November 25, 2024 • 30 mins
When Rose and I opened the River Café in 1987, we were credited for bringing open kitchens, farm-sourced ingredients, and women chefs, to restaurants. We would always say ‘Alice Waters did it first.
Chef, author, food activist, founder of Chez Panisse and Edible Schoolyard, Alice is a culinary icon and a hero. She is also my close friend.
Today, we are here to talk about our restaurants, our families, the world we live in and wonderful memories.
Ruthie's Table 4, made in partnership with Me+Em
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode is brought to you by Me and M,
the British modern luxury clothing label designed for busy women.
Founded and designed in London. Me and M is about
intelligence style. Much thought and care are put into the
design process, so every piece is flattering, functional and made
to last forever. Me and M is well known for
its trousers and how I got to know the brand.
(00:22):
It's my go to for styles that are comfortable enough
to wear in the kitchen or the restaurant, also polished
enough for meetings. Me and M is available online and
in its stores across London, Edinburgh, New York. If you're
in London, I'd really recommend heading to their beautiful, brand
new flagship store in Marlevin, which opens on the twenty
ninth of October. When Rose and I opened The River
(00:45):
Cafe in nineteen eighty seven, we were credited for bringing
open kitchens, farm sourced ingredients and women chefs to restaurants.
As happy as we were to receive this credit, we
would always say Alice Waters did it first. Not only
has she created Chapennese told us how to cook through
(01:06):
her six cookbooks, Alice has showed us all how food
can bring communities together. As a food activist, her foundation,
the Edible school Yard, has taught children how vegetables grow
and the joy of creating a garden, whether in a
disadvantaged urban area or on the lawn behind the White House.
(01:28):
Even though we're probably what seven thousand miles apart, I
feel deeply connected and close to you. Alice.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Oh, I'm so touched.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
When Rose and I opened I have the menu from
the very first day we opened the River Cafe, and
on the dessert menu was Alice Walters lemon tart and
it's been on the menu every day since then. And
I was wondering whether you would like to talk about
lemons and your lemon tart.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
I would love to talk about lemons. I just picked
from my backyard this morning. Oh, they smell so good.
And it reminded me that the first really successful dessert
at Chipenneses was a Meyer lemon ice cream and Sherbert
(02:17):
that we put inside a lemon cup, and people were
so surprised by the taste.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Tell me about Meyer lemons.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
There are fradle that it's sweet and I can't describe flavor.
It's sort of ethereal to me, but it's not sharp.
It's very floral. Lindsay Shearer's family lived up north on
a farm, and she had Meyer lemons there as well,
(02:52):
and that sort of was the beginning of our connection
directly with the farmers.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
She was her pastry chef. She was the dessert chef
for Shapenese.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
She was, but she was also a partner in the
owner and still is. I planted a Meyer lemon tree
in my backyard and I was holding up those lemons
and remembering the lemon tart we made, and I have
to say that it is.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
One of my favorite desserts.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Lemon merang pie as a child was always one of
my favorite desserts.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Did your mother make it for you?
Speaker 3 (03:35):
She actually did for my birthday. That was one of
the only things she knew how to.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Make, to make a lemon meraing pie every year for
your birthday. Yes.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I grew up in the late forties in New Jersey,
where it was very cold, very hot in summer, but
I certainly fell in love the vegetables and fruits of
my parents' victory garden. My parents kept it their whole life.
They planted it during the war, both as a way
(04:12):
to help to send food to the soldiers in Europe,
and the Roosevelt had asked everybody to do that, but
they did it for financial reasons because we were a
family of six, and so my parents planted tomatoes and
(04:33):
canned the tomatoes for the winter, and always had squashes
that were in the basement. And that seasonality of food
I think was deep inside me. I loved corn and
tomatoes in the summer more than anything.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
When is the season for lemons in San Francisco? When
do you have them?
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Well, right now, they're just beginning to ripen, and I
was just going to cut these open that I picked
in my backyard. But it's a longer season of course
in California, and different ferraldos have a longer life. But
we're lucky that way.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Alice. I'd love to hear your story of starting Chapanese,
and I know that it was a most part of
your activism as a person in the early sixties when
the United States was in the tumult of the free
speech movement of the Vietnam War and you were at Berkeley.
(05:41):
Tell me what really inspired you to start a restaurant.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Well, it began really in that free speech movement with
the leadership of Mario Savio, and he said said to
all of us, you need to visit other cultures, understand
the way people think around the world. And he said,
(06:07):
if you can, you should take off your junior year
and go to some other country.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
So I did.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
I went to France in nineteen sixty five, and it
really did change my life, not just because of the
food that was so extraordinary, but because of the beauty
of the culture of France. I fell in love with
(06:36):
Notre Dame, sitting by the sind drinking a glass of wine.
I walked everywhere. I loved the farmer's markets. And I
came back home and I just said, I want to
live like the French. And I had friends who felt
(06:57):
the same way. In are not even day, we thought, well,
maybe if we open a little French restaurant, the food
will come.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
And it did it sure did. Did you have chefs
who knew how to do a meal for people who
came in at seven, some people came in at nine,
Some people wanted fish, some people wanted how did you
did you know how.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
To welc had one meant you. I wanted it to
be like the little restaurants in Paris where you ate
things that you may not have ever had before, that
we could curate according to the season and what we
loved to cook well strangely and over time, and because
(07:46):
it was very affordable, people liked it a lot, and
they came because it was in an old house, and
they came and it felt like they were eating at home.
And that is a really part of I think my
(08:09):
monatssory training, which said that you need to appeal to
all of your senses because they are our pathways into
our minds. And so I wanted the restaurant to smell good.
I used to burn rosemary up in front of the
restaurant so it smelled like the south of France. And
(08:32):
I knew that a fireplace in the kitchen would given aroma.
I knew that candles on the table would be beautiful.
But it was taste I was looking for when I
got back from France. I wanted to eat and live
like the French, and I didn't find taste until I
(08:57):
found the farmers.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Say you wanted to eat like the French age and
shopped like the French shop. Can you tell me about
what that meant?
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Well, it meant that you only ate food and season
and only local food, you know. I fell in love
with those wild strawberries and the all and all of
a sudden they were gone, and they said, oh, you
have to go up in the woods and pick them.
(09:27):
And I just didn't believe that people spent the time
doing that and bringing them down from the woods and
selling them to the restaurant tours. And of course in
the end, that's what we did. We really bought the
(09:50):
food directly. And when we started doing that, chipanas, everybody
in the state wanted to sell to us because we
left out the middleman. And that's what's so critical, because
the farmers need real costs, and our farmer would want
all of our composts to food and take it back
(10:13):
to the farm and wet up the vegetables.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
And how was the kind of rigor of a restaurant.
How was the finances and the ordering and the margins
and everything? Did that matter or did it not matter?
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Well?
Speaker 3 (10:30):
I was never out. None of us was out to
make money. I mean, my parents mortgaged their house so
that I could buy the.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Building that we were in.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
And it was back in those days it caused practically
nothing that subsidized the beginning of restaurant, no question about that.
But it really began as with a group of us,
and some of us knew how to do pastries and
(11:06):
some knew how to make soup, and it was very
collaborative in that way. And then we got some more
experienced people in the kitchen and things changed. But it's
always been kind of an extended family.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Yeah, and you've had such great chefs that have worked
for you and then have gone on to do like
the River Cafe. You know, one of the great the
expressions that I often use is if you love them,
let them go. And you've certainly loved them, and you
have have let them go. And I think also what
you've done is you've created not only a place where
(11:46):
the values were on the food, but it was also
quite revolutionary in the way that you created a place
where people could work and also have a life. Whereas
it used to be that to work in a restaurant,
to suffer early hours, you had to suffer late nights,
you had to suffer bullying in the kitchen, you had
(12:06):
to suffer no days off. You must take the credit
for having changed the culture of restaurants.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Well, I did something very important. As I look back
over the fifty three years. Probably the most important decision
I made was when I had a child and I
realized that I could not cook six days a week,
and I decided that we would divide the job in
(12:38):
two and there I would work three days, but I
would be paid for six. Someone else would do likewise.
And it works so beautifully that I did it for
the cafe upstairs, and I did it for the pastry.
So instead of having one chef in each department, you
(13:03):
had two. And it meant that there were many points
of view, and so young people who came to learn
in the kitchen would experience that sort of collaborative thinking.
And it made life for the people who were leading
(13:28):
the kitchen civilized, and they could be with their families,
they could go out to other restaurants, and it really
did change shape Anice.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
I just want to point out everyone listening this to
this what a really radical and almost revolutionary way that
Alice transformed the culture of restaurants. There's still a long
way to go, and there still is a matcho. I
just had a chef who came and did a month
with you in Berkeley, a Japanese, and she came back
(14:02):
so excited and so impressed by the culture of your restaurant.
The River Cafe Cafe are all day space and just
steps away from the restaurant. Is now open in the
morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti, chiambella and crostada from
(14:25):
our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon, ice creamed coops and
River Cafe classic desserts. We have sharing plates Salumi misti, Mozzarella,
brusquetto red and yellow peppers, Vitello tonado and more. Come
in the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in
the bar. No need to book. See you here. Tell
(14:52):
me about what it was like raising a child as
both a chef and an entrepreneur and someone who wrote
coop with how did You?
Speaker 3 (15:00):
And I always wanted her to taste the ingredients, and
I had a garden out back of my house and
I planted things that were very aromatic and little wild
strawberries and things she could pick. But I was very
(15:24):
intent on making her school lunches something that she loved,
and it turned out that shared them with her friends.
They all loved the lunch that she took. But she
really became a connoisseur. She loved to eat, and then
(15:51):
she became really engaged in food as part of her
her work as an artist, and it's doing a website
now for new mothers to learn how to cook for
their kids.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
I think we're both concerned with, certainly with children and
their nutrition and the way you know what schools, How
schools can just give children who may not be even
able to have dinner that going to school might give
them their one meal a day, and how we can
provide what is in San Francisco, do children get free meals?
(16:33):
What do you have to do to qualify for.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
I mean theoretically yes, but in fact the meals in
every school in the country is really the reimbursement comes
to the schools federally, and they could be serving them
packaged fast food. And it takes a really determined school
(16:58):
district to make exchange. And that's why we need to
do this in an international way where we can understand
that we can buy foods that are affordable, that are
delicious and nutritious. That's what my new cookbooks about the
(17:20):
school lunch Revolution tell me.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
About the new cookbook I'd like to know about it, Well.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
It's about school lunches, it's food that kids like, I
mean things like hummus and peter bread, and who knew
that they went like wilted greens and all kinds of
fruits and vegetables, but they just haven't been exposed to them.
(17:47):
But the Edible school Yard project was a model that
shared human values.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Have a garden and.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
A school and a kitchen to teach all the academic
subjects in that monassory way, learning by doing in a
kitchen and garden classroom. It's amazing what they learned and
how happy they are to be in those classrooms.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Can you tell me and tell everyone who's listening about
Edible Schoolyard.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Well, thirty years ago the principal of school in Berkeley
called me up and asked me whether I could help
him beautify his school. And I went over to the
school and it was a middle school. It had eight
hundred students that came from They spoke twenty two different
(18:50):
languages in their homes.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
And I was very intimidated when.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
I saw this big, huge piece of land, and from
really the very first planning of that vacant lot, parents
wanted to help, kids wanted to help. After school, it
was amazing how quickly it changed the whole nature of
(19:19):
the school. You could make a kitchen classroom, and you
could make a garden classroom, not for teaching cooking or gardening,
but for teaching the academic subjects. You could teach geography
in the kitchen classroom. And its success and our teaching
(19:41):
every year we do a training has created amazing network
which I'm going to share that's map because you won't.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Believe, Wow, amazing, I'm looking at a map. I just
tell looking at a map, describe what you're showing me,
a network.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
Of edible school of your arts that goes to practically
every country around the world, over sixty five hundred schools
in all different climates and cultures. But I have to
say that it has been the reason that I am
(20:28):
so sure that school supported agriculture can change the world.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
I dare say can if we get children when they're young,
if we teach them when they are you want to
learn and to be exposed. I think one of the
things that you and I probably as parents, have understood
the difference between well the importance of exposure. When we
take chefs who've worked for us, we take them to
(20:59):
Italy every year to see how olive oil is made,
and you realize you and I have done that with
our children from an early age, but so many people
have not understood how vegetables grow, how olive oil is made,
how cows are milked. It's really understanding what the culture
is of food. Do you agree?
Speaker 3 (21:20):
I totally agree, But I agree that there's something deep
inside all of us that, of course is connected to
nature and to food, and that coming back it's almost
like coming home. It's not something that's difficult for children
(21:44):
to embrace or even for adults to embrace. When they
are at a table and food is delicious, it's easy
for them to want to go back there again and
for them to want to make change.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
The other very well known garden that you were involved
with was a garden of the White House when President
Obama was there and you worked with Michelle. Can you
tell me about that experience.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Well. I talked to her a lot about the Edible
School Yard project, and she loved the idea, and she
knew about Roosevelt's interests, his wife's interest in victory gardens
and buying food. He even had a garden on the
(22:38):
front lawn of the White House at one time. But
she found a farmer, Sam cass and I was so
surprised when she planted the garden behind the White House.
One of her first things she did.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
What did she grow there?
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Everything? And he had to behive. It was amazing.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Are you optimistic about the future do you think that
this will go forward people knowing more.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
I really am optimistic about the possibility of changing the
procurement of public schools around the world. I mean many
other countries and your country one of the most able
to do this because if your long history and gardening
(23:31):
and also belief in education. Unfortunately we don't have that
in the United States. And even though many many people
are involved with gardening around the country and selling to schools,
we need that leadership to show us that this is
(23:54):
possible and absolutely essential for climate.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
We can't shipping food around the world.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
It's the idea that comes from the fast food and
doctrination that we should have whatever we want, whenever we
want it. And you can't bring an unripe avocado from
Mexico and hope that it's going to ripen by the
time you get it to you know, Denmark in December.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
If you like listening to Ruthie's table for Would you
please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, O, wherever you get your podcasts.
Thank you, Thanks to you, and really what you've done,
(24:51):
there's a much greater understanding of the restrictions and the
joy we have of different seasons that a vegetable or
fruit comes and then it goes, and then another one
comes and then it goes. Don't you think you say
hello and then you say goodbye to a fruit or vegetable.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
It's a beautiful thing actually to think of it that way,
Hello and goodbye, because you don't want to be just
eating food. Isn't at that moment of ripeness when it
has such a distinct flavor. I mean, right now, we
(25:28):
have passion fruit all the trees around Berkeley, and people
are bringing them over to shape and ease, and we're
buying them and we're making a passion fruit syrup. We've
never done that before and.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
It is delicious.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Yeah, right now we have we don't have passion fruit,
but we have porcini mushrooms that we're gathering, and we
have white truffles, and we have now but the best guess,
but the best thing we have is the olive oil.
I served some yesterday to some friends. I poured some
oil out and I said, these olives were on the
(26:09):
trees three weeks ago.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Well, we discovered that we can make olive oil that's
as tasty as ol of the olive oils I've always
loved from Italy. So it's really interesting to know what
we can grow and to get those seeds. And we're
(26:33):
going to really need it with climate change. What grow
when it's very rainy, very hot, and we need to
really collaborate internationally about that.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Last year, there was rain in July, then there was
a hal there was heat, and the olive oil was
really challenging to find enough oil because you know, we
use so much in the River Cafe. I think we
use seven thousand bottles a year, you know, ten bottles
a day. How have you experienced climate change in San Francisco?
(27:12):
How has that affected what you're eating and growing?
Speaker 3 (27:15):
It's affected us all of course psychologically. And it's the
reason that I'm so focused on public education, supporting farmers
directly like we do paying them the real costs.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Because we need to have a.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
Solution or a way to directly help the farmers during
this time of climate change, we need to pull the
carbon down and put it in the ground where it belongs.
We could do that with the procurement of food.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
In public schools.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
You're doing that with King Charles's Foundation Farm to School
in England, but I think that restaurants could really help
to lead the way to supporting and purchasing all food
that it's locally grown, organically and reach oatively.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
My last question to you, Alice, is if food is
what we feed our children, our grandchildren, what we feed
people who come to our restaurants, it is also comfort.
Food is a source of comfort, emotional comfort. Is there
a food that you would particularly associate with comfort?
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Well, for me, the great thing about food is esth
that it connects you to the beauty of nature. And
I go outside and just throw myself down on around
smelthy herbs, and I love rosemary. I love to fry
(29:09):
rosemary and sage. I love to sprinkle it on just
about anything. But it is aroma therapy and that is
very powerful.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Thank you, Alice. I feel that we are separated by
oceans and valleys and rivers, plains and cities, but I
do feel that we are connected through so much, our
love for food, our love for people we work with,
our children, our grandchildren, for nature, for farmers, and most
(29:47):
of all, I think, certainly on my part, our love
for each other. Thank you very much, thank you,
This episode is brought to you by Me and M,
the British modern luxury clothing label designed for busy women.
Founded and designed in London. Me and M is about
intelligence style. Much thought and care are put into the
design process, so every piece is flattering, functional and made
to last forever. Me and M is well known for
its trousers and how I got to know the brand.
(00:22):
It's my go to for styles that are comfortable enough
to wear in the kitchen or the restaurant, also polished
enough for meetings. Me and M is available online and
in its stores across London, Edinburgh, New York. If you're
in London, I'd really recommend heading to their beautiful, brand
new flagship store in Marlevin, which opens on the twenty
ninth of October. When Rose and I opened The River
(00:45):
Cafe in nineteen eighty seven, we were credited for bringing
open kitchens, farm sourced ingredients and women chefs to restaurants.
As happy as we were to receive this credit, we
would always say Alice Waters did it first. Not only
has she created Chapennese told us how to cook through
(01:06):
her six cookbooks, Alice has showed us all how food
can bring communities together. As a food activist, her foundation,
the Edible school Yard, has taught children how vegetables grow
and the joy of creating a garden, whether in a
disadvantaged urban area or on the lawn behind the White House.
(01:28):
Even though we're probably what seven thousand miles apart, I
feel deeply connected and close to you. Alice.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Oh, I'm so touched.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
When Rose and I opened I have the menu from
the very first day we opened the River Cafe, and
on the dessert menu was Alice Walters lemon tart and
it's been on the menu every day since then. And
I was wondering whether you would like to talk about
lemons and your lemon tart.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
I would love to talk about lemons. I just picked
from my backyard this morning. Oh, they smell so good.
And it reminded me that the first really successful dessert
at Chipenneses was a Meyer lemon ice cream and Sherbert
(02:17):
that we put inside a lemon cup, and people were
so surprised by the taste.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Tell me about Meyer lemons.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
There are fradle that it's sweet and I can't describe flavor.
It's sort of ethereal to me, but it's not sharp.
It's very floral. Lindsay Shearer's family lived up north on
a farm, and she had Meyer lemons there as well,
(02:52):
and that sort of was the beginning of our connection
directly with the farmers.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
She was her pastry chef. She was the dessert chef
for Shapenese.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
She was, but she was also a partner in the
owner and still is. I planted a Meyer lemon tree
in my backyard and I was holding up those lemons
and remembering the lemon tart we made, and I have
to say that it is.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
One of my favorite desserts.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Lemon merang pie as a child was always one of
my favorite desserts.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Did your mother make it for you?
Speaker 3 (03:35):
She actually did for my birthday. That was one of
the only things she knew how to.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Make, to make a lemon meraing pie every year for
your birthday. Yes.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I grew up in the late forties in New Jersey,
where it was very cold, very hot in summer, but
I certainly fell in love the vegetables and fruits of
my parents' victory garden. My parents kept it their whole life.
They planted it during the war, both as a way
(04:12):
to help to send food to the soldiers in Europe,
and the Roosevelt had asked everybody to do that, but
they did it for financial reasons because we were a
family of six, and so my parents planted tomatoes and
(04:33):
canned the tomatoes for the winter, and always had squashes
that were in the basement. And that seasonality of food
I think was deep inside me. I loved corn and
tomatoes in the summer more than anything.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
When is the season for lemons in San Francisco? When
do you have them?
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Well, right now, they're just beginning to ripen, and I
was just going to cut these open that I picked
in my backyard. But it's a longer season of course
in California, and different ferraldos have a longer life. But
we're lucky that way.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Alice. I'd love to hear your story of starting Chapanese,
and I know that it was a most part of
your activism as a person in the early sixties when
the United States was in the tumult of the free
speech movement of the Vietnam War and you were at Berkeley.
(05:41):
Tell me what really inspired you to start a restaurant.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Well, it began really in that free speech movement with
the leadership of Mario Savio, and he said said to
all of us, you need to visit other cultures, understand
the way people think around the world. And he said,
(06:07):
if you can, you should take off your junior year
and go to some other country.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
So I did.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
I went to France in nineteen sixty five, and it
really did change my life, not just because of the
food that was so extraordinary, but because of the beauty
of the culture of France. I fell in love with
(06:36):
Notre Dame, sitting by the sind drinking a glass of wine.
I walked everywhere. I loved the farmer's markets. And I
came back home and I just said, I want to
live like the French. And I had friends who felt
(06:57):
the same way. In are not even day, we thought, well,
maybe if we open a little French restaurant, the food
will come.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
And it did it sure did. Did you have chefs
who knew how to do a meal for people who
came in at seven, some people came in at nine,
Some people wanted fish, some people wanted how did you
did you know how.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
To welc had one meant you. I wanted it to
be like the little restaurants in Paris where you ate
things that you may not have ever had before, that
we could curate according to the season and what we
loved to cook well strangely and over time, and because
(07:46):
it was very affordable, people liked it a lot, and
they came because it was in an old house, and
they came and it felt like they were eating at home.
And that is a really part of I think my
(08:09):
monatssory training, which said that you need to appeal to
all of your senses because they are our pathways into
our minds. And so I wanted the restaurant to smell good.
I used to burn rosemary up in front of the
restaurant so it smelled like the south of France. And
(08:32):
I knew that a fireplace in the kitchen would given aroma.
I knew that candles on the table would be beautiful.
But it was taste I was looking for when I
got back from France. I wanted to eat and live
like the French, and I didn't find taste until I
(08:57):
found the farmers.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Say you wanted to eat like the French age and
shopped like the French shop. Can you tell me about
what that meant?
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Well, it meant that you only ate food and season
and only local food, you know. I fell in love
with those wild strawberries and the all and all of
a sudden they were gone, and they said, oh, you
have to go up in the woods and pick them.
(09:27):
And I just didn't believe that people spent the time
doing that and bringing them down from the woods and
selling them to the restaurant tours. And of course in
the end, that's what we did. We really bought the
(09:50):
food directly. And when we started doing that, chipanas, everybody
in the state wanted to sell to us because we
left out the middleman. And that's what's so critical, because
the farmers need real costs, and our farmer would want
all of our composts to food and take it back
(10:13):
to the farm and wet up the vegetables.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
And how was the kind of rigor of a restaurant.
How was the finances and the ordering and the margins
and everything? Did that matter or did it not matter?
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Well?
Speaker 3 (10:30):
I was never out. None of us was out to
make money. I mean, my parents mortgaged their house so
that I could buy the.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Building that we were in.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
And it was back in those days it caused practically
nothing that subsidized the beginning of restaurant, no question about that.
But it really began as with a group of us,
and some of us knew how to do pastries and
(11:06):
some knew how to make soup, and it was very
collaborative in that way. And then we got some more
experienced people in the kitchen and things changed. But it's
always been kind of an extended family.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Yeah, and you've had such great chefs that have worked
for you and then have gone on to do like
the River Cafe. You know, one of the great the
expressions that I often use is if you love them,
let them go. And you've certainly loved them, and you
have have let them go. And I think also what
you've done is you've created not only a place where
(11:46):
the values were on the food, but it was also
quite revolutionary in the way that you created a place
where people could work and also have a life. Whereas
it used to be that to work in a restaurant,
to suffer early hours, you had to suffer late nights,
you had to suffer bullying in the kitchen, you had
(12:06):
to suffer no days off. You must take the credit
for having changed the culture of restaurants.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Well, I did something very important. As I look back
over the fifty three years. Probably the most important decision
I made was when I had a child and I
realized that I could not cook six days a week,
and I decided that we would divide the job in
(12:38):
two and there I would work three days, but I
would be paid for six. Someone else would do likewise.
And it works so beautifully that I did it for
the cafe upstairs, and I did it for the pastry.
So instead of having one chef in each department, you
(13:03):
had two. And it meant that there were many points
of view, and so young people who came to learn
in the kitchen would experience that sort of collaborative thinking.
And it made life for the people who were leading
(13:28):
the kitchen civilized, and they could be with their families,
they could go out to other restaurants, and it really
did change shape Anice.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
I just want to point out everyone listening this to
this what a really radical and almost revolutionary way that
Alice transformed the culture of restaurants. There's still a long
way to go, and there still is a matcho. I
just had a chef who came and did a month
with you in Berkeley, a Japanese, and she came back
(14:02):
so excited and so impressed by the culture of your restaurant.
The River Cafe Cafe are all day space and just
steps away from the restaurant. Is now open in the
morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti, chiambella and crostada from
(14:25):
our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon, ice creamed coops and
River Cafe classic desserts. We have sharing plates Salumi misti, Mozzarella,
brusquetto red and yellow peppers, Vitello tonado and more. Come
in the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in
the bar. No need to book. See you here. Tell
(14:52):
me about what it was like raising a child as
both a chef and an entrepreneur and someone who wrote
coop with how did You?
Speaker 3 (15:00):
And I always wanted her to taste the ingredients, and
I had a garden out back of my house and
I planted things that were very aromatic and little wild
strawberries and things she could pick. But I was very
(15:24):
intent on making her school lunches something that she loved,
and it turned out that shared them with her friends.
They all loved the lunch that she took. But she
really became a connoisseur. She loved to eat, and then
(15:51):
she became really engaged in food as part of her
her work as an artist, and it's doing a website
now for new mothers to learn how to cook for
their kids.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
I think we're both concerned with, certainly with children and
their nutrition and the way you know what schools, How
schools can just give children who may not be even
able to have dinner that going to school might give
them their one meal a day, and how we can
provide what is in San Francisco, do children get free meals?
(16:33):
What do you have to do to qualify for.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
I mean theoretically yes, but in fact the meals in
every school in the country is really the reimbursement comes
to the schools federally, and they could be serving them
packaged fast food. And it takes a really determined school
(16:58):
district to make exchange. And that's why we need to
do this in an international way where we can understand
that we can buy foods that are affordable, that are
delicious and nutritious. That's what my new cookbooks about the
(17:20):
school lunch Revolution tell me.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
About the new cookbook I'd like to know about it, Well.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
It's about school lunches, it's food that kids like, I
mean things like hummus and peter bread, and who knew
that they went like wilted greens and all kinds of
fruits and vegetables, but they just haven't been exposed to them.
(17:47):
But the Edible school Yard project was a model that
shared human values.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Have a garden and.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
A school and a kitchen to teach all the academic
subjects in that monassory way, learning by doing in a
kitchen and garden classroom. It's amazing what they learned and
how happy they are to be in those classrooms.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Can you tell me and tell everyone who's listening about
Edible Schoolyard.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Well, thirty years ago the principal of school in Berkeley
called me up and asked me whether I could help
him beautify his school. And I went over to the
school and it was a middle school. It had eight
hundred students that came from They spoke twenty two different
(18:50):
languages in their homes.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
And I was very intimidated when.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
I saw this big, huge piece of land, and from
really the very first planning of that vacant lot, parents
wanted to help, kids wanted to help. After school, it
was amazing how quickly it changed the whole nature of
(19:19):
the school. You could make a kitchen classroom, and you
could make a garden classroom, not for teaching cooking or gardening,
but for teaching the academic subjects. You could teach geography
in the kitchen classroom. And its success and our teaching
(19:41):
every year we do a training has created amazing network
which I'm going to share that's map because you won't.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Believe, Wow, amazing, I'm looking at a map. I just
tell looking at a map, describe what you're showing me,
a network.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
Of edible school of your arts that goes to practically
every country around the world, over sixty five hundred schools
in all different climates and cultures. But I have to
say that it has been the reason that I am
(20:28):
so sure that school supported agriculture can change the world.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
I dare say can if we get children when they're young,
if we teach them when they are you want to
learn and to be exposed. I think one of the
things that you and I probably as parents, have understood
the difference between well the importance of exposure. When we
take chefs who've worked for us, we take them to
(20:59):
Italy every year to see how olive oil is made,
and you realize you and I have done that with
our children from an early age, but so many people
have not understood how vegetables grow, how olive oil is made,
how cows are milked. It's really understanding what the culture
is of food. Do you agree?
Speaker 3 (21:20):
I totally agree, But I agree that there's something deep
inside all of us that, of course is connected to
nature and to food, and that coming back it's almost
like coming home. It's not something that's difficult for children
(21:44):
to embrace or even for adults to embrace. When they
are at a table and food is delicious, it's easy
for them to want to go back there again and
for them to want to make change.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
The other very well known garden that you were involved
with was a garden of the White House when President
Obama was there and you worked with Michelle. Can you
tell me about that experience.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Well. I talked to her a lot about the Edible
School Yard project, and she loved the idea, and she
knew about Roosevelt's interests, his wife's interest in victory gardens
and buying food. He even had a garden on the
(22:38):
front lawn of the White House at one time. But
she found a farmer, Sam cass and I was so
surprised when she planted the garden behind the White House.
One of her first things she did.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
What did she grow there?
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Everything? And he had to behive. It was amazing.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Are you optimistic about the future do you think that
this will go forward people knowing more.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
I really am optimistic about the possibility of changing the
procurement of public schools around the world. I mean many
other countries and your country one of the most able
to do this because if your long history and gardening
(23:31):
and also belief in education. Unfortunately we don't have that
in the United States. And even though many many people
are involved with gardening around the country and selling to schools,
we need that leadership to show us that this is
(23:54):
possible and absolutely essential for climate.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
We can't shipping food around the world.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
It's the idea that comes from the fast food and
doctrination that we should have whatever we want, whenever we
want it. And you can't bring an unripe avocado from
Mexico and hope that it's going to ripen by the
time you get it to you know, Denmark in December.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
If you like listening to Ruthie's table for Would you
please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, O, wherever you get your podcasts.
Thank you, Thanks to you, and really what you've done,
(24:51):
there's a much greater understanding of the restrictions and the
joy we have of different seasons that a vegetable or
fruit comes and then it goes, and then another one
comes and then it goes. Don't you think you say
hello and then you say goodbye to a fruit or vegetable.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
It's a beautiful thing actually to think of it that way,
Hello and goodbye, because you don't want to be just
eating food. Isn't at that moment of ripeness when it
has such a distinct flavor. I mean, right now, we
(25:28):
have passion fruit all the trees around Berkeley, and people
are bringing them over to shape and ease, and we're
buying them and we're making a passion fruit syrup. We've
never done that before and.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
It is delicious.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Yeah, right now we have we don't have passion fruit,
but we have porcini mushrooms that we're gathering, and we
have white truffles, and we have now but the best guess,
but the best thing we have is the olive oil.
I served some yesterday to some friends. I poured some
oil out and I said, these olives were on the
(26:09):
trees three weeks ago.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Well, we discovered that we can make olive oil that's
as tasty as ol of the olive oils I've always
loved from Italy. So it's really interesting to know what
we can grow and to get those seeds. And we're
(26:33):
going to really need it with climate change. What grow
when it's very rainy, very hot, and we need to
really collaborate internationally about that.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Last year, there was rain in July, then there was
a hal there was heat, and the olive oil was
really challenging to find enough oil because you know, we
use so much in the River Cafe. I think we
use seven thousand bottles a year, you know, ten bottles
a day. How have you experienced climate change in San Francisco?
(27:12):
How has that affected what you're eating and growing?
Speaker 3 (27:15):
It's affected us all of course psychologically. And it's the
reason that I'm so focused on public education, supporting farmers
directly like we do paying them the real costs.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Because we need to have a.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
Solution or a way to directly help the farmers during
this time of climate change, we need to pull the
carbon down and put it in the ground where it belongs.
We could do that with the procurement of food.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
In public schools.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
You're doing that with King Charles's Foundation Farm to School
in England, but I think that restaurants could really help
to lead the way to supporting and purchasing all food
that it's locally grown, organically and reach oatively.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
My last question to you, Alice, is if food is
what we feed our children, our grandchildren, what we feed
people who come to our restaurants, it is also comfort.
Food is a source of comfort, emotional comfort. Is there
a food that you would particularly associate with comfort?
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Well, for me, the great thing about food is esth
that it connects you to the beauty of nature. And
I go outside and just throw myself down on around
smelthy herbs, and I love rosemary. I love to fry
(29:09):
rosemary and sage. I love to sprinkle it on just
about anything. But it is aroma therapy and that is
very powerful.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Thank you, Alice. I feel that we are separated by
oceans and valleys and rivers, plains and cities, but I
do feel that we are connected through so much, our
love for food, our love for people we work with,
our children, our grandchildren, for nature, for farmers, and most
(29:47):
of all, I think, certainly on my part, our love
for each other. Thank you very much, thank you,
Host
Ruth Rogers
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