Welcome to River Cafe, Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and Adamized Studios.
There are actors who write, producers who direct, and cooks who campaign for social change. Stanley Tucci does all of these. He writes, cookbooks, creates and hosts a beautiful TV series about Italy, and acts and directs movies that touch us all. Stanley Tucci is respected and admired by every chef in the River Cafe, especially me.
Oh my gosh, Ruthie, that's so nice. Now can I leave now?
Okay, Barchi c.
So what we can do is, would you please read the recipe that you've chosen.
Meze pacari cachoi pepe with langustines. Serve six six hundred grams medze pacheti pasta, sixty grams unsalted butter, one hundred and fifty grams pecorino freshly grated, four hundred grams medium languestines, cooked, peeled and cut into pieces. Cook the pasta in plenty of water until al dente. When draining the pasta, reserve some of the cooking water for the sauce. Melt the butter with the pecorino in a large pan over a low heat adding some of the pasta water to create
a sauce. Add the languestines to the pecorino sauce with black pepper, Add the hot pasta and mix until you have a glossy sauce coating the pasta, adding more pasta water if needed. Serve with extra pecora grated on top. And it's also incredibly delicious. I just ate it.
So of all the recipes and all the cookbooks, and you eat here a lot, and you're a cook, what made you choose this recipes?
Well, lots of reasons.
One is that, as you say, you broke a rule, which is you don't really put cheese with seafood in Italy.
I love pasta.
I eat pasta practically every day, sometimes twice a day. I love languesteine, I love pecorino. Just made sense. It's a gorgeous recipe.
Very few ingredients, very few ingredients.
But like most Italian cooking, it's incredibly few ingredients. I sometimes feel guilty that I'm using the same thing, but then when I look through cookbooks, I'm like, it's still the same. It's all the same thing, but the iterations, you know, the variations are extraordinary. Yeah, So your grandparents came from My grandparents came from Columbria both sides.
Were they together before they came or did they meet?
No, No, they met because they came. My mother's mother was three when she came to America, but her my mother's father was in his mid twenties when he came. They were about thirteen years apart an age or something when they got married. I think she was sixteen or seventeen when she got married. And my dad's father came over in the early part of the first century and his wife I think was maybe already here at that time, and then they met.
And got married.
But you know, with the Italians, a lot of town's, entire towns would basically move to the same area, to the same area. It's one of the things we talked about in the show. We did an episode on London because there are so many Italians in London, and Angela Hartnett did the show. She's half Welsh, half Italian or you know, but her family came from Bardie and over eighty percent or ninety percent of the Welsh Italians came from that one town.
So they would just all move.
And the same in America too, because one guy moves over, and then he brings his friend comes over and they're getting work, and they bring their family over, and.
It just keeps and so.
Growing up with your grandparents, were they involved in the food that you ate?
Did you?
We saw them every just about every week, we'd go to visit them. And my maternal grandparents had this incredible garden where they seemed to be able to grow anything anytime of the year.
My grandfather had.
A fig tree, beautiful fig tree. No this was in peak skill, but not for peak. They would take the fig tree and in the winter they would wrap the tree in plastic so that it would endure the winter.
When I talk to people about who've immigrated from another country, they often talk more about the food of their grandparents than their parents, because that's my experience as well, coming from a Jewish immigrant family from Russia and Hungary. My grandparents, I really remember their food. I don't think they really mastered English much less the cooking of the United States, where my mother, you know, adapted, and probably we as
children rejected anything but American food. And I think when you talk to people, it's interesting how the grandmother features is that or did your mother and father still have a very strong sense of Italy.
Oh, yes, very much so. I mean they didn't speak Italian. My father could speak a bit of Italian and they could understand dialect, and because that's what you know, both their parents spoke. But my mother swears to this day, and my father told me that he goes your mother couldn't cook. I met her and I was like, what are you talking about this? I don't believe that story. He said, no, Stanley, it actually is true. And my
mother admits it that her mother was a brilliant cook. Obviously, my mother had this innate talent as well, and her cooking today, still today is some of the best food I've ever had. She's at my house now.
I know.
It's really disappointed, I know.
I mean, I can't say I was disappointed to see you, because I was disappointed that I didn't see them.
You want to see my parents.
I love meeting parents. I love meeting the parents.
They're really great and they're really extraordinary. Like my mom made a thing the other day that was just you know.
What she bess charged, Yeah, just what does she do?
She little boiling of it and then a little bit of fresh tomato olive oil and a hint of garlic. It was just one of the greatest things I've ever eaten. And I said, well, how did you do that? I try to do that, I can't do it.
I was born in Upstate, New York and you were born not far away. My family were not a time yours were. But the food that we grew up with thinking was as we knew it was Italian food. Would you say that was radically changed from when you actually went to Italy?
And you know, yeah, I mean because I grew up eating my family food because they were from Italy, So yeah, there were, without question, there were similarities. But when I would go to friends' houses and have what they thought was Italian food, it was horrifying. I mean it was just bad, you know, because the ingredients were lousy and they didn't really understand it.
Yeah, for us, and I, you know, I grew up with meatballs and spaghetti and an egg plot parmesana and you know, and it just was heavy and it was rich, and it was that version of it.
A lot of that Italian American food came out of of suddenly having access to large amounts of meat, having access to more so more was added, right, More sauce was added because the Italians don't put a lot of sauce really on pasta use a minimal amount for the most part, whereas in America things are loaded with sauce or loaded with cheese, or loaded with meat. And it was about, you know, it was a land of plenty. And also I think they were, you know, catering to American tastes.
When did you.
Start eating in restaurants? Do you remember when that kind of happened?
Yeah?
I started eating in restaurants when I no longer had to work in them.
Yeah, do you know what I mean?
As an actor, it's kind of what you did to make money, But working in them gave me a tremendous ciation for them. And then finally when I had a little bit of money and I could start going to restaurants, I really got excited about it because I all knew what was going on behind the scenes, and that was sort of part of the genesis A Big Night, which
was it's almost thirty years ago now, that movie. I wanted to write a story about the struggle between commerce and art, but you can't really do that with a painter because that is literally like watching paint dry, but you could use the chef as artist. And also I like the idea of not the idea the actuality that you have off stage and you have on stage in a restaurant just like the theater.
And I love that.
I love that too. And there were many scenes that you stay in my mind forever. But interestingly enough, one of my favorites is the very first scene where you come out of the out of the front door having been inside, and isn't there a pot with plants in it? And you move it a centimeter, you know, and I
just thought, God, that reminds me of me. I mean it really, it really did remind me of the way that sometimes before service I walk out to the car park and then I walk in, you know, just just to look at the restaurant and just walk through that space, you know.
I think that's that's really important, the idea of space. A space is crucial in film. So if you try to make a food movie and you just show beautiful shots of food, it's of no consequence if you show the thing that makes is we actually look at the food in Big Night, it doesn't look very good. What makes it work is the people's reaction to the food, and then the fact that we're seeing them in that space, so you know you were married to an architect.
Space is everything.
It's one of the reasons your restaurant works so beautifully, because the space envelops you but also opens you up.
I'm George.
I'm a chef at the River Cafe.
It's a pleasure to meet you, Stanley. Your show is amazing and I've watched it fully twice. We're very lucky to be able to cook for some amazing people in this restaurant, and we get tickets come through with people's names. But probably the most exciting time a ticket came through with your name on it was when I had to make you a artichoke. Judea and I had literally the night before watched the episode in which you make them.
The real episode, the right episode.
Yeah, and so I fell under a huge amount of pressure. So I actually got our head chef, Danny over and and made him do it with me from beginning to end.
Really. Yeah, absolutely, But I had those that wasn't that long ago, No, it was recently, right, Yeah, I just had them here.
Yeah, it was maybe maybe a month or so ago.
It was delicious. Oh, thank you, No, it was great. I'm glad you liked the show. That's really that's great.
You know, obviously you know what you're doing, and the fact that you like the show, that you appreciated, that's that's wonderful.
Tell me about the series.
What an idea that I had for a long time. I think it's probably about thirteen fifteen years ago that I had this idea and that you'd go through every region and you'd break down that region through the food, but relate it to or how how does the food relate to politics, to socioeconomics, to topography, to history, to art to whatever. And I kept thinking. I wrote some notes about it, and then CNN came to me and they said, do you have any ideas for a show?
I gave them three ideas. One was about refugees and food and there sort of one like I don't think so. And then one was documented about cancer because my wife died, my first wife died of cancer. I had just gone through cancer treatments. I had so many friends who you know, and we know it's basically, you know, an epidemic, you know.
So those two ideas they didn't care for. And then I said, well, I have this idea about Italy and you know, going through every region and breaking it down as I said, and they went, okay, okay, no one had really done it before that we didn't know. I think that a lot of people don't know. I think a lot of Americans don't know. Italy isn't just pizza and pasta, and it isn't sunny all the time, and not everybody's happy and hugging each other all the time,
and not everyone's a mafioso. There are these two sort of polarities that Americans see, and I wanted to hope, I hope to She did dispel those.
And also inform us about the region, the serious regionality. I mean, I do think probably in the north of France very differently than you read in Provence, and that in Greece probably on heedraw you would eat differently than in Athen's. But in Italy it's very very regional, fiercely so. And as I think, I told you the other day that we had met somebody who'd never had tomato sauce until she was fourteen, that's.
Right, and she lived non Italy.
So the image and I think that's what you've done, you know what is your next?
We're going next to Pulia and Calabria, and my parents are going to come with me to Columbia.
In the film.
Yeah good, yeah, yeah.
And then we do Liguria and Sardinia, and then we do a feast where everyone comes together, so all the chefs, not all the chefs. We take a person from each region.
So how many would that be.
It'll be a.
Total of about Well, we'll have done thirteen regions. We're not doing all twenty regions. You can't do all twenty regions, but we're doing thirteen, so we'll have thirteen different chefs or cooks come or a Vintnor, two ventnors. So it'll be some sort of place that has a substantial kitchen,
lots of outdoor space. I want to have or build three different outdoor fires, so somebody can do a goat or whatever on a spit, somebody can grill something, and somebody can bake something in a wood fire oven, and then a proper restaurant kitchen, and it'll all be at one long table and everyone they'll all cook for each other.
They each have a course and they'll cook each each course in essence, so you know, you know, we might actually do We're going to do probably four different kinds of pasta and you the guests can choose what they want if there if they want to have all four of the guests, you know, the guests, they are the guests, I see, So they cook for each other. But there are a few other people that were taking from the shows as well, who were who were contributors.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So the idea is that you unite Italy at the table, because the whole thing is called searching for Italy. But really, in the end, what I realized was that Italy doesn't exist. It only exists at the table. That's where Italy is.
Have you done kind of deals in a restaurant? Michael Caine said that in the old days, you would never sign up for a movie unless it was in a restaurant. I don't know if that exists anymore.
I have had that happen, But no, I think that might be a more British thing than an American thing.
Oh here what he was saying, it was Hollywood, it was old time home. Oh really, was there a restaurant called Chasen's or something? Oh, you would go to and you know, but then I asked younger people. They said, no, no, it's not like to do it on zoom.
I do remember going to Hollywood though the first time, you know, it was thirty four, you know, thirty six years ago, and.
I hated it right away.
But everyone was going out to lunch all the time, but they weren't really eating or drinking. The whole thing was weird to me. I was like, well, why are we at lunch? That's the point Richard.
Once but we were taken by an architect, Philip Johnson to the Four Seasons in New York, and we walked in and we thought, wow, you saw you know, the great people of leaders of society and profession, and everybody was having cottage. She's a nice tea. It was iced tea, and Richard ordered a glass of wine and they really thought he was an alcoholic. Yeah, it was just not done' la too.
Also la people are driving too. Maybe not so much anymore with uber and all that, but but yeah, it just wasn't and it was. I found it just incredibly cold, and although there are some amazing restaurants, but it wasn't just not It's.
Also quite revealing how person behaves in a restaurant. I always used to say in the early days of having a restaurant that you could tell a lot of Americans in the River Cafe had at one time in their life worked in a restaurant because they were nice. They were just they They are not saying the British weren't nice. But having worked in a restaurant, it does make you more tolerant, don't you think you know.
Without question what it's like. Yeah, you have to know how hard that is. Yeah, I think particularly in America too, because the pay is so bad and you're relying on your tips and it's really really hard work. Having worked as a bus boy and a bartender, and you know.
We think about food and hunger, and it's also mental health, and it's also physical health. And we in times of pain, we in times of discomfort. And you refer just now to the fact that you had cancer and that your wife died of cancer. How did you see illness and how did illness affect your attitude or your food for you?
But I think when anybody's sick, even if it's just a cold or flu, you instantly say, do let me make atriction soup. Right, it's the first thing you know you do or I'll always say do you do you want this? Are you feeling hungry? Are you feeling why does your stomach urt? Do you want this? And sometimes it's a test too if they go the kid in particular.
Would go no, I don't. I don't want that.
I don't And then you know something's really wrong. You know, you go, would you like a chocolate? You know, they go, no, I don't want a chocolate. You go, okay, let's go
to the doctor. Or so you know, but I think it was you know, in the end, well, Kate went through so many different treatments, and you know, going through chemo and radiation and all that stuff made her very nauseous and she couldn't eat a lot at times, and then she would recover and then cancer would present itself again and then she'd go through the process again.
It was horrible.
When I went through mine because it was an oral cancer. All the treatment was focused on my mouth, so I lost everything. You don't only lose your sense of taste. Your sense taste is destroyed and perverted so that everything tastes like you know what for months and plus your mouth is so compromised and so much pain. You're on pain medications and all that stuff, and you have a
feeding tube. You're trying to put protein drinks through your feeding tube, which are disgusting and not that you're tasting them, but they're upsetting your stomach. And then there's morphine you're putting through. It's just a it's a nightmare. And for me, it was a real nightmare because food is everything to me.
It's now how most of my life. And not to be able to eat properly, not to be able to everything smelled horrible, tasted horrible, and not to be able to sit and eat with my friends and drink with my friends and cook for my family, it was really really hard.
And did that come back? Obviously came back, But how did it just come back and you embraced.
It or was it slow? It's very slow.
It's still not I'm almost four years out from finishing my treatments and I still Last night I made lamb chops.
I didn't really eat them.
I can't really because you lose your saliva, so I don't have all of my saliva. So if you don't have your saliva, it's very hard to break things down. So I eat a lot of pasta. But that's fine. You know, I can eat it, just depends. You definitely cannot eat spice, even that pepper today on that well,
it was delicious if it were a normal person. But because my mouth is so hyper sensitive that you know, I ate it very you have to eat it very slowly, and you're sort of drinking lots of water with it and all that sort of stuff.
But that's just the way it is.
I'm probably at the point now where this is about where I'm going to be. I don't know how much more I will recover, but it's fine. I can eat most things. I can drink wine, I can have a martini slowly.
It's fine. Nicroni Negroni's yet.
Yeah, you know about the nigroni.
It's my love of food.
My desire to know more about it has just grown. So it's sort of all I think about, and it's very much how I spend my time now. And you know, I had people over last night and I fell asleep with terrible anxiety because I wasn't happy with the meal I cooked, and they said it was good.
Do I believe them? I don't know.
And also not just the meal, but also the fact that I kept getting up and sort of trying to time things and whereas I should have just made a stew, served it with polenta and sat down and that's the end of that.
Yeah.
I had a cousin who came from Italy, apparently young kid who came and he stayed with some friends. And when they were told that, he asked what they're having for lunch and they didn't include pasta.
He cried.
It was about twelve and just cried because for him, pasta was just, you know, so important. I don't know what the British sure, you know the equivalente sausages and yeah, sausages.
Sausages British. Yeah, they have sausages. Oh my god. Please, it's it's like we're I feel like I'm Fagan.
Yeah, just you know, you know, doling out sausages all the time.
Yeah.
I think that if food can be painful, if food can be restorative, Food is an expression of love for our children. Food can be memory of your grandparents. It is also what we've been saying, it's comfort. And I suppose my last question to you, after really lovely afternoon thank you, is to ask you what Stanley Tucci would be your comfort.
It's probably something that you love as well, which is pastave with tomato, pasta with a really simple tomato sauce and a little pam gano, and that's it.
It makes me so comforted.
It's definitely mine. So let's have it together, whether we need comfort or not. Thank you, Sam, thank you, thank you so much.
Thank you.
To visit the online shop of The River Cafe, go to shop the Rivercafe dot co dot uk.
River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeart Radio and Adamized Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.