Bonus: First Days At The River Cafe

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1:34You are listening to Ruthie's Table 4 in partnership with Moncler. Hello and welcome to this bonus episode of Ruthie's Table 4. The question that I always ask people who have worked here for a while is, do you remember your first day? and so I thought today would be really interesting to hear from two people, our executive chef Sean Owen and Joseph Trevelli, about their first day and how they think about somebody coming to work now on what will be their first day. Sean, do you remember your first day? I remember coming for my interview. I remember meeting you, but Rose interviewed me and I'd been very lost because it's really hard to find the River Cafe.

2:25Is it? Really? It's so true that I had the same experience. You get lost, don't you? So if you can find it, then you're probably... Yeah, that's a step ahead. It's like part of the initiative test. Exactly. But I remember Rose saying, I'll teach you to cook. I'll teach you how to cut prosciutto to the perfect thickness. I'll teach you how to cook beans to the perfect thickness. And I'd come from working for another chef called Darren Simpson who also worked for you guys, didn't he? and he had sent me he was moving to australia and um he sent me here because he was like i know the perfect place that will really suit you you should go work for rose and ruth well he actually said auntie rose and auntie ruth and so then i got my first um trial day and i remember theo randall was on because he was a head chef at the time and he gave me four jobs which i would never give anyone on their first day.

3:18It wouldn't even cross my mind. Rebelita, artichoke fritti, cavalladero puree, and dragon cello sauce or A &R, one of those. And I was working so hard to get all that done. And I remember just being on my nerves the whole of the shift. And I remember Rose standing in the kitchen by the window and telling me that she'd give me a job that afternoon. Whereas now we would give people much more than a couple of hours. Not if they did, we believe, to Artichoke Fritti Dragon Cello. That's a fact. And they did it well, you might say, don't let this girl out of the front door, we're keeping her. But nowadays we'd never give someone that much to do.

4:00No. So you came in what year? December 99. And so then cut to... I came in January 2001. Yeah. So a year later, and in this year in between, when Shana started here, I started working for your ex-head chef called Darren who'd emigrated to Sydney, and I worked with him in Sydney for a year. And then he sent me here as well, you know, which would have been my dream. You know, I was addicted to the Italian Kitchen on television. The Italian Kitchen is a program that we did for Channel 4. It's brilliant. Rose and I, we had two seasons, I think. One season was in London, and then I think we did a season where we went to Italy, yeah.

4:40I just remember being about, I don't know, 22 or something, and watching it and it was just so stylish and the food just looked so good and I remember asking I worked with this guy called Steve Harris actually he's become a very very successful famous chef in the meantime but I remember saying to him do you think I could work at a place like that and he was like he was like yeah you should just go I was like I've never been to cooking school they wouldn't look at me he's like no you should go there and so anyway I went to Sydney worked for Darren Darren sent me here and then I came in and yeah absolutely was terrified I think I think I made salsa verde, which I would say is pretty standard.

5:16Yeah. You know, like entrance, because you sort of see, you talk to someone about chopping stuff up, then you talk to them about how to make something balanced. You know, it's very important kind of fundamentals. And I definitely did that. I remember doing that with Peter Begg. Yes. Who's, you know, an incredible chef. Was Jamie here? Was Jamie here? His locker was still in the changing room. And then we used to have stages come in and take photos of the locker. because by then he was really famous I remember about a week later I was terrified and I think a lot of new people, they still do this I burnt myself really badly I can't remember how and I was just used to being in let's be honest, Darren's kitchen where it was much more macho and it didn't really suit me to be honest in a lot of ways although in a lot of ways I loved it but being here and burning myself really badly and just assuming I just cover it with a tea towel and carry on.

6:11And then you brought me outside and gave me a cup of tea and sat me down. And I think I had smoked a cigarette and I just knew this was it. I'm in the right place. And that was that. So you think about covering up your mistake when you do something wrong and then you want to cover it up so that nobody finds out. Have you ever thrown something away so that they don't see it? Of course not. Of course not. We still do. Are you kidding me? That's what I'm saying. Yeah, exactly. Don't look in the bin. Don't let anybody see. I've done one where I was cooking the pigeon on Hot Swan, which is a wood oven section.

6:44And you have to be, by the time you're cooking on the wood oven, you're like quite an accomplished River Cafe chef, aren't you? So you're cooking the pigeon, and it was with probably something like lentils and Swiss chard. And then one of Theo's things where you split a bit of creme fraiche in at the end. And then I finished service, and I just got to the bottom of the bowl of creme fraiche and realised I'd used a panna cotta. A panna cotta. for the whole night. I saw the vanilla pop at the bottom of the bowl and the vanilla is probably rather delicious. But what also I remember more than like obviously the food and the vegetables and that guy who used to come with a big pig over his shoulder every week and it just felt otherworldly to be honest to me.

7:26But then also just making friends like in the first week I became friends with Sian and then I made loads of mistakes and she helped me out. Yeah. You know, I just wasn't used to that. My experience in Australia had been far from that. It's like everyone on the line was trying to outdo the person next to them whereas here it just felt like I was making friends and being helped. I remember the story about the waitress who on her first day maybe it was her second or third day we found her crying and we said why are you crying and she said well I came to work and I was so hungry I bought a croissant on the way in and Richard Rogers came in and saw it at the bar and ate it.

8:11He ate my croissant. We said, OK, well, you better get used to that. But it was also really lovely working here with Richard's office next door. Their lights were always on. They were always here later than us. And I had that real feeling of that bustle of not just of them having lunch, but just being around and designing buildings. It was just really nice. It was nice. They used to come and ask us to look at drawings. I remember going over. Do you remember going to the model shop? Yeah, of course. And then, you know, we'd ask them to come over and taste the soup. You know, it was a kind of very, very kind of issue.

8:45But I think thinking about your first day and your first day, does that make you really think hard about a chef coming in here on their first day? Nowadays, we generally interview people who would send in an interesting CV. a CV that doesn't have to have hundreds of top restaurants a couple of a couple of restaurants that they've worked in of note I would say rather than it being the first job that they've ever done but it's not to say we don't take people at that level so then they've come and do a couple of days in the kitchen so we can see how they move in a kitchen life skills cleanliness approach their kind of manner and sort of spatial awareness you don't think that that's something you look out for but you can people can just it's almost like doing a dance in the kitchen everyone moves around everyone really sort of organically almost don't they and a good chef I think has that they're very spatially aware and you can learn it yeah you can learn it it's not like something that you have to have or not but it is really good I'm often asked that question how do you know And when do you know that somebody's going to be an important part of a team?

9:59When do you know that somebody can work in the kitchen? So after a week, you have an intuitive sense of whether they'll work, the way they move, the way they accept criticism, the way other chefs respond, the way they cook, of course. I agree with that. And I think we've got such a good team that get along really well, you know, in a specific kind of river cafe camaraderie way. Like quite often, I love it. if I've been on holiday, I said, they'll come back and Sian will say, oh, I interviewed so-and-so, you know, you're going to really get on with them. You know, it's this sort of part of where we are.

10:32I'm always employing people, aren't I? Yeah, Sian doesn't stop. If you want a job, ask Sian, just say yes. Because I always like to think that a lot of London kitchens, they are short-staffed. And I think that running a kitchen that's short-staffed is a way to get everyone working too many shifts. The more shifts people work, the more they start to hate their job. Chefs often do a shift called a double shift, which is it's usually nine in the morning till 11 at night. That's an average. And many chefs and many London restaurants will do three or four of those a week. And having done that when I worked in other restaurants in London, you start to lose your quality of life.

11:12And so I genuinely think that the more you can turn chefing into like a career where you work good hours, then the more you enjoy your job and you go home and you cook and you read cookbooks and you go out to eat and you meet hang out with chefs and hang out with friends so to have that you need to have chefs so you can't run the chefs into the ground making them do all these doubles because it's not the best paid industry to be in so you've got to give them work-life balance totally agree so we need a lot of chefs and also having having quite a lot of chefs gives us the ability to train people you know we're really good at training people but we're not especially quick at it you know it takes ages yeah but thinking back to it in the you know 20 years ago we used to employ people and i won't say who they are or where they came from but they'd arrive here and they were clearly broken from kitchens they were exhausted that doesn't really happen anymore so i think maybe as an as a whole industry it's way way way way better yeah also because rose and ruth weren't you didn't come from kitchens yeah so you you ran it with reason with just that's how which how a business runs we work good hours we eat good food we take breaks we and i'd never it i'd never worked anywhere where the respect was so mutual and it was amazing to see women doing that and that and i think that creates longevity in in this in the river cafe because it was done by pioneers of that way of working.

12:41Well, I do think there is, I think when you say that, that we didn't have, I certainly had absolutely no experience of another restaurant, so I didn't have a concept, as you say, of the way you do it. You'd run it the way you run an architecture office or, you know, a lawyer's office or a doctor's office. It wasn't, but when a journalist used to call me and say, it must be so exhausting being a chef, and I used to go, it must be so exhausting being a journalist, you know, because any career where you work you know, that many hours a day. I mean, that probably is more physical. It is the curtain goes up and you have to be ready and you have to be...

13:17The other thing about the kitchen, what I was thinking is quite unusual, was the fact that we never had titles. Yeah, that's true. I still don't know what a sous-chef does. I don't know. So what's the other? A chef de party? I don't know what that does. A commissaire. I don't know a commissaire. Well, all you need to know is who's in charge. And you probably work that out quickly. And then everyone else is genuinely... Some people are better chefs than other people because you can see that people have been cooking longer, but there's no titled chef, which is a hard concept to get your head around as well, isn't it?

13:46As our last question to someone coming, would you have any advice for them on their first day? I think you don't want to be too stressed, but you also don't want to miss... When you come to River Cafe, it appears very relaxed. The sort of house style is very open and friendly, but it is also like very diligent and hard working so we expect to see people really concentrating and they want to learn and they're interested in the ingredients and I want to talk about food I agree with that obviously absolutely I think you should definitely take it seriously I think it warrants it but at the same time just try and be yourself as much as you can ask questions ask questions for sure yeah of course be as nosy as you can and you know asking what everyone's doing and you know take a real interest I'm impressed with people who really have their heads down you know really focused on what they're doing I think we're pretty I hope that we're encouraging and we're understanding and we it's a great world you know the rest of you who've come through not even just the big names that you've got there obviously the Jamie Ollivs and Thea Randalls and April Bloomfields, who are you, Fernlees.

15:02We've also got, you know, the Thomas Perrys, the Stevie Pahls. Oh, my gosh, there's loads of them. It's a great place to learn, the River Cafe. It's a great place to learn. And I say when people leave, I say, you know, some of them go to open a little place in New Zealand, some of them, you know, open a big restaurant in Soho. But I think as long as you take what you've learned from here and keep cooking. I remember getting, when I got mugged in Florence so I lost my wallet. I didn't know what to do because I had not a single penny on me. So I called Linda in the office and she organised an ex-member of staff who is living in Florence now to come with an envelope of money.

15:38That sounds a little bit like the sort of secret service. What? I reckon you go to many, many places now around the world and you could probably be the same. OK, first days, second days, third days, fourth days, one year, ten years, 25 years. Amazing. We just keep going. Thank you.

16:03Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table 4 in partnership with Montclair.

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