April 19, 2022 • 21 mins
Say the name Bob Iger, former CEO of Disney and Chairman of the Board, and everyone will think of the man that acquired Pixar, Lucas Films, and Marvel. I think of my good friend who cares passionately about what he feeds his children, his grandchildren and the people that work with him.
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, Glenn Close, 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/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/therivercafelondon/
Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to River Cafe Table for a production of I
Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. Remember turning to once
and you said to me, well, Ruthie, how many people
do you employ? And I very proudly said, I employ
a hundred and ten people. Bob, how many do you employ? It?
(00:21):
He said, how many? That's a lot. Say the name
Bob Iger to me, and I think of my good
friend who cares passionately about what he cooks, the vegetable
garden outside his kitchen, and what he feeds his children,
grandchildren and the people who work with him. Say the
(00:44):
name Bob Iger, the former CEO and chairman of the
board of Disney, and everyone will think of the man
who acquired Pixar, Lucas Films, and Marvel, giving the world
some of our most loved movies. There is much more
Bob By has done for Disney and for us, and
this is what we're going to talk about today. That
(01:09):
was very involved in the food program at our parks,
and not only have we hired a lot of great chefs,
but we also have quite a wine program. We we
believe we're the largest buyer in the largest cellar of
wine in the world, interestingly enough, which you wouldn't expect
to hear about Disney. This recipe is for pasta al limone,
(01:33):
two hundred and fifty grams of spaghetti, the juice of
three to four lemons, hundred and fifty millileaters of olive oil,
hundred and fifty grams of parmesan cheese, freshly grated, two
handfuls of fresh basil leaves picked and chopped, and finally
grated lemon zest. Cook the spaghetti, then drained thoroughly and
(01:55):
returned to the saucepan. Meanwhile, whisk the lemon juice with
the olive oil, then stir in the parmesan. It will
melt into the mixture, making it thick and creamy. Season
and add more or less lemon juice to taste. Add
the sauce to the spaghetti, and shake the pans so
that each strand of the pasta is coated with the cheese.
(02:18):
Stir in the chopped basil and a generous amount of
lemon zest. And there you have it, pasta ald just here.
You read it, taste of summer, doesn't it. You've just
woken up haven juice early there. We're in different times
since have you had breakfast. I did have breakfast. Okay,
(02:42):
tell me about your breakfast. I get up at four
fifteen in the morning, so by six I'm starved and
I'm I'm a creature of habit when it comes to breakfast.
I always have Greek yogurt and a nice portion of
really good granola and a cup of coffee every day
of the week, every week of the month, and every
month of the year. I do think you have a
(03:03):
between that sort of lack of decision. You know, you
wake up and let you know that's what you're going
to have. Is quite a way comforting, isn't it that
you just know your day is beginning in the same way.
But I think of you was such an inventions eater
and a curious eater. Did you going back to the beginning,
begin at the beginning, What was it like growing up
in your house? Did your parents cook? Well? Interestingly enough,
(03:25):
I I live with my my maternal grandmother and my parents.
My maternal grandmother lived with us, and she was from
the Old Country. Which country she was from Poland? But
she was a nice Jewish grandmother. So her go to
meals that are the most memorable were pot roast and
(03:46):
stuffed cabbage were the two big ones, and um, and
she liked to make mots of ball soup as well.
But she also made a mean apple pie. Interesting, my mother,
who picked up some of her cooking abilities, was not
very adventuresome. And you know, in the nineteen fifties in
the United States, what was available was actually quite limited.
(04:09):
Like we didn't have access to great fresh produce, at
least not in New York and supermarkets even the Big
Change didn't have great produce sections. I don't think you'd
ever get fresh basil, for instance, And so a lot
of what we ate were canned foods, caned peas and
carrots and canned green beans and like. Um. But adventurous
(04:31):
cooking was not my mother's middle name. She she made
some good desserts, but that was about it. Do you
think that as an immigrant you bring the food of
your country, because a lot of people have spoken to
whether is David a j talking about growing up as
a Ghanaian in London bringing that culture to the society
that you've moved in, which might be alien, might be frightening,
(04:52):
might be anything that the food that you have is
part of what you bring with you as an immigrant. Absolutely.
I think you know you bring you know, a would
think Eastern European accent and a number of recipes. Yeah.
So did she do the cooking in your house? Was
she the you shared the cooking with my mother? Yes,
but but cooked often? And would you all sit down
(05:13):
to a meal together? Was that a big deal? We did.
She died when I was sixteen, but she lived with
me up until then and she was always part of
our family meals. Yes. What about your father? Did he cook? No?
My father wasn't much of a coocola. I remember him
making scrambled eggs from me on occasion in the morning.
And he liked to make a good Jewish deli sandwich,
(05:35):
you know, he'd buy meat from the local deli and
concoct great sandwiches. But beyond that, no, um. He loved
a good hot dog Nathan's hot Dogs. Nathan's was the
famous Coney Island hot dog emporium, and he loved that.
But he wasn't much of a cook. He was a
trumpet player, not a cook. But he performed. Yes, he
(05:57):
played occasionally in the house. He had sort of lost
his lip by the time I was born. He had
played some professional trumpet in his day, but he took
me to jazz concerts. I grew up listening to jazz
and some great jazz players. I saw Louis Armstrong play,
I saw Duke Ellington, for instance, and that was a
great influence on my life. And music is a is
(06:19):
a true love of my life thanks to him, and
his trumpet still sits in my office at home. Yeah,
so you grew up with this, which I think a
lot of American, as you say Americans in the fifties.
So did you find food yourself when you went to
college and when you went to Interestingly enough, it started
with a cookbook. My father collected a lot of books
(06:41):
and for some reason we had a Life magazine book
Food and included the great restaurants of the world in
it at the time and some recipes. And I decided
to impress a college girlfriend by cooking some Italian food
for are and I actually loved it. And then when
(07:03):
I went into New York to begin work after college,
I started cooking for myself quite avidly, and I ended
up taking a cooking class, a number of lessons with
a French woman of I think Egyptian descent, and it
was a Mediterranean cooking class, and I fell in love
with cooking, and then I ended up in um in
(07:26):
jobs working for ABC Sports that took me around the world,
and that's when I first got truly introduced to the
world's food. Yeah, that exposure again, going to different cultures
and say, but back to the girlfriend. I want to
go back to that girl? Did cooking an Italian meal
for her? That work? By the way, I think it
(07:47):
was rather basic, do you remember? Yes? It was. It
was a pasta with vegetables, very basic. But I made
my own I guess it was a light tomato sauce.
I remember making my own us for the first time
in impressing myself. But I think I kind of used
cooking is as a means of the of presenting myself
(08:08):
as an attractive date two folks. I remember actually when
I met Willow, and I remember telling her that I cooked.
She said, you cook, and her eyes lit up Suddenly.
I was far more attractive once she discovered that exactly.
And then when you started traveling, what was that like?
Where would you travel to when you were working? It's
quite an amazing experience because I started working for ABC
(08:30):
Sports when I was twenty four years old, and I
worked there for thirteen years, and I worked on a
program called Wide World of Sports, which covered sporting events
all over the world in rather exotic places as well,
including you know, visiting Beijing in the late seventies, in
South Africa, and certainly all over Europe, but also Central
(08:53):
and Eastern Europe and then the then Soviet Bloc countries
as well and Latin America. So it was almost no
place that I didn't visit. It was quite it was
quite amazing. And we lived well when we traveled, and
that's we ate well, and so I you know, I
remember going to Tayvon in Paris, which is going to
(09:14):
by the way, but it was the thing to do.
And uh, I remember the hotel to Perry in Monte
Carlo and trying to remember where I would be. Oh,
I remember there was a grill at the Connaught. Yeah,
I remember having a steak there, the grill at the
hotel Canna And did you keep cooking? I cooked really
(09:36):
until I became CEO of Disney, which was in two
thousand and five, and I, in time management became a
little bit more challenger, much to my wife's chagrin. But
it's one of the things that I look forward to doing,
having the time to cook more. And I love shopping
for food too. I love going up farmers markets and
(09:56):
discovering new things and tasting. And I I've got guts
to pick up a book and pick out a recipe.
You know, I'm trying to remember. I've I've cooked from
a few River Cafe books a few times. Do you
find it relaxing after working to cook? Yes? I find
(10:18):
it relaxing, incredibly therapeutic. And I must have a glass
of red wine open to sit from. And I like
to listen to music. And I don't like intrusions. I
like to take over the kitchen. I get that. So
it's a long way from the cans of vegetables that you, Hey,
did your mother? Did your mother and father? Were they
(10:39):
part of that explosion of food for you? Did you
cook for them when they came to visit. I did
cook for them. I tried to be a positive influence
on them in terms of healthier eating, but I failed
at that. It's interesting because my dad and mom both
had hard conditions and bypass surgery in their fifties early fifties,
and I could never quite understand how it somehow another
(11:02):
didn't change their diet afterwards. My father, I think, used
to taunt me we'd go to restaurants. If I took
them to an Italian restaurant and I ordered the grilled
salmon rocket, he would order spaghetti bologness, and then when
the bread would come, he would wonder why there was
(11:23):
olive oil and not butter. Yeah, generation, what do you
think about when you eat? I'm a very healthy eater,
mostly Mediterranean diet, high in seafood and low in carbs,
although I allow myself a good bowl of pasta every
once in a while, and I passion of minus pizza.
(11:43):
I've been trying to hone my pizza making skills, and
we have a nice pizza oven at the house, and
so I've spent some time doing that when you traveled.
When you traveled for Disney later on, what was that like?
Did people really try to give you their culture through food? Yes? I,
first of all, it was always a priority of mine
(12:04):
when I visited a city to find a good restaurant,
and over time, because I visited a number of cities often,
for instance Shanghai, I was visited Shanghai over forty times,
I always made it a point to have a nice
meal out, and I typically like to do it with
a small group of people and enjoy a good bottle
of wine. And it was my way of relaxing when
(12:25):
I traveled and not being on just literally being able
to kick back a bit and enjoy a good meal.
And I love the food of the world, and so
it was always on my itinerary, and often I would
go back to ones that I had fallen in love with,
obviously River Cafe being at the top of the list.
I always say, when we go to a city, you know,
(12:47):
we try to find the market, because I think the
market tells you also about the culture. You know, if
you go to the realto it's noisy and this fishing.
You go to a small market and niece, it's about,
you know, the piece of basil and small bunches of salad,
And I think markets tell you and restaurants tell you.
(13:07):
Food really tells the story of a culture, doesn't it. Yes,
By the way, with the market in Nice, it was
coarse alea I can't remember the name of it goes
on for blocks and blocks. I remember I remember seeing
more olives than I've ever seen exactly. That's a wonderful market.
There are a few in Paris too that I like,
and we visit. What about the markets in l A.
(13:29):
There are farmers markets will have visits regularly. But we
also we have property in l A that has allowed
us to plant a quite a nice size garden. That's right. Yeah,
and well we grow a lot of citrus. We have
great lemons, including myra, lemon and oranges of all sorts.
But we also have a thriving garden and frequently the
(13:52):
vegetables from our own garden, which is fun. And what
about when you're on the boat do you put on
the boat when we're on our boat? I do know cooking.
We have a great chef and she spoiled us. But
we're always interested in in her shopping and provisioning, which
she enjoys a lot, and at times joined her to
(14:12):
go to a local market, which is fun. Or to
find great seafood, you know, find. We were in Croatia
this summer and a town called Corchuela, flying the streets
looking for a great fish, for instance. That's always fun too.
Tell me about wine. Did you study wine? And yes, yeah,
it started when I worked at ABC and I lived
(14:33):
in a building on the west side of New York.
At the corner of the street that my building was on,
there was a wine shop called sixty seven Street Wines
and Liquors. And I had time on my hands as
a single man in New York, and one of the
salesman took a liking to me and taught me a
tremendous amount about wine and got me interested in an
(14:55):
early age, well before I could afford a good bottle
of wine. And over the years I've collected wine, and
I think I probably enjoyed it more than I've collected it,
but I collected. I very rarely have wine at lunch.
I mean, it's got to be a very special occasion,
although a good glass of rose sitting outdoors at a
(15:15):
cafe on the Plasta Voge in Paris that's licensed to
have a glass of wine. But at dinner. It's interesting
because I probably had wine maybe three or four times
a week pre pandemic. It's probably six times a week
since um, I like a good glass of wine right
before dinner and one had had a meal. Do you
(15:45):
work over food to go for business lunches? Somewhat? I
probably pre pandemic would have two or three business lunches
a week and the other days I eat at my
desk and get work done. And I shunned business dinners,
but that was mostly because I wanted to be home
having dinner with my family. So and I never believe
(16:05):
that a business dinner was a prerequisite for being successful.
But often I found both business lunches and dinners were
always an excuse to turn what could have been a
half hour meeting into it two and a half hour meal,
and I didn't think that was a very efficient way
to manage time. Interesting how people use restaurants. I would
(16:27):
say that, you know, very often people do very private
things in a very public space, and sometimes people will
use restaurants to you know, fire someone or to hire
someone or two have a marital conflict. To see people
crying in restaurants, and not very many people crying the
River Cafe. But what do you look for in a restaurant?
Food is obviously critical quality, I like mood or ambience
(16:52):
a lot um and you know, thinking about your restaurant,
what strikes me is that it takes its food seriously,
very seriously, but it doesn't take itself seriously, So they're
meaning it's not arrogant in any way it's inviting, which
is great. I love that it's also but it has
(17:14):
a real professional field to it too, and it is
the kind of place you do want to hang out
in and not just to enjoy the food, to take
it all in. And it's also a great crowds, great
people watching. It's I've also found it's a nice place
to have quiet celebrations. Yeah, celebrations. The way people are
(17:35):
in a restaurant, dotes tell you about the person, do
you agree, How they treat the people who are serving
them is very telling, and also the degree to which
they appreciate what they're being served. Yeah, that's very true.
By the way, I fell in love, I fell in
love with my wife over dinner. Did you tell me
about it? But that's the story. We had run into
(17:57):
one another at an event in New York, and to
a variety of complicated circumstances, it took us eighteen months
to have the first dinner. Eighteen months, which is extraordinary.
That's a lot of patients, yeah, but for both of us.
And there I was thinking about this woman that I
had met eighteen months ago, trying to figure out where
to take her to dinner, and we went to a
(18:19):
restaurant called Allison on Dominic. Dominic is a street in
downtown New York, which was not only a really good
food but quite romantic. And that was our first official day,
June thirteenth. We still sell We celebrate the anniversary of
that date more than we celebrate our wedding anniversary. And
(18:41):
I mean, she claims that she knew that night we're
a good meal at Allison on Dominic. I think I
probably did too. But it was the beginning of a
great romance. And and now twenty five years of marriage,
the restaurant still there. No, the restaurant is not there,
but we've carried on a tradition of having dates uh
(19:04):
since then. I think one of the one of the
nicest parts of my life, and there are many, is
just being able to go out to dinner alone with
my wife. If I know that I'm doing that, I
look forward to it all week. It's one of the
things I missed the most out of from the pandemic,
is my date dates with my wife's. Occasionally we bring
(19:24):
food into the house and tell our son or our
sons were going down to we have another building on
our property to have to have dinner, just to escape. Yeah.
In the graduation speech that I just delivered at the
University of Texas, which is where our older son graduated,
I talked about being bold and getting out there and
(19:48):
changing the world, because there's certainly so much that needs
changing and fixing. But I also talked about embracing life
and my equivalent of smelling the roses, which is truly
appreciating every moment of your a I is savoring great pizza,
and so I put that into my speech because I
do love pizza. That is my go to comfort food.
(20:10):
I was just gonna ask you, is it. It's so
tell me about pizza. A good margarita, pizza. I don't need.
It doesn't need to be fancy. It can be very
very basic. But I'd say, if if I could only
have one meal, that's what it would be. But I
talked in the speech about savoring the finer things in life,
including friendships and relationships of course, but a great piece
(20:34):
of pizza well, and that we can end a really
lovely conversation about fact of connection and memories our friendship
and let's have more meals together and I'll make you
a pizza the next time you come to the River cafe.
To visit the online shop of The River Cafe. Go
(20:57):
to shop The River Cafe dot com. That okay River
Cafe table for is a production of I Heart Radio
and Adam I Studios. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to River Cafe Table for a production of I
Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. Remember turning to once
and you said to me, well, Ruthie, how many people
do you employ? And I very proudly said, I employ
a hundred and ten people. Bob, how many do you employ? It?
(00:21):
He said, how many? That's a lot. Say the name
Bob Iger to me, and I think of my good
friend who cares passionately about what he cooks, the vegetable
garden outside his kitchen, and what he feeds his children,
grandchildren and the people who work with him. Say the
(00:44):
name Bob Iger, the former CEO and chairman of the
board of Disney, and everyone will think of the man
who acquired Pixar, Lucas Films, and Marvel, giving the world
some of our most loved movies. There is much more
Bob By has done for Disney and for us, and
this is what we're going to talk about today. That
(01:09):
was very involved in the food program at our parks,
and not only have we hired a lot of great chefs,
but we also have quite a wine program. We we
believe we're the largest buyer in the largest cellar of
wine in the world, interestingly enough, which you wouldn't expect
to hear about Disney. This recipe is for pasta al limone,
(01:33):
two hundred and fifty grams of spaghetti, the juice of
three to four lemons, hundred and fifty millileaters of olive oil,
hundred and fifty grams of parmesan cheese, freshly grated, two
handfuls of fresh basil leaves picked and chopped, and finally
grated lemon zest. Cook the spaghetti, then drained thoroughly and
(01:55):
returned to the saucepan. Meanwhile, whisk the lemon juice with
the olive oil, then stir in the parmesan. It will
melt into the mixture, making it thick and creamy. Season
and add more or less lemon juice to taste. Add
the sauce to the spaghetti, and shake the pans so
that each strand of the pasta is coated with the cheese.
(02:18):
Stir in the chopped basil and a generous amount of
lemon zest. And there you have it, pasta ald just here.
You read it, taste of summer, doesn't it. You've just
woken up haven juice early there. We're in different times
since have you had breakfast. I did have breakfast. Okay,
(02:42):
tell me about your breakfast. I get up at four
fifteen in the morning, so by six I'm starved and
I'm I'm a creature of habit when it comes to breakfast.
I always have Greek yogurt and a nice portion of
really good granola and a cup of coffee every day
of the week, every week of the month, and every
month of the year. I do think you have a
(03:03):
between that sort of lack of decision. You know, you
wake up and let you know that's what you're going
to have. Is quite a way comforting, isn't it that
you just know your day is beginning in the same way.
But I think of you was such an inventions eater
and a curious eater. Did you going back to the beginning,
begin at the beginning, What was it like growing up
in your house? Did your parents cook? Well? Interestingly enough,
(03:25):
I I live with my my maternal grandmother and my parents.
My maternal grandmother lived with us, and she was from
the Old Country. Which country she was from Poland? But
she was a nice Jewish grandmother. So her go to
meals that are the most memorable were pot roast and
(03:46):
stuffed cabbage were the two big ones, and um, and
she liked to make mots of ball soup as well.
But she also made a mean apple pie. Interesting, my mother,
who picked up some of her cooking abilities, was not
very adventuresome. And you know, in the nineteen fifties in
the United States, what was available was actually quite limited.
(04:09):
Like we didn't have access to great fresh produce, at
least not in New York and supermarkets even the Big
Change didn't have great produce sections. I don't think you'd
ever get fresh basil, for instance, And so a lot
of what we ate were canned foods, caned peas and
carrots and canned green beans and like. Um. But adventurous
(04:31):
cooking was not my mother's middle name. She she made
some good desserts, but that was about it. Do you
think that as an immigrant you bring the food of
your country, because a lot of people have spoken to
whether is David a j talking about growing up as
a Ghanaian in London bringing that culture to the society
that you've moved in, which might be alien, might be frightening,
(04:52):
might be anything that the food that you have is
part of what you bring with you as an immigrant. Absolutely.
I think you know you bring you know, a would
think Eastern European accent and a number of recipes. Yeah.
So did she do the cooking in your house? Was
she the you shared the cooking with my mother? Yes,
but but cooked often? And would you all sit down
(05:13):
to a meal together? Was that a big deal? We did.
She died when I was sixteen, but she lived with
me up until then and she was always part of
our family meals. Yes. What about your father? Did he cook? No?
My father wasn't much of a coocola. I remember him
making scrambled eggs from me on occasion in the morning.
And he liked to make a good Jewish deli sandwich,
(05:35):
you know, he'd buy meat from the local deli and
concoct great sandwiches. But beyond that, no, um. He loved
a good hot dog Nathan's hot Dogs. Nathan's was the
famous Coney Island hot dog emporium, and he loved that.
But he wasn't much of a cook. He was a
trumpet player, not a cook. But he performed. Yes, he
(05:57):
played occasionally in the house. He had sort of lost
his lip by the time I was born. He had
played some professional trumpet in his day, but he took
me to jazz concerts. I grew up listening to jazz
and some great jazz players. I saw Louis Armstrong play,
I saw Duke Ellington, for instance, and that was a
great influence on my life. And music is a is
(06:19):
a true love of my life thanks to him, and
his trumpet still sits in my office at home. Yeah,
so you grew up with this, which I think a
lot of American, as you say Americans in the fifties.
So did you find food yourself when you went to
college and when you went to Interestingly enough, it started
with a cookbook. My father collected a lot of books
(06:41):
and for some reason we had a Life magazine book
Food and included the great restaurants of the world in
it at the time and some recipes. And I decided
to impress a college girlfriend by cooking some Italian food
for are and I actually loved it. And then when
(07:03):
I went into New York to begin work after college,
I started cooking for myself quite avidly, and I ended
up taking a cooking class, a number of lessons with
a French woman of I think Egyptian descent, and it
was a Mediterranean cooking class, and I fell in love
with cooking, and then I ended up in um in
(07:26):
jobs working for ABC Sports that took me around the world,
and that's when I first got truly introduced to the
world's food. Yeah, that exposure again, going to different cultures
and say, but back to the girlfriend. I want to
go back to that girl? Did cooking an Italian meal
for her? That work? By the way, I think it
(07:47):
was rather basic, do you remember? Yes? It was. It
was a pasta with vegetables, very basic. But I made
my own I guess it was a light tomato sauce.
I remember making my own us for the first time
in impressing myself. But I think I kind of used
cooking is as a means of the of presenting myself
(08:08):
as an attractive date two folks. I remember actually when
I met Willow, and I remember telling her that I cooked.
She said, you cook, and her eyes lit up Suddenly.
I was far more attractive once she discovered that exactly.
And then when you started traveling, what was that like?
Where would you travel to when you were working? It's
quite an amazing experience because I started working for ABC
(08:30):
Sports when I was twenty four years old, and I
worked there for thirteen years, and I worked on a
program called Wide World of Sports, which covered sporting events
all over the world in rather exotic places as well,
including you know, visiting Beijing in the late seventies, in
South Africa, and certainly all over Europe, but also Central
(08:53):
and Eastern Europe and then the then Soviet Bloc countries
as well and Latin America. So it was almost no
place that I didn't visit. It was quite it was
quite amazing. And we lived well when we traveled, and
that's we ate well, and so I you know, I
remember going to Tayvon in Paris, which is going to
(09:14):
by the way, but it was the thing to do.
And uh, I remember the hotel to Perry in Monte
Carlo and trying to remember where I would be. Oh,
I remember there was a grill at the Connaught. Yeah,
I remember having a steak there, the grill at the
hotel Canna And did you keep cooking? I cooked really
(09:36):
until I became CEO of Disney, which was in two
thousand and five, and I, in time management became a
little bit more challenger, much to my wife's chagrin. But
it's one of the things that I look forward to doing,
having the time to cook more. And I love shopping
for food too. I love going up farmers markets and
(09:56):
discovering new things and tasting. And I I've got guts
to pick up a book and pick out a recipe.
You know, I'm trying to remember. I've I've cooked from
a few River Cafe books a few times. Do you
find it relaxing after working to cook? Yes? I find
(10:18):
it relaxing, incredibly therapeutic. And I must have a glass
of red wine open to sit from. And I like
to listen to music. And I don't like intrusions. I
like to take over the kitchen. I get that. So
it's a long way from the cans of vegetables that you, Hey,
did your mother? Did your mother and father? Were they
(10:39):
part of that explosion of food for you? Did you
cook for them when they came to visit. I did
cook for them. I tried to be a positive influence
on them in terms of healthier eating, but I failed
at that. It's interesting because my dad and mom both
had hard conditions and bypass surgery in their fifties early fifties,
and I could never quite understand how it somehow another
(11:02):
didn't change their diet afterwards. My father, I think, used
to taunt me we'd go to restaurants. If I took
them to an Italian restaurant and I ordered the grilled
salmon rocket, he would order spaghetti bologness, and then when
the bread would come, he would wonder why there was
(11:23):
olive oil and not butter. Yeah, generation, what do you
think about when you eat? I'm a very healthy eater,
mostly Mediterranean diet, high in seafood and low in carbs,
although I allow myself a good bowl of pasta every
once in a while, and I passion of minus pizza.
(11:43):
I've been trying to hone my pizza making skills, and
we have a nice pizza oven at the house, and
so I've spent some time doing that when you traveled.
When you traveled for Disney later on, what was that like?
Did people really try to give you their culture through food? Yes? I,
first of all, it was always a priority of mine
(12:04):
when I visited a city to find a good restaurant,
and over time, because I visited a number of cities often,
for instance Shanghai, I was visited Shanghai over forty times,
I always made it a point to have a nice
meal out, and I typically like to do it with
a small group of people and enjoy a good bottle
of wine. And it was my way of relaxing when
(12:25):
I traveled and not being on just literally being able
to kick back a bit and enjoy a good meal.
And I love the food of the world, and so
it was always on my itinerary, and often I would
go back to ones that I had fallen in love with,
obviously River Cafe being at the top of the list.
I always say, when we go to a city, you know,
(12:47):
we try to find the market, because I think the
market tells you also about the culture. You know, if
you go to the realto it's noisy and this fishing.
You go to a small market and niece, it's about,
you know, the piece of basil and small bunches of salad,
And I think markets tell you and restaurants tell you.
(13:07):
Food really tells the story of a culture, doesn't it. Yes,
By the way, with the market in Nice, it was
coarse alea I can't remember the name of it goes
on for blocks and blocks. I remember I remember seeing
more olives than I've ever seen exactly. That's a wonderful market.
There are a few in Paris too that I like,
and we visit. What about the markets in l A.
(13:29):
There are farmers markets will have visits regularly. But we
also we have property in l A that has allowed
us to plant a quite a nice size garden. That's right. Yeah,
and well we grow a lot of citrus. We have
great lemons, including myra, lemon and oranges of all sorts.
But we also have a thriving garden and frequently the
(13:52):
vegetables from our own garden, which is fun. And what
about when you're on the boat do you put on
the boat when we're on our boat? I do know cooking.
We have a great chef and she spoiled us. But
we're always interested in in her shopping and provisioning, which
she enjoys a lot, and at times joined her to
(14:12):
go to a local market, which is fun. Or to
find great seafood, you know, find. We were in Croatia
this summer and a town called Corchuela, flying the streets
looking for a great fish, for instance. That's always fun too.
Tell me about wine. Did you study wine? And yes, yeah,
it started when I worked at ABC and I lived
(14:33):
in a building on the west side of New York.
At the corner of the street that my building was on,
there was a wine shop called sixty seven Street Wines
and Liquors. And I had time on my hands as
a single man in New York, and one of the
salesman took a liking to me and taught me a
tremendous amount about wine and got me interested in an
(14:55):
early age, well before I could afford a good bottle
of wine. And over the years I've collected wine, and
I think I probably enjoyed it more than I've collected it,
but I collected. I very rarely have wine at lunch.
I mean, it's got to be a very special occasion,
although a good glass of rose sitting outdoors at a
(15:15):
cafe on the Plasta Voge in Paris that's licensed to
have a glass of wine. But at dinner. It's interesting
because I probably had wine maybe three or four times
a week pre pandemic. It's probably six times a week
since um, I like a good glass of wine right
before dinner and one had had a meal. Do you
(15:45):
work over food to go for business lunches? Somewhat? I
probably pre pandemic would have two or three business lunches
a week and the other days I eat at my
desk and get work done. And I shunned business dinners,
but that was mostly because I wanted to be home
having dinner with my family. So and I never believe
(16:05):
that a business dinner was a prerequisite for being successful.
But often I found both business lunches and dinners were
always an excuse to turn what could have been a
half hour meeting into it two and a half hour meal,
and I didn't think that was a very efficient way
to manage time. Interesting how people use restaurants. I would
(16:27):
say that, you know, very often people do very private
things in a very public space, and sometimes people will
use restaurants to you know, fire someone or to hire
someone or two have a marital conflict. To see people
crying in restaurants, and not very many people crying the
River Cafe. But what do you look for in a restaurant?
Food is obviously critical quality, I like mood or ambience
(16:52):
a lot um and you know, thinking about your restaurant,
what strikes me is that it takes its food seriously,
very seriously, but it doesn't take itself seriously, So they're
meaning it's not arrogant in any way it's inviting, which
is great. I love that it's also but it has
(17:14):
a real professional field to it too, and it is
the kind of place you do want to hang out
in and not just to enjoy the food, to take
it all in. And it's also a great crowds, great
people watching. It's I've also found it's a nice place
to have quiet celebrations. Yeah, celebrations. The way people are
(17:35):
in a restaurant, dotes tell you about the person, do
you agree, How they treat the people who are serving
them is very telling, and also the degree to which
they appreciate what they're being served. Yeah, that's very true.
By the way, I fell in love, I fell in
love with my wife over dinner. Did you tell me
about it? But that's the story. We had run into
(17:57):
one another at an event in New York, and to
a variety of complicated circumstances, it took us eighteen months
to have the first dinner. Eighteen months, which is extraordinary.
That's a lot of patients, yeah, but for both of us.
And there I was thinking about this woman that I
had met eighteen months ago, trying to figure out where
to take her to dinner, and we went to a
(18:19):
restaurant called Allison on Dominic. Dominic is a street in
downtown New York, which was not only a really good
food but quite romantic. And that was our first official day,
June thirteenth. We still sell We celebrate the anniversary of
that date more than we celebrate our wedding anniversary. And
(18:41):
I mean, she claims that she knew that night we're
a good meal at Allison on Dominic. I think I
probably did too. But it was the beginning of a
great romance. And and now twenty five years of marriage,
the restaurant still there. No, the restaurant is not there,
but we've carried on a tradition of having dates uh
(19:04):
since then. I think one of the one of the
nicest parts of my life, and there are many, is
just being able to go out to dinner alone with
my wife. If I know that I'm doing that, I
look forward to it all week. It's one of the
things I missed the most out of from the pandemic,
is my date dates with my wife's. Occasionally we bring
(19:24):
food into the house and tell our son or our
sons were going down to we have another building on
our property to have to have dinner, just to escape. Yeah.
In the graduation speech that I just delivered at the
University of Texas, which is where our older son graduated,
I talked about being bold and getting out there and
(19:48):
changing the world, because there's certainly so much that needs
changing and fixing. But I also talked about embracing life
and my equivalent of smelling the roses, which is truly
appreciating every moment of your a I is savoring great pizza,
and so I put that into my speech because I
do love pizza. That is my go to comfort food.
(20:10):
I was just gonna ask you, is it. It's so
tell me about pizza. A good margarita, pizza. I don't need.
It doesn't need to be fancy. It can be very
very basic. But I'd say, if if I could only
have one meal, that's what it would be. But I
talked in the speech about savoring the finer things in life,
including friendships and relationships of course, but a great piece
(20:34):
of pizza well, and that we can end a really
lovely conversation about fact of connection and memories our friendship
and let's have more meals together and I'll make you
a pizza the next time you come to the River cafe.
To visit the online shop of The River Cafe. Go
(20:57):
to shop The River Cafe dot com. That okay River
Cafe table for is a production of I Heart Radio
and Adam I Studios. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Ruth Rogers
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