Welcome to River Cafe, Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and Adami's Studios.
Hi. I'm Michael Caine and I'm here with a very good friend of mine called Ruthie Rogers.
I often say that the real reason I have a restaurant is that once a week I get to walk Michael Caine from Table four through the crowded restaurant to his car and say good night to a man I admire and I adore.
Is that me? Oh? Yeah, well, I love the restaurant.
I always say, what do we always say? Now? We both say it the only reason she has a restaurant. In each episode, my guest reads a recipe they have chosen from one of our cookbooks. I talk about food, the food they cook, the food they eat, and most of all, the food of their memories.
The River Cafe have a dessert which is my favorite, and it's called Pannacotta with grapper. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you the recipe in cash. You want to make it for yourself, Okay, Pour nine hundred milligrams of cream into a pan, Add the vanilla pods, add the lemon ride, bring to the boil. Simmer and reducee by a third pass through a sieve. Then scrape the seeds from inside the vanilla pods back into the cream and discard the alter pods. Remove the
gelatine from the milk. Heat the milk until hot, then return the gelatine to the milk and stir until dissolved. Pour through a sieve into a hot cream and leave to cool, stirring occasionally. Lightly whip the remaining cream with the icing sugar, fold into the cold cream mixture and then add grapper. It is now ready to be poured into six small balls and put into the fridge for at least three hours or if you like, overnight.
So, Michael, here we are Yeh River Cafe. But let's go back to the beginning. You were born in London.
Yeah, I was born in Burmasey, which is South London. But I'm a company because I was born in a part of Burmasey which is opposite bow Bells. And if you're born within the sound of bow bells, you're a company.
What about food? Do you have memories of food?
Yeah? My memory of food is this. My father was a Billies Gape fish market porter and he was a big gambler, and so he never bought steak or anything. It was too deer. But he used to nick a lot of fish. So for fifteen years I ate fish, every kind of fish you can imagine, and I realized that's a very healthy thing. And also another accidental healthy thing for me was the Second World War. You couldn't
get any sugar. You couldn't get any of those things, those drinks that you have now with all this sugar in it. Then I was evacuated into the country away from the smug which in Bermondsey then was terrible because of everyone had cold fires. But I was evacuated to the country and I lived on a farm for six years.
Do you remember the food there.
Oh, the food was wonderful. I mean some of the food I caught myself because I could outrun a rabbit. And I used to catch a rabbit with a stick and give it to my mother to cook for dinner. Pheasant partridge. We remember all those things, and so thinking back on it, health wise, I was very lucky. And not on top of all that, my mother insisted I ate porridge for breakfast. For fifteen years.
You had fish, you had pheasants, had.
Porridge, rabbit and everything had fresh vegetables. We lived on a farm. We used to go and knick the cabbage. And eventually we came back to London and the council gave us a prefabricated house which was made of asbestos, and they put them up like in two weeks, and people were sort of sympathizing with people like me who were having to live in these prefabricated houses. And what they didn't know was what life was like before because in the flat we lived in when I was a
little boy, there was no toilet. For a start. You had to go down to the garden, so I had very strong legs, or you bought a pot pop, you know. But when we walked into the prefab the first time, my brother Stanley and I, we were stunned. We were in a place which for the first time had electric light, an indoor toilet, and it had a little garden. It was unbelievable in the middle of London and the Elephant Castle.
Do you remember the kitchen.
The kitchen was lovely. It was an electric stove and a refrigerator, you know, it was a refrigerator. We'd never seen a refrigerator and we had a bathroom. I mean when we used to have a bath in the kitchen, in a bath that my mothers pour hot watering in the kettle.
So you imagine mother and father moving with their children to this prefabricated house which it had had a bathroom, it had a kitchen, it had a view, it had a garden. So how do you think that changed her way of being with you and cooking for you.
It was fabulous for her because it cut out masses of work to do things, you know, And she was so happy and the food got even better.
Why do you like the pana cootta?
Well, the panakotta has little bits of fruit in it, and I can eat that without conscience because I'm eating fruit, you know. And I said, oh, look it's a BlackBerry.
Yah.
It just happened to have a little bit of extra panicotta with it because it was quite old and I can't stuff down sugar as much as i'd like to, and there's quite a lot of sugar in it.
It's quite a bit. But she just read the have you ever made it?
Oh? No, I never make desserts. I only does and veitch because I'm afraid of eating them.
Oh, okay. And what do you make when you make a main course? What do you like to cook?
Well, I'm the one responsible in the house for Sunday lunch, so I do roast beef, roast lam Christmas, I do the roast turkey. I do the best, allegedly the best roast potatoes anybody who ever came ever eaten. Yeah, I'm very good at that. Well, the trick is, when they're cooked is to mash them just a little bit, just crack them open, put oil on them, and then bake them again, so they always got baked inside. Oh yeah,
but I've never eaten panicotta in any other reund but yours. Okay, Well, I always eat it every time I come.
You do? You come usually on a Wednesday or Thursday. You always sit on table for and you always sit at the same seat. And I was just wondering how you feel about restaurants and food.
Well, I love restaurants. I've owned a couple. I don't use restaurants for occasions. Restaurants are part of my life.
Because your mom worked in the Lion's Corner house.
Yeah, my mother was a cook in a lion's corner house. That was the first sort of brasserie in England that I ever saw. There were no braiseries in England, but Lion's Corner House was a brasserie. I realized later when I went to France and loved the braseries in France, and I came back to England and I met Peter Langan and we both said there isn't a brasserie in London, and we opened Langard's brasseriie together, what was it like being involved in a restaurant fabulous?
What did you like about it?
Well? I loved the idea right from the start of designing the restaurant and didn't getting drunk for nothing.
How did you design it? What would your design be?
Of the design there is? I said, how we got to design this? Said Peter Langer, my partner. He said, We've got masses of walls. It was an enormous restaurant. He said, we cover them with pictures, paintings. I said, paintings. I said, I'm the money. I said no, he said, we'll get wonderful paintings for very little money. Because I had the perfect partner, who's going to help me? Choose him? I said, what's his name? He said, David? Helpney. David
even did the menu forever. Yeah, so I had a great time.
When you sort of started out acting and being an actor on your own. Was food important to you then? Would you grab something or did you go back to your Now?
I used to go to the cheapest possible restaurant I could find. I mean, I had no money. I found an Italian restaurant in Soho that served three course meal for half a crown.
Half a crown and six. I interviewed Paul McCartney the other day and he was telling me that the first really good meal that he remembers was going with George Martin to Latoine and that was an awakening for him of what food could be. Do you remember an experience going from an expensive, cheap restaurants to actually having your first.
Well, my first thing was when my dad died. He left me a bit of money, about one hundred pounds, and I was so sad. I thought, I'm going to get on a train and go to Paris. And I got on a train on my own and went to Paris. And I stayed there for about seven months. And I adored the food in Paris. I loved it, but I adore English.
I remember how old you were when you went to Paris.
I was seventeen seventeen.
Yeah, so you took the hundred pounds at the one hundred pounds last year seven months.
No I worked. I used to sell on the street, freaked freak for a franc used to get free for a franc. I used to sell that. And I had a French mate who had a cafe so there. Then I had an American friend, another sort of broke like me, and he worked in the air terminal, so I used to go in there and I could get free food from him. And I used to have an empty suitcase. I'd sleep on the sofa as I was waiting for a plane if I didn't have enough money. But I
love Paris, and I learned to speak French. I speak very good friends, It's good.
Do you remember, like the first grand meal that you had when you had money, which will you take into a restaurant and had something amazingly sophisticated to eat and that made you interested in food, even food.
Yeah. The restaurant was the White Elephant, that was Encouragement Street. Yes, and we went there. I'm trying to think what the hell it was We had. Oh it was to do with cavia. Ah, and there was cavia all over the place, and I never got over that. I'd never eaten the caviar obviously couldn't afford it. But then this whole dish was cavire. It was wonderful. I know who it was too. Harry Saltzmith had given me the part in Ichris File, and he took me to the White Elephant. And of
course I was under contract. You know, I could have anything I liked, and I suddenly realized that's what my life is going to be.
But having great food could be possible.
Yeah, having enough money to have great.
Food, because I think food is an aspiration, isn't it Having great food or something that you can it opens you up to a world.
Is why I come here.
What about when you went to make the Italian Job in Italy? What was that like?
Oh? I had a wonderful time. It was a great restaurant every evening.
Did they cook on set? Do you eat? No?
No, we didn't buy that much with lunch because a movie is a hard thing to make, you know, especially when with all those cars and crowds, like an Italian job. So we concentrated on that all day. I mean, you wind up having a sandwich or a bowl of spaghetti, but then you'd have a great meal in the evening.
And if you are in a film, do you really try and avoid food or do you find it's good to sit.
Down and have no I avoid food. Yeah, I don't want to go to sleep in the afternoon when I was supposed to be doing ten pages of dialogue. Food makes you go to sleep.
When you make movies in la Is there a restaurant that you go to?
Oh?
Yeah, Chasins.
We ate the Chasin tell us about Chasins.
Chasins was almost like a club. I used to go there every Friday and you look around the room and Alfred Hitchcock was always sitting there. Kerry Grant was over there, you know, and it was one of those incredible places, you know. But everybody only ever went to the same restaurant on the same day. If you went to Chasings on a Tuesday, would have been crowded, but there'd been no stars there. The stars were there Friday night, and
Spargo was another one Thursday. Everyone was in Spargo. And the great thing about that is that there was great food and a great atmosphere. But there were stars everywhere, just all the movie stars I've been seeing in movies all my life. My grandfather knew Alfred Hitchcock. Alfred Hitchcock was born in South London. His father had a grocery store next door to my great grandfather with Alfred Hitchcock.
When I went to Universal making a picture Gambit with Shirley McLean, was given a dressing room bungalow next door to his. His was a permanent one, it was always in. Mine was a temporary one. And I've got to know him very welcome from both from South London. And I said him one day I saw, I said, I saw strangers on a train and there wasn't one shot of a train in the entire movie, going along a track to somewhere. He said, whose viewpoint on the train would
that have been? And there in one line he summed up directing movies. And I remember that you never did a movie.
With his Scot, did you.
I bet people who did movies and they loved him. I never did. I never got that lucky.
If you sit near the wood of and you get a great view of what we're cooking, whether it's dover soles, turbots, pigeons, or pieces of beef. Today we're making potatoes eleven oregano, parsley and black olive alfuna. The potatoes are in here now with all the herbs, good olive, all season twelve. You have to incorporate all your.
Mouthy lemons chopped and chopped garlic a little bit later.
If I put them into soon, the garlic would probably go too quickly, as with the lemon. Now the potatoes have had a bit of a head start.
Then we'll get all the lemon and the garlic in that and they will all come together.
The other thing I think about restaurants, having worked in one and having an open kitchen really seeing the people who come in, is that people do very private things in a public space. So they'll use a restaurant to fire someone, or they'll use a restaurant admit an affair, or they'll use a restaurant to get divorced. You see a lot of tears, but if you talk to my waiters, they will tell you about the amazing amount of people who'll cry.
Well, people at my table have cried, but with laughter, wait, jokes and stuff.
You know.
I consider myself a Duff commits.
When you've been asked to be in a movie, will you have had meetings with you know?
Oh, in Hollywood you're always with executives and it's quite serious. But it's never dinner. It's always lunch. I would never discuss business at dinner. You've got to come to lunch for that, because I'm not wasting the dinner doing it.
Yeah, you know.
Do you think that's just you or is it most people? You go into Hollywood restaurants at lunch time and it's all business. Yeah, it's all business lunches.
When Richard and I went to New York, the thing that I was really interested was we were often taken out to lunch by his clients, to the Four Seasons and the Secret Building. And the thing I still notice is that nobody drinks. No. You know, Richard asked for a glass of white wine, and I think they thought he was an alcoholic, you know, having and if you go around, they're having fantastic food, but with iced tea.
With New York, I find a restaurant and live in it.
Yeah.
My restaurant in New York was Elaines. Yeah. Elaine was a lady who owned this restaurant named after her, and she was one of my closest friends. And she was everyone's close, just mine, and you always met people there. Yeah, I mean it was a very showbiz area. Yeah, very showbiz.
I know for myself that people will return to a restaurant where they're welcomed with warmth, with kindness, and the food might not be the top priority, but people will come back to a restaurant if their chicken was overcooked or their lemon tart was a bit you know, curdly. But I certainly will not go back to a restaurant where I've been treated badly or I've been people been arrogant, or you know, you go. I want people to feel safe when they.
Go on restaurant where I got treated badly. I never did because I'm so fussy about restaurants, and yeah, I read about them, you know, before I go the first time. Yeah, and I've always been in restaurants all over the world, but the River Cafe in particular. Someone took me there the first time, and I was stunned by the restaurant. I had never seen a restaurant like that. It was the highest restaurant I've been in the widest and being
well known, and people coming asking for autographs. You sit so far apart from each other that no one recognizes you, especially if like me, got a baseball cap and dark glasses.
You know that helps.
And you can see all the staff cooking, and there was a big boiler doing pizzas with great big flames coming out.
You would be meaning the wood oven.
Yeah, And I had never seen a restaurant like that. I mean of the sixties, the big popular restaurants for small Italian brasseries which took over from the English restaurant. You know, where you had to leave a sort of nine o'clock about half past eight. You see the headweight. They're looking at his watch. Great, when are the bloody people leaving? But what there was also he sees the timing.
You stay as long as you like. You leave when you finished the dinner, not when the waiters have got fed up.
I think that when Rose and I started the River Cafe, we were at a point in restaurant world. And it wasn't just us. It was Alice Walters in San Francisco and Sally Clark in London and Roly in London as well. And I think we were at a point where you could either go to a very very established, well cooked meal formal it was an occasion you would go out, you'd dress up, and you'd be humiliated by the wine waiter,
you know, but you would have a good meal. And then there were the kind of like you said, the cheap Italians or the Greek or the places where you could go and have a great time but maybe not eat so well. And we thought, well, why can't you combine the two. Why can't you do a place that has elegance and it has drama, all the things we look for, but also you could have fun.
From my point of view as an actor, I realized that I love writing. I'm writing a book now another one. Yeah, And I loved a garden and I love to cook. And if you think that there are three things, you do them on your own. My life is spent with one hundred and fifty people all day, and when I go home, I write, cook or garden on my own. And that's why I chose those things. I didn't know i'd chosen them for that.
One of the questions that I ask everybody at the end of the conversation is we have food when we're hungry. We have food when we're celebrating, but sometimes we just want food for comfort. What would that be your comfort food?
Well, years ago, sausage of mesh. Yes, now it's caveo.
Okay. To visit the online shop of the River Cafe, go to shop Therivercafe dot co dot uk.
River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and Adamized Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.