Ruthie's Table 4: Sian Wyn Owen & Joseph Trivelli

The answers to this questions are simple. It's people, and two of the most important people for me at the River Cafe are Sean Manoan and Joseph Travelli, who, between them have merely clocked up fifty years of experience in this restaurant. Sean, if I were to ask you to introduce Joseph of Ellie, how would you introduce him? Well, Joseph is one of my best friends. I've worked with him for twenty plus years. And how would you introduce Sean? You have to say she's one of your best friends.

Actually say I don't know Sean very well? How dare you? So? There were cheers Okay, Champagne, this is the first for me. At the beginning of this interview might be better than the end, or maybe the end would be better at the beginning, in terms of process and in terms of how a restaurant works, how does a menu get written? Do whatever we can both talk about. I think we have. What we would encourage chefsidy when we employ them is

to have a constant dialogue about food. So from the minute I get up in the morning, I would cycle to work, go straight to the pool, and for that half an hour where I'm just swimming my lengths, I just think about the menu. I think who's working, what's the weather like? It's a scorcher, is it cold? You know? And no one can interrupt me because I'm just swimming up and down. So basically I can get the menu in my head thinking about all those nuances of a

balanced menu, color, obviously seasonality. And I remember once writing a menu in in the early days at the River Cafe, and I remember Ruthie saying to me, every person who comes to River Cafe is coming for a different reason,

but there's many people who are coming to celebration. So one person's working lunch is someone else's wedding, anniversary or birthday, and so to write a menu that considers all those things, it's a real skill because if you're if you're eating out seven days a week, you don't want to eat the same way as if you've saved up to come here and this is your big day. So you need to write a menu that thinks of all of that. The fussy eater, the celebratory eater. Do you think about

it when you're swimming every day? I don't swim every day anymore. I used to, um, I think about it cycling in, And when I'm writing the menu, I always think about Yes, it's the balance on one line of a dish, you know, like Chilian lemon or whatever, and the colors, and then the balance on the menu. And

then there'll be a soux chef on that shift. He'll be working with us, So while we're writing the menu, they're manning the kitchen and making sure that the prep is done, you know, checking this and that, dealing with the fish suppliers phoning up and the butcher's phoning and people. You know, there's many calls coming in about because we're working with the seasonality and we're only cooking what's reflected in the market. You know, if there's no scollops, we

won't put them on the menu. It's not like we've got a three month menu where we have scollops on every day. If there's no cavalon ero and the you know, everything reflects the market. I always like to call on my way in or the night before as probably really frustrating, but to kind of know what you have. You know that you have in your head that you have Langston but you don't have so you have Sea Best but you don't have to. You can then start planning, you know.

I think how that goes. I think one of the things that both of you is that you are incredibly patient with new chefs. I do. I think you are. I've always tried to if ever I was to tell someone off in the kitchen, I would always try and make sure that it it was never a personal would only be like to do with what they've done. I take a lot of pride and not being aggressive chef, never really raising my voice and people some people want to see you behave like that in the kitchen because I

think that's what head chef would do. And I just think I refuse to do that that's not her roll and never do that. Take a lot of pride in it, and you're a brilliant boss. Just like it's just so focused on everyone being in the right zone all the time, which is so important. Is importan alton as being clean

and washed down. We always say that, don't we. Being in a professional kitchen is I always liken it to being on the West End doing two shows a day, because you've got two non negotiable deadlines a day where you have to be ready and ready to go. And so when I opened the door to come down into the kitchen and I've got my chef's outfit on, and I'm always comes straight into my professional persona. So I'm

like morning morning everyone. Morning. I think of morning to everybody, and I like boil myself up by my good morning nous and then to have a feeling of good will and that really does perpetuate teamwork and respect for working environment that I take really really seriously. Also the building as well. You know we haven't talked about the building.

I mean it's just like the room and the kitchen being in the room, so it's just got this lovely feeling of calm, you know, and after twenty two years whatever it is of going into it every morning, opened the door and just think, oh, this is just you know, this is for me, for us at home, but it's also just it's impeccable. If I come in the morning, this is like ever so slightly topical. But if I come in the morning and someone's left a bottle of wine I haven't finished on table one, you know, it

really annoys me because it's just sounds okay. Also, you should be able to from the table. Table one is right in the kitchen. Table twelve is literally in the kitchen, and in theory you should be able to walk into the kitchen at any moment. I mean, don't try it at home. And there's nothing hidden. Everything is fully on the show, so there's nothing dodgy going on behind the scenes, everything in which the ruthie's a real stickler for, like make sure the bin the get rid of that bin.

And I love it when someone comes into the kitchen they say show me the kitchen and they just go, this is it. There's something else like downstairs that this is. I'd think I looked after you on your first day massively and then we both worked our way up through the River Cafe kitchen together, so we became friends really like that. I remember once being on the cold section with Joseph and saying, how much oil do you think

we will like on this dish? We were, you know, we had a comraderie, and then we were on our same journey all the way up to the top, to the point now that I get to basically work with my best friend, because I hadn't say to chefs, especially sometimes I say it when a chef has been fear for a while and it's kind of slightly impatient with a very very young chef has just started. I said, you remember your first day, you know, it's like remembering

your first kiss. Can you remember your first day here? Either of you? Oh gosh, absolutely? What was it like? I was terrifying was I here? So Rose was there. I remember the whole process of arriving. Wrote a letter and gave it to Rose, incredibly nervous when I had lunch and she invited me to come the following week to work. And yeah, you were away that week and I was just terrified, to be honest, until you came back.

And then you made me a cup of tea and I thought, Okay, I think I can get up with this. But I was the first week. I was like in awe and so scared. I remember leaving and just thinking like, okay, I'm okay, I've got through another day. It was literally day by day. But I'm sure you know that is the same for anyone in a You know, I wanted to work here for a couple of years at that point, and it just meant so much I could barely cope

with it. Did you remember yours your first day? I remember meeting Rose on my first day and she said something I always quote still said, I'll teach you to slice a piece of prisciuto the perfect thickness. I'll teach you to cook pelotti beans perfectly. I'll teach you the art of simple cooking. And I remember thinking that sounds easy, But actually that is the essence of the river, isn't it.

Simplicity and the understanding of simplicity, which, as I've worked with Ruthie over the years, I've never understood it more than watching you and how you take one thing more away. But were you scared? Yeah, definitely, And what was still here? It was the fear that you could do something wrong

if someone would tell you. All For I think maybe twenty years ago, when I was younger, chef kitchens, even though the River Cafe wasn't like that, having come through London kitchens and then being quite hierarchical and aggressive and well dominated, I really, you know, to go somewhere as Revere River Cafe, the preconception would be more of that. But as I was going along my journey, I was

becoming more sure of what I didn't like. So when I arrived at the River Cafe and met two women that I was like, Wow, this this is like a life goal here, you know, and then you could pursue your own values as we went up the ladder. Are the things that were really important to us as you became more of a manager. I suppose absolutely right. This interesting about how immediate your performances judged in the restaurant. Chefs the judge as soon as they walk into the kitchen.

I mean, you can judge a chef by the the chef's trousers they were even or if they're come in the jacket that's not clean or tied neatly. And how you present yourself before you've even picked up your knife, which people are judging you by your knife quietly, even though I don't believe in the what your knife says about you, per say, But a lot of chefs will just have a little look at someone's knife before they've

even chopped anything. Did you start being so afraid? How long did it take two years ago or just after two years? About two years to settling? What do you think there was? I think what? Because what the River Cafe does. We write the menu every day, twice a day for lunch and dinner, and so it's very unique.

When I worked in for example, Bluebird, I was the queen of Mason Plus and we would do and so when you say about music plus, it means you have to have your breath, all your vegetables and stuff done for you know, for the like in the River Cafe, we have have vegetables done just for lunch, and most things we do to order. So if we have parsley, we'll chopped parsty to order, and we chopped garlic to order, and we do everything to orders as fresh as it could be. When I worked in Bluebird, I had the

whole fridge stock for the week. So when I started at the River Cafe. I was like, you're mad, how can you do everything to order that? This is a recipe for disaster. I'm the queen of muse on Plus. You know when a new chef comes, when you've interviewed someone and you know, I used to say, what books do you read? Michelle Rue used to say, make me an omelet? But what do you look for in terms

of somebody coming for a job here? If we interview people together, that we try and put them off because some people come with they have maybe a law degree or they've done a degree in dark medicine. We have and we're like, okay, so you know, you have to stand up for a living. You know, you have to work nights, you have to work weekends. It's shift work. If you love cooking, you can always cook at home.

And then if you're really, really, really really really set on it, then you know, because some people you think, my god, you could earn the fortune being a lawyer. I look for people that I think will fit into the team because if someone wants to learn, we can teach you anyone to cook. But going back, what actually

made you want to be a chef? I didn't study it, but I grew up having long summer holidays in Italy, and my grandmother started cooking before we got up, and I slept in a room where the only window was to the kitchen. There wasn't a window to the outside, so I think it was kind of they had to pass through the kitchen to get through. There was no I was actually not you know, there was no outdoor window. There was just a hatch to the cooker and NONEA was impatient for us to wake up so she could

be with her grandkids. That should open the thing and put cups of like sweet coffee and you know, do everything to wake us. So that's how it got in me. But I didn't realize that I could make it into a career. I got a job washing up in the kitchen with a for a guy called Chris, who's a dear friend, and one day he m burned himself so badly had to go to hospital and I was left to make Sunday lunch and I just loved it. And I think that's when I thought, Okay, I could I

could really enjoy this, and what about you. My mom was a really brilliant cook, and really in the eighties she was a sort of Robert Carrier generation, and I aspired to where she was coming from. Probably you know that French influence. And my parents were real um, you know, the gastronomic in the seventies eighties, and I was fortunate enough to travel and eat well. And then as I became older, I read cookbooks like literally, like there were novels.

I don't haven't read the classics, but I've read the classics and cookbooks, and then I well, I probably, I mean, I've read my Italian repertoire, but the ones that really got me into cooking when I was young, I loved reading the French ones. I loved the Rue Brothers. But you know, Sophie Griggson, But did you read Richard only or not? I didn't have more America Elizabeth David or not much Elizabeth David. Yeah. I wanted to be a chef, but my parents would not entertain the idea. And obviously

I was being such a good person. I just did what they said. So I went off to university and then I became a chef after I had graduated, much against everyone else's you know, what they thought was a good idea, and just work my way up from the bottom. Then aged twenty two, I started, did you Yeah, and you had to overcome your parents disapproval took a while, and then your father, I know it was so fiercely proud of being a chef. He was yeah, yeah, he definitely was a chef, but also a chef who took

the River Cafe and moved it forward. So you know, we've talked about both of you being interviewed by Rose or in all of her in love with her, as you know we were. People often ask me, they say, how did the River Cafe survive a fire? What would happen if two of your great Shana Joseph left, What would happen if you had something happened, and how would you get through it? And I say, well, the worst thing that ever could have happened, the most imaginable thing

that could have ever happened. I'm gonna start to cry. It was Rose dying, that Rose left us, and if we could get through that, then we could almost do anything, because it was a lot, and she was not only she don't really died, but she was sick and we went through different stages of that illness. And we don't have to focus on her death. Can focus on her life. What was she like? When I think about Rose, I

think about was she was? Really she was very different to you in many ways, wasn't she like you know, of course this is probably the secret of a good working relationship. But she was an avid gardener, wasn't she. The garden was something she was very the vegetable garden. She had encyclopedic knowledge of plants, which was you know, she encouraged us to think about the River Cafe Garden with only having an edible for every single plant in the River Cafe gardens edible and she was very proud

of that. The other thing I think of when I think of Roses is vin Italy. How I was lucky enough to go to Vinitaly with her. Like soin Italy is a big wine tasting where you go for a I mean, you could go for a week, you may never come back. Probably goes two days is perfect. And we'd go and we try I don't know, fifties wines and they maybe maybe that's the exaggeration, but a lot of wine, and towards the afternoon, Roses get a little bit like, you know, the pallett is starting to fade.

Let's go into Verona and getting a pair of TiVo and sit in the square and watch the world go by, and and go, let's go and eat a cake here, and and that appetite for for that sort of hedonistic cheffing, which was you know, really fun as well. That's that's why I would remember her. What do you think about when you think about Rose. I've got no idea what kind of chef i'd be without Rose, what kind of cook cook i'd be even home, let alone in a restaurant.

I don't even know where to start, you know. As fortunate, I had an Italian grandmother who also taught me a lot of things. But I came to the River Cafe, Rose taught me, retaught me how to make tomatoes. Source just feel very lucky to have sat literally holding on their april drings, probably being a bit annoying and trying to take it in. And I suppose a part of it as well, particularly in the early days, was trying to please her, impress her. You know, I think loads

of people say this, it's so true. It's just like three nice words from Rose could like get you through half a year, and so looking for that an awful lot and just enjoying it so much being here cooking with you and her people away say, oh, you give up so much being a chef, especially your twenties. What you can't come to the concert on Saturday night? You know, I wouldn't, didn't want to be anywhere else. I mean,

you're kidding me. I remember one time we had a huge lunch in Tuscany and then we drove to Pierre Monte and we went out to dinner and there was I remember there was again a grand dinner, and I said, next year. I remember when the fifth course came out, I just started to cry, literally started, I can't take this, Moore, It's too much. And she was just you know, there she was, come on Roger's, Rogerina. She used to call

me next time. There were so many She was very much her own person, I think in terms of what she chose to do, and fiercely loyal, fiercely proud. I was saying, you know, we used to get into a taxi in Paddington in the early early days and she just said to the driver river Cafe, and I used today, I hope this guy knows where the River Cafe days going to be rude, and she was really just such

a character. So actually speaking of changes we've made and the way we've grown, we did grow and the beginning of lockdown, and I was wondering if you might like to tell the story of how we reacted to a closure which we didn't know it would be for weeks or for months, and what is the story of Shop the River Cafe. Well, we start we were all in different places working remotely. Sean was stuck in Wales which

she couldn't leave. You were at yours, I was at my house, and then we had a fridge full of cheese and other things that I had to come in and look after the from anything else. So we started to see if we could sell them. We had a lot of food that we were left with. It was just criminal to see it, just you know, we couldn't

waste it, and we tried to. There was some amount that you can we can give stuff to charity away, but there's some sort of strict rules about what you can and can't give and fresh food, and so because we had no idea how long it was going to go on for, so we kind of did some entrepreneurial ideas to sort of empty the kitchen and then after we've done that, Ruthie, who's like a voracious appetite for never resting, was like, okay, right now we've got rid of that, but hang on, what we're going to do

with ourselves. Yeah. I think what happened is that we sat here in the private dining room and we thought we're going to have to close this restaurant. We don't know how long for. But we did have all these ingredients and pastas and everything, and so that's what we thought. We could sell the olive oil, we can sell the pasta, and we would have an online business where we could never the way we could sell it. And then I think I think I made tomato sauce. There's a photograph

of me with seven jars of tomato. And then you said that you thought, Joseph, that pesto would be possibility. So I think we had tomato sauce and pesto, and then and then we just added bit by bit, didn't we. And then as it we realized it was as as everyone in Lockdown was so keen to have something from

a restaurant. I think that was, you know, we were busy, starting to become busier, but it culminated I think on Mother's Day of the first the second one at one of the lockdowns where we had so many orders that we had to prep a thousand artichokes and we had the boxes came in the floor to ceiling and it took a whole day to prepare them. Because everything we

do it shop. The cafe is made at the River Cafe by our River Cavery chefs, and it was like we were and it was actually kind of cool to see that we could actually pull that off, I think, wasn't it. I think everyone really enjoyed. I think by that stage of it, the team was ready to be together and just to be doing something. It just felt really good. We kept people in different teams since week, so we didn't have everyone could be had bubbles. We

had bubbles. Yeah. What I found with the shop is that's been such a learning curve because we've gone from understanding how to cook and then we had the packaging and then we were like, oh my god, the packaging is leaking or someone's potatoes have fallen out of the box, and so it was like, oh God, and how are we going to solve this problem? So we were doing problem solving and then we were like, okay, how can we get this to a customer who wants it in Scotland?

And then we were throwing had the box packed and we have all the stuff, And remember throwing off the balconies if it broke to check out packaging materials with work. I remember having the chefs and being you have these little kind of lunch boxes, but they're filling them up with food and saying you must just put this in here as beautifully as if it was for a plate in the restaurants, and when they open it's lovely, you know.

And then we put it all in and then I saw the levy driver come and pick them up and threw them over shoulder, and I just, oh no, it's a really whole other world doing these podcasts. Advice was given to me to always have a common question that you asked everyone before we say goodbye on this afternoon, what would be your comfort food? Do you have one who hads to go first? I almost reckon that I could answer, could maybe can you product, but just answer

to what's your comfort? I reckon you die the same bread or pastor bad pastor. I mean I feel free to answer for yourself. Slice of bread. What would you put on the bread? Maybe nothing, nothing, but yeah maybe not tested just a piece of bread if it was like warm bread, I think maybe nothing. Yes, And you know what shance comfort feel is. I've got a few choices, actually, but maybe spaghetti botago. Maybe I say that because that's blank,

but that's a yeah, that's true. But I know that you eat that when you're home alone, you know, And that's your kind of treat for yourself. That's true. Okay, now you can come and on each other. So yours would be bread? Would your target? It's in my top five four o four cheese any cheese, any cheese. So bo target is dried. I mean it sounds really not that appetizing. It's a it's a row of a of a gray mullet, and it's a Sardinian specialty. Do you

just grate it into spaghetti? I mean generally, I think people would probably use about a third of a stick per person. I could eat a whole stick. I love it. And then you put it into the spaghetti with lots of olive oil, a little tiny one drop of lemon juice, plenty of black pepper, Oh my god, making yourself hungry? Okay, So Sean said that if you said there was nothing on your bread, what would be on your pasta? And what would the pasta? I think it would probably be

pasta with tomato. Thank you. Well, I can say that I don't know what food is my comfort, but I have to say a hundred percent YouTube are my comfort. Thank you, stop me all thanks to visit the online shop of The River Cafe. Go to shop the River Cafe dot co dot uk. River Cafe Table four is a production of I Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.