Ruthie's Table 4: Tina Fey

Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and Adami's Studios.

A few months ago, my good friend Lorne Michaels texted me to say that Tina Fay was coming to London to star in the New Barrow movie. He knew I would love her from the first meeting. It became a friendship formed with food. Tina arrived at our house with a beautiful box of chocolates for me, as brought up to do by her mother, and I brought home a River Cafe lemon tart for her. The first dinner, I made slow cooked tomato pasta. She ate two portions, and.

Then we played cards. Dare you are dipped?

I think if baby, it was three, I'm actually, you know, being polite. Tina was there for the Rogers family traditional Thanksgiving Italian style with Puntarell New olive oil and cavalonero and turkey. There was a tea time visit when four of us ate pretty much a whole panetoni and wrote a song for the River Cafe Christmas party. Best of all was a dinner in the River Cafe when her family, Jeff, Alice and Penelope came for the holidays, and we ordered

Okay, I'm Sean Winowen and I'm the executed chef at the River Cafe. Today we're making tomato tellier renni with Tina Fey. So we're going to make a tegler renni with the slow cup tomato, sauce and butter, which is probably one of Ruthie's secret is adding the butter to it. It's gonna cook the master. In boiling salted water, they always say that you should cook past there in water. That's the saltiest sea salt.

Yeah, I was just gonna say that's true. The thing that you taste like you sea. Yeah.

I think having the competent to see.

Some water that march is the men a bit bold. I'm not afraid of spots. You know, I have low blood pressure, so I can have as much stuff as I want. You're one of the luckiest, I tell myself. I shuld I had this giant past the boiling station in my head.

Say this is what you want?

I mean, aha, now we know that's about a half pop of butter, you know, one person portion. Oh, it's not good. It's not a play Yeah, only because we can't pour it right into my mouth here at the station. This being an audio format is not doing this fastive justice.

Have it in a nice high pile.

And yeah, gorgeously, Mike, wuld marry a non human entity. I would marry this past.

This is like one of griefy house classics.

Yes, I had this. I had the deep privilege of I went to Ruthie's house onceoever, and she served us at her house. And then then somehow we figured out that we could be jerks and come here in order it off anywhere.

Exactly all you always have it.

We can just have it for yeah, any days the special occasion of you try hard and I'm thank you much, tell, thank you yah.

Tina is leaving London tomorrow. Words I can hardly bear to say. And her last day in London is here in the River Cafe. She's made of tomatoes sauce in the kitchen with Sean and the chefs, and is now in the recording studio with me, and she's.

Already told us what she wants to eat for lunch.

A friendship formed of food indeed, And Lauren was right.

I do love her.

Oh thank you, that's such a nice introduction.

Good well, you've just been in the River Cafe kitchen.

What was it like?

Oh my god, it's the most beautiful dance happening in the kitchen, everyone working so perfectly together. And also Sean was saying, today's the first day back after Christmas break, and so everyone you would never know it. Things are flowing perfectly and everything looks delicious.

And what was it like making the pasta? What did you do?

Well?

I did learn that one secret to the pasta because I was wondering what was so extra about this beautiful, simple tomato pasta? And I think The answer is that it's a buffalo milk butter, A sizeable A sizable portion gets dropped on this pasta right at the end and melt it into it, and it's very good.

That's time when people come to our house and I'm making it, I often say would you would you like to go? Because it's an open kitchen, I would like to go sit down to That feels such a trader for using butter in the pasta when everybody thinks that tom apasta is olive oil and pasta and tomato and that's delicious. You know, tomato pasta without butter is delicious, But there's something about the butter which kind of holds it together and makes it.

It's devery good. And I have to say I did I think I gasped out loud when I saw she showed me how much she drops on top, and I was.

Like, oh, I know, it's that money reaching it. How is it?

It's wonderful.

Let's talk about your life in comedy for a second. It all started in Chicago.

What were you doing there?

I went there to study improv and comedy and worked at a place called the Second City and another place called the Improve Olympic, and that's where I met my husband. Where I met Jeff was the piano player for the impro Olympic and also worked at the Second City eventually, and that's where I met my dear friend Amy Poehler, so many of my good friends.

So in those days, would you do improvo day and then say let's go and eat?

We would again. It was a diner culture. We would go to this Oh gosh, no, what was the name of that y? There actually was an NPR piece about this amazing waitress who worked at that diner. Oh my god, what was the name of the diner. I'll have to think about it and give them okay. But we would go because we would go. It's crazy that I can't mamember because we would go at least once a day, oftentimes twice a day. We'd go, you know, have something before the show and then go back at one am.

Do you like to eat before you perform again?

At the time, I was not treating my body like the beautiful instrument that so yeah.

I would eat before.

I would eat like like Boston Market before and then and then in the middle of the show, I'm going to get sick. The Boston Market was a god willing now defunct chain that sold like rotisserie, chickens and turkey. I used to say, I would get I would get food at Boston Market, and you'd start to get sick before you left, right, So then it was like you never even ate.

It was perfect.

But then we'd go and have usually after the shows we'd do two shirt shows on a Friday and Saturday and go and have like a giant breakfast of like eggs and a waffle.

At breakfast one am to so the show fish then you, yeah, there is with friends of mine who are often in plays, that there is a thing of we'll go out to eat after.

Yes, because you're adrenaline so high, it's too it's yeah.

Yeah, it's a bit like in the chef world as well. There's a whole not so much anymore now that everybody's you know, stopped doing and all that stuff. But when after after a performance in a way and what you described for chalet or having an audience there the curtain going up, there's a lot of I always think the reason probably a lot of actors like to work in restaurants is there is a similarity. You know, there's a

Yeah, and at the end of your theater, yes it is. It's the end of your work day, so you want to go out and have your evening, and your evening just happens to be at one o'clock in the morning.

Yeah.

The one thing I used to love with it's Saturdaynight Live. Saturday was the most fun day because it's the day where it's finally all happening and you can spend a lot of time being worried, and then Saturday you just have to kind of go down the slide, you know. And we would have these crew lunch dinner I guess we'd sort of rehearse from one pm till about five thirty pm, and you'd go down to the NBC cafeteria and have lunch with everybody or dinner with everybody. That's

Anderson, who really his dream would be not to have any lunch, to shoot off, just to shoot a day and not stop because in another director said the same that they just found having to stop and then go back and then do that. But the crew it wasn't so happy with that. You know. His idea was, he said to try and have a soup and then everybody just go back and then have a big meal at the end of the day. But the crew wanted wanted to They want a break. Yeah, and you need that

I mean I always if I'm producing something, I want the food to be good and to be ample. And oftentimes, if you want to reward the cast and crew, you send more food. We send like food trucks, like pizza truck, coffee truck. Yeah, the food is in my I believe food is the only reward in life. In life good I like that, sure money, sure food. Yeah. We still

They want.

You don't go through, they want me to take my sandwich on it take no way.

Yeah, But the first you have to describe that scene I'm not going to do it because I think it is one of the great scenes and food.

Thank you, I will say. I think as an actor, perhaps my only specialty is on camera eating. I commit to it. I'm looking great at it. And so this is a scene where Liz lemon Is, she's chasing her love interest, who is played by Jason Sadaikis, who you all may know is Ted Lasso, and I'm chasing through the airport and I've been also the other part of the stories. I've been trying to get the team stirs, the union drivers to tell me where they get these

I love that scene.

I just love that scene because it was like, what's important here right now? And also you have left out one thing about that sandwich was there was a dipping sauce.

There was a dipping sauce too that I had to dip it in. Yeah, to lubricate.

That's righting not only eat the sandwich security, but I'm gonna dip it. Doesn't She say something about this is a cliche.

Or yeah that I think it was that Johnny May.

The actresses, I think I might bet she's so funny, she's like really yeah, So eating on camera is yes, Is it hard to do?

Yeah? It can be because you when you film something, you film it a million times. And so if you this is something fun you can look at. When you watch movies now, you will notice that the actors and dinner scenes almost never put food in their mouth because if you were to do it, you would do it, the camera would be far away, you would do it, and then they now that you'd have to eat like ten plates of food, and so actors are usually pretty adept at not doing it. Not me, I get in there.

Yeah right the only time.

Also the one on Son Now when you're eating the cake, when you're talking about I mean it is it is a work of art to see the way you I didn't mint it.

Now.

I thought I was going to be sick. Did you just do? But you did that one?

I did it well. I did it twice because we have a dress rehearsal, and I thought to myself, you know what, I better really do it in dress rehearsal. Because it was live TV. And I was a little worried that I would choke, and I thought, I was worried you were going to choke it. I was worried I was going to choke. And that cake, I will say, the only disappointment with that one was that I love them dearly. But that was the SNL Props apartment and that cake was not tasty. I was trying to run

What do they think?

They make all kinds of cakes, but I just get like yellow cake, white white.

Yeah, come on, I get it.

Yeah, I know. We once we were in Mexico once. It was a friend of mine's birthday and we went to we just couldn't find any cake. We were in the beach and we went to that place where they put them in the fridges and you see them. We thought, okay, and we apologized for it, and we said this is all we could get and then we you know, lit the candle, blow it out and literally it was one of the.

Great great cakes.

Yeah, I should say that as a river because it probably but there's something about that kind of white cake.

Yeah, you know, yellow us day.

Yeah, going back to the beginning, what was food like in your household when you were growing up as a kid.

I grew up outside Philadelphia in a very Greek neighborhood. I'm half Greek, and where I first lived, it was the neighborhood was very Greek.

You my mom's Greek.

Yeah, my mom's Greek, and so we had a mix of Philly food and sort of seventies food and American food and Greek food. But you know, I grew up watching her make Spana coopita and we'd go every year to like the church festival down the street was the only time you could get Lucu Mathese St. Demetrius Greek Church, which when I came to live here, they're like, you're staying on Saint Dioni's road. I was like, oh, that seems right to me. You'd get Luca Matha's you know

They puff up, they puff up.

Yeah, they're like puffy hot balls of dough with yeah and you only they're a real pain in the butt to make.

Did your mother make them?

No? You only get them at like the church festival once a year. And anytime I've ever gone into a Greek restaurant in New York that sometimes there's a place in New York that I won't name her, they often have them on the menu and if you order them, they're like, we don't have them tonight because they're a real pain. I think they're pain and yeah, so we grew up eating that kind of stuff.

Was your mother born in Greece or was she born My mother was, I believe conceived in the US, born in Greece and brought back as an infant, like I think her mom went to be around her mother when she delivered and then came back.

And did your grandmother come back too, Yes? Did she cook more Greek food for you than perhaps your mother?

Well, my grandmother had passed away when I was still quite small. So my brother's eight years older than me, he probably remembers my grandmother. I don't have first hand memories of any of my grandparents, but for sure certain foods like the Avgo lemono soup, which is the Greek chicken soup with lemon and with orzo instead of rice.

I think that the image is you were saying going back to that of food when you're in America, same as you say with Italian.

I grew up in.

Upstate New York. The idea that was that, you know, Italian food was egg plant, parmesan or meat balls and spaghetti and very.

Kind of heavy food.

And then you go to Italy and this piece of grilled fish with herbs and olive oil or you know, very light pasta.

I went to Greece.

As you can see, I don't know much about Greek food, and I haven't spent enough time in Greece. But when we went there, we went to Hedra, and the food was so gorgeous.

And so well. I mentioned, it's a little bit like, I know, you love Mexico and it's sort of the same thing. You're like, well, here we're by the sea, cook what we caught today. Like that kind of life is interesting how that translates them. Why is it that when you know immigrants then came to the United.

States that they guess I guess it was just the idea of giving abundance or giving a lot of food, or making people feel that, you know.

Right, feed and things that need to be that keep them a refrigerator. And it's not the same.

I think for you saying first generation still cooks the food from the country, doesn't it from the home country, and the second generation is trying to adapt, and then the third generation is probably completely forgotten about it.

You know.

Apparently my grandmother who's from Hungary, never went anywhere without her rolling pin. Oh wow, Yeah, she just didn't trust anybody to roll out the strudle or whatever she was making, you know, But then my mother never cared and made anything like that. Did your father cook?

No, My mom did the cooking, and I think she was, you know, cooked by just the virtue of the fact that that was what was expected of her. I don't think she she did well. She had worked for like a brokerage firm in her youth, and I think she definitely once I was in high school she went back to work. I think she was a woman who liked to work, and sort of the norm at the time was you don't work when you have kids, So she didn't work until I was She didn't work until I

It was, but it still feels like there was a focus on food.

For sure, and events were all very you know, if it was Christmas time or birthday part like back when we were kids, especially like so many kind of Greek specialties. It'd be like getting ready for the holiyes to'd be like making.

Back lava and she made she would make baklava, she would make gurulaikya, and her friends would come over and it was like, okay, we got a hustle on this because all those things with the puff pastriore, they're labor intensive.

Yeah, so a lot I love that. That's sweet. It was ultra sweet, so spy.

Yeah yeah. And then the kurulaikya are the ones that are like little twists. They look like the aids ribbon and they're not very sweet. They're like closest to like a not a biscottie, but that you would have them with coffee, and.

That's interesting We grew up with such a culture of food that you did as part of your identity would be that eating Greek food, but you were in the community of people eat Greek food.

Oh for sure, for sure. I still love to cook. In the spring in New York, I love to cook dandelion grease. And my mom's aunt came to visit from Greece and she kept saying to my mom, like in Greek, which I can't speak, but like she wanted to pick the dandelion greens out of like the cracked sidewalk where she lived. And my Mom's like, no, no, no, you can't eat those. Like she'd be like cats pee on those get because in her mind like, oh there's there's dandelions, we should cook them.

That again goes back to the culture of Yeah, Richardsville, Ships and Florence used to go out in the fields and you know, it wasn't even cold forging, it wasn't called something very special. You just pick it, and especially things like as you say, dandelion.

My husband Jeff, when he was originally from West Virginia and then his family moved to Ohio, they would go out into the woods behind their house and pick ramps in the spring, which are these very garlic eats, some across between strong garlic and a scallion, and use them

They were remember I was supposed to do to dinner with Alice Walters and I Rose and I were doing it for an Edible school Yard, which is a foundation, and I said, let's call it Alice. As we were thinking can we get the fish from Maine? And can we get this from here? And what are you going to get? And I said, what are you going to do Alice?

For food?

She went, Oh, We're going to forge in Central Park And I was like.

How do you compete with that?

Wow?

You know she was going to go and find her greed.

She found a complete sandwich in a trash can.

Maybe speaking of sandwiches, we'll get onto that. But what about did you go to restaurants?

A lot of times we would go to restaurants that either Greek family friends owned, like little kind of coffee shop dinery restaurants. I also had my godparents their son owned for a long time a huge diner in Wildwood, New Jersey, called the Vegas Diner. I don't know if you know that Jersey Shore area, but it's these gorgeous nineteen fifties diners. There's a lot of them are landmark now. It was those kind of places where the menu is like fourteen pages long and you can either get like

I grew up with diners, not so much in upstate New York is maybe on the New Jersey Shore. And then when I married an Italian, I loved really good food and we lived in Paris. People would always say to me, where did you eat New York And I'd say, oh, we've got that diner. Because Richard all he wanted to eat was either pastrami sandwiches or diner food. And actually, if you analyze it, probably diner food is when it's good because it's all cooked fresh, is it.

Then there's a diner in my neighborhood in New York that does they just roast guests. I don't know how many, but they roast turkeys every day. So when you get a turkey sandwich from the diner, it's like, yeah, it's the day after Thanksgiving. It's the most delicious fresh turkey.

Yeah. Are they still around diners? And are they Are they thriving?

Do you think they are in New York? I think they've managed to survive the pandemic. I think one thing that the city did that was probably smart was when everyone could only do delivery during the pandemic, they allowed people to deliver alcohol also, so every delivery menu would they would lead on the app. They'd be like, do you want it's four glasses of wine? Do you want a cosmo? Also grilled cheese also, so I think that

With that stuff.

That's just so so good. And that's growing up with that real Italian stuff. I can't when I went to college in Virginia and it was like regular, like Bolognians, This is felvida, is not it?

Growing up in this house that were you nurtured and exposed, wonderful you did. Then go to the University of Virginia. Was that traumatic not to have that anymore?

I remember being at the University of Virginia. Within the first couple of weeks I was there, going to the cafeteria and picking up what I thought was a breaded chicken cutlet and biting into a chicken fried steak and being like, what the hell is this?

I don't know what it is.

In the ground, they take a steak and bread it and deep fried like chicken, and it is gross. But then you know, believe me, wherever you put me, I will find what there is to eat with the other I forget, I'm.

Like, okay.

The way to play it in Virginia was to go to a chain called Morrison's Cafeteria and just get the vegetarian plate, which was like biscuits, black eyed peas, collared greens. Yeah, grits with butter and salt. These were all foods I had never had before.

Did you ever have yourn apartment when you were at Uva?

I did eventually, But I'll tell you exactly what I used to eat. I know you can imagine what I look like from that. I didn't cook properly. I used to get a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese and make it and then add to it a drained can of tuna fish and some lightly cooked frozen peas. Stir that together and eat all of it, and then eat a pine of ice cream.

Did that cause you to gain weight?

I mean I was. I was, honestly, like, it's a it's a miracle. I didn't gain more weight because I would do that often. Yeah, yeah, but also probably I probably also had a side of apple sauce for nutrition.

Yeah, did your mom ever teach you to cook? Did she ever try to teach?

She has taught me. I've since gotten her to show me how to do this the spanic copita. She yeah, No, I think the few things I've learned to cook, I've learned some moves more, I would say more. I've learned more in the last five years than I did growing up.

When you when you're in college and you're doing that, probably food. There was somebody and who did. I talk to a friend and Brian Chesky, and he said that when he was at the Rhode Island School of Design, it was almost was an arts school and it was almost competitive as well.

You could cook in.

This interesting expression, go and eat and and then every night somebody had to make a different dish and they were all involved in cooking. But I think it's more unusual. I think most people when they go to college have left home and then they're just you know, on the male plant or whatever.

And also economically.

But the macaroni cheese, is that the last time you had that tuna macaroni cheese?

What was the other ingredient.

Piece, O piece. I've tried to convince I tried to make.

A actually to deconstruct that.

No, come like.

I assembled that. Oh I see, Okay, I think I've tried to sell my kids on just old seventies tuna castle because that was like and they were like, no, this is.

Terrible created these monsters? I know, can we have yellowtail sish? And what about when you became domestic, when you did start having kids? And yes, I did have a husband. And Jeff Cooks is a natural cook. My husband is a fantastic cook. He is someone who did learn from his grandmother. His grandma Perlein taught him all these things.

So he knew how to cook and he some people are just natural, right, Like I'm the kind of person if I cook and have to read it a hundred times and I measure and then and whenever there's anything that's instinct related, like is the steak done? Like, my instincts are terrible, so and his instincts are good. I'm getting better. I can cook a steak from myself, but I had to really learn. And he's just a natural. He can kind of cook anything. He does most of the cooking in our house. Yeah.

Yeah, And what's that like? Are you able to have dinner with your kids on the weekday?

Yeah, we try to, and we try to. We've really been committed to doing a big Sunday dinner with some friends every week.

Over the sun. Then I didners are nice, aren't they?

It's really nice.

We had one together that night.

We played It's the kind of day where you're getting ready for Monday and say goodbye to the weekend.

It's nice.

Yeah, So you have lunch with your kids or Sunday night dinner.

We have Sunday dinner with your friends with us friends, different friends come over and Jeff cooks that and it's usually like roast chicken or you know, cut a beef or sometimes it's sometimes we'll do pasta.

And how often do you go out as a family.

Well, it's interesting, you know, we're just in New York. I think we were just starting to go back to places in person in the last six months, so we were ordering in a lot before then because I didn't want the restaurants to close. And then, you know, when Jeff is busy, then I get excited to be like, oh, I'll do the family weeknight dinner. And I'm always trying things. And I don't know if your family was the same way, but when kids are younger, I can never find something

I see with my grandchildren that there's just a very different way of approaching food, which is basically, you know what one will have like this, and like you say, chicken, and one doesn't. One's vegetarian and one's not eating gluten, and one doesn't like fish at all. Nobody likes fish. I guess there was a time in life maybe if we're all sitting here when you ate what you were maybe given.

Yes, which we've tried to sort of explain to them. But you know, Lauren said this to me once, and I think is smart and like, you can't make them have your childhood. You can't explain to like you they don't have your.

Child and now it's done.

Yes, that's over. So there is a and maybe having all that choice makes for a happier not for the person who's cooking it. I had a friend who had a girlfriend of one of my sons had the best, most amazing pasture.

She was French.

She just was amazing and we all said, Vernie, how did you get that? She said, well, every time we sat down to dinner, my father would just make sure that we sat up straight and we just sat like that, you know, and we all have fantastic pasture, but we hate family dinners. Oh interesting, she said, I might have this posture, but you know, never do I want to sit down to a meal with family because they were tortured, because that's all it's too rigid. That's probably a heavy medium.

And you do go out, but you now go out, Yes, we're back to going out.

And where do they eat?

Well? Now, my older daughter likes to go meet up with her friends and they just go to like a Mexican place in the neighborhood.

But Penelope is she's quite smart about food. Help is a good eater. And also both of them were I have to say that night we had dinner at the River Cafe. They were really sophisticated in a choice.

Yeah, Milby has the bomber of she has a treenut allergy, so that's like, but beyond that, she's the one. She'll eat vegetables, she'll eat. Yeah, she'll eat like a braized cavalon narrow She'll sit there and eat it. She'll eat She and Jeff do I think that Timmy is insane where the two of them both like to take sardines and put them on like a saltine cracker with a

Yeah?

And then Alice is a bit more picky, but.

They were good eaters. I was talking to again, Ivy, one of my granddaughters. We're talking about loving food. She said, she goes to bed at night and thinks what she's going to have breakfast the next day, and then she gets up in the morning and she thinks, oh, now that she's working in this way, she has early lunch at twelve, but she likes that because it means she

Morning, you know that?

So what is that?

What is the food you dream of?

You really do the food I do efect, I do think. I do like simpler food. I don't like anything with two sort of saucy or you know, like like French food. I don't really I think, I just I think. And also the like that growing up with that Greek food where everything's just like olive oil and some lemon and salt. You know, I think when I'm here by myself, which I've been here for myself, I'm almost a vegetarian, you know. I want to cook just like vegetables and pasta yea, and bread and cheese.

You're here doing.

Acting in a movie called a Haunting in Venice, directed by Sir Kenneth Branna. It's when Agatha Christie inspired murder mystery. And it's been very fun to be here shooting in an ensemble with some really great actors Michelle Yoh and Jamie Dornan and Kamilka Tan and Kelly Riley. And it's just been fun to be basically on the Haunted Mansion

Is the culture of filming in Britain in Europe in London very different? And back to food, is it a different food culture that is a little different.

Our lunch is, our hours are very civilized here. We stopped every day at six on the dot, which at home, depending on who you're working for, you could drift into eight o'clock, ten o'clock, one am, you could work really late. Yeah, we s done. Our lunch is very short. It's only half an hour, which was sort of we weren't used to it at first, but none I grew to really like it because then you don't kind of lose momentum.

Is there a food scene in it?

I didn't get to do any on camera eating.

Oh that's shame.

There was a nice thing on set, which was again because food is the only way to communicate with people. Because the cast were all from different places, we started kind of sharing our favorite unique snacks from our countries, which started because somehow it was Halloween when I first got here, and I was talking about candy corn, and of course no one here knew what that was, and so I had a friend bring me a couple bags of candy corn to share and we started taking a poll.

What is a movie called?

It's called A Haunting in Venice.

A Haunting in Venice. So you actually are going to go to Venice. Now we go to Venice tomorrow.

Have you been there before?

I have never been there.

Okay, so what are you thinking about Venice and food? Friend of mine took their kid to Venice. I'll just tell you and the kids. It was a big big deal for them to go. They didn't have much money. They flew from New York. They went to Venice and they said, how do you like Venice? After three days he said, I thought there would be more canals.

Canals. There are a lot of canals. Wanted more. When you're thinking about Venice.

Weirdly, the one thing I'm most excited for about Venice is not a food thing, which is I'm excited to film outside. I'm excited to a little bit of chaos because I am used to shooting outside in New York City and we've been on this lovely contained set for a while, and I kind of like the idea that, like something could go a little wrong. I'm a little bit convinced that I'm going to fall in the canal, but I don't think I will, but maybe it will.

If you do.

It's okay because the water is put cleaner than it was and it used to be because of the pandemic.

There are no cruise ships.

Oh that's probab Yeah, those Christians are too big together. So and I haven't even had a chance to really think about what we're going to eat or where, So I need you to tell me where to.

Eat this great food in Venice. You know, there's the Cepionaro. They have these black squid with the ink. And a friend of mine who grew up outside event It said that she only really had pasta when she was thirteen. Because everybody ate risotto. Oh you're gonna have a wonderful time. I'm exciting as you now in this podcast as we

Poskay, I'm going to say tomato though, tomato.

I know I've been here, you know how many years?

Forty years?

Yeah?

I think you come say tomato.

I say tomato.

Okay, okay, slow cooked tomato sauce. It serves six to eight or in my case, two three tablespoons olive oil, two garlic clothes peeled and cut into slivers, two one kilogram jars peeled plum tomatoes drained of their juices. One hundred and fifty grams on salted butter cut into cubes, which I would say visually to me was about a third to a half a cup of butter. Heat the olive oil in a large sauce pan. Fry the garlic until lightly browned. Now add the tomatoes and stir to

There you go.

So when you go back to New York, oh yeah, I need this's your dish. So if we were talking about comfort, you're talking about comfort, and you're talking about snacks, and you're talking about you know, nationalities, what their views are of comfort. And we think about cooking as being a way of expressing love and something that alleviates hunger and something that we want to share or keep to ourselves.

Well?

I have so many, Well you can name a few.

You don't have to have.

Two come top of list, but there are so a pasta like this. Obviously this tomato pasta would be top of the list. I also think back to New York diner food, sort of a grilled cheese with tomato with the big sort of steak fries that you get at a diner and then open the grilled cheese and put a few fries into the sandwich with a fountain coke, not pepsi. Okay, that would be one.

Is there another one?

And the other one would be yellow cake with white eyes?

Okay?

So these both comfort you. So when I come to New York in February March, can we have that together? I'll make you know. Oh no, I'll get the cake from Make my Cake.

Okay, and we'll get them and then we'll go to the Vande Diner.

Okay. I can't wait.

Thank you too, Thank you for the book.

The River Cafe Lookbook is now available in bookshops and online. It has over one hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated with photographs from the renowned photographer Matthew Donaldson. The book has fifty delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a host of River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted for new cooks. The River Cafe Lookbook recipes for cooks of all ages.