Welcome to River Cafe, Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and Adami Studios.
Sitting here in the River Cafe on a Sunday Monday morning, with chefs in the kitchen making ravioli, with hiroles and waiters laying tables in the garden, the uncertain world we live in feels miles away. The artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen does not separate the world of beauty and the world of suffering in any of his work political oppression, slavery, sexual inequality. Step and I met in nineteen ninety nine when he won the Turner Prize for his radical video art,
and we once had dinner together with President Obama. It was clear that the only person President Obama was interested in talking to with Steve McQueen, and he didn't want to share him with anyone else else. Now, a few years later, I finally have Steve McQueen all to myself, and being a generous person, we'll share him with you. Steve and I share a hero in Paul Robeson. We share the same concerns for equality and justice and food, and today we're going to talk all about that and more.
Thank you, Steve, Thank you for inviting me. Tell me about growing up in London. You lived with your parents in West London and what did you eat?
Yeah, we grew up. I grew up in the first leship of Bush, West London. My relationship with food really starts with the market. I was the kid who was carrying the bags behind their mother, you know, because basically I would have to go with her, because you know, I was the sort of vext to bad hands.
A shopping back home.
Food was a way of actually getting to know London because if someone in I said to my mother this, you know, you could get so and so sea based in this market for this amount of money, she will be there. So people used to talk about where can they get particular kind of food and fresh produce yew.
Where was your mother born?
My mother was.
Born in Trinidad, but she grew up in in Grenada, and my father was born in Grenada.
How old were they when they came to London.
My mother was about fourteen fifteen, I think you're about fifteen when she came to London. I think in the early sixties, and my father was a little bit older. I think maybe it was about twenty one.
I don't know. When I think he came early sixties too, but not not at the same time.
And so do you think her mother had taken her to the market. As you say, the market does introduce us to a culture, that introduces us to a city. It's the first place I always go when I go to any town in any city in any country. But tell me more about the smells of the market and what it looked like for you and your mother's experience of the market.
Well, in fact, what happened was that a lot of joity of people for coming from west in this headline, and they grew their own food, you know, and look after you know, the animals and so forth and whatnot. And fishing was a big part of the culture too, because obviously my mother lived on on the coast in a place called Stears and was a very big fishing spot there, you know, it's called a fishing village. Food was very much directly sort of to do with who
they were. So when they came to London, of course looking for good food was very important. And you know, we used to go to all kinds of bloody markets all over London.
I so, I said, I met up with it.
I said, missed my football focus on a sacle because I had to go to the market with my mum.
It was something which I remember.
There was all different cultures, you know it was didn't You had the sort of you know, the Londoners and the white Londoners and the Indian, you're the Jewish. You had all kinds of people. It was fabulous. It was really kind of cool tone.
When you would come home from the market. What would you eat? What would they cook from the market?
Oh, if you get dashing, you know, spinage? You know again, you know you cook? I mean my my my favorite was like a nice stewed chicken. I'm not a special thing, I'm roty, just you know, Oh my god, what was it? A beautiful It's like a nice stew fish. And I just to love.
What was this? This one thing I used to not very much was a vegetable? What was it? It was? I love? I love?
It was all kinds of exotic stuff. I mean I say exotic because it was familiar to me. But my friends, my white first and what was that was this?
Was this? Yeah?
Who cooked in the house.
My mother cooked, my father cooked. My father was a good cook too.
He took pride in the Christmas ham.
That was his job.
There was a particular way of cooking that came from because his uncle was a butcher in the West Indies, So there was a particular way of cooking the ham. I can't even prescribe it now, but it's close, all into indented in all everywhere.
It was almost like sort of a ror movie marblous. Yeah, great cooks, great cooks.
Did you cook with them? Was it a family affair? Would you all cook together?
I mean I loved being with my mother in the kitchen because somehow I love to help out. I love to sort of be I don't know, I love to love that. So I can't say that I'm a great cook, but I was a very good shoe chef, a bit of a neat and tidy person.
Would they entertain? Would friends come over? Did was there that feeling.
When people did come over? It was?
It was a lot of family and and what I think most of the things I used to do when the people's come up with them would just listen because there was always boys that would come out that my parents will never talk to us about, of course, but always because adults will talk to adults, So therefore and find out about sort of how what was going on or when.
You left this very comforting family meals where you were cooked for and you ate together. What was that like when you left home? Where did you live?
I was actually nearing you, guys. Actually I was in Fulham. I was just around the corner from me. I was with his girlfriend and she was great. She was a very important girlfriend of mine.
Your name was a Nuke.
She was a Swiss. And then she had discovered this restaurant, this place called Malati, the Indonesian place and so, which was delicious. It was gorgeous. And that was my first restaurant and.
She that was your first restaurant.
I think that was one of my first restaurants. Yeah, I was. I think I was about nineteen years old.
And after that the restaurants become part of your social life. Did you love restaurants?
Absolutely?
I mean, what's great about I mean now, I suppose in London it wasn't so when when I was growing up, we didn't have that was the world, I think. And to be introduced to the world through food and of course good company, that's always the main ingredient for going to a restaurant. So that was wonderful and then we got to know. So we've got a lot of restaurants and so we got to know I remember during that time, miss early nineties, early early nineties.
Yeah, and also in the East then too.
Yeah, what about an arts school? Was that revelation?
Yeah? I mean, you know, Canon Bitter Cheese, Ladiel and Baget.
I mean that was that was kind of like interesting because again there was an addition to waste in this cheese.
I mean no cheese. I was crappy cheese.
You know, can imagine a sort of a big block of something which they called cheese. But getting to them cheese was interesting during my time at Foundation at Chelsea.
I mean, it's a kind of interesting life change, isn't it between this going to the market with your mother and carrying the bag and coming home and cooking and then sitting and down and eating and then having independence and having to fend for yourself and discover life out there. Did you go home? Would you return home for the home cooked meal?
Yes? I used to love going home for food.
My goodness, I said, oh, oh, my goodness, I used to love it. It's just it's just a sort of yeah, it was difficult because at first it was how do I cook?
What do I cook? I was on the phone to my mom, Mom, how do I do this? Mom? I do this? My Mom, I do that.
So a lot of calls about me and sort of soups and things like that, and how do I season them because I can't. For granted, I said to be the shoe chep, but I wasn't really looking. It wasn't really studying. Yeah, so a lot of phone calls.
Basically back round, Welcome back to River Cafe, Table four.
In each episode, my guest reads a recipe they have chosen from one of our cookbooks. We chose spinach and peas, So would you like to go for it and tell the world how to make it?
One kilogram fresh peas in their pods, extra virgin olive oil, one garlic cloth peel and diced, one dried red chili crumbled, one canogram of spinach, washed tough stalks, Removed.
The piece and blanche them in plenty of boiling water. In Italy, no one ever cooks vegetables.
Absolutely only past it.
So rather than blanching these peas, boil them so that they almost melt together with spinach and the olive oil.
Gorgeous. So now Steve, here we are and we're going to talk about the series that has just been on television that we've all watched and been so moved by. Small acts. You tell the story of a local restaurant constantly harassed by the police. Is that a memory or is that? Can you tell me about the restaurant, the politics and the series.
Sure?
Well, the Mangrove Restaurant was a restaurant run by Frank Krischlow in Lambergrove on All Saints Road, and he opened a restaurant in nineteen sixty eight and it was a sort of home away from home restaurant. You can imagine, as I said before, other people on the sort of the taste of home and had a vibrancy of having sort of like many people wanted to sort of come to a place to eat and to sort of commune with each other. So it was a place of refuge
in it in a way. You know, the vibe, the vibes that came out of there, and it was just one of those places which became very infectious if people
wanted to go. It was it was it was something which was which was which was on the scene and unfortunately the police and the authorities that be obviously didn't like what was happening at this place because again it was you know, it was people from the Western Ears, it was working class people, it was the thinkers, it was sort of activists were coming there and also the whole eploy.
So all these people.
Coming to this spot and talking over food, having ideas, and obviously that was something which the authorities didn't like, and therefore they tried to disrupt disrupted as much as they could. You know, it was a case of the people not wanting certain ideas having a foothold in UK, and they thought that the Mangrove was a place where those ideas could sort of take root.
There's something about doing that kind of discussion as well over food. And one of the things that I see in the restaurant is that somehow being out of your house, being away from your domestic life, being looked after, gives you the chance to really focus on a conversation. Do you find that in a restaurant.
Absolutely absolutely, And there's a sense of, I don't know what is it purpose, you're there, you're present, there's another person there and present, but also actually just a listen.
It's just a case.
Of being in an environment where you are you know, you feel comfortable in order to say things and listen.
And also I've talked to various people in business and in film and creating movies or making deals. I mean when I always quote is Michael Caine who said that he never did a deal for a movie in America that didn't take place in a restaurant. And he said that was very Hollywood. Do you work in restaurants? Do you'd like to meet people that you're going to work with in a restaurant?
First, I love it. That doesn't happen often.
I mean, I think it's sort of it's a classy way to do anything, isn't it. And also I love it because growing up in the art world. What was wonderful about growing up in the art world is that artists never paid for dinners, never because.
You're the artist. And it was amazing.
In fact, I think that's how I grew up in food in an interesting way. It was through the art world. It's completely different to the film world. I mean, you know the fact that you you know, you might get crappy sang which you're you're you're lucky.
But in the art world, it was always the best wines. It was always the best.
Food, you know, if it was an opening or even a meeting, it was always the best restaurant.
And that was a huge education. Absolutely.
I was thinking about making movies and the movies you've made, and of course here we are talking about food and eat and the joy of being taken care of through food. And then I think of the movie that you know, was so earth shattering, which was Hunger, And so we're talking about a movie called Hunger and the state of hunger and somebody put their principles and politics above comfort
and as a political act actually starved themselves. So what was it like making a movie that was the absence of food as a political statement?
He I mean, for me, it was again its food is interesting thing.
I related to that in a way, that of being a child in the way that you know, the often don'tly power a child has is frailing to eat his or her mother saying you're not leaving the table until you finish that plate, and the child sort of you know, refusing to eat, and then you're sent off the bed,
you know. And it's interesting because you know what the clothes you wear that as a as a child of a certain age, what time you go to bed, what food you eat is chosen by your parents, and the whole idea that this child, the power this child has is to refrain to eat. That was my relationship in some ways to Bobby Sands and hunger strike, that the power that person had was to refrain to eat.
Ever since it was a child.
I remembered asking my mom when I saw this image of Bobby's Sands on on television with a number benderneath his image, and asking my mother, what's what's what is that? How old this person is? Because no, that how many days this person has been a hunger strike. So there was an immediate relationship with the story and it was yeah, it was It was difficult, but I think Michael Fans been there, you know why cass as Bobby Sands was tremendous and that was a bond up you know we
have to this day. It was a real kind of a labor of love and not what.
Other food scenes in your movies In twelve Years a Slave, there's a scene, isn't there at the dinner table.
I seem to remember, Yeah, there's lots of I think there's lots of food in my films.
I mean you can see after that is shame the two characters Brandon any sort of a possible girlfriend or at this dinner table, and this waiter annoying way to comes in every five seconds to interrupt them. I remember that from having lots of dinners in New York and every five seconds and what becomes in the middle of something was getting bigger.
You know how conversations are. They had to get to that point.
You know, it's always it was commercial buddy breaks every five seconds. You have to start from scratch every five minutes. So it didn't make for a good eating experience. So I put that in the movie.
What do you eat on a film?
So?
Do you hate stopping for lunch when you're filming?
No?
I think it's fantastic. I mean, what was so wonderful when I started filmmaking and Hunger and Sharing twelve is it's like all the actors and all the crew will eat together. We the people in their body trailers in that crap, everyone lead together. There's something about communal eating
and it's about weed. It's such a unifying thing to see, you know, the hear and makeup and the camera department, and tubing up for food and sitting at the table together and talking about the film or talking about things.
There's a camaraderie.
It's only time often when you're sort of on set together that you had that sort of times, you know, when you're sitting together eating and it's fun.
It's fun. I love it.
Year three is an exhibition that was at the Tate and I went to see it three times because every time I went back, I saw something, something different in the expression of a child of a teacher. It really told the story of the world we live in through
these photographs. And one of the issues that I think is very important is that when we had the lockdown a year ago, one of the things we learned that when children were denied school, they were also denied food, and they were denied food at lunchtime, which might have been their only of the day. And the idea that we have a society that children depend on having their food away from the home because of the poverty in the home is appalling and shocking and distressing everything else.
Yes, absolutely, I mean I had school, did this, which I paid for by my mother. That's why even today. I like hot meals, love hot lunches, I mean, and they were vital.
They were vital there were children.
I know for a fact that that was the main meal of the day, if not the only meal of the day. And this is with our bottle of milk in the morning before missus snatcher took it away from us.
Yeah. Yeah, I love school meals in that way. Also, just because we are such a good laugh in the canteen, you know, I associate food in school with good times and I can even remember the smell of it, the canteen and the noise and the cutlery banging together, and it's so important. You know. Also people have to sort of really tip.
They had to Marcus Rashford and what he did in the sense of, you know, getting the government to sort of stand down twice about the school mill because you know it can This is, you know, if we can't look after people we can't afford to eat, then I don't know who we are as human beings. That it took a footballer to do that is kind of a bit, you know. There you go, Everyone has got to step up in your own way. I suppose if people aren't
doing their job properly, that meaning the government. And also don't forget this again. It's just one of those things I feel that you know, everyone is unfortunately not brought into this world equally. But if you just give someone the possibility a little bit of a shaft of life, one doesn't know where that might lead them to. So, yeah, the fact that people actually have a meal in the stomach,
you know in Britain, Yeah, it's more than important. One thing I was very shocked by when I was shooting in Chicago, shooting widows was how I didn't see a grocery store in a black neighborhood. I didn't see any greens in a black neighbor you know, there wasn't a green grocer's, but there was always some sort of fast food place where people eat.
So people are losing this sort of heritage of food.
People are not aware of food and nourishment and possibilities within food.
And food is politics in a way.
It reverts back to what we were talking about right at the beginning of our conversation. It starts with like in a way markets because markets, a lot of markets are on the threat, a lot of markets have closed. So this sense of community, sense of promarderate, a sense of sort of love of food and love of each other is being sort of erased in the sort of you know, working class areas. I mean, you get these markets, but they're so they're kind of like posh markets, aren't they.
They're sort of farmers' markets, they call them.
And you know, the food is so expensive, so and I can I feel that they're becoming kind of food deserts in a way where kids are growing up on fast food and not being introduced to sort of love food in a way. So that's the which I'm a bit sort of concerned about.
Yeah, food is a connection, and food is a memory, and food is giving and sharing, and food is political and social, and it's also comfort. It's something that we go to and we need comfort. And so I suppose Steve McQueen, what would you say is the food you would go to if you needed comfort?
For me, the comfort food that I very much love and I appreciate is often the cold day, you know, and you come in and it's my mum's chicken soups West Indian chicken soup, which has the bones in it and stuff, you know, you suck on the bones and it's the sort of you know, it's the time, it's the garlic. It's all kinds of stuff, you know, the sugaret ingredient which you want, you still want, a toom, the dumplings, a bit of potatoes, a bit of peas.
It's wonderful.
So those are the kind of things I really love. Yeah, And I could hear my dad sucking the bones right now. Wonderful, you know, having those dinners together on those cold days. I remember it was. It was beautiful. It was beautiful, and lots of great memories. My dad's not anymore. So when I often do think about him, I do think about him, and that soup. I do think about him. Christmas and the ham, of course, and Christmas. Christmas breakfast was a big thing. Hot cocoa.
My dad would make a bake. A bake is a.
Kind of a flat bread West Indian flat bread in the morning, and oh.
My god, how can I how can I not say this? Fish cakes, my mother's fish cakes.
Oh my god, my mother's fish cakes on the Christmas morning, and she's waiting these little bakes.
Which was sort of like a like a bread you'll fry in oil. Oh my god.
And even my daughterly when my mom comes up as yours, ask Granny please make fish cakes for me because it's a West Indian fishcakes such as it's gorgeous and of course you know that there's never anything left for me when I get home. But you know it's just a I think, really, what you've done actually is actually given me. I mean facts, what love is rock, not even love is rock. That's what the whole of Small Acts was based on. The foundation of all of that was based
on food and memory. Because it's what's so fascinating. I'm rambling on it again myself. But the smell is the most antaste is the most potent sources of memory, not the photographs. Photographs is only tell you so much because you know it cuts out what's beyond. The frame is not present, it's not visible. When going on wrapping, I'll stop myself.
No doubt it's beautiful, but it is what it does. There are people who say I never remembered that until we started talking about the food, and that brought back the memory. I had somebody whose father had left home and he would when he saw his children on the weekends, he would suddenly start cooking for them. And he said, oh, I don't know. I don't think I've ever told anybody that story. But now I remember my father actually is a way of his guilt or his love just started cooking,
you know. And I think what you just when you choose your comfort food, you start thinking about your father and your mother, and you think about the memories and that it's so potent, isn't it. I thought it would be interesting, but what it really brings home over and over again is the connection that food has for us for memories.
Yeah, forget about this. I'm telling you, Doug, you've done it, mate, smell until you've done it.
Well, thank you, you've done it. It's all to do with 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 iHeartRadio and Adami Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.