March 13, 2023 • 27 mins
Austin Butler is a winner. He beats me at cards, knows how to cook a wild salmon on the grill, and when we had a dinner every Sunday night for a year always arrived with a new book he was reading, a piece of pottery he’d made or a rare bottle of tequila.
We first recorded this podcast in 2021 but wanted to play it for you again in case you hadn’t heard it – it's one of my favourites, just like Austin.
For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home.
On Ruthie’s Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers.
Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks.
Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation.
For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/
Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/ruthiestable4
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio
and Adami's Studios. Austin Butler is a winner. He beats
me at carts, knows how to cook a wild salmon
on the grill, and when we had at dinner every
Sunday night for a year when he was filming in London,
he always arrived with a new book, he was reading,
a piece of pottery he just made, or a rare
(00:22):
bottle of tequila. We first recorded this podcast in May
twenty twenty one, but we wanted to play it for
you again in case you hadn't heard it. It is
one of my definite favorites, just like Austin. If you
like listening to Ruthie's Table four, would you please make
sure to rate and review the podcast on the iHeartRadio app,
(00:45):
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.
My favorite line in this conversation is when Austin Butler
refers to his and my relationship as family. Austin arrived
(01:08):
here from filming bas Lermann's movie Elvis, playing Elvis himself.
London was just out of COVID lockdown and needing an
immediate tradition we decided to have dinner at my home
every Sunday night with the same small group of friends.
Austin would turn up early and cook with me, and
(01:31):
this is what we did every Sunday for thirty nine weeks.
Austin is a brilliant actor, a beautiful singer, a poet,
and a true friend. And Austin is my family. So Austin,
(01:51):
you and I are here in the River Cafe to
talk about food, our memories, travel and a lot more.
But maybe we should just start with Australia. I was
in Australia for a year and a half filming. I
was making the ovis with Basil Lerman. Did you have
food on set? Did you sit down to meals? Yeah? Well,
(02:13):
we did this thing. It's I'm realizing it's a very
European sort of thing where you have these rolling lunches,
which basically means you don't have a lunch break. You
eat while you're filming. And I actually kind of like
it because it keeps momentum of filming. And so while
(02:39):
we were filming a lot of times it was just
I was eating for It was like gasoline, you know,
I was eating for energy. I just making the most
thin black hand. And then when we wrapped, Bas and
(03:00):
I were at his house and there was a small
group of us, and it was the night that we
wrapped it was it was the first time that he
and I both sort of were able to go, ah,
we did it. You know, we've been working on this
for I've been a time for about two and a
half years at that point, maybe three years. He'd been
doing this for long or five or eight years or something.
(03:22):
And we just we danced until the sun came up.
We just yeah, well we had a little group there,
but we just put on vinyl records and we just danced,
and we ate oysters and we just we just lived life.
It was like this feeling of letting our hair down.
And and then the sun started to come up and
and Bass looked out and he lived across the street
(03:45):
from the sea, and he said, should we go swim
in the ocean right now? And this is the night
that we wrapped the film, and so we both we
were like, yeah, let's do it. So we ran across
the street and we jumped in the ocean and it's
like five morning now, and we swam in the ocean
and said, the sun's rising, and I was gonna not
(04:05):
go that night as well, and I said, I said, Baths,
I can't believe I was gonna go to sleep tonight.
And he started singing nessa dorma and he goes, no
sleep tonight, No sleep tonight. He starts singing this opera
and I hadn't really heard that song, and he was
telling me the story of the opera and then he said,
I'll play it for you when we get back to
the shore. And he went back to the shore and
I kind of took a second from myself in the
(04:27):
ocean where it's just me. I just watched the sunrise,
and I sort of processed all that we had done.
And you don't know the final outcome of a film.
You hope that you did everything you possibly could and
you gave every bit of your soul, but you don't
know how it's going to be received. But at that moment,
I just kind of processed all that we had, the
work that we had done, and the joy and the
(04:49):
love that we'd put into it. And I sort of
had that moment. And then as I sort of slowly
walked back to shore, I look at Baths and he's
holding a speaker above his head like John Cusack and
say anything. And he's playing nessa Daughter, the Pavarati version,
and it's blaring at like five to thirty in the
morning now on the beaches of the Gold Coast. It
was so magical and cinematic. And then we made breakfast.
(05:14):
What was that We We looked in the refrigerator and thought, okay,
what can we make? Because he and I both had
been working so hard, and there's this thing about filming
where you're there's so many responsibilities that other people end
up almost treating you like you're a child. In many areas,
they walk you to the bathroom, you know, if you
if you're if I said I'm want to go to
(05:34):
the trailer, they walk me there and to make sure
I don't get lost. They treat you like you can't
do anything, and they bring you your food, and so
you're very spoiled in many ways. But there's something so
relieving about that moment when you're finally able to do
something for yourself. And uh and so he and I
that was our moment. We opened the refrigerator and we
saw that okay, we got eggs, we got asparagus, we
(05:56):
got some spinach there, we got some tomatoes, we got
some farmers cheese. What can we do? And so we
kind of just made this breakfast. And there's these this
loaf of bread and so we cut off bits of
this bread and we toasted it and just made this
delicious meal. And that's one of the most glorious memories
of my life. Was like after we finished this thing
that was so terrifying and daunting, and that we gave
(06:17):
it everything we could and then and then we just
sat there and as the morning sun sort of laid
down on us and ate that breakfast, and it was
so glorious. It's it's about memories, isn't it. It's about
the time. And what about tarantine? Now he was he
interested in food? Yeah, yeah. Remember one night we were
we were doing night shoots and it was about three
(06:39):
in the morning. He had this amazing crepe maker come
and make crepes and we were eating these amazing crepes
and he said, he said, Austin, you know, my thing
is I want to give everybody such a good experience
on this job that their next job sucks. And it
(07:01):
was such a wonderful thing. So every every night there
would be some new food thing that he would he
would organize, so you just had this thing to look
forward to. And and the other thing that he did
was after every hundred rolls of film, which, believe it
or not, this was the first time I had shot
anything on film, because everything since I grew up was
(07:22):
on digital essentially with every person and I've worked with,
and so that was really special, just hearing the sound
of the film going through the camera when you're sitting
in the car. But every hundred rolls of film, you'd
throw a party and it would have a theme. So
he'd have you know, Grappo would come out and so
everybody and they'd be singing these songs, and or Margaritis
(07:43):
would come out and he'd have a mariachi band or
so there every hundred rolls, whether it'd be ten in
the morning or you know, three in the morning, it
was something to look forward to. I think that does
actually give people a kind of commitment to the person
you're working for. You know that they're taking care of you, know,
they're thinking about you there. Yeah, recognizing that you you're
working hard and that you want to give them something back.
(08:07):
It's a lot, doesn't it. Yeah, when you lived by yourself.
You once told me that you chose a house in
Los Angeles because it had a pizza oven. Oh that
was great. Yeah, there's this beautiful house that had belonged
to Gary Oldman before and he had built a pizza oven.
(08:28):
And I became obsessed with learning how to make the
perfect fire and this pizza oven, the specific type of
wood and exactly how to lay it. And I got
one of those laser temperature gauges so I could make
it a thousand degrees and learned how to make the
pizza sauce and the dough and everything, and and it
(08:48):
was actually Christmas that I made the most pieces, I think,
and the first couple kind of came out rough and
then and then started to get really into the zone
of it. And it was amazing to me how you
have asked you could cook a pizza, yeah, and that
he in that heat in thirty seconds or forty five seconds,
you could cook a whole pizza. Yeah. So I cook
pizzas from my whole family, and such a great experience
(09:10):
just getting to feed them and the special thing of
all kind of being around the fire. And we had
this table out there and it sort of looked like
the Secret Garden and as well in his backyard and
cooked all these pizzas, and then I started getting into
and other things. I thought, what else can I cook
in this fire? And there's a restaurant in la called
Patch that is in Laurel Canyon that makes this salmon
(09:34):
on a seed or plank, and so I thought, I
want to learn how to make that, And so I
ended up getting these ceedar planks and you're soaking them
in water and putting the salmon on top and seasoning
it and sticking it in the wood fire. It came
out so incredibly. This is something solitary. When I talked
to Michael Caine, he said that he'd loved to write
a book Yeah to Garden, and he liked to cook
(09:57):
because doing a movie, you are surrounded by hundreds of people.
You're surrounded whatever you're doing. You just describe being walked
to the bathroom or trying to find your trail. There's
always someone around. And then he chose three solitary things
that you can do on your own. Yeah, so it
sounds like maybe that cooking was something that you could
do without absolutely it makes you feel self sufficient, yeah,
(10:20):
and also giving giving back to the people that you
want to feed. Absolutely, it becomes my love language in
a way. I cook so much for the people around me.
I'll look into their eyes when they're eating it and
try to see if they love it as much as
they say they do, and try to figure out ways
(10:41):
of making it better. And it sounds the way you're
talking about it, like a performance. Yeah. Do you think
there are parallels between acting or performing or singing and
cooking looking into people's eyes and seeing how they are
responding to your performance. Absolutely? Grilled white peaches with amoretto
(11:11):
serve six six ripe white peaches, one vanilla pod, two tablespoons,
cast of sugar, one hundred and twenty milliliters amaretto, pre
heat of into one hundred and ninety degrees celsius. Heat
a grilled pan until very hot. Cut each peach in
half and remove the stone. Place the peach halves cut
(11:34):
side down on the hot pan and grill until slightly charred.
Remove from the pan and place face up on an
ovenproof dish. Slice the vanilla pod length ways and put
with the sugar into a mortar pound until the vanilla
pod is broken up and combined with the sugar scatter
(11:57):
the vanilla sugar over the peaches and pour over half
of the amaretto. Bake for ten minutes or until the
peaches are soft. Add the remaining amoretto, and serve hot
or cold with a spoonful of crumb fresh Thank you.
That sounds delicious. Austin amaretto an Italian liqueur peaches grilled.
(12:21):
Is that anything to do with any food you grew
up with in California? Yeah? So I was born in Anaheim,
right near Disneyland, and we used to have these We
used to have trees in the backyard that it wasn't
We didn't have peaches, but we had grapefruit trees, and
we had an orange tree in the backyard, and and
(12:42):
so like the smell of fresh fruit. I remember my
mom picking it and us having this fresh fruit and
the kitchen and these lemons and grapefruit, and so that's
that's sort of what that made me think of, did
your mom? Was she a good cook? She was a
grape cook, and especially as the years went on, I
remember eating a lot of fish sticks and you know,
(13:06):
the things that you'd get in the freezer aisle, and
little corn dogs that she would make. Because when I
was born. She wanted to be a stay at home mom,
and she was a dental hygenius at the time, and
then she she ended up starting daycare out of the house,
and so she would watch the children of the mothers
(13:28):
who taught at the school right right around the corner
that I eventually went to elementary school there, and so
we always had little children in the house, and so
she had to make these meals that were really quick
and easy. So as a kid, I just remember eating
those and tuna fish sandwiches and peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches and so nothing really gourmet at all. And then
(13:50):
as the years went on, she became vegetarian, and then
she became vegan, and then she got really into making
special things with portobello mushrooms and bell peppers stuffed with
goose coups or things like that. So she got a
little bit more into it later on, But when I
was growing up, it wasn't extremely healthy in the house.
It was it was kind of efficient meals. And she's
(14:13):
probably working so hard. She's working so much in it.
I mean there was twelve kids in the house sometimes
and yeah, all all different ages. And when I was
when I started going to elementary school. We lived around
the corner from that same school, and I would walk
home every lunch and she'd have a peanut butter and
jelly sandwich waiting for me, and uh, and we watched
(14:34):
this home decorating show called Surprise by Design and UH,
and then we would come up with things that we
were going to do around the house, and so we
we'd lay a brick path in the backyard or m
plant little flowers or that sort of thing. We get
inspired by this show, and I just remember how excited
I was to walk home every day and just eat
the sandwich that she made for me, And how special
(14:57):
that was. A beautiful memory of your mother something for
you and going home for lunch. Yeah, that's that's Would
you have dinner as well? Would you all sit down
to dinner? What was that? Well? My parents divorced on
our seven and a lot of my memories go back
to that time because it was when sort of the
stability of family split up and my dad moved into
(15:21):
this this person that he worked with, he moved into
their garage and they had sort of a converted garage
and we had a tiny little miniature fridge and that was.
That was where we kept all our groceries. And we
had air mattresses that we slept on and we'd put
them down at night, and then we put them up
and we'd put down a table during the day. And
so it was this one room that was our entire house,
(15:44):
and it was just this old garage and there was
a treadmill in the corner that was their old treadmill,
and we would we would make food there, and so
we shared their kitchen, but other than that we had
sort of just this one room. And I started cooking
as a kid because with my dad had he had work,
(16:05):
and so he would say, hey, I'll pay you two
dollars if he'd cooked dinner tonight, and so it was
a way that I could stock up money as a kid,
was cooking dinner. And there was like three staple things maybe,
and one of the main ones that I remember is burritos.
We'd make Dennison's Chili beans burritos, which this can of
beans with some sour cream and cheese, and I haven't
(16:26):
eaten one of those in years, but we used to
eat that every night. And then a special occasion would
be getting a five dollars pizza from down the road
or something like that. So those were that was like
the idea of a fancy meal was ordering a pizza
out when I was a kid, which I think then
years later coming to a place like like your restaurant here,
(16:48):
going a French laundry for the first time or something
like that, was was so felt. I felt so out
of my element in a way when I first started
going in really nice restaurants, because you know, five dollars
sounded like a lot for a meal when I was
a kid. Would you do the shopping or would he
order out? What we would always we'd usually get a
Costco Yeah I was a kid, Yeah, and uh yeah,
(17:09):
we'd get food and bulk and then and make meals
out of that um. And then at a certain point,
I think when I moved I moved out when I
was seventeen, and I started wanting to learn how to
make food and wanting to know how flavors fit together.
And I started making some money, and so I started
(17:30):
trying restaurants in La or Um, and then I worked
in New York for the first time, and that was
really eye opening because you know, just getting to try
great little Italian restaurants. And I remember going to Roberta's
for the first time, which is this restaurant in Brooklyn
that a friend of mine who owned all these restaurants
in la he said, this is the restaurant that made
me want to open a restaurant. And uh so going
(17:52):
to Robertas and and and trying there, and it feels
a lot like here, where you feel like you're home,
you know you, And I realized I have a lot
of instability in my life. There hasn't been a lot
of continuity in many areas of my life since I
was young, just because I travel a lot, and even
(18:16):
the nature of doing a film or a TV show,
you you sort of make a family of the entire
crew and then it splits up. And through therapy, I
sort of realized that that was that I was almost
like reliving my childhood of my parents getting divorced, for
you know, many years of making a family and then
(18:36):
it splits up, and you make a family and it
splits up, and so I'd seek out ways of having
stability and consistency, and most of that for me while
on location, whether I was in Vancouver or New Zealand
or Australia, or here in London or wherever I was,
I would I would find restaurants that became my second home,
(18:57):
and I'd get to the point where I'd go there
every day, and the staff then knew me and I
knew them, and suddenly it felt like there was there
was this thing that was separate from my work, that
felt like home. Even if I've woken up with anxiety,
or if i feel sad or i feel overwhelmed, I
go to a restaurant and I think what you've created
(19:18):
here is so beautiful because I feel it here as well.
I'll come here with a book and you know, and
I get to see you, and I get to read,
and I know the people who work here, and and
that goes even deeper because you and I have a
family relationship. Beyond that, I think I always say that
in an irregular world, we do need regular things. Yeah,
(19:39):
I think even if we have you know your life,
you know the way you describe it as very moving
and very honest and a revelation of who you are.
But I think that even if you have a consistency
and you have those foundations and you have that life,
it's still we seek out. You know, you talk to
(20:01):
people about the Sunday lunch, people going home for Sunday
lunch or Friday night supper or Christmas. The Christmas lunch
has to be the same every year. And so food
does mean that, doesn't It gives you a sense of stability.
And I always wanted a restaurant to feel like home,
you know that as a place. I'm always amazed that
(20:22):
people will come to a restaurant even if they've had
a really bad day, you know, or something bad has happened.
Sometimes we need it all those days the most. Yeah,
that you come morning, I could hardly leave the house.
I just felt anxious for some reason. Yeah, and then
I got myself. I just said, you know, I just
got to get to the cafe. And once you get there,
then suddenly there's life around you and it sort of
(20:43):
buzzes and you feel humanity wash over you, and things
that are happening outside of your own experience that. And
then and then you eat delicious food and that really helps.
(21:04):
Did you eat pizzas in Italy when you went on
that trip you took a road trip, Yeah, I had
a lot of pizza there. Why did you start? We
we took this one of the best trips I've ever
taken was this. I spent a month just road tripping
through Italy. What year was that? That was probably four
years ago or something before ours. And we started in Milan,
(21:29):
drove from Milan to the coast and went to Portofino first,
and I'd only ever spent maybe a week in Italy
before this, and sound was incredible. And then drove down
and went to chinquit Terre and hiked between the little
villages and went through the venues. There had pesto. Oh,
my gosh, the best pesto pasta besides yours. Yeah, they
(21:54):
can make a better one than mine. I'm not competitive. Incredible,
And then drove down to Skaney, drove to Florence and
did that for a couple of days, and drove out
to this little bed and breakfast in Tuscany. It was
run by this this beautiful Italian woman and her husband,
and they had two daughters, and one of the daughters
(22:15):
would play piano in the afternoon and you'd hear it
reverberating through the vineyard and so it's just us in
this family. And she'd bring for cotcha up and you'd
eat it around the pool in the afternoon and then
h and then at night her husband would would One
night he caught a wild boar and so then she
made this wild boar and it was just absolutely divine.
(22:37):
And one of their daughters was dating a young man
who was eighteen years old that he was half Israeli
and half Italian. And he told me, he said, you know,
I am a pilot. And I said, oh, you're a pilot.
That's that's fantastic. And he said and he said, you
know I can fly you if you wanted me to hun.
(22:58):
He said, wow, yeah, I mean that would be cool.
But I thought, I'm not trusting our lives in this
eighteen year old kids hands, you know. And then the
next night his mom came to dinner. She was in
the Israeli Air Force, and she said, you know, he's
actually a very good pilot. I said, you know what,
you only live once. I mean, where where can we go?
And he said, you know, I can fly you to
(23:19):
Elba And I thought, well, last where Napoleon was exiled,
and you could go to that little island and that
would be really cool. And I said, you know what,
let's do it. I'll pay for gays, I'll pay for
the plane whatever we need, and so we end up
we end up getting in the car and he couldn't
drive a car, but he could fly a plane. And
(23:39):
so I drive us all it's it's me and my
girlfriend at the time, and him and his girlfriend, and
we drive up to Florence and we end up getting
to the little like separate private area of the airport
and we go through security and and then he ends
up going to a little garage and by hand pulling
(23:59):
out a little four seat or cessna, see you pictured,
the skinny little Italian. And yet, oh my gosh, he
pulls this thing out by hand. I'm thinking, oh my god,
what are we doing here? It felt like riding in
a go cart or something. And we get into the
plane and go through all the pre flight checks and
then we take off and he and then I can't
(24:20):
hear him at all. It's static in the headphones, and
I see panic over his face. And we're in the
air now and we're flying. I'm thinking, he's the only
person that can land this plane and his panic on
his face and I can't hear him, and it's static.
And then I realized that he just couldn't figure out
how to switch a certain switch, and so we couldn't
hear each other. And once he figured that out, then
peace came upon the airplane. And then he told me
(24:43):
it's a very dangerous landing place in Elba because you
have to fly in this zig zag shape. And so
let's then, I'm going to God, we're trusted this eighteen
and we end up zig zagging through the mountains of
Elba and landing and we got there safely, thankfully, and
then clearly. And then we ate pasta with him and
his girlfriend that day for lunch, and they flew back
(25:07):
and we stayed and rode around on vespers and ate
pasta all these different beaches on Elba, and went to
the vineyards that Napoleon used to go to. And then
he came back three days later and picked us up
on the plane and we flew back to Florence, and
that was it was magic. So the adventure of travel, yeah,
the adventure of eating. It's like over dinner, you create
(25:27):
these adventures. You know, the culture of a country is
so taken through its food. And very often, as as
you know, we meet somebody who comes back from a
country and we don't ask what museum they went to
or you know what gallery they saw, what church, what
we do. But you know this also tells you so
much by them saying, as you've just described the food
(25:48):
that they ate, the culture of the dinners, or the
shooting a boar or catching a fish, or it's as
exciting as getting on a plane. Crazily, I might say,
I'm always somebody you don't know. You know, it's all
about curiosity and exploring and opening ourselves up. And so
if we think about you know, we've talked about food
(26:11):
as memory, the food that you've found that sets and
traveling and working, and the food that connects us all.
I suppose it connects our memories, it connects each other.
Is a sense of excitement, but it's also sets of comfort.
What would be the food you would probably go to
for comfort. I've been away from home for a long time,
(26:34):
and as well as the fact that my mother is
no longer here. She passed away when I was twenty three,
and I almost didn't hadn't put it into conscious thought.
But I often will after a big week or if
I'm feeling really overwhelmed, I'll make a peanut butter and
jelly sandwich, and that becomes my thing. I made one
(26:56):
the other day and it's just that that comforting sensation.
Um yeah, so that that's one of my go to
comfort foods for sure. I'll see you for cards on
Sunday night, my day's partner. Yeah, thank you, thank you.
(27:18):
To visit the online shop of The River Cafe, go
to shop The River Cafe dot co dot uk. River
Cafe Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and Adami Studios.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio
and Adami's Studios. Austin Butler is a winner. He beats
me at carts, knows how to cook a wild salmon
on the grill, and when we had at dinner every
Sunday night for a year when he was filming in London,
he always arrived with a new book, he was reading,
a piece of pottery he just made, or a rare
(00:22):
bottle of tequila. We first recorded this podcast in May
twenty twenty one, but we wanted to play it for
you again in case you hadn't heard it. It is
one of my definite favorites, just like Austin. If you
like listening to Ruthie's Table four, would you please make
sure to rate and review the podcast on the iHeartRadio app,
(00:45):
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.
My favorite line in this conversation is when Austin Butler
refers to his and my relationship as family. Austin arrived
(01:08):
here from filming bas Lermann's movie Elvis, playing Elvis himself.
London was just out of COVID lockdown and needing an
immediate tradition we decided to have dinner at my home
every Sunday night with the same small group of friends.
Austin would turn up early and cook with me, and
(01:31):
this is what we did every Sunday for thirty nine weeks.
Austin is a brilliant actor, a beautiful singer, a poet,
and a true friend. And Austin is my family. So Austin,
(01:51):
you and I are here in the River Cafe to
talk about food, our memories, travel and a lot more.
But maybe we should just start with Australia. I was
in Australia for a year and a half filming. I
was making the ovis with Basil Lerman. Did you have
food on set? Did you sit down to meals? Yeah? Well,
(02:13):
we did this thing. It's I'm realizing it's a very
European sort of thing where you have these rolling lunches,
which basically means you don't have a lunch break. You
eat while you're filming. And I actually kind of like
it because it keeps momentum of filming. And so while
(02:39):
we were filming a lot of times it was just
I was eating for It was like gasoline, you know,
I was eating for energy. I just making the most
thin black hand. And then when we wrapped, Bas and
(03:00):
I were at his house and there was a small
group of us, and it was the night that we
wrapped it was it was the first time that he
and I both sort of were able to go, ah,
we did it. You know, we've been working on this
for I've been a time for about two and a
half years at that point, maybe three years. He'd been
doing this for long or five or eight years or something.
(03:22):
And we just we danced until the sun came up.
We just yeah, well we had a little group there,
but we just put on vinyl records and we just danced,
and we ate oysters and we just we just lived life.
It was like this feeling of letting our hair down.
And and then the sun started to come up and
and Bass looked out and he lived across the street
(03:45):
from the sea, and he said, should we go swim
in the ocean right now? And this is the night
that we wrapped the film, and so we both we
were like, yeah, let's do it. So we ran across
the street and we jumped in the ocean and it's
like five morning now, and we swam in the ocean
and said, the sun's rising, and I was gonna not
(04:05):
go that night as well, and I said, I said, Baths,
I can't believe I was gonna go to sleep tonight.
And he started singing nessa dorma and he goes, no
sleep tonight, No sleep tonight. He starts singing this opera
and I hadn't really heard that song, and he was
telling me the story of the opera and then he said,
I'll play it for you when we get back to
the shore. And he went back to the shore and
I kind of took a second from myself in the
(04:27):
ocean where it's just me. I just watched the sunrise,
and I sort of processed all that we had done.
And you don't know the final outcome of a film.
You hope that you did everything you possibly could and
you gave every bit of your soul, but you don't
know how it's going to be received. But at that moment,
I just kind of processed all that we had, the
work that we had done, and the joy and the
(04:49):
love that we'd put into it. And I sort of
had that moment. And then as I sort of slowly
walked back to shore, I look at Baths and he's
holding a speaker above his head like John Cusack and
say anything. And he's playing nessa Daughter, the Pavarati version,
and it's blaring at like five to thirty in the
morning now on the beaches of the Gold Coast. It
was so magical and cinematic. And then we made breakfast.
(05:14):
What was that We We looked in the refrigerator and thought, okay,
what can we make? Because he and I both had
been working so hard, and there's this thing about filming
where you're there's so many responsibilities that other people end
up almost treating you like you're a child. In many areas,
they walk you to the bathroom, you know, if you
if you're if I said I'm want to go to
(05:34):
the trailer, they walk me there and to make sure
I don't get lost. They treat you like you can't
do anything, and they bring you your food, and so
you're very spoiled in many ways. But there's something so
relieving about that moment when you're finally able to do
something for yourself. And uh and so he and I
that was our moment. We opened the refrigerator and we
saw that okay, we got eggs, we got asparagus, we
(05:56):
got some spinach there, we got some tomatoes, we got
some farmers cheese. What can we do? And so we
kind of just made this breakfast. And there's these this
loaf of bread and so we cut off bits of
this bread and we toasted it and just made this
delicious meal. And that's one of the most glorious memories
of my life. Was like after we finished this thing
that was so terrifying and daunting, and that we gave
(06:17):
it everything we could and then and then we just
sat there and as the morning sun sort of laid
down on us and ate that breakfast, and it was
so glorious. It's it's about memories, isn't it. It's about
the time. And what about tarantine? Now he was he
interested in food? Yeah, yeah. Remember one night we were
we were doing night shoots and it was about three
(06:39):
in the morning. He had this amazing crepe maker come
and make crepes and we were eating these amazing crepes
and he said, he said, Austin, you know, my thing
is I want to give everybody such a good experience
on this job that their next job sucks. And it
(07:01):
was such a wonderful thing. So every every night there
would be some new food thing that he would he
would organize, so you just had this thing to look
forward to. And and the other thing that he did
was after every hundred rolls of film, which, believe it
or not, this was the first time I had shot
anything on film, because everything since I grew up was
(07:22):
on digital essentially with every person and I've worked with,
and so that was really special, just hearing the sound
of the film going through the camera when you're sitting
in the car. But every hundred rolls of film, you'd
throw a party and it would have a theme. So
he'd have you know, Grappo would come out and so
everybody and they'd be singing these songs, and or Margaritis
(07:43):
would come out and he'd have a mariachi band or
so there every hundred rolls, whether it'd be ten in
the morning or you know, three in the morning, it
was something to look forward to. I think that does
actually give people a kind of commitment to the person
you're working for. You know that they're taking care of you, know,
they're thinking about you there. Yeah, recognizing that you you're
working hard and that you want to give them something back.
(08:07):
It's a lot, doesn't it. Yeah, when you lived by yourself.
You once told me that you chose a house in
Los Angeles because it had a pizza oven. Oh that
was great. Yeah, there's this beautiful house that had belonged
to Gary Oldman before and he had built a pizza oven.
(08:28):
And I became obsessed with learning how to make the
perfect fire and this pizza oven, the specific type of
wood and exactly how to lay it. And I got
one of those laser temperature gauges so I could make
it a thousand degrees and learned how to make the
pizza sauce and the dough and everything, and and it
(08:48):
was actually Christmas that I made the most pieces, I think,
and the first couple kind of came out rough and
then and then started to get really into the zone
of it. And it was amazing to me how you
have asked you could cook a pizza, yeah, and that
he in that heat in thirty seconds or forty five seconds,
you could cook a whole pizza. Yeah. So I cook
pizzas from my whole family, and such a great experience
(09:10):
just getting to feed them and the special thing of
all kind of being around the fire. And we had
this table out there and it sort of looked like
the Secret Garden and as well in his backyard and
cooked all these pizzas, and then I started getting into
and other things. I thought, what else can I cook
in this fire? And there's a restaurant in la called
Patch that is in Laurel Canyon that makes this salmon
(09:34):
on a seed or plank, and so I thought, I
want to learn how to make that, And so I
ended up getting these ceedar planks and you're soaking them
in water and putting the salmon on top and seasoning
it and sticking it in the wood fire. It came
out so incredibly. This is something solitary. When I talked
to Michael Caine, he said that he'd loved to write
a book Yeah to Garden, and he liked to cook
(09:57):
because doing a movie, you are surrounded by hundreds of people.
You're surrounded whatever you're doing. You just describe being walked
to the bathroom or trying to find your trail. There's
always someone around. And then he chose three solitary things
that you can do on your own. Yeah, so it
sounds like maybe that cooking was something that you could
do without absolutely it makes you feel self sufficient, yeah,
(10:20):
and also giving giving back to the people that you
want to feed. Absolutely, it becomes my love language in
a way. I cook so much for the people around me.
I'll look into their eyes when they're eating it and
try to see if they love it as much as
they say they do, and try to figure out ways
(10:41):
of making it better. And it sounds the way you're
talking about it, like a performance. Yeah. Do you think
there are parallels between acting or performing or singing and
cooking looking into people's eyes and seeing how they are
responding to your performance. Absolutely? Grilled white peaches with amoretto
(11:11):
serve six six ripe white peaches, one vanilla pod, two tablespoons,
cast of sugar, one hundred and twenty milliliters amaretto, pre
heat of into one hundred and ninety degrees celsius. Heat
a grilled pan until very hot. Cut each peach in
half and remove the stone. Place the peach halves cut
(11:34):
side down on the hot pan and grill until slightly charred.
Remove from the pan and place face up on an
ovenproof dish. Slice the vanilla pod length ways and put
with the sugar into a mortar pound until the vanilla
pod is broken up and combined with the sugar scatter
(11:57):
the vanilla sugar over the peaches and pour over half
of the amaretto. Bake for ten minutes or until the
peaches are soft. Add the remaining amoretto, and serve hot
or cold with a spoonful of crumb fresh Thank you.
That sounds delicious. Austin amaretto an Italian liqueur peaches grilled.
(12:21):
Is that anything to do with any food you grew
up with in California? Yeah? So I was born in Anaheim,
right near Disneyland, and we used to have these We
used to have trees in the backyard that it wasn't
We didn't have peaches, but we had grapefruit trees, and
we had an orange tree in the backyard, and and
(12:42):
so like the smell of fresh fruit. I remember my
mom picking it and us having this fresh fruit and
the kitchen and these lemons and grapefruit, and so that's
that's sort of what that made me think of, did
your mom? Was she a good cook? She was a
grape cook, and especially as the years went on, I
remember eating a lot of fish sticks and you know,
(13:06):
the things that you'd get in the freezer aisle, and
little corn dogs that she would make. Because when I
was born. She wanted to be a stay at home mom,
and she was a dental hygenius at the time, and
then she she ended up starting daycare out of the house,
and so she would watch the children of the mothers
(13:28):
who taught at the school right right around the corner
that I eventually went to elementary school there, and so
we always had little children in the house, and so
she had to make these meals that were really quick
and easy. So as a kid, I just remember eating
those and tuna fish sandwiches and peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches and so nothing really gourmet at all. And then
(13:50):
as the years went on, she became vegetarian, and then
she became vegan, and then she got really into making
special things with portobello mushrooms and bell peppers stuffed with
goose coups or things like that. So she got a
little bit more into it later on, But when I
was growing up, it wasn't extremely healthy in the house.
It was it was kind of efficient meals. And she's
(14:13):
probably working so hard. She's working so much in it.
I mean there was twelve kids in the house sometimes
and yeah, all all different ages. And when I was
when I started going to elementary school. We lived around
the corner from that same school, and I would walk
home every lunch and she'd have a peanut butter and
jelly sandwich waiting for me, and uh, and we watched
(14:34):
this home decorating show called Surprise by Design and UH,
and then we would come up with things that we
were going to do around the house, and so we
we'd lay a brick path in the backyard or m
plant little flowers or that sort of thing. We get
inspired by this show, and I just remember how excited
I was to walk home every day and just eat
the sandwich that she made for me, And how special
(14:57):
that was. A beautiful memory of your mother something for
you and going home for lunch. Yeah, that's that's Would
you have dinner as well? Would you all sit down
to dinner? What was that? Well? My parents divorced on
our seven and a lot of my memories go back
to that time because it was when sort of the
stability of family split up and my dad moved into
(15:21):
this this person that he worked with, he moved into
their garage and they had sort of a converted garage
and we had a tiny little miniature fridge and that was.
That was where we kept all our groceries. And we
had air mattresses that we slept on and we'd put
them down at night, and then we put them up
and we'd put down a table during the day. And
so it was this one room that was our entire house,
(15:44):
and it was just this old garage and there was
a treadmill in the corner that was their old treadmill,
and we would we would make food there, and so
we shared their kitchen, but other than that we had
sort of just this one room. And I started cooking
as a kid because with my dad had he had work,
(16:05):
and so he would say, hey, I'll pay you two
dollars if he'd cooked dinner tonight, and so it was
a way that I could stock up money as a kid,
was cooking dinner. And there was like three staple things maybe,
and one of the main ones that I remember is burritos.
We'd make Dennison's Chili beans burritos, which this can of
beans with some sour cream and cheese, and I haven't
(16:26):
eaten one of those in years, but we used to
eat that every night. And then a special occasion would
be getting a five dollars pizza from down the road
or something like that. So those were that was like
the idea of a fancy meal was ordering a pizza
out when I was a kid, which I think then
years later coming to a place like like your restaurant here,
(16:48):
going a French laundry for the first time or something
like that, was was so felt. I felt so out
of my element in a way when I first started
going in really nice restaurants, because you know, five dollars
sounded like a lot for a meal when I was
a kid. Would you do the shopping or would he
order out? What we would always we'd usually get a
Costco Yeah I was a kid, Yeah, and uh yeah,
(17:09):
we'd get food and bulk and then and make meals
out of that um. And then at a certain point,
I think when I moved I moved out when I
was seventeen, and I started wanting to learn how to
make food and wanting to know how flavors fit together.
And I started making some money, and so I started
(17:30):
trying restaurants in La or Um, and then I worked
in New York for the first time, and that was
really eye opening because you know, just getting to try
great little Italian restaurants. And I remember going to Roberta's
for the first time, which is this restaurant in Brooklyn
that a friend of mine who owned all these restaurants
in la he said, this is the restaurant that made
me want to open a restaurant. And uh so going
(17:52):
to Robertas and and and trying there, and it feels
a lot like here, where you feel like you're home,
you know you, And I realized I have a lot
of instability in my life. There hasn't been a lot
of continuity in many areas of my life since I
was young, just because I travel a lot, and even
(18:16):
the nature of doing a film or a TV show,
you you sort of make a family of the entire
crew and then it splits up. And through therapy, I
sort of realized that that was that I was almost
like reliving my childhood of my parents getting divorced, for
you know, many years of making a family and then
(18:36):
it splits up, and you make a family and it
splits up, and so I'd seek out ways of having
stability and consistency, and most of that for me while
on location, whether I was in Vancouver or New Zealand
or Australia, or here in London or wherever I was,
I would I would find restaurants that became my second home,
(18:57):
and I'd get to the point where I'd go there
every day, and the staff then knew me and I
knew them, and suddenly it felt like there was there
was this thing that was separate from my work, that
felt like home. Even if I've woken up with anxiety,
or if i feel sad or i feel overwhelmed, I
go to a restaurant and I think what you've created
(19:18):
here is so beautiful because I feel it here as well.
I'll come here with a book and you know, and
I get to see you, and I get to read,
and I know the people who work here, and and
that goes even deeper because you and I have a
family relationship. Beyond that, I think I always say that
in an irregular world, we do need regular things. Yeah,
(19:39):
I think even if we have you know your life,
you know the way you describe it as very moving
and very honest and a revelation of who you are.
But I think that even if you have a consistency
and you have those foundations and you have that life,
it's still we seek out. You know, you talk to
(20:01):
people about the Sunday lunch, people going home for Sunday
lunch or Friday night supper or Christmas. The Christmas lunch
has to be the same every year. And so food
does mean that, doesn't It gives you a sense of stability.
And I always wanted a restaurant to feel like home,
you know that as a place. I'm always amazed that
(20:22):
people will come to a restaurant even if they've had
a really bad day, you know, or something bad has happened.
Sometimes we need it all those days the most. Yeah,
that you come morning, I could hardly leave the house.
I just felt anxious for some reason. Yeah, and then
I got myself. I just said, you know, I just
got to get to the cafe. And once you get there,
then suddenly there's life around you and it sort of
(20:43):
buzzes and you feel humanity wash over you, and things
that are happening outside of your own experience that. And
then and then you eat delicious food and that really helps.
(21:04):
Did you eat pizzas in Italy when you went on
that trip you took a road trip, Yeah, I had
a lot of pizza there. Why did you start? We
we took this one of the best trips I've ever
taken was this. I spent a month just road tripping
through Italy. What year was that? That was probably four
years ago or something before ours. And we started in Milan,
(21:29):
drove from Milan to the coast and went to Portofino first,
and I'd only ever spent maybe a week in Italy
before this, and sound was incredible. And then drove down
and went to chinquit Terre and hiked between the little
villages and went through the venues. There had pesto. Oh,
my gosh, the best pesto pasta besides yours. Yeah, they
(21:54):
can make a better one than mine. I'm not competitive. Incredible,
And then drove down to Skaney, drove to Florence and
did that for a couple of days, and drove out
to this little bed and breakfast in Tuscany. It was
run by this this beautiful Italian woman and her husband,
and they had two daughters, and one of the daughters
(22:15):
would play piano in the afternoon and you'd hear it
reverberating through the vineyard and so it's just us in
this family. And she'd bring for cotcha up and you'd
eat it around the pool in the afternoon and then
h and then at night her husband would would One
night he caught a wild boar and so then she
made this wild boar and it was just absolutely divine.
(22:37):
And one of their daughters was dating a young man
who was eighteen years old that he was half Israeli
and half Italian. And he told me, he said, you know,
I am a pilot. And I said, oh, you're a pilot.
That's that's fantastic. And he said and he said, you
know I can fly you if you wanted me to hun.
(22:58):
He said, wow, yeah, I mean that would be cool.
But I thought, I'm not trusting our lives in this
eighteen year old kids hands, you know. And then the
next night his mom came to dinner. She was in
the Israeli Air Force, and she said, you know, he's
actually a very good pilot. I said, you know what,
you only live once. I mean, where where can we go?
And he said, you know, I can fly you to
(23:19):
Elba And I thought, well, last where Napoleon was exiled,
and you could go to that little island and that
would be really cool. And I said, you know what,
let's do it. I'll pay for gays, I'll pay for
the plane whatever we need, and so we end up
we end up getting in the car and he couldn't
drive a car, but he could fly a plane. And
(23:39):
so I drive us all it's it's me and my
girlfriend at the time, and him and his girlfriend, and
we drive up to Florence and we end up getting
to the little like separate private area of the airport
and we go through security and and then he ends
up going to a little garage and by hand pulling
(23:59):
out a little four seat or cessna, see you pictured,
the skinny little Italian. And yet, oh my gosh, he
pulls this thing out by hand. I'm thinking, oh my god,
what are we doing here? It felt like riding in
a go cart or something. And we get into the
plane and go through all the pre flight checks and
then we take off and he and then I can't
(24:20):
hear him at all. It's static in the headphones, and
I see panic over his face. And we're in the
air now and we're flying. I'm thinking, he's the only
person that can land this plane and his panic on
his face and I can't hear him, and it's static.
And then I realized that he just couldn't figure out
how to switch a certain switch, and so we couldn't
hear each other. And once he figured that out, then
peace came upon the airplane. And then he told me
(24:43):
it's a very dangerous landing place in Elba because you
have to fly in this zig zag shape. And so
let's then, I'm going to God, we're trusted this eighteen
and we end up zig zagging through the mountains of
Elba and landing and we got there safely, thankfully, and
then clearly. And then we ate pasta with him and
his girlfriend that day for lunch, and they flew back
(25:07):
and we stayed and rode around on vespers and ate
pasta all these different beaches on Elba, and went to
the vineyards that Napoleon used to go to. And then
he came back three days later and picked us up
on the plane and we flew back to Florence, and
that was it was magic. So the adventure of travel, yeah,
the adventure of eating. It's like over dinner, you create
(25:27):
these adventures. You know, the culture of a country is
so taken through its food. And very often, as as
you know, we meet somebody who comes back from a
country and we don't ask what museum they went to
or you know what gallery they saw, what church, what
we do. But you know this also tells you so
much by them saying, as you've just described the food
(25:48):
that they ate, the culture of the dinners, or the
shooting a boar or catching a fish, or it's as
exciting as getting on a plane. Crazily, I might say,
I'm always somebody you don't know. You know, it's all
about curiosity and exploring and opening ourselves up. And so
if we think about you know, we've talked about food
(26:11):
as memory, the food that you've found that sets and
traveling and working, and the food that connects us all.
I suppose it connects our memories, it connects each other.
Is a sense of excitement, but it's also sets of comfort.
What would be the food you would probably go to
for comfort. I've been away from home for a long time,
(26:34):
and as well as the fact that my mother is
no longer here. She passed away when I was twenty three,
and I almost didn't hadn't put it into conscious thought.
But I often will after a big week or if
I'm feeling really overwhelmed, I'll make a peanut butter and
jelly sandwich, and that becomes my thing. I made one
(26:56):
the other day and it's just that that comforting sensation.
Um yeah, so that that's one of my go to
comfort foods for sure. I'll see you for cards on
Sunday night, my day's partner. Yeah, thank you, thank you.
(27:18):
To visit the online shop of The River Cafe, go
to shop The River Cafe dot co dot uk. River
Cafe Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and Adami Studios.
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Host
Ruth Rogers
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