Bonus: Behind the scenes at The River Cafe over Father's Day

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1:25How does a restaurant work? What are the concerns that we have as chefs, as managers, as waiters, as suppliers? The sun has come out. There are holidays. Wimbledon's going to be coming soon. And we're doing parties and we're doing a wedding. And so every day is a different day. And so we thought today we would talk to you, Sean, Joseph, and myself, about the River Cafe and what we're thinking about and doing right now. Over to you. So tell me, we had a pretty intense weekend. So I'm reeling off the back of yesterday lunch, which was a Sunday, a 280 cover lunch in the main restaurant. And feeling like I've probably run a small marathon, maybe a little mini marathon.

2:13When you say 280, what does that feel like? Because would you say if it had only been 220 or if it had been 180, what do you balance that against? Probably it's not a number, is it, when you're looking at the number of people you cook for. It's more about how that number rolls through the day. And I think I, on reflection, if this is the therapist's couch, I would say that I probably wrote a too difficult a menu. you know I'll be introspective here so I thought because it was Father's Day I thought I'd try and do some dishes for families I thought there'll be a lot of families coming out so I did one dish which was um the beefsteak of Fiorentina takes you to Tuscany it's a really classic dish that I think is is fun because you basically get a whole a beefsteak of Fiorentina is a is a t-bone but it's thick cut it's a it's um cut as if it was a double thickness and it has sirloin on one side and fill it on the other and we char grill it and then would roast it to finish it off and then we serve it on a massive plate and you can share it for two or three people and I thought that's going to be amazing all the fathers out there having their steak

3:39i thought what would be really nice would be some tuscan roasted potatoes some little potatoes rosemary and garlic and olive oil another plate of um some green bitter green vegetables some chikoria with olive oil and then i thought it would be really nice with two sauces horseradish fresh horseradish with creme fraiche and salsa verde and that all sounds like dreamy but what I hadn't really thought through was the fact that you need for that one dish you need one plate with the beef on one plate with potatoes on one plate with greens on one plate with sauces on and the plates for the people so the person who's taking the food out had to basically go back to the table several times with all these extra accoutrements which was just people were in a lather taking the food out it was just like for every steak there were six plates rather than And someone having a steak and having one plate, there was like a feast arriving.

4:35We had it. So I came as a guest yesterday and Noah always orders beef. We love the beef. And it was incredible. It was incredible. It was just so great to have this piece of beef brought to the table. And actually the sides look beautiful on the separate plates. And you could choose the potatoes were dark and crisp and the greens were just kind of juicy and the sauces. So as you were describing it, it doesn't sound like the easiest thing, but did a lot of people order it? We had 16 whole Fiorentinas to sell and we sold all of them. We could have sold more. So that's about 32 people, 40 people having that.

5:17And the other dish, shall I tell you about the other dish? Yeah. I decided to totally stitch up the kitchen early on in the day by doing another dish that I thought would be really family focused, which was an erosto misto I don't know why I thought of doing that on such a busy day so I sent a note to the kitchen when I woke up in the morning but I was up earlier but I sent a note saying I wanted to debone three rabbits and then um so we need to debone the rabbits that's already quite a skillful job then we wanted to stuff them with breadcrumbs livers rosemary pancetta roll it up and then wrap it in prosciutto then tie it and then that would be roasted as one part of a dish that's what i'm ordering it was and then that was going to be served with um a liver crostino slow cooked peas and a half a pigeon and so in theory for a nice 50 to 100 cover lunch that's manageable but for that many people it was really hard going it's funny because i was here the saturday night and i saw the um it was on saturday night i think it was carlotta and she was laying out the menu you know just saying what was available what were you going to have and i saw a rosto misto and i thought wow okay i thought it was joseph's idea I thought it was Joseph Oh I'm getting blamed Yeah you're getting blamed I said oh it was Joseph on And he thought that would be A nice thing for Sean to do On Sunday lunch And no The message came back It was Sean's idea So I thought okay This was Sean's idea And she's doing it That's okay And I did notice A few aren'tinas But both of them were You know Was it fun?

7:03It was fun And the fact that It was a busy day And we sort of Spend the whole year Knowing that in this week The next few weeks We've got Queen's tennis Wimbledon there's Henley it's a London season people come to London for art people come to London for parties don't they absolutely and so the River Cafe the next two months is full throttle and so all the chefs know that so people they're kind of pumped I guess they kind of know what's expected of them and um because I went in there a few times and you know usually you see and the thing that scares me is when you go in there when I'm working in there was when you just have a build-up of tickets and you see the whole line of tickets but i never saw more than like four or five on each level of the detective grabber it looked like you were big tables i think yeah maybe oh you sort of did it and then took a table down i think there were lots of bigger tables so there were sixes and eights rather than like so you could have a whole order board full of tables of two or you could have a smaller order board but with bigger tech bigger tables i think maybe that was it but never has the staff drink at the end of the day tasted so good that was a fun part that was a fun part decompress what have you been cooking jim what have we been cooking a lot this week been um thinking about the pizzas this week that we've been serving and looking at the types of flour and uh the recipe for our pizza dough i like the way in the river cafe is so it's this combination of like what sean's been talking about things you do in the moment that are just you know could be just in fact keith mcnallage was just asking us about the menu we say is that when do you try out stuff you know we can just yeah have a go at doing something and then we might not do it again which is really lovely but as so aside that kind of incredible freedom really there's also these things that we constantly do like pizza and squid and um it's really nice actually um i quite like the just digging a bit more down into we've got a new baker here who's making the dough for us and i've been talking to him this week about making some adjustments i think the great thing is that we've been having lately is the pesto you know that we're doing pesto right now and we've been waiting for pesto to start and still i don't know how you feel about the basil whether it's sort of that really green peppery that you get more in july we do have a way of making it that is quite light now let's talk to the people are listening about pesto i mean what What is your idea of pesto?

9:36I would start with the basil because we already have a situation in the kitchen with the basil, how it's prepped. Because we get this basil, which is DOP basil from Liguria. Can you describe to the listener what DOP is? Will you describe DOP basil? So it's not often it's used for wine or for things that's come. It's protected, comes from the specific place. so the the basil that they grow in luguria i've always been told doesn't grow anywhere else you know you can't they try and take the same seeds south and it doesn't work so the lugurian basil that we buy is comes in these little light green leaves in a bunch that is protected in a box and it's so delicate as soon as you open the box and start using it the basil starts to you know will to go away I'm not going to talk about how much it costs but it's phenomenal you can and because somebody listening they might want to get this basil first of all can they find it well we buy this basil sometimes for as much as seven pounds a bunch of basil and that's you know bring in mind we're buying boxes of it it's very expensive it almost looks like a bridal bouquet yeah it's so beautiful so cute I almost thought and a great big pink wrapper down the aisle with basil yeah you should see the box it really is beautiful yeah it is yeah and so you're right over the last few years i think we've really perfected this kind of like kind of light green paint emulsion paint type kind of pesto that is absolutely beautiful and is so and it's really useful here on days obviously days like today when it's sunny and bright but also you know like you get in london you get bad weather in the summer and i always think putting this beautiful pesto on the menu brings this brings the sun in you know so this is a lovely way we can we can use the menu and at the same time sometimes when you just need a tiny bit of pesto might make it old-fashioned in a mortar and pestle you know putting leaf by leaf you know and crushing leaf by leaf and getting a slightly more rustic sort of dark green pesto which i don't mind so much to put like a dollop in the middle of a soup or something i had the soup i had the minestrone with this pesto in the middle and also we do the pea soup with pesto I like pesto in soups you know just a little dot what is your we went what was the name of that restaurant we went to in Liguria we were went together where they put the bibs around NX and then they made us this super smooth pesto yeah and we got the feeling they were making it like literally to order Santa Margarita right yeah they give you that that very well what's your technique for making Well, so there's like various house styles, aren't there?

12:16So since then we were like, how do they make this pesto? It's so pale green. Not like what you might imagine you could buy in a deli. It's almost, I really think Farron Ball should make a paint colour called River Cafe Pesto. Maybe it could be a paint that sort of will go khaki quickly, like the pesto when you leave it out. How would you describe the green? It's almost like. It's pale, pale, pale. like lettuce green. So pale green. And that comes from, I mean, when I was taught that in the kitchen, they put it in a vertical blender. They don't put it in the, neither in the Cuisinart, nor do they pound it or, you know, it's that verticalness, which really whizzes it up and almost foams it, you know.

13:04And you're trying to sort of avoid the basil oxidizing really, aren't you? I think they're trying to retain the green. So tell somebody listening how to make. So we used to, think how do they get it this pale? Then we found that with a little bunch of basil packed, I found that you don't want to pick the basil, pick the leaves, because the stalks are so delicate that you can just use a stalk as well. So I would fill a large bowl of water, dip the basil head in it, and swish it around. But then any of the water that's left, I think, helps with the emulsifying of the oil and water because you need a bit of water in it yeah and then you have um you know for one bunch of basil probably 50 grams of pine nuts and maybe a half a clove of garlic probably about 50 grams of parmesan and then we put it all in the liquidizer with a probably about 150 ml of olive oil give or take and then switch it on and the water and the oil and all of that washes up and then it becomes this green pale green paste which is just so you think oh I wonder what that's going to taste like and then you taste it and it's literally like all the flavors in the pesto in this smooth liquid is amazing so it's so beautiful on the plate and also I think especially you know um the pesto that you have in Liguria you often have with lasagnetti this very thin sheets of um of pasta and I used to watch the woman and she You just would spoon it over and it was just so, so thin and yet so strong.

14:41But I think you do need something liquid. You need a bit of water or something other than the olive oil and the pine nuts because it just doesn't whiz up. You need something. I remember a Ligurian chef who worked here. Do you remember Lorenzo? Yes. This is more than 15. Yes, Lorenzo. Who knows how long ago. And I remember making pesto with him when I was, you know, a chef in the back of the kitchen with him. And him asking me what the ingredients were, the classic kind of a table. So what do you think goes in a pesto? Pie, nuts, you know, cheese, whatever. And he said, you've missed an ingredient out.

15:15And I was like, what have I missed out? And what's your, and he's like water. Water, yeah. Yeah, that was, you know, he was like, you need to have a little bit of water to make your pesto. So good. We are now officially expecting a heat wave, okay, this week. And so we've got to think about what, when we order, what are we thinking about? When it gets hot, and I know that we're going to be hot in the kitchen, you sort of think about the well-being of the team. So true. Because it's kind of, I remember a few summers ago where we had a proper mega heat wave in London and we ran a sweepstake on how hot it was going to get above the grill.

15:51And the person who got the temperature right got a glass of champagne. And we bought big blocks of ice. We bought these blocks of ice that people buy to carve just to have them hanging around. Because we don't have air conditioning, do we? And so we'd probably try and do the cooking early on in the morning when it's cool and then turn the ovens off. So you like, you guys say like, we do like the wild trout cooked in sea salt or turba in sea salt. We can do vitello tonato, sea bass carpaccios, cold longestines with aioli. I really like it when we grill and then roast the fish. Oh, that's so nice.

16:28Yeah, grilled and roasted sea bass in cookbook one. Yeah. And think about, I always think about the customer sitting outside with a cold glass of rosé that always looks so appetizing. And then like what food goes with what, you know, that kind of thing, isn't it? You kind of think, do you want to eat finely chopped up raw veal on a boiling hot day? I don't know. You sort of think maybe not. So you probably don't. We're careful with risottos on hot days. We don't often serve risotto just because of the rice being a bit something you might not fancy on a hot day. Although those tomato risottos sometimes seem really summery in the evening.

17:04Delicious. In the evening, yeah. Thank you.

17:12Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table 4 in partnership with Montclair.

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