Welcome to River Cafe, Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and Adami's Studios.
A few minutes ago, I sat at a table in the River Cafe and spoke to Rudy Law, who was a waiter here. He told me about growing up with a father who cooked for him, his brothers and his sisters, who insisted on family dinners, created a nut roast at Christmas for his vegetarian siblings and encouraged them all to be adventurous in what they ate. Now, I am going to sit down with Rudy's father, this wonderful man, Jude Law, loved by his son and by me.
What could be better? Hello?
Jude?
Know to have your sons talking so moving.
I was almost in tears, So before we start, would you like to read the rest of that you've chosen?
Yes. Pair and almond tart serves ten to twelve people. Six ripe commis pears, three hundred and fifty grams blanched whole almonds, three hundred and fifty grams of unsalted butter softened, three hundred and fifty grams of caster sugar, three eggs, peel, halve and core. The pears place the pair halves face down and in one layer in a prebated sweet pastry base. Put the almonds in a food processor and chop until fine. Cream together the butter and sugar with an electric mixer
until pale and light. Add the almonds, then the eggs one by one. Pour this almond mixture over the pears, Bake for forty minutes or until the filling is golden brown, and set. Leave to cool, and serve with a dollop of creme fresh m.
So we're sitting here with the pair and almond.
Tare award award.
It could be a reward. You can have it whenever you want. We can stop the conversation to eat. That's perfectly possible. I was really pleased that you chose this recipe because, in fact, it's a recipe that I ate in a restaurant called Benoit in Paris when Richard was working there doing the Pompadoo, and we used to go there and we used to finish the meal with this pear and almond tart. And so it's not an Italian recipe, but it's one that means a lot to me. Do you know why you chose this recipe?
It's one of the many things, but certainly one thing I always look forward to having wherever I come here. And I'm someone who often encourages the other guests that I'm meeting with to get other desserts so that we can all try, you know, different plates, but this is the one I always get.
It's interesting, isn't it about getting your guests when you come to a restaurant to try as you say that the A friend of mine told me the other day that when he hires somebody, he always brings them to the River Cafe, and if they choose squid, he doesn't not sure. He wants to hire them test the squid test.
Wow.
And he was saying, because there's so many exciting things to have. I actually I think I would be impressed by somebody who chairs squid. But I like the idea that you encourage people to share.
I do.
I'm just thinking about it just struck me that, of course I often have my initial meetings for jobs at restaurants too. Yeah, and so in a weird way, I'm being auditioned, and I'm auditioning them usually over food, because I suppose food and how you eat and what you eat and where you want to feel it is hugely revealing. And if you're going to go on a journey together creatively or one way, you're going to share insights and emotions, you're going to share food.
And what about in the theater? Do you eat before?
If you're doing a performance in the evening? Would you wait anything afterwards?
You have to, I have to eat before, but you also then have to time it so that you've got a couple of hours to digest it. Probably. I had a lovely ritual when I was doing Hamlet. I would arrive at the Windows, which is right next to Chiky's. I'd get there a couple of hours before and they were very sweet. They'd let me go in even though they weren't always open, and have a little piece of fish, so it was kind of clean protein, maybe a salad, and then I can have a little sleep, wake up
and warm up and then do the plant. I did that for aly seven.
Months and a great Hamlet.
It was thank you?
And would you go out after because when some of my friends who are in the other week the idea that you go out afterwards?
Yes? Did you like that? Do you like How do you feel the end of performance?
Well?
Initially, initially especially in that show, I had this ridiculous rule that no, you know, I can't get it's going to be exhausted. I can't get caught up in that. I'm going to go home every night really early. I think that lasted about a week, and then it was like, let's go out and great wine and eat great food and celebrate because you're on a wonderful sort of high. And it feels also it's such a lovely part of the place. Sharing then what your friends or family have
thought if they come and see you. And then there's a surprise too. Someone suddenly comes and you're like, oh, I haven't seen you in years, thank you for coming. And part of the ritual of production is to eat together afterwards or as a company.
Would you go out with other actors or was it usually always yeah, yeah, yeah.
There is sometimes a comparison between the drama of a restaurant and the drama of the theater. Theater everywhere, Yeah, and that I can work a night and have a packed restaurant. But at the end of that performance you think either it didn't quite work with the audience. I could just feel there was not the mood. And I used to come home to REGI and say, oh, I
said it's over. I'm giving up. I don't know what I did, but tonight didn't work, or you'd come on this incredible high of say that was a night to remember and.
That anticipation of it. The doors are open is happening and you can't go back. Then yeah, we're open, and we close for another four hour. You know, it's it's the same in a way in theater. Absolutely, the curtain goes up, you're on.
You're on.
That reliance on each other to be a sort of smooth operation is keys absolutely at the heart of it, isn't it. And it becomes like trust and it becomes it becomes you have a great trust and you in others. And I think also you find out about yourself in that environment because you really are having to be in a team and or what kind of a team player am? I?
Rudy tell me that your mother was a really good cook, is a really good cook, and so did you grow up with good food?
I grew up with pretty good food. My mum cooked with a lot of love. She grew up in Lancashire and was the sort of sixties generation who ran away, so she didn't actually run away. She moved to London as a student and embraced the sort of swinging sixties and was very much someone curious in exploring new possibilities, and so yeah, I think that was reflected in the food she then cooked us when we me and my sister came along.
One of the thing that I've also noticed in these conversations is how many people remember the food of their grandparents, almost more than their parents. And I was wandering Lancashire. Is that where Lancashire hot part comes from?
Yes?
Did you have that?
Not that I remember, but you're I think you're so right about the influence of grandparents' food. My grandma's food was fantastic, very hearty.
Is this the mother of your mother or your father?
Well, that's a complicated that's a long story that leads off from food. My parents were both adopted, and my mom's mum by adoption passed away when she was quite young, so her sister, my mum's auntie, became a sort of maternal role and that's who I always think of as my grandma. He was complicated.
What did you do with your grandfather?
He was a plumber, He was a very successful plumber in that area, and he would get up every morning when we were there and cook everyone breakfast in bed, every single.
Day, in bed and wait for your grandfather.
Oh no, actually I wouldn't. I'd get up and help Uncle Alan, help, I'd help Alan, but everyone else would stay in bed and he'd do a tray for everyone. Isn't that amazing? I'm thinking back now, that's it's amazing, pretty good. And you could order your egg you get poached eggs, you can get fried. Yeah, he'd do fried, toast, bacon, coffee, tea. Yeah, amazing.
Surprised my mum and dad didn't go more often. This is in Lancashon, a little town called bake Up, and when we would go out to say hello to all the aunties, it would start off wonderfully well because you get a huge slice of cake. But the problem is there were like six or seven aunties and by the end of the trip you were eating six or seven and you couldn't eat any more cake.
Cake.
It was scones, chocolate cakes, all sorts, but lots of cake.
So can I just say that that would have been Rudy's for Rudy a great grandmother and he spoke at great grandson today about the the cake.
When did you leave home?
I lived? I'm actually very young, seventeen I moved. I had to move to Manchester because I'd got a job on tell it, I was at school. I was all set to sort of carry on my school career and I had always wanted to be an actor. And I got off at a job and I lived on my own. I had my own little flat up in Manchester seventeen and had to cook so I could. I sort of learned then, but you know, I'd already picked up little I used to love making little beef paupets. I'd make
little beef paupets. I remember my mum taught me chopping onions, finding those bit of garlic.
Do you then start acting and traveling? I did.
I did, and my love affair with Italy really started. I took a play on tour around Italy and I was gone for seven or eight months, and we would do a little town each day and then pack up
the set and drive to the next town. And being there as a young adult, and being there with a group of Italians who were running the tour and knew every little tiny restaurant or those wonderful places you can eat in Italy, in the little towns where you sit with the family and you pay a little bit of money and you eat what they eat, but the food is spectacular, So you're sort of eating slightly more adventurous Italian food than perhaps you would if you were to
go to a restaurant. And I just fell in love with Italy there and then, and I've been going ever since quite regularly, and I've been lucky enough to go back and work there and make films there, which is sometimes has often been some of the happiest experiences of my life.
So what was it like being in Positana? Did you stay there when you were doing Ripley?
Was that we weren't there so long? And my memory of Ripley is more on the island of Iskia.
Oh, I've never been there.
Shot.
Yeah, just off Naples and next to Caprian Prody, and we found this extraordinary restaurant right on the sea, and it was almost as if they could sort of fit shout of the back window and cook what they caught. You know. We just sort of as a crew took that over and it became the sort of heart of the film really where everyone would congregate there after a day's shooting and eat wonderful fresh fish food.
What about working and acting and eating because you know, I know that you're in of course, you're in Budapest hotel.
And I talked to West who said.
That he only really he would rather not give his anybody any food at all during the day, maybe a bowl of soup and give them soup for lunch, but then the crew objected to the soup.
I think I'd agree with Wes on that that the problem with lunches when you're filming is that you have to take obviously that hour, but then it also takes an hour to get everyone back and warmed up, so sometimes you lose the momentum. So if you're in the middle of a seed and suddenly someone says, right, okay, lunchtime, you think, well, we're not going to get really back to this for another three hours and you have to
start again. So I'd rather sometimes just carry on. I mean, I also remember, I know that crews, you know, differ, don't they, But but I remember working with one actress who decided that the food was really unhealthy, and so they sort of got it all changed to very gluten free and all this, and there was an uprising because of course the crew wanted their pie and custard and they wanted the hearty stuff to keep them going.
You talk about your family, You talk about the influence of your mother and your grandmother and your aunt, and the cakes and Lancashire, and about being an actor and.
The excitement of eating.
You have six children and I know four of them, you know, and I know that they're great kids. A lot of influence of your parents and the way Rudy spoke about the love that he had for food and for you taking care of him. And he said that you cooked, you know, you actually cooked for them, and that you insisted on the dinners. And as I said in my introduction, there was a Christmas when you made the nut roast and you were in here meat eaters.
And he said, his sister and brother vegetarians, but there was that kind of of taking care of each other.
So what is it like being a father of six children? And food?
It's the element that defines me and brings me the most joy and also the most concerned and dramas, but makes me feel the most alive and talking about it like this now makes sense that, yeah, the center of that was the were the meals that we eat together as they were growing up as a family, And that comes directly from my parents, the importance of that, and I think they, yeah, they talk about it. They love
it too. I mean, you know raph Iris and Rudy, well, Rafa and Iris are now they've moved out now and they have their own places, but you know, they still come back for Sunday lunches or dinners, and I'm so pleased that that was at the heart of their childhood. And yeah, learning to cook vegetarian food because you know, I had to respect their choices as veggies. And I
enjoyed the challenge of it, really and I enjoyed. Gosh, it's funny talking about it like this because you realize that the words you keep repeating and therefore what's at the heart of it. But I enjoyed giving the love of it. I enjoyed looking after them. I always say this to friends who are expecting children, that you know, the satisfaction you get when you're about to go to bed and your kids all eaten, they're washed, they're in bed,
they're safe. It's just such a fantastic feeling. It's a greatest sense of satisfaction and contentment that you've got there another day and they're all right, you know, they've eaten all of that, and that was an important part of bringing them up to me. And and the adventurousness I suppose because again it reflects I don't know. You know people that go, oh, no, I don't like that, and
you think, well, have you tried it? You know that was always that's always the first question to the kids, and you think, no, just try it, you know, and you see them suddenly thinking, oh, actually.
Yeah, so it's an octopus.
You think, I go and try a little bit.
It's really good.
But I think that's that trying it probably then carries over to other parts.
Of absolutely, and I think you get a connection, to say, with a country or a nation or a nationality because of the food. If you know you like their food, you sort of think, oh, yes, why do they cook like that? Or what?
That's interesting?
You know, it opens your eyes and your heart to culture. It's I won't, I won't, I won't steer into politics. But what's amazes me about not you know, the idea of sort of not embracing immigrants and refugees or but you know this, this to me what certainly in London, but the heart of this country is the influence of other countries. The food and the culture that they bring makes this the most fantastic country.
So if we think that food is so movingly expressed by your son and by yourself as food is love, the food is a connection, The food is memory, and food is parenting, and food is curiosity and part of our world that we care for. It's also comfort, isn't it. You know, it's kind of what we do and we need comfort. So for my last question to do law,
what would be your comfort food? Not when you're hungry, not when you want to cook for somebody else, because you're such a giver and you're talking all the time about what you can do for everyone and your children, what would be your comfort food?
What would you turn to?
Well, I have two that spring to mind. The first one is ice cream. I love ice cream. I love variety of flavors, and I love that you can almost have a sort of a conversation with different flavors if you get them right. So if you get a little lemon and chocolate and then maybe hazel nut. I mean, that's a really interesting combination. I'm trying to.
Three scoops, scoop, hazel, lemon and ice cream.
Separately.
Yeah, maybe even ice cream too. Yeah.
But then the other thing that comes to my mind, and this is an odd one, is nuts. I love nuts.
But type all types, salted, unsalted, salted. I'm afraid.
I mean, I realized it's really bad for me. I eat a lot of nuts, and yeah, I love them, almonds, peanuts, cashews, maceadamia's, brazil nuts.
I hope you don't need much c because I think you are surrounded by love of our friends and your children. But comfort is good, and certainly you have been my comfort. And it's cold December night.
Thank you, Jude, it's my pleasure.
Thank you good oh, thank you. That was lovely.
This holiday season.
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River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and Adamized Studios. For more podcast from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.