Best of Season Two: Part 1

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea or OSA in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing. If anyone has ever said you snored loudly or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability, and concentration issues, it may be due to OSA. OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at don'tsleep on osa.com.

0:39This information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company. Welcome to River Cafe Table 4, a production of iHeartRadio and Atomize Studios.

0:51Gwyneth Paltrow worked for a day in the River Cafe kitchen. She arrived early, dressed in professional chef whites, ready to cook. This memory speaks to how professional Gwyneth is. An Oscar-winning actor, she built Goop from a simple newsletter into an influential and uplifting business with energy, elegance, and strong values. Another memory. Ten years ago, just after the death of our son Beau, I asked Gwyneth if she might surprise the River Cafe team and sing one song for them, at our Christmas party to thank them for their care and concern for me. Gwyneth not only said yes, she sang four songs, danced with everyone, and stayed to the very end.

1:36In the River Cafe history, we still talk about the time Gwyneth Paltrow came to sing. I admire Gwyneth for being a brave, smart entrepreneur. I respect Gwyneth as a writer of recipes. Most of all, I love Gwyneth for being there with me that night and here with me today. Oh boy, I wasn't expecting that. That was so beautiful. Thank you. So if we were going to start at the beginning, what is the beginning? Where were you born? Where did you grow up? I was born here in Los Angeles, in Hollywood. We kind of went back and forth between New York City and Santa Monica a lot. I did a lot of preschool in New York City, and I did first and third grades in New York City while my mother was on Broadway.

2:26And then the bulk of the rest of elementary school here, and then moved permanently to New York City when I was 11. Can you remember the kitchens as we were talking about food? Okay, describe the kitchens. Were they very different, the LA house and the New York apartment? The kitchens were very different. So our kitchen in Los Angeles here had a brick floor, a red brick floor, and a tile counter, sort of like very country kitchen. Lots of windows, and you could see the backyard and the pool. And we were in there a lot. I mean, I think with every house, you're in the kitchen more than anywhere.

3:00Our New York kitchen was on the ground floor. We grew up in a townhouse, almost no windows, but we had a big fireplace in the kitchen, which was really nice. And it was more of a modern kitchen. It had been done by a Swedish architect. It was kind of minimal. And who cooked? Well, when I was little, I remember, I mean, my mom cooked. My dad started cooking a lot, but that was later. He got very into cooking kind of when we were older teenagers. And would you have meals around the table together? Would you and Jake and your parents sit down? Yeah. What were they like? They were really nice. Nice.

3:39I mean, it was, I think we felt special being included at the dinner table, even though it was a nightly event. It felt, you know, like if they had friends over, we sat with them at the table and had long conversations. It's something that I've carried on with my kids as well. You know, we always have dinner all together as a family, no phones allowed at the table and you get into great discourse with them and hear what they think about things. And I think my father made me feel that I was valuable during those dinners because he really elicited our opinion. He asked questions and my brother and I were very much a part of the conversation.

4:16What was his background? He grew up without money. He grew up on Long Island and they were kind of a working class, moving up into middle class Jewish family, but they didn't have a lot of disposable income and they didn't go out to eat. So when my father finally made it, you know, like his, and he loved food and all the beautiful things in life, you know, he loved beautiful fabrics and paintings and, you know, he would take me to every museum in the world and we would walk for hours. And I think food for him was really an expression of life's beauty and our blessings and good fortune to be able to eat something that was fresh and delicious and really well conceived and thought about.

5:05And he was so proud that we ate oysters and things that he hadn't come across until really later in his life. And I always remember, and I wrote about this in my first book, that when we would get into the car to go out to dinner, no matter how many times we had gone, Like he was so excited. It was like the greatest thing of all time that we were going out to dinner. Did you travel with your parents? Did you go to Italy or Spain? We never went to Italy until, you know, the first time I ever went to Italy with my father, he was when he died. He died in Florence, didn't he? He died in Rome. And we were doing our first kind of road trip after my 30th birthday.

5:56And, yeah, he kind of died on me, which complicated the trip a little bit. Does it complicate Italy for you? It did complicate Italy for me for a long time. I didn't go back for 10 years. And when we were on our road trip and I found out that he was sick and he had been coughing up blood and I said, we have to go to the hospital. He'd been hiding it from me because he really wanted to finish our trip. And I was like, we are going to the hospital. And he was like, no, we got to get to the Splendido. He really was trying. And I was like, we're going to the hospital. And he ended up dying. And then I had a real aversion to Italy for a long time.

6:40And then very sweetly, Chris Martin, my first husband, on my 40th birthday, 10 years later, And I was having a lot of anxiety about it anyway, because I think turning 40, I mean, I'm about to turn 50 and I kind of don't give a f***, but 40, I was like really had so much anxiety about it. And he, by that point, I had the two kids and we got on a plane and I didn't know where we were going. And we, all of a sudden I realized we were landing in Genoa and that we were going to the Splendido, which was so sweet. It was such a nice surprise. So it was like a completion. But Jake was with me and my two best friends, Mary and Julia, who've been my best friends, one since I was four and one since I was 11.

7:29They were with me. And my father was like a father to them, too. So it ended up being a really beautiful experience that we all got to be there and kind of come full circle. And now we bought a little farmhouse in Umbria. Where? just south of the Tuscan border. Great food in Umbria. You have the black truffles in the fall. You have lentils and, you know, boar. It's great. I know. It's a really special place. So I'm excited to spend more time there and to learn some Italian. What about Spain or France? Spain? So France, well, I kind of have told this like now. Now it's kind of a famous story about my dad taking me.

8:12my mom was doing a filming something in London when I was 10. We still lived in Los Angeles and we all made the trip over to visit her. And then my dad took me to Paris for the weekend and just he and I, and we stayed at the Ritz and we went to the Pompidou, we went to the Louvre, we went to all the museums. And my main thing was that I wanted to eat French fries, like actual French fries. So that was the first thing we did when we checked into the hotel is that I ordered French fries. Um, and he took me all around, you know, we were eating all kinds of things and, and, um, on the way back to London, he said, do you know why I took you to Paris?

8:57Just you and I. And I said, no. And he said, because I wanted you to see Paris for the first time with a man who will always love you no matter what.

9:12So sweet. So sweet. I mean, what you've been talking about is memories of a man who loved food, loved you, wanted to take you and indulge in new experiences to do with eating and cooking and spending time with you. And I think that, you know, that is about what we do. Food is memory and food is love.

9:39Hi everyone, hope you're well. Sorry to be familiar, I just am because I'm here. They always look like, what the? He's quite familiar, isn't he? Oh, it's that guy.

9:56I can't say how many times when arriving in the River Cafe 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 Cafe was owned by Jamie, and I thought, why correct him? He is a prodigal son or the brother who knows that when he walks in the door of the restaurant, he is home. Like the old days. When was the last time you were here? 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. You see Charles, which always makes me very happy.

10:34We normally go through the same old jokes and then crack onto a bit of new news. Friends and family, but there's lots of nostalgia, isn't there? No, well, I think one of the things you always said is that you love the reset of coming back to the River Cafe. It's something you and Begsy always said. Yeah. 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 Cafe experience again. It's like being home, which is lovely. Jamie came to work with us when he was just about 20, I guess, Almost 30 years ago, Rose Gray interviewed him for the job and, as always said, it was love at first sight.

11:09Thank you, Ruthie. Wow. I love that. I remember the first time Rose interviewed me. Tell me about it. Well, I had been working at the Neal 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 white reportage photos and it was like fresh air. And I knew I had to get there. So I phoned up and I came in. I was quite skint and I had my first suit that was a really cheap suit.

11:49Honestly, if it had gone near a candle, it 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 first impression and I remember Theo who was head chef at the time and all the chefs looking around just thinking like he's in a suit what's he doing at the river because you don't really wear suits at the river cafe even our customers don't wear suits no I know so I really stuck out but we definitely bonded on I think Ravioli was the place that we kind of connected and then the rest was history then did you come straight away yeah straight away yeah and I couldn't I couldn't wait and it was like it was an amazing time because you know obviously you always look back in in with romance but it was an amazing time in Britain and the River Cafe was like on fire and had come from you know such humble beginnings but was this extraordinary unconventional restaurant doing incredible things run of course by you and Ruthie and the amazing team but you know call Britannia the music scene, the fashion scene, the photography scene, the art scene.

12:53I remember cooking with you for New Labour before they got in and during they got in. And I remember the Millennium Dome as a sketch on a tablecloth. And I remember it as a model that was just a few metres away from the pastry section while making Chocolate Nemesis. And then I remember the real one. What year did you remember? I was 19 years old when I came here. And I was here. So that was 19... When did Blair win the election? Was it 97? And as you said, there was a kind of excitement, a kind of melding also of politics and food and, as you say, culture and excitement. I certainly remember Rose calling me up.

13:38I think I was away, clearly, when you came for your interview in the suit, or 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 i was so keen i was so keen and it felt like a family straight away and i'd grown up obviously you know in a family restaurant i know and 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 mopping mop it and and i remember just sort of um coming to the river cafe and it actually felt like a family which is it's actually it is more rare than it's not that common even now in restaurants what you and rose were doing was so untraditional from what the kind of machine teaches i remember i remember thinking about crying for about three weeks not 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 what you created was thinkers yeah people that could adjust and react to seasons and 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 are quite aggressive um often flooded with drugs and it was quite scary yeah uh 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 50-50 balance.

15:14And that's the holy grail, I think. I mean, I think if you skew one way or the other, you can get issues. But, you know, it's... But the thinking was so different. One of the amazing trajectories was when we did a film called... What was it called? Christmas at the River Cafe. And that was a film that, you know, really... I remember, you know, you fried mushrooms, didn't you? Yeah, well, we did, I think, porchetta and ritolo. Yeah. And then I think I was on Hots 2 one night. You were on Hots, yeah. And obviously I can look at it back now, sort of seeing, because 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 supposed to be working that night.

15:59I don't know if I ever told you this. No, I don't know that. 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 Jules was off as well and she worked at the River Cafe on the front of the 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. Jules, you know, we've all the best in the world. Like I had to come and put the shift in. But that's when 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.

16:34and I was running hot too which as you know is one of your busier sections I'm sure it still is now but it was it was frito misto tagliatelle if I remember with gerolds and risotto I do I do remember and and the slow cooked pork of course yeah I I didn't think anything of it and the night it went out on tv like many months later maybe six months later possibly um 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. I came in, I always say that I came in that morning and said, wow, Jamie, you did a really great, great thing with those mushrooms.

17:15You were amazing on television. And then the phone rang and I can 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 Llewellyn. He came over to me and he went, Ruthie, somebody just called me up and asked me if I want to do a screen test. What's a screen test? Yeah, yeah. Should I go? I didn't know anything. And we didn't know anything. And then he said, Ruthie, the newspapers called up and said, do I want to do a column? Can I go? We said, sure, Jamie. And then a supermarket is called up.

17:45He said, can I go? And I would say that within a very short time, you had a column in a newspaper, a television show, an advertising campaign with a supermarket. market and they knew, they knew that you could do all this and you showed them that you could and you did. I mean, when I think about it, I mean, I remember when I had my 20 years anniversary and there was loads of people together and to think that it really genuinely does come back to that phone call at four o 'clock saying, can you cover?

18:2510 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points. You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an iFit contract for$250 ,000. This is where mindset comes in. Someone will be eliminated. Pressure is coming down. This is Trainer Games. Watch it on Prime Video starting January 8th. Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Smart Talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO, Arvind Krishna. And I asked him, how can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business?

19:12My one advice to them, pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example? If anybody has more than 10 % of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind. If anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30 % more productive today, with the goal of being 70 % more productive. Yeah. Wow. So we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it. We say, you can leverage what we did. We are happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change in the process, because the biggest change is not technology.

19:57It's getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things. To listen to the full conversation, visit ibm.com slash smarttalks.

20:14Some weeks ago, Ian Wright and his beautiful family were sitting here in the River Cafe Garden celebrating Nancy, his wife's birthday. Ruthie, the waiter said to me, please go and ask him to do a podcast, especially for all of us. We know he loves to eat, but we want to know more about him. He is our hero. Ian does a lot that I could never dream of achieving. For instance, kicking footballs into nets. But we do share a lot as well. Concern for healthy eating for children, advocacy for social justice, a more fair society, and an end to racial discrimination. Today on Table 4, we're going to get to know each other better, discussing all this and more, including having delicious lunches with our family.

20:59Thank you so much for doing this. And you're going to stay for lunch? Yes, yes. Because you do love to eat out, don't you? Yes. I see you here and you always seem so happy. Did you eat out as a child? No. This is probably why I love eating out so much. I didn't actually start eating out until obviously I think probably 21, 21, 22. Didn't have a lot of experiences of going to restaurants. And even when I started doing that, I started eating pasta very late in my life. My mum never, there wasn't a lot of variety. It was a lot of West Indian food. It was stew chicken. It was curry goat, mutton, tripe, pig's trotters, oxtail, white rice, rice with peas, boiled dumplings.

21:40so it was that kind of food all the way up until that point and I remember when I started playing football at Crystal Palace um I used to get very nervous about going to like we used to have to go to hotels you used to have to go to restaurants and communal eat all of us together and I was very um insecure about it because I didn't know I didn't know food so and then we had older players who were really they're quite mean let's say things like you know I you know you've got dauphinoise on there, you know, you've got sauté potatoes. And they'd say things like, you know, you don't even know how to spell dauphinoise.

22:13You know what I mean? Do you know what sauté potatoes are? Can you afford steak? So what I would do is I would end up then getting my mum to make me something. I'd go down so the boss would see me. And then I'd say for a five minute, and then I'd leave. And get my food warmed up by the people in the kitchen. And I'd eat in my hotel room. And that's what we used to do when we was younger. We used to all eat either in the bedroom or in the living room in front of television or stuff like that. So I was more comfortable doing that. But my problem was insecurity about ordering the food. It's intimidating.

22:45And it was intimidating to the point where the manager, I've done it a few times, about three or four times he didn't see me at dinner. And I remember in the morning he said, where are you? I'm not seeing you at the dinner. That's how I get together. And then I explained to him why. And then he kind of sorted that out for me. You had a word with them, you know, obviously, you know, it didn't help because obviously when people. It's bullying. Yeah, it was, it was, it didn't help. But then I just, I just blasted through it. And so off of the back of that, you know, you start to, because you get into a situation where you can go to nice restaurants.

23:21And so when I go, I love it. So when you talk about being excellent at your sport, right? Being able to do what you do so well and that you're on a team and then going to a meal time was painful. And it was painful because you were made to feel, you know, unable to do that. I feel a bit inferior, to be honest. I was 21. In fact, I just turned 22 when I joined Crystal Palace. It was very late for me. And a lot of my experiences started to come as learning on the job about mixing with people, different people, worldly people. You know, even just the knife and forks from outside in, you know, knowing what to do.

23:59You know, you sit there and you're nervous. and so those were the kind of intimidating things about going to a restaurant or eating with people that used to really frighten me because I never we ate on our laps literally all the way through and so it's obviously was your mother working was it no no so was there a table where you could sit no the kitchen wasn't big enough for a table for the four so it was my mom it was my mom my stepdad my my older brother uh me and my sister right so you know there wasn't enough space for all of us to sit and have that dinner and have that chat we never done that yeah you know that's something that's happened to me later in my life would you tell me about arson wenger wow the thing with him is that he was a how can i say a visionary a visionary in the way he came and changed the diet what year are we talking about 1996 95 96 when he got there and you know food for arson wenger was fuel to perform.

25:01He came in and he changed the diet from steak and chips and anything you wanted to proper food, like everything that is good for you. But the thing, what it was, with all the vegetables and the rice and the chicken steamed, you know, no seasoning, no salt. Really? No salt, no seasoning, no nothing. All we could do is drink water and eat this bland food. Where was he from? It's kind of Austrian French. He's on that border. And when he came in, it's the first time I realized that it's not about liking what you're eating. It's the fact that you have to be eating this for that slow sugar release that you need when you're performing at a level where you need your energy and your energy has to be there constantly.

25:45This is why sweet things and certain things that just shoot you up like that during the game, you'll have to come down because if you shoot up, you have to come down. So this is why pasta and broccoli and cabbage and carrots and all those vegetables, they give you that slow sugar that burns continually so you can stay at a certain level and you can continue to perform. And it was very difficult at the start. But like when you started to see everybody doing it and you could see, and obviously we had vitamins to go alongside that. But when you saw everybody starting to doing it and enjoying it, then they're taking it into their home lives.

26:17They do the same at home. and all of a sudden you're realizing this is for us to perform to the best of our ability to the point where when you go to restaurants you'd almost feel guilty to have anything that wasn't going to enhance you you know arsene wenger he had no problems after the game for you to have a sugar rush like a donut or something but then monday you've got to be back on that you train really hard it's tough that's tough and then what happens is is that you realize that if you're not eating right you're not taking the vitamins right you will see that you are you're lagging behind the guys who are doing it religiously to the point where again you go into a dressing room roofie and you know it is very competitive very competitive especially when you go into dressing room where you're trying to attain and achieve everybody there's the margins are very small for yeah we practice and we train to a level where we say well they better they better be training as hard as we are because if not we are going to destroy them and that is what we were striving for.