April 24, 2023 • 37 mins
I can't say how many times when arriving at The River Café in a taxi, the driver will turn around to me and say, ‘Is this the restaurant where Jamie Oliver cooked?’ The other day, one even informed me that The River Café was owned by Jamie, and I thought, why correct him? He is the prodigal son or the brother, who knows when he walks in the restaurant, he is home.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Adamized Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Hi, everyone, hope you well. Sorry to be familiar. I
just am because I'm ill. They always look like.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
He's quite familiar, is that guy?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hell?
Speaker 4 (00:33):
I can't say how many times when arriving in the
River Cafe in a taxi the driver will turned around
to me and say, is this the restaurant where Jamie
Oliver cooked the other day? One even informed me that
the River Cafe was owned by Jamie, and I thought,
why correct him? He is a prodigal son or the
(00:53):
brother who knows that when he walks in the door
of the restaurant, he is.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Home, not the old day. When was the last time
you're here?
Speaker 3 (01:01):
I try and get here at least two or three
times a year if I'm lucky, and I have to say,
it's a bit like therapy really see Charles.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Which always makes me very happy.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
We normally go through the same old jokes and then
crack onto a bit of new news, friends and family.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
But there's lots of nostalgia, isn't there.
Speaker 5 (01:18):
I think one of the things you always said is
that you love the reset of coming back to the
River Cap something you and Beggsy always said, Yeah, as
you go out into the world, and then it's quite
nice to get back to your roots and taste a
bit of that, get that River Cap experience again.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
It's like being home, which is lovely.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
Jamie came to work with us when he was just
about twenty, I guess almost thirty years ago. Rose Gray
interviewed him for the job and as it always said,
it was love at first sight.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Thank you, Euthie. Well, I love that. I remember the
first time Rose interviewed me.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Tell me about it.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Well, I had been working at the Nil Street restaurant
for a year and a half and I knew it
was time for me to move on. And I just
read this book, the first River Cafe book Blue, and
it just like changed everything. It was like it's like
a moment because just from a design point of view
and a feeling point of view and the black and
(02:13):
white reportage photos and it was.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Like fresh air.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
And I knew I had to get there, so I
phoned up and I came in. I was quite skin
and I had my first suit that was a really
cheap suit. Honestly, it was if it had gone near
a candle. We had gone up in flames so quickly,
and I turned up in a suit with a terrible
tie because my dad always said, like make an effort.
(02:38):
And I remember the headshef at the time and all
the chef's looking around just thinking like he's in a suitcase.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
You don't really wear suits the customers. But we definitely
bonded on.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
I think Ravioli was the place that we kind of
connected and then the rest was history.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Then did you come straight up?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah? Yeah, I couldn't wait.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
And it was like it was an amazing time because
you know, obviously you always look back with romance, but
it was an amazing time in Britain. And the River
Cafe was on fire and had come from, you know,
such humble beginnings. But was this extraordinary, unconventional restaurant doing
incredible things run of course by and Ruth in the
(03:23):
amazing team, but you know, cool Britannia, the music scene,
the fashion scene, the photography scene, the art scene. I
remember cooking with you for a new labor before they
got in, and during that they got in, and and
I remember the Millennium Dome as a sketch on a tablecloth,
and I remember it as a as a model that
(03:45):
was just a few meters away from the pastry section
while making chocolate Nemesis.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
And then I remember the real one, and.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Did you do you remember I was I was nineteen.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Yeah, I was nineteen years old and I came here
and I was.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
Ninety ninety eight, ninety eight, yeah, maybe ninety eight, but
nice memriag wondered Blair when the election wasn't ninety seven.
And then, as you said, there were the kind of excitement,
a kind of melding also politics and food and as
you say, culture and excitement. I certainly remember Rose calling
(04:19):
me up. I think I was away clearly when you were.
When you came through an interview in the suit, I
would have remembered it. And she said, you know, Ruthie,
this one you're going to love. This is you know,
this is somebody.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
I was so keen.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
I was so keen, and it felt like a family
straight away, and I'd grown up obviously in a family restaurant.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
I know.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
My last bit of advice from my dad to me
was like, just whoever you work for, just treat their
business like yours. And you haven't got one job, You've
got every job. If the phone rings picks it up.
If your floor needs moping, mop it. And I remember
just sort of coming to the River Cafe and it
actually felt like a family, which is actually it is
more rare than it's not that common even now in restaurants.
(04:57):
What you and Rose were doing was so untraditional from
what the kind of machine teaches. So I felt like
I was being liberated.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Well, your friend Ed Baines once said that, you know,
when he came to work for us, he said, you
know that song, I did it my way. Well you
should say we did it were away and we didn't
know what we were doing, but we just knew that
we were doing it our work.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
But you were right right, because I think what had
happened is I mean, I feel like I can look
at it objectively now, but like training is fine, but
it's it's for consistency, and you have structure, and it's
it was very male dominant, and which is very testosterone dominant.
And to go from that typical training and typical kitchens
to you and Rose was the most visceral, emotional, maternal,
(05:48):
common sense logical thing that ever happened to me. Ever,
and and because you were you, I mean, I know
you know what has happened here a special but when
you're an outsider coming in, it was it was like
someone had invented a new type of music. And I
remember the sheer worry of writing a menu at say
(06:09):
three point thirty for customers coming at six, because normally
your trains do like monthly menus, and here we are
doing two a day every day. And I remember just
doing the jobs list, and I remember seeing like you'd
have random people bringing in like overly Caesar mushrooms and you, well, Rob,
I start, we'll put them on now, and it's like,
(06:31):
but we just put no now, and like nothing everything
was now, and it was all about freshness, and that
energy was I remember. I remember thinking about crying for
about three weeks, not because of you or the team,
but just because of the stress of a new menu
twice a day was completely outside of what I knew.
But then you get used to it, and I learned
(06:51):
what you created was thinkers, Yeah, people that could adjust
and react to seasons and everything that was happening in
the industry was about protocol and structures and safety, whereas
we I don't know. It was so exciting to have
two women as bosses and owners. I think very male
driven kitchens, and I'm not saying this for any effect,
like quite aggressive, often flooded with drugs, and it was
(07:17):
quite scary. Yeah, And I knew those kitchens and I'd
worked in London and abroad and things like that, so
it was you know, even when I come in today,
you can see there's this lovely fifty to fifty balance
of them. And that's the holy grail I think. I mean,
I think if you skew one way or the other,
you can get issues, but.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
You know, it's but the thinking was so different. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
I think it also helped us so much having chefs
who worked in other kitchens, because neither of us. Rose
did a bit with McNally's in New York and a
bit with Carlucci. But somehow I remember the joy of having,
you know, young people who had actually experienced other kitchens
or contributed to us, who taught us, you know.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
The yin and yang of you and was really a
precious one as well, because you're you crossed over in
the middle, but you had strengths on other sides, and
that was quite.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Interesting to see a great partner.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Yeah, and I think, you know, like also having the
open kitchen where there was that connection with the customer.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Remember we used to answer the telephone and take reservations
when maybe it was before the time, but I literally remember, no,
I remember writing it down. You know, it's a table
for four, table for six, you know. And then going
back to kind of stirring the the televant in my head.
But if we go back, because you talk, you spoke
(08:35):
about your father, and you speak about, you know, the
way you grow up. And just even in the first
five minutes of conversation, he's present and he's telling you,
you know, whether it's to wear a tie, or to
be curious, or to treat a restaurant in a certain way.
So why don't we maybe begin also a little bit
at the beginning with the ol of our household. So
(08:57):
how many siblings do you have?
Speaker 2 (08:59):
I have one sister ancestor. She's a year younger than me.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Yeah. And so when you were growing up, who did
the cooking? Was it your mother? Father she did?
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (09:08):
I mean dad was a chain chef and he'd started
really young and also grew up in a pub that
did very good food.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Yeah, his father.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Yeah, and they still have Yeah, they had have a
pub called the Plow and Sow in Paglesham, which is
in a dead end near the River Blackwater, which is
where we used to get sea bass from Ben's Fish and.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
Then fish yeah, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Yeah and West Mersey Oysters. Yes.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
So that's where Dad grew up. And I was born
actually in South Fuckington, in South Fuckington in Grays, Essex,
so right in the estuary of Essex and got devastated
in the war. And Dad was the youngest license holder
in the country at the time. I believe he was seventeen. No, no,
(09:54):
I think in those days you could have it a
bit younger. He was at least eighteen, but I think
he was even younger. And then he had me at twenty.
So as soon as I was born, we got a
tatty old pub that was beautiful in a little village
called Clavering and it was a sixteenth century pub and
I obviously grew up there, but Dad, I mean I
(10:14):
remember a few things.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
That stuck out.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
So the chalkboards were daily, so that gave me some
sort of connection with the river cafe changing daily. The
game was local, the fish was only on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Lots of live crabs and lobsters and whole fish, whole
animals coming in to be butchered. He had a brigade
I only ever remember a brigade of at least six
on a shift. And the pastry was a proper pastry
(10:37):
of sort of Anglo French Swiss style. Am yeah, well
I thought it was normal, but of course even now
it's not normal. And you know, typical would have been
freezers full of stuff you could reheat. And he was trained, yeah, yeah,
and he really I mean he didn't go to school
much as a child, but he got a Student of
the Year at South End College and went and worked
(11:00):
in France as well, so he was kind of he
had a really good start. But he ran the pub,
and I remember little things like the head chef was
paid more than he paid himself, and I remember as
a child going with that carb be right, and he's like, no, no,
we've got to invest in the quality and get the
brigades steady. And of course these are all real things.
But it had a bar side and then it had
(11:20):
a restaurant side, which meant there was slightly two tones
of cooking with food, yeah, and quite Anglo French cooking,
so kind of things that you would get I guess
at the Wolseley or kind of like rules, you know,
classics like simply cooked game and beautiful over souls, you know,
(11:41):
cooked how you.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Liked it, but everything homemade.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
So that was I just wanted to go to London
for five years so I could learn some things then
come back and run apart.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
I remember, actually I remember you kind of very really
quite late. You were always really interested in the pub.
Did your mother work there as well?
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Yeah, she was a classic land lady in the sense
of that's not like an east Enders land lady, like
it's quite a glamorous role. And mum was very glamorous.
All I remember with my mum honestly was she'd get
ready for two hours, the smell of that hair spray
from the gold canister, and rollers, always enrollers, and then
this and always in sort of like nineties, and then
(12:18):
all of a sudden this outfit came on and the
hair was out, and then she'd go down about eight fifteen.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Two hours oh.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
And and just work in the locals and it was
a busy pub. And I think, I guess, in a
sort of cheesy sense, we went from a working class
family to a classic middle class family in about thirteen years.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
The cooking for you and your sister, how would she
do that? Between rolling her hair?
Speaker 3 (12:44):
She would do all the books, all the high Well,
Mum would do the hiring and Dad would do the firing,
and often Mum had to run after people that Dad
had fired to rehire them because he hadn't dealt with
the problem quite right. But Mum mainly did like classic
things really, like, you know, did you live in the pub? Yeah? So,
like my bedroom was not much bigger than this room,
which is like two and a half by four. Of course,
(13:06):
it was sixteenth century, so there's gaps all around the edges.
So everyone smoked such a lot. So you know, God
forbid I ever do get anything unhealthy with my lungs.
But if it was, it was because I had passive
smoking as a child.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
But yeah, I mean, so.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
You lived over so would you you had a diving
room and a kitchen or not?
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Really there was.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
There was two bedrooms in a front room, but in
the front room we had a little table, so we
Mum would cook down in the commercial kitchen in between shifts.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
She would cook dinner for you and your Yeah, but.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
They cooked well and Mum still cooks well today and
Dad still cooks well, but dad they're both retired now,
and which they did in lockdown.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
So you can you can imagine living upstairs from this pub,
having your parents.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
You know, always customers a lot.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Yeah, but of course I worked at the weekends for
pocket money.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
What did you do?
Speaker 3 (13:56):
I started up bottling up, which is replace certain. Well,
you go and look at the bar after a busy night,
and you look at all the empty shelves and if
you're lucky, you can see a little round marks where
all the bottles had sat, and you'd count them and
then you'd replace them, and then you'd recycle the bottles.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
How old were you when this was going on? Nine?
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Yeah, And I was in the wash up by ten.
And the wash up involved a lot of vegge preps,
so not dissimilar to at the River Cafe when you're
picking the herbs and all the stuff. And then I
really wanted to get into the kitchen, so I was
probably fully in the kitchen by about eleven. And they
had sections, so they had veg starters, mate, and they split.
You'd have someone putting food in the oven, someone taking
it out and serving it and then a pastry section.
(14:43):
But yeah, I mean i'd probably by the time I
was sixteen, I'd done the rotation of the kitchen maybe
three times. So I remember having to develop a skill
to teaching cooking. When I say teaching, like if you
had a twenty one year old come in from college
to get a job, as it's a commie chef, I'd
be fourteen and I'd have to train him. And obviously,
(15:05):
when you're fourteen, you haven't got a hair on your chin,
and these twenty one year olds looked like men. So
I had to sort of develop a way of teaching
without getting a slap that make them feel like they
were teaching themselves, and like teaching like well you left
or right handed? Okay, work from left to right.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
So this is this dish, and we prep this and
prep that, and we put that, put that on ice,
and you know, just try and set it up for
service so the service can flow. And I, obviously, being young,
I was cocky as well, so I often ended up
in the freezer. I often ended up with like why
because I've been maybe back, like somebody puts you in
the free freezer.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
Yeah, I close the door.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
And sit on it shin.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
It was a bit like the shining. If I'm honest,
I'm sure it was illegal. I'm sure it was with love.
But I'd finish shifts and take my jacket off and
there'd be clothes pegs with like there'd be like one
hundred clothes pegs and a few signs saying very unkind things.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
Does your father know they would?
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Yeah, I think he felt it was a kind of
initiation of some description. So of course, by the time
I was eighteen, I was well versed to stuff.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
Wow, I think that I do you think that might
go on now?
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Yeah? I think.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
I think wherever you have teams and institutionalized sort of training,
which I think kitchens have been, that there's that going on,
and it can be for best or for worst. I
think it's you posted something with your your team and
it was very clearly a fifty to fifty split of
men and women. I reposted it because.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
It's me Well, it was so powerful.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
The balance is so important in a really happy kitchen,
and if it's one hundred percent men or hell breaks loose,
and you know, if you can get to twenty percent,
that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
But fifty to fifty is definitely the h that's the think.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
There is a feeling that I mean, it's something that
I've always said that when people call up and say
a journalist might say, Wow, it's it's so hard being
a chef. It's so stressful, and I go, it must
be really hard being a journalist. You know, God, it
must be so stressful, because in a way you want
to take our profession and have it not be different
(17:16):
from other professions. You know, the kind of myth that
because we have to do you know, service so quickly,
or we have difficult customers, or chefs are yelling, that's
so old fashioned in a way. And now, certainly the
young people who work in the River Cafe're just not
going to put up with that anymore.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
I think just we're over that.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
I think as a kid that struggled in school, and
as an adult now with kids sort of looking at
where AI and technology and all the things that are
going to happen around learning and how that's going to
check affects learning in schools in the future. I think,
what I can I can thank you for a thousand things,
but one of the things that is most precious that
(17:55):
you and Rose taught me and the institution the family
that you create was how to think for yourself. So
that's really interesting because learning stuff is learning stuff, and
that's kind of what happens in school, but problem solving
and resilience and reacting to weather, which is therefore seasons,
which is therefore ingredients, which is therefore the two shifts
(18:16):
today that you know, Like it was really interesting as
a young chef, I would watch brilliant chefs come out
of Michilin Star kitchens and they go and do their
own thing, and they'd be doing versions of the same
thing that they left. And if you look at the
family tree that's come from the River Cafe, I mean,
I guess Sam and Sam from Morrow is a really
(18:36):
good first example, Like you can see River Cafe through
their heart and their soul. But it's they did this
incredible North African you know, and they not only went
into restaurants, they opened pizzerias and sandwich but they just
did brilliant things and you created thinkers, and I think
that's different. I always tell people there's ways to run
(19:00):
a kitchen. One is sort of through fear, and one
is through family.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Yeah, and family is a bit slower, but you get
much more back in return, and fear is very efficient,
but you get so little back.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
In the long run. I feel quite passionately about.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
That carl you chose. Was really interesting time for me
because it was in the Nil Street.
Speaker 4 (19:29):
Restaurant signed by Terrence Conrad.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Yeah, and next door to the Neil Street I mean
the Neil Street was famous for mushrooms and late night
serving because of the opera house. The kitchen was hidden
in the basement, so you didn't see much light all day,
so I was pretty vitamin D deficient. And you know,
Antonio was the wonderful character at the front door, smoking
(19:52):
a cigar, having a little a little whisky or something,
but not really in the kitchen. But Gennara was in
the kitchen and he was an incredible drawer. But he
didn't work in the restaurant. He worked in the very
first Carluccio's Deli, driven by Priscillaccio, who was Antonio's wife,
And that was really interesting because the kitchens were shared.
And I did nine until three, and then I did
(20:16):
six until one in.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
The morning every day every day.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
But then I did a third shift, which was three
until seven with Gennaro.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
So I did a third secret.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
Shift and how many how that was like I was.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
But I was so young I could do it.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
I mean I couldn't do it now, but I was
only really there to learn from Gennaro. And you know,
I knew I just had to make bread with Gennaro. Really,
so I'd asked Antonia. He said no. So I thought, well, look,
if I'm here till one, I can get the ovens on,
I can get the temperatures on, I can weigh out
all the flowers, I can get all the kind of
(20:54):
I kind of configured everything so he could work quicker,
and because I thought, poor man is getting up at
crack door and every day. So and one of the
clever things I did with the bread was all the
stale bread from that day they would finally whack, making
too very fine bread crumbs to dust the trays.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
We have to get a lovely crunch.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
And I'd sack about one hundred trays up to make
all these different breads, and I'd draw a little froud
messages in there and sort of like say good good
morning Gennaro, and just just to befriend him, because I
didn't know Hi at that stage, and as soon as
we became friends, he said, oh, don't worry about Antonio,
just come in. But it was an amazing I mean,
the restaurant was great. It was very traditional, slightly northern
Italian stuff. But what happened at night was amazing. Like
(21:36):
at four o'clock they had ding dong and there'd be
thirty policemen that would come.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
In and four in the morning.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Four in the morning before in the morning and I
get up there, open them up. There's police out here, Gennaro, let.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
The bastards in.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
I'm like, oh okay, and all these coppers were coming.
But the clearly it was their home. They sat down
as if it was their front room. They went behind
the bar. They started making espressos and we'd reheat the
stale bread from the day.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Before, give them the dale stuff.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
We eat it, and then we give them some light
honey and some jam and they'd be very happy and
they would you think I'm making it up, But yeah,
it was kind of great.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
British Bobby, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Yeah, I mean, I don't think it happened anymore, but
that sound like the good old day. Yeah, But they,
I mean they were very romantic and I think you
did give me a good base to tiptoe into the
River Cafe, and but the River Cafe really was where
my heart was at.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
You know. One of the amazing trajectories was when we
did a film called what was it called Christmas at
the Christmas at the River Gervet, and that was a
film that you know, really I remember you know you
fried mushrooms, didn't you.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yeah, well we did.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
I think Porlketta and Ritolo. And then I think I
was on hots too one night. And obviously I can
look at it back now sort of seeing because you,
I think, correct me if I'm wrong. You were filming
for a couple of weeks, the show that you were making,
and I wasn't so sposed to be working that night.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
I don't know if I ever told you this. I
don't know that.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
So the night that I was in the background of
your program, I wasn't supposed to be working. I was
off and my wife, Jewels was off as well, and
she worked at the River Cafe on the front of house.
We hadn't had a night off together for ages and
the phone rang about four o'clock and one of the
team had gone sick.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Jewels, you know, with all the best in the world.
I had to come and put the shift in, but
that's when.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
The crew was there, and actually they were kind of
in the way because I was catching my tail because
I was an hour and a half late for the
shift to cover someone and I was running Hot two, which,
as you know, is one of your busiest sections. I'm
sure it still is now. But it was free to
misso tagleateeley if I remember with Girols and Risotto, I do,
I do remember, and the slow pork of course.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
I didn't think anything of it. And the night went
out on TV like many months later, maybe six months later.
Possibly I didn't know I was in it because I
was working. But then the phones started to ring the
next day, literally the next day.
Speaker 4 (24:09):
I came in. I would say that I came in
that morning and said, wow, Jamie, you did a really great,
great thing with those mushrooms. You were amazing on television.
And then the phone rang, and I remember where it was.
The phone used to hang up on a hook in
the kitchen just when you came in. It was before
we had the really open kitchen, and it was a
call for you from Pat Lewellen came over to me
(24:31):
like Ruthie. Somebody just called me up and asked me
if I wanted to do a screen test? What's a
screen test? Should I go? And we didn't know anything,
and then they said, Ruthie. The newspapers called up and said,
do I want to do a column?
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Can I go? We had, sure, Jamie. And then a.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Supermarket is called up, could I go? And I say
that within a very short time, you had a column
in a newspaper, a television show, an advertising campaign with
the supermarket and they knew, they knew that you could
do all this, and you showed them that you could and.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
You did it.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
I mean, when I think about it, I mean I
remember when I had my twenty years anniversary and there
was loads of people together, and to think that it
really genuinely does come back to that phone court four
o'clock saying can you cover?
Speaker 4 (25:20):
What was it like from being a chef in the
river cap Who was around you, who was protecting you?
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Who was going I.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Didn't, Yeah, I didn't really have any protection for a while.
Everyone was perfectly lovely. But I'd done the first book,
like I couldn't write or type, so I did it
in dictaphone the responsibility of delivering it is like a nightmare.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
And then it was the naked chef for the first view.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
Yeah, and so that was with the television show.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And that was it was kind of
like a year later. At least it was because what
happened was they pitched, they pitched like a little show
reel to Channel four and it sat with them for
like six months and then they passed on it. It
then went to BBC two and Mark Thompson commissioned it
in seven days. So I think, like, you know, knowing
(26:11):
what I do about commissioning now, I think there might
have been a gap and like they probably had a
BBC sort of remit for representing a wide group of
people when I was a bit younger.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
I guess I'm making this up. By the way, I
don't know.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
I have asked him since because he runs The New
York Times. Was he left, and he just said, like,
you know, I think he just he just said, I
just had a feeling and I took a call on it.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
But that doesn't happen that often.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
I mean, and TV is not as they're not they're
very risk averse and normally if you're on Teley, I mean,
how do we not come up with the Naked Chef?
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Which is I remember writing down what I.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Would and wouldn't do on TV and it said, you know,
stripping down restaurant food to its bear essentials.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
And stripping and bear a turenned me to the Naked Chef,
which is was that your title? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (27:00):
I didn't come up with it, but before that, the
working title was falking gorgeous, So thank god, I think,
I mean, both both were looking quite shady, but I
think Naked Chief just got away with it, and probably
more than anything, hit a moment and a sound and
a time and again, like I think timing, Timing is
an interesting master, isn't it? But it was, it was interesting.
(27:22):
It was a bit of a whirlwind, I think it was.
It felt like being in a pop band. And I
think because I was younger and I wasn't married at
that point, it was very larry. And thankfully I had Jewels,
who's obviously been with since I was eighteen, and was
you know, my rock, and I had good friends in
the business, and I had you and Rose, and I
(27:45):
have Mum and Dad, so I felt like safe enough
right now, I did the Naked chef in my holiday time. Yeah,
I mean I think I worked here until half until
(28:08):
the end of season two. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
I've still got that vesper.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
Do you know you got nigged and I ended up
buying my own vestper back off eBay, off of a
friend of a friend of a criminal. You've still got it,
still use it. It just makes a slightly different sound
going up the hill than it used to, slightly more strained.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
If you like listening to Ruthie's Table for would you
please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get
your podcasts. Thank you. I went saw an interview with
(29:02):
a great interview Michael Parkinson with George Best and Beckham
and George Best talked about the difference between his vulnerability
when he became you know, huge figure and he had
no one, There was no one. He went from being
a kid kicking a ball to being somebody that was
(29:23):
followed by paparazzi and given deals. And now when you
think you know the kind of surround that you have
of agents and pr and it's a very you know.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Quite well, but only through naivety and passion. I guess
is I looked after myself pretty early. I had an
agent for a bit and she was fantastic, but like
I knew she had many people, and I knew I
was one of many. So I sort of started the
production company. We didn't know what we're doing. Early employed
someone to look after me from like a legal point
of view. So I did that. I think that gave
(29:58):
me a lot of freedom in the early days. And
I think in those early days you can get eaten
out and spat out in about four years quite quickly,
and luckily I always sort of say it was like
like when I set up fifteen, it was such a
beautiful thing and a beautiful premise, and and well, why
did you do it? I said, Well, I wanted to,
I could, and I did. And it was as simple
(30:21):
as that I was young enough, stupid enough, and able
enough to do it. And obviously the scenario of having
a twenty four year old kid, I'd gone from having
no money to having like money in the bank, and
I spent all of it on fifteen, which was a charity.
So like, my dad was so worried about me. He
thought I'd lost the plot because he'd never made an
(30:42):
easy pound, so he was he thought, he was very concerned.
And there was about three weeks when I was theoretically bankrupt,
but luckily I got.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
Let's talk about fifteen, because when you say it was
a beautiful concept, it was. It wasn't just opening a restaurant.
It was a a restaurant with values and a kind
of philosophy and an idea of fairness and tell us.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
About well it was really it was kind of like
I think I felt from being that kid that struggled
at school, like is there anything that we could do
to kids that had gone off the rail or got
lost or had problems with the law, and even homeless kids.
And so we set up fifteen because the profits from
the restaurant would take fifteen kids every year and train
(31:27):
them for like sixteen months. And really it was a
very beautiful blend of the values that I'd learned at
the River Cafe with you and Rose, Mum and Dad
and Gennaro, and you could see it. I mean, it
was a very different restaurant, but also you could see
the China genetics in recipes of the River Cafe and
genera Mum and Dad and really mainly for you guys.
(31:51):
We took these kids on trips around sourcing from farmers
and you know it look some of these kids were
like drug dealers and frauds to and you know, and
we'd take them to catch wild salmon and then we'd
get a farm salmon and a wild salmon and we
do an autopsy and show the difference, and like seeing
(32:12):
is believing, and you start to get their wonder and
they're like, okay, so you haven't won them over yet.
But then you do that with pork, and then you
do that with foraging, and then you do that with
olive oil, and slowly but surely, about nine months in
the consistency And I think that's one of the things
I learned about lots of the things I love and
(32:33):
people that we love is consistency of how a person is,
how they dress, how they look after their yard or
whatever it might be, and their product. I think for
these young kids they had, most of them got in
trouble with the law because they had no consistency. And
through fifteen and the things that inspired me, we tried
(32:54):
to and we we graduated over eighty percent every year.
And for content text, that's the complete opposite of the
government when they rehabilitate young offenders, so they do about
twenty five.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
But yeah, we did that for seventeen years until sadly
it closed.
Speaker 4 (33:12):
But it also shows I think back to food. You
know that what you can what food can do, how
food can be, you know, a generator of fairness. As
you were talking about fifteen and taking these kids around,
I was thinking, well, is there something that could be
a catalyst as strong as food to motivate people to taste,
(33:36):
to experiment, to commit to learn. And I think, you know,
I think well maybe, I mean, would you it was
a fact, you know, tailor trying to teach people to
make suits, or a doctor trying to you know, to
get people healthy, all those professions. But there's something about
food which is so compelling.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
And I think if you did a broad strokes analysis
of all those young people that got in trouble in
their life or with the law, like what's beautiful about
cooking is you know, even on a bad day, there's
still I always see it like little jiffy bubbles, you know,
like it's not just a bad day, Like there's still
three or four positive bubbles of something you've learned that day.
(34:18):
So do you know what I mean, And I think
that's what's so nice about cooking. And then at the
end of the year, you've got all these bubbles that
you've learned, and then it's like, okay. So obviously from
what we'd learned at the River Cafe, we would sit
down and write menus every day and that was and
still is rare, but they kind of that the young
people would learn about food more from the debate about well,
(34:40):
should we could we?
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Is that right? Is that wrong?
Speaker 3 (34:42):
And so that was a very powerful experience for me,
and to be honest, until then, I'd never been political.
I'd never been a campaigner. I'd never had deep seated
feelings about what was right or wrong about I think.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
I think I don't feel that.
Speaker 4 (35:03):
I mean, politics is politics, but your values and your fairness, and.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
I think they were there, they were there, But I
think the idea of having a voice or expressing them,
or using a platform to amplify stories that had to
be told, I didn't really I didn't feel like i'd
learned that until fifteen, and as I got to know
their stories, and like, when you talk to young kids
about life of crime, it's so frightening and so sad
(35:31):
and it's so hopeless, and you kind of get down
to sort of nuts and bolts, like you know, mums
and dads that couldn't afford to feed them, and how
like a free school lunch was important, you know, and
like it was the only hot meal of the day,
and you hear it sometimes mentioned, but when you meet it,
when you see it, and you might have like, you know,
(35:53):
a lot of our students could handle themselves because they've
been through such traumatic lives, but yet there were still
grateful for the hot school lunch and to be that
free school lunch kid and the baggage that goes with it.
And of course that I started to realize then because
roughly around the same time, there seemed to be a
lot of press around how bad school lunches were, so
(36:13):
I kind of then went onto that.
Speaker 4 (36:22):
And in the next episode, we're going to talk more
about Jamie's school Meals campaign. We'll also head back into
the kitchen with Jamie to make a classic River Cafe recipe.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
The River Cafe Lookbook is now available in bookshops and online.
It has over one hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated with photographs
from the renowned photographer Matthew Donaldson. The book has fifty
delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a host of
River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted for new cooks.
(36:58):
The River Cafe Lookbook Recipes for Cooks of all ages.
Ruthie's Table four is a production of iHeart Radio and
Adami Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Adamized Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Hi, everyone, hope you well. Sorry to be familiar. I
just am because I'm ill. They always look like.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
He's quite familiar, is that guy?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hell?
Speaker 4 (00:33):
I can't say how many times when arriving in the
River Cafe in a taxi the driver will turned around
to me and say, is this the restaurant where Jamie
Oliver cooked the other day? One even informed me that
the River Cafe was owned by Jamie, and I thought,
why correct him? He is a prodigal son or the
(00:53):
brother who knows that when he walks in the door
of the restaurant, he is.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Home, not the old day. When was the last time
you're here?
Speaker 3 (01:01):
I try and get here at least two or three
times a year if I'm lucky, and I have to say,
it's a bit like therapy really see Charles.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Which always makes me very happy.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
We normally go through the same old jokes and then
crack onto a bit of new news, friends and family.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
But there's lots of nostalgia, isn't there.
Speaker 5 (01:18):
I think one of the things you always said is
that you love the reset of coming back to the
River Cap something you and Beggsy always said, Yeah, as
you go out into the world, and then it's quite
nice to get back to your roots and taste a
bit of that, get that River Cap experience again.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
It's like being home, which is lovely.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
Jamie came to work with us when he was just
about twenty, I guess almost thirty years ago. Rose Gray
interviewed him for the job and as it always said,
it was love at first sight.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Thank you, Euthie. Well, I love that. I remember the
first time Rose interviewed me.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Tell me about it.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Well, I had been working at the Nil Street restaurant
for a year and a half and I knew it
was time for me to move on. And I just
read this book, the first River Cafe book Blue, and
it just like changed everything. It was like it's like
a moment because just from a design point of view
and a feeling point of view and the black and
(02:13):
white reportage photos and it was.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Like fresh air.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
And I knew I had to get there, so I
phoned up and I came in. I was quite skin
and I had my first suit that was a really
cheap suit. Honestly, it was if it had gone near
a candle. We had gone up in flames so quickly,
and I turned up in a suit with a terrible
tie because my dad always said, like make an effort.
(02:38):
And I remember the headshef at the time and all
the chef's looking around just thinking like he's in a suitcase.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
You don't really wear suits the customers. But we definitely
bonded on.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
I think Ravioli was the place that we kind of
connected and then the rest was history.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Then did you come straight up?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah? Yeah, I couldn't wait.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
And it was like it was an amazing time because
you know, obviously you always look back with romance, but
it was an amazing time in Britain. And the River
Cafe was on fire and had come from, you know,
such humble beginnings. But was this extraordinary, unconventional restaurant doing
incredible things run of course by and Ruth in the
(03:23):
amazing team, but you know, cool Britannia, the music scene,
the fashion scene, the photography scene, the art scene. I
remember cooking with you for a new labor before they
got in, and during that they got in, and and
I remember the Millennium Dome as a sketch on a tablecloth,
and I remember it as a as a model that
(03:45):
was just a few meters away from the pastry section
while making chocolate Nemesis.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
And then I remember the real one, and.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Did you do you remember I was I was nineteen.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Yeah, I was nineteen years old and I came here
and I was.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
Ninety ninety eight, ninety eight, yeah, maybe ninety eight, but
nice memriag wondered Blair when the election wasn't ninety seven.
And then, as you said, there were the kind of excitement,
a kind of melding also politics and food and as
you say, culture and excitement. I certainly remember Rose calling
(04:19):
me up. I think I was away clearly when you were.
When you came through an interview in the suit, I
would have remembered it. And she said, you know, Ruthie,
this one you're going to love. This is you know,
this is somebody.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
I was so keen.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
I was so keen, and it felt like a family
straight away, and I'd grown up obviously in a family restaurant.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
I know.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
My last bit of advice from my dad to me
was like, just whoever you work for, just treat their
business like yours. And you haven't got one job, You've
got every job. If the phone rings picks it up.
If your floor needs moping, mop it. And I remember
just sort of coming to the River Cafe and it
actually felt like a family, which is actually it is
more rare than it's not that common even now in restaurants.
(04:57):
What you and Rose were doing was so untraditional from
what the kind of machine teaches. So I felt like
I was being liberated.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Well, your friend Ed Baines once said that, you know,
when he came to work for us, he said, you
know that song, I did it my way. Well you
should say we did it were away and we didn't
know what we were doing, but we just knew that
we were doing it our work.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
But you were right right, because I think what had
happened is I mean, I feel like I can look
at it objectively now, but like training is fine, but
it's it's for consistency, and you have structure, and it's
it was very male dominant, and which is very testosterone dominant.
And to go from that typical training and typical kitchens
to you and Rose was the most visceral, emotional, maternal,
(05:48):
common sense logical thing that ever happened to me. Ever,
and and because you were you, I mean, I know
you know what has happened here a special but when
you're an outsider coming in, it was it was like
someone had invented a new type of music. And I
remember the sheer worry of writing a menu at say
(06:09):
three point thirty for customers coming at six, because normally
your trains do like monthly menus, and here we are
doing two a day every day. And I remember just
doing the jobs list, and I remember seeing like you'd
have random people bringing in like overly Caesar mushrooms and you, well, Rob,
I start, we'll put them on now, and it's like,
(06:31):
but we just put no now, and like nothing everything
was now, and it was all about freshness, and that
energy was I remember. I remember thinking about crying for
about three weeks, not because of you or the team,
but just because of the stress of a new menu
twice a day was completely outside of what I knew.
But then you get used to it, and I learned
(06:51):
what you created was thinkers, Yeah, people that could adjust
and react to seasons and everything that was happening in
the industry was about protocol and structures and safety, whereas
we I don't know. It was so exciting to have
two women as bosses and owners. I think very male
driven kitchens, and I'm not saying this for any effect,
like quite aggressive, often flooded with drugs, and it was
(07:17):
quite scary. Yeah, And I knew those kitchens and I'd
worked in London and abroad and things like that, so
it was you know, even when I come in today,
you can see there's this lovely fifty to fifty balance
of them. And that's the holy grail I think. I mean,
I think if you skew one way or the other,
you can get issues, but.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
You know, it's but the thinking was so different. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
I think it also helped us so much having chefs
who worked in other kitchens, because neither of us. Rose
did a bit with McNally's in New York and a
bit with Carlucci. But somehow I remember the joy of having,
you know, young people who had actually experienced other kitchens
or contributed to us, who taught us, you know.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
The yin and yang of you and was really a
precious one as well, because you're you crossed over in
the middle, but you had strengths on other sides, and
that was quite.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Interesting to see a great partner.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Yeah, and I think, you know, like also having the
open kitchen where there was that connection with the customer.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Remember we used to answer the telephone and take reservations
when maybe it was before the time, but I literally remember, no,
I remember writing it down. You know, it's a table
for four, table for six, you know. And then going
back to kind of stirring the the televant in my head.
But if we go back, because you talk, you spoke
(08:35):
about your father, and you speak about, you know, the
way you grow up. And just even in the first
five minutes of conversation, he's present and he's telling you,
you know, whether it's to wear a tie, or to
be curious, or to treat a restaurant in a certain way.
So why don't we maybe begin also a little bit
at the beginning with the ol of our household. So
(08:57):
how many siblings do you have?
Speaker 2 (08:59):
I have one sister ancestor. She's a year younger than me.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Yeah. And so when you were growing up, who did
the cooking? Was it your mother? Father she did?
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (09:08):
I mean dad was a chain chef and he'd started
really young and also grew up in a pub that
did very good food.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Yeah, his father.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Yeah, and they still have Yeah, they had have a
pub called the Plow and Sow in Paglesham, which is
in a dead end near the River Blackwater, which is
where we used to get sea bass from Ben's Fish and.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
Then fish yeah, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Yeah and West Mersey Oysters. Yes.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
So that's where Dad grew up. And I was born
actually in South Fuckington, in South Fuckington in Grays, Essex,
so right in the estuary of Essex and got devastated
in the war. And Dad was the youngest license holder
in the country at the time. I believe he was seventeen. No, no,
(09:54):
I think in those days you could have it a
bit younger. He was at least eighteen, but I think
he was even younger. And then he had me at twenty.
So as soon as I was born, we got a
tatty old pub that was beautiful in a little village
called Clavering and it was a sixteenth century pub and
I obviously grew up there, but Dad, I mean I
(10:14):
remember a few things.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
That stuck out.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
So the chalkboards were daily, so that gave me some
sort of connection with the river cafe changing daily. The
game was local, the fish was only on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Lots of live crabs and lobsters and whole fish, whole
animals coming in to be butchered. He had a brigade
I only ever remember a brigade of at least six
on a shift. And the pastry was a proper pastry
(10:37):
of sort of Anglo French Swiss style. Am yeah, well
I thought it was normal, but of course even now
it's not normal. And you know, typical would have been
freezers full of stuff you could reheat. And he was trained, yeah, yeah,
and he really I mean he didn't go to school
much as a child, but he got a Student of
the Year at South End College and went and worked
(11:00):
in France as well, so he was kind of he
had a really good start. But he ran the pub,
and I remember little things like the head chef was
paid more than he paid himself, and I remember as
a child going with that carb be right, and he's like, no, no,
we've got to invest in the quality and get the
brigades steady. And of course these are all real things.
But it had a bar side and then it had
(11:20):
a restaurant side, which meant there was slightly two tones
of cooking with food, yeah, and quite Anglo French cooking,
so kind of things that you would get I guess
at the Wolseley or kind of like rules, you know,
classics like simply cooked game and beautiful over souls, you know,
(11:41):
cooked how you.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Liked it, but everything homemade.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
So that was I just wanted to go to London
for five years so I could learn some things then
come back and run apart.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
I remember, actually I remember you kind of very really
quite late. You were always really interested in the pub.
Did your mother work there as well?
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Yeah, she was a classic land lady in the sense
of that's not like an east Enders land lady, like
it's quite a glamorous role. And mum was very glamorous.
All I remember with my mum honestly was she'd get
ready for two hours, the smell of that hair spray
from the gold canister, and rollers, always enrollers, and then
this and always in sort of like nineties, and then
(12:18):
all of a sudden this outfit came on and the
hair was out, and then she'd go down about eight fifteen.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Two hours oh.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
And and just work in the locals and it was
a busy pub. And I think, I guess, in a
sort of cheesy sense, we went from a working class
family to a classic middle class family in about thirteen years.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
The cooking for you and your sister, how would she
do that? Between rolling her hair?
Speaker 3 (12:44):
She would do all the books, all the high Well,
Mum would do the hiring and Dad would do the firing,
and often Mum had to run after people that Dad
had fired to rehire them because he hadn't dealt with
the problem quite right. But Mum mainly did like classic
things really, like, you know, did you live in the pub? Yeah? So,
like my bedroom was not much bigger than this room,
which is like two and a half by four. Of course,
(13:06):
it was sixteenth century, so there's gaps all around the edges.
So everyone smoked such a lot. So you know, God
forbid I ever do get anything unhealthy with my lungs.
But if it was, it was because I had passive
smoking as a child.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
But yeah, I mean, so.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
You lived over so would you you had a diving
room and a kitchen or not?
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Really there was.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
There was two bedrooms in a front room, but in
the front room we had a little table, so we
Mum would cook down in the commercial kitchen in between shifts.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
She would cook dinner for you and your Yeah, but.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
They cooked well and Mum still cooks well today and
Dad still cooks well, but dad they're both retired now,
and which they did in lockdown.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
So you can you can imagine living upstairs from this pub,
having your parents.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
You know, always customers a lot.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Yeah, but of course I worked at the weekends for
pocket money.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
What did you do?
Speaker 3 (13:56):
I started up bottling up, which is replace certain. Well,
you go and look at the bar after a busy night,
and you look at all the empty shelves and if
you're lucky, you can see a little round marks where
all the bottles had sat, and you'd count them and
then you'd replace them, and then you'd recycle the bottles.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
How old were you when this was going on? Nine?
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Yeah, And I was in the wash up by ten.
And the wash up involved a lot of vegge preps,
so not dissimilar to at the River Cafe when you're
picking the herbs and all the stuff. And then I
really wanted to get into the kitchen, so I was
probably fully in the kitchen by about eleven. And they
had sections, so they had veg starters, mate, and they split.
You'd have someone putting food in the oven, someone taking
it out and serving it and then a pastry section.
(14:43):
But yeah, I mean i'd probably by the time I
was sixteen, I'd done the rotation of the kitchen maybe
three times. So I remember having to develop a skill
to teaching cooking. When I say teaching, like if you
had a twenty one year old come in from college
to get a job, as it's a commie chef, I'd
be fourteen and I'd have to train him. And obviously,
(15:05):
when you're fourteen, you haven't got a hair on your chin,
and these twenty one year olds looked like men. So
I had to sort of develop a way of teaching
without getting a slap that make them feel like they
were teaching themselves, and like teaching like well you left
or right handed? Okay, work from left to right.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
So this is this dish, and we prep this and
prep that, and we put that, put that on ice,
and you know, just try and set it up for
service so the service can flow. And I, obviously, being young,
I was cocky as well, so I often ended up
in the freezer. I often ended up with like why
because I've been maybe back, like somebody puts you in
the free freezer.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
Yeah, I close the door.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
And sit on it shin.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
It was a bit like the shining. If I'm honest,
I'm sure it was illegal. I'm sure it was with love.
But I'd finish shifts and take my jacket off and
there'd be clothes pegs with like there'd be like one
hundred clothes pegs and a few signs saying very unkind things.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
Does your father know they would?
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Yeah, I think he felt it was a kind of
initiation of some description. So of course, by the time
I was eighteen, I was well versed to stuff.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
Wow, I think that I do you think that might
go on now?
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Yeah? I think.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
I think wherever you have teams and institutionalized sort of training,
which I think kitchens have been, that there's that going on,
and it can be for best or for worst. I
think it's you posted something with your your team and
it was very clearly a fifty to fifty split of
men and women. I reposted it because.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
It's me Well, it was so powerful.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
The balance is so important in a really happy kitchen,
and if it's one hundred percent men or hell breaks loose,
and you know, if you can get to twenty percent,
that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
But fifty to fifty is definitely the h that's the think.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
There is a feeling that I mean, it's something that
I've always said that when people call up and say
a journalist might say, Wow, it's it's so hard being
a chef. It's so stressful, and I go, it must
be really hard being a journalist. You know, God, it
must be so stressful, because in a way you want
to take our profession and have it not be different
(17:16):
from other professions. You know, the kind of myth that
because we have to do you know, service so quickly,
or we have difficult customers, or chefs are yelling, that's
so old fashioned in a way. And now, certainly the
young people who work in the River Cafe're just not
going to put up with that anymore.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
I think just we're over that.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
I think as a kid that struggled in school, and
as an adult now with kids sort of looking at
where AI and technology and all the things that are
going to happen around learning and how that's going to
check affects learning in schools in the future. I think,
what I can I can thank you for a thousand things,
but one of the things that is most precious that
(17:55):
you and Rose taught me and the institution the family
that you create was how to think for yourself. So
that's really interesting because learning stuff is learning stuff, and
that's kind of what happens in school, but problem solving
and resilience and reacting to weather, which is therefore seasons,
which is therefore ingredients, which is therefore the two shifts
(18:16):
today that you know, Like it was really interesting as
a young chef, I would watch brilliant chefs come out
of Michilin Star kitchens and they go and do their
own thing, and they'd be doing versions of the same
thing that they left. And if you look at the
family tree that's come from the River Cafe, I mean,
I guess Sam and Sam from Morrow is a really
(18:36):
good first example, Like you can see River Cafe through
their heart and their soul. But it's they did this
incredible North African you know, and they not only went
into restaurants, they opened pizzerias and sandwich but they just
did brilliant things and you created thinkers, and I think
that's different. I always tell people there's ways to run
(19:00):
a kitchen. One is sort of through fear, and one
is through family.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Yeah, and family is a bit slower, but you get
much more back in return, and fear is very efficient,
but you get so little back.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
In the long run. I feel quite passionately about.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
That carl you chose. Was really interesting time for me
because it was in the Nil Street.
Speaker 4 (19:29):
Restaurant signed by Terrence Conrad.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Yeah, and next door to the Neil Street I mean
the Neil Street was famous for mushrooms and late night
serving because of the opera house. The kitchen was hidden
in the basement, so you didn't see much light all day,
so I was pretty vitamin D deficient. And you know,
Antonio was the wonderful character at the front door, smoking
(19:52):
a cigar, having a little a little whisky or something,
but not really in the kitchen. But Gennara was in
the kitchen and he was an incredible drawer. But he
didn't work in the restaurant. He worked in the very
first Carluccio's Deli, driven by Priscillaccio, who was Antonio's wife,
And that was really interesting because the kitchens were shared.
And I did nine until three, and then I did
(20:16):
six until one in.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
The morning every day every day.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
But then I did a third shift, which was three
until seven with Gennaro.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
So I did a third secret.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
Shift and how many how that was like I was.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
But I was so young I could do it.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
I mean I couldn't do it now, but I was
only really there to learn from Gennaro. And you know,
I knew I just had to make bread with Gennaro. Really,
so I'd asked Antonia. He said no. So I thought, well, look,
if I'm here till one, I can get the ovens on,
I can get the temperatures on, I can weigh out
all the flowers, I can get all the kind of
(20:54):
I kind of configured everything so he could work quicker,
and because I thought, poor man is getting up at
crack door and every day. So and one of the
clever things I did with the bread was all the
stale bread from that day they would finally whack, making
too very fine bread crumbs to dust the trays.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
We have to get a lovely crunch.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
And I'd sack about one hundred trays up to make
all these different breads, and I'd draw a little froud
messages in there and sort of like say good good
morning Gennaro, and just just to befriend him, because I
didn't know Hi at that stage, and as soon as
we became friends, he said, oh, don't worry about Antonio,
just come in. But it was an amazing I mean,
the restaurant was great. It was very traditional, slightly northern
Italian stuff. But what happened at night was amazing. Like
(21:36):
at four o'clock they had ding dong and there'd be
thirty policemen that would come.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
In and four in the morning.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Four in the morning before in the morning and I
get up there, open them up. There's police out here, Gennaro, let.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
The bastards in.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
I'm like, oh okay, and all these coppers were coming.
But the clearly it was their home. They sat down
as if it was their front room. They went behind
the bar. They started making espressos and we'd reheat the
stale bread from the day.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Before, give them the dale stuff.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
We eat it, and then we give them some light
honey and some jam and they'd be very happy and
they would you think I'm making it up, But yeah,
it was kind of great.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
British Bobby, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Yeah, I mean, I don't think it happened anymore, but
that sound like the good old day. Yeah, But they,
I mean they were very romantic and I think you
did give me a good base to tiptoe into the
River Cafe, and but the River Cafe really was where
my heart was at.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
You know. One of the amazing trajectories was when we
did a film called what was it called Christmas at
the Christmas at the River Gervet, and that was a
film that you know, really I remember you know you
fried mushrooms, didn't you.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yeah, well we did.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
I think Porlketta and Ritolo. And then I think I
was on hots too one night. And obviously I can
look at it back now sort of seeing because you,
I think, correct me if I'm wrong. You were filming
for a couple of weeks, the show that you were making,
and I wasn't so sposed to be working that night.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
I don't know if I ever told you this. I
don't know that.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
So the night that I was in the background of
your program, I wasn't supposed to be working. I was
off and my wife, Jewels was off as well, and
she worked at the River Cafe on the front of house.
We hadn't had a night off together for ages and
the phone rang about four o'clock and one of the
team had gone sick.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Jewels, you know, with all the best in the world.
I had to come and put the shift in, but
that's when.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
The crew was there, and actually they were kind of
in the way because I was catching my tail because
I was an hour and a half late for the
shift to cover someone and I was running Hot two, which,
as you know, is one of your busiest sections. I'm
sure it still is now. But it was free to
misso tagleateeley if I remember with Girols and Risotto, I do,
I do remember, and the slow pork of course.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
I didn't think anything of it. And the night went
out on TV like many months later, maybe six months later.
Possibly I didn't know I was in it because I
was working. But then the phones started to ring the
next day, literally the next day.
Speaker 4 (24:09):
I came in. I would say that I came in
that morning and said, wow, Jamie, you did a really great,
great thing with those mushrooms. You were amazing on television.
And then the phone rang, and I remember where it was.
The phone used to hang up on a hook in
the kitchen just when you came in. It was before
we had the really open kitchen, and it was a
call for you from Pat Lewellen came over to me
(24:31):
like Ruthie. Somebody just called me up and asked me
if I wanted to do a screen test? What's a
screen test? Should I go? And we didn't know anything,
and then they said, Ruthie. The newspapers called up and said,
do I want to do a column?
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Can I go? We had, sure, Jamie. And then a.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Supermarket is called up, could I go? And I say
that within a very short time, you had a column
in a newspaper, a television show, an advertising campaign with
the supermarket and they knew, they knew that you could
do all this, and you showed them that you could and.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
You did it.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
I mean, when I think about it, I mean I
remember when I had my twenty years anniversary and there
was loads of people together, and to think that it
really genuinely does come back to that phone court four
o'clock saying can you cover?
Speaker 4 (25:20):
What was it like from being a chef in the
river cap Who was around you, who was protecting you?
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Who was going I.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Didn't, Yeah, I didn't really have any protection for a while.
Everyone was perfectly lovely. But I'd done the first book,
like I couldn't write or type, so I did it
in dictaphone the responsibility of delivering it is like a nightmare.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
And then it was the naked chef for the first view.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
Yeah, and so that was with the television show.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And that was it was kind of
like a year later. At least it was because what
happened was they pitched, they pitched like a little show
reel to Channel four and it sat with them for
like six months and then they passed on it. It
then went to BBC two and Mark Thompson commissioned it
in seven days. So I think, like, you know, knowing
(26:11):
what I do about commissioning now, I think there might
have been a gap and like they probably had a
BBC sort of remit for representing a wide group of
people when I was a bit younger.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
I guess I'm making this up. By the way, I
don't know.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
I have asked him since because he runs The New
York Times. Was he left, and he just said, like,
you know, I think he just he just said, I
just had a feeling and I took a call on it.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
But that doesn't happen that often.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
I mean, and TV is not as they're not they're
very risk averse and normally if you're on Teley, I mean,
how do we not come up with the Naked Chef?
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Which is I remember writing down what I.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Would and wouldn't do on TV and it said, you know,
stripping down restaurant food to its bear essentials.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
And stripping and bear a turenned me to the Naked Chef,
which is was that your title? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (27:00):
I didn't come up with it, but before that, the
working title was falking gorgeous, So thank god, I think,
I mean, both both were looking quite shady, but I
think Naked Chief just got away with it, and probably
more than anything, hit a moment and a sound and
a time and again, like I think timing, Timing is
an interesting master, isn't it? But it was, it was interesting.
(27:22):
It was a bit of a whirlwind, I think it was.
It felt like being in a pop band. And I
think because I was younger and I wasn't married at
that point, it was very larry. And thankfully I had Jewels,
who's obviously been with since I was eighteen, and was
you know, my rock, and I had good friends in
the business, and I had you and Rose, and I
(27:45):
have Mum and Dad, so I felt like safe enough
right now, I did the Naked chef in my holiday time. Yeah,
I mean I think I worked here until half until
(28:08):
the end of season two. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
I've still got that vesper.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
Do you know you got nigged and I ended up
buying my own vestper back off eBay, off of a
friend of a friend of a criminal. You've still got it,
still use it. It just makes a slightly different sound
going up the hill than it used to, slightly more strained.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
If you like listening to Ruthie's Table for would you
please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get
your podcasts. Thank you. I went saw an interview with
(29:02):
a great interview Michael Parkinson with George Best and Beckham
and George Best talked about the difference between his vulnerability
when he became you know, huge figure and he had
no one, There was no one. He went from being
a kid kicking a ball to being somebody that was
(29:23):
followed by paparazzi and given deals. And now when you
think you know the kind of surround that you have
of agents and pr and it's a very you know.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Quite well, but only through naivety and passion. I guess
is I looked after myself pretty early. I had an
agent for a bit and she was fantastic, but like
I knew she had many people, and I knew I
was one of many. So I sort of started the
production company. We didn't know what we're doing. Early employed
someone to look after me from like a legal point
of view. So I did that. I think that gave
(29:58):
me a lot of freedom in the early days. And
I think in those early days you can get eaten
out and spat out in about four years quite quickly,
and luckily I always sort of say it was like
like when I set up fifteen, it was such a
beautiful thing and a beautiful premise, and and well, why
did you do it? I said, Well, I wanted to,
I could, and I did. And it was as simple
(30:21):
as that I was young enough, stupid enough, and able
enough to do it. And obviously the scenario of having
a twenty four year old kid, I'd gone from having
no money to having like money in the bank, and
I spent all of it on fifteen, which was a charity.
So like, my dad was so worried about me. He
thought I'd lost the plot because he'd never made an
(30:42):
easy pound, so he was he thought, he was very concerned.
And there was about three weeks when I was theoretically bankrupt,
but luckily I got.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
Let's talk about fifteen, because when you say it was
a beautiful concept, it was. It wasn't just opening a restaurant.
It was a a restaurant with values and a kind
of philosophy and an idea of fairness and tell us.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
About well it was really it was kind of like
I think I felt from being that kid that struggled
at school, like is there anything that we could do
to kids that had gone off the rail or got
lost or had problems with the law, and even homeless kids.
And so we set up fifteen because the profits from
the restaurant would take fifteen kids every year and train
(31:27):
them for like sixteen months. And really it was a
very beautiful blend of the values that I'd learned at
the River Cafe with you and Rose, Mum and Dad
and Gennaro, and you could see it. I mean, it
was a very different restaurant, but also you could see
the China genetics in recipes of the River Cafe and
genera Mum and Dad and really mainly for you guys.
(31:51):
We took these kids on trips around sourcing from farmers
and you know it look some of these kids were
like drug dealers and frauds to and you know, and
we'd take them to catch wild salmon and then we'd
get a farm salmon and a wild salmon and we
do an autopsy and show the difference, and like seeing
(32:12):
is believing, and you start to get their wonder and
they're like, okay, so you haven't won them over yet.
But then you do that with pork, and then you
do that with foraging, and then you do that with
olive oil, and slowly but surely, about nine months in
the consistency And I think that's one of the things
I learned about lots of the things I love and
(32:33):
people that we love is consistency of how a person is,
how they dress, how they look after their yard or
whatever it might be, and their product. I think for
these young kids they had, most of them got in
trouble with the law because they had no consistency. And
through fifteen and the things that inspired me, we tried
(32:54):
to and we we graduated over eighty percent every year.
And for content text, that's the complete opposite of the
government when they rehabilitate young offenders, so they do about
twenty five.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
But yeah, we did that for seventeen years until sadly
it closed.
Speaker 4 (33:12):
But it also shows I think back to food. You
know that what you can what food can do, how
food can be, you know, a generator of fairness. As
you were talking about fifteen and taking these kids around,
I was thinking, well, is there something that could be
a catalyst as strong as food to motivate people to taste,
(33:36):
to experiment, to commit to learn. And I think, you know,
I think well maybe, I mean, would you it was
a fact, you know, tailor trying to teach people to
make suits, or a doctor trying to you know, to
get people healthy, all those professions. But there's something about
food which is so compelling.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
And I think if you did a broad strokes analysis
of all those young people that got in trouble in
their life or with the law, like what's beautiful about
cooking is you know, even on a bad day, there's
still I always see it like little jiffy bubbles, you know,
like it's not just a bad day, Like there's still
three or four positive bubbles of something you've learned that day.
(34:18):
So do you know what I mean, And I think
that's what's so nice about cooking. And then at the
end of the year, you've got all these bubbles that
you've learned, and then it's like, okay. So obviously from
what we'd learned at the River Cafe, we would sit
down and write menus every day and that was and
still is rare, but they kind of that the young
people would learn about food more from the debate about well,
(34:40):
should we could we?
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Is that right? Is that wrong?
Speaker 3 (34:42):
And so that was a very powerful experience for me,
and to be honest, until then, I'd never been political.
I'd never been a campaigner. I'd never had deep seated
feelings about what was right or wrong about I think.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
I think I don't feel that.
Speaker 4 (35:03):
I mean, politics is politics, but your values and your fairness, and.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
I think they were there, they were there, But I
think the idea of having a voice or expressing them,
or using a platform to amplify stories that had to
be told, I didn't really I didn't feel like i'd
learned that until fifteen, and as I got to know
their stories, and like, when you talk to young kids
about life of crime, it's so frightening and so sad
(35:31):
and it's so hopeless, and you kind of get down
to sort of nuts and bolts, like you know, mums
and dads that couldn't afford to feed them, and how
like a free school lunch was important, you know, and
like it was the only hot meal of the day,
and you hear it sometimes mentioned, but when you meet it,
when you see it, and you might have like, you know,
(35:53):
a lot of our students could handle themselves because they've
been through such traumatic lives, but yet there were still
grateful for the hot school lunch and to be that
free school lunch kid and the baggage that goes with it.
And of course that I started to realize then because
roughly around the same time, there seemed to be a
lot of press around how bad school lunches were, so
(36:13):
I kind of then went onto that.
Speaker 4 (36:22):
And in the next episode, we're going to talk more
about Jamie's school Meals campaign. We'll also head back into
the kitchen with Jamie to make a classic River Cafe recipe.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
The River Cafe Lookbook is now available in bookshops and online.
It has over one hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated with photographs
from the renowned photographer Matthew Donaldson. The book has fifty
delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a host of
River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted for new cooks.
(36:58):
The River Cafe Lookbook Recipes for Cooks of all ages.
Ruthie's Table four is a production of iHeart Radio and
Adami Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Ruth Rogers
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