Bonus: Valentine's Day At The River Cafe

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human I'm Bowen Yang And I'm Matt Rogers During this season of the Two Guys Five Rings podcast In the lead up to the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games We've been joined by some of our friends Hi Bowen, hi Matt Hey Elmo Hey Matt, hey Bowen Hi Cookie Now the Winter Olympic Games are underway And we are in Italy To give you experiences from our hearts to your ears Listen to Two Guys, Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:42Sean Owen and Joseph Trevelli and I are here today to talk about a holiday which we all love, Valentine's Day. It is really easy to be cynical about Valentine's Day, but in fact, why not celebrate Valentine's Day as an expression of love, a time when you can take out somebody you love, whether it's your mother, it can be a friend, it can be a father, a partner, a colleague, anybody that you kind of want to say, I love you too. And so let's talk about what it means to the River Cafe and how we respond to it. Valentine's Day has always been a really fun day in the restaurant. I am here on Valentine's evening this year, and I'm really looking forward to cooking some different food to a slightly quieter room, but with maybe a quieter room, but a room full of feeling.

1:34The nice things that we have now, the River Cafe doing their Valentine's, our Valentine's night, but also the River Cafe Cafe is full. and we've actually taken Sylvia's, the private dining room and put tables in there as well. Oh, it's going to be really nice to walk around the site that night. I think you can really pull out the stops again like the Christmas menu writing. You can do the St. Valentine's menu writing like Trevis hearts. Celery hearts. Hearted with hearts, exactly. Hand cut pasta ribbons. Creme fraiche and lemon. All sounds really enticing. and go to town with how not only the menu reads but how you might be feeling in the way you want to eat on valentine's day like you might think oh i actually fancy a lobster yeah i have ordered some truffles in advance yeah for valentine's evening because i thought that would be a nice we don't do a lot of the black winter truffles but i think valentine's evening i think it might be a really nice thing to have easy on the garlic not too much garlic in the cooking yeah i was going to say that's true what do you not only what do you cook but what do you not cook it's easy to say you need lobsters and we're not going to have oysters but like oysters or whatever maybe you shouldn't have ribble eaters not really the thing for lovers yeah we because we do actually have quite a lot of fun thinking about the menu okay so let's do a valentine's menu that each of you or i and i would want to have oh i think starter wise i might go something like longustines maybe peeled to save you having to manhandle them too much how would you cook them i'd probably poach the longustine whole and then the chefs will do the work we'll take them out of the shelf for you and maybe with some poached sea kale or something that is really seasonal and delicate but also delicious with maybe a little bit of aioli or maybe lemon maybe lemon mayo or something lemon mayonnaise and wedge of lemon that is would be beautiful with a glass of champagne as well that kind of thing i think is really nice and what would be yours i think maybe like a fish carpaccio like sea bass carpaccio maybe with one of the special citrus fruits that are really in season at the moment just shaved on the top and kind of light what are you going to do with your truffle so i think these things are never decided until the afternoon but i think i'll probably make ravioli I think and then shave the truffle yeah what would you do for the pasta creamy definitely have to rock out the hand cut pasta ribbons but not bows with maybe something that feels a bit like opulent that we're doing maybe something like we do a really nice sauce with a cream that we infuse with prosciutto hock yes and sage and a lemon peel and a bit of garlic and then And so it tastes like it's got everything in it, doesn't it?

4:24But it's all strained. So it's very sort of velvety and smooth and quite luxurious, isn't it? That's quite, sounds quite romantic. You can imagine people eating this noodle together. On the tramp star. Yeah. I think I would have the artichoke in the beginning. So I might even do Judea, that you could actually take your time and take the leaves off and have the heart. Yeah. And then I was thinking that I might quite like to have a risotto. If you were going out on a first date for Valentine's night, it might be a matter of also discovering getting to know somebody by what they order, you know? Definitely.

5:03I definitely hold the chopped parsley on food. Yeah. I think that's quite a consideration of how people, especially when you... And I also think cuttlefish. Don't want it in your teeth. Yeah, cuttlefish ink is a bit of a... That's a definite. I think we have to say... If someone orders the cuttlefish, you know there's something going wrong. We also have to, exactly, we also have to say why, because the cuttlefish is made with, it turns your whole face, mouth black. For those of you who are listening who are not sure why we're saying we don't recommend it, even though we love to eat it. Yeah. But then you might be really impressed if you were on a date and you did find that they ordered it.

5:38You might think that was very cool. You might want to marry the guy or marry the girl, just because on our first date, this is what she ordered. And then mains, what would we do? I think my favourite Valentine meal that I would cook at the River Cafe is the beef fillet wrapped in copper, copper de palma. I just, I don't know why I think it's romantic. Maybe, I think it's, I think beef fillet feels like it's something that you might not buy or cook at home as much. Certainly a treat. And to cook it perfectly pink is a real skill, I think, to have it so it's not. Tell us how to make sure that it's pink.

6:12So we get a whole beef fillet. We trim the beef fillet. Then we get a couple of cloves of garlic and cut them into the thinnest shards. So we cut them. We cut it lengthways and then we cut through it again to make the most thinnest little. It almost looks like a tiny shard of garlic and one rosemary leaf. And then we slash down the side of the fillet all the way around. And then we stud it with garlic and rosemary. all the way around the fillet up and down so that a fillet is actually getting infused with the flavor of rosemary and garlic then we cut copper de palma which is cured meat in the vein of prosciutto you can use prosciutto if you want and then we lay it on a greaseproof sheet of paper overlapping then we roll the beef fillet in the copper de palma and then we tie it up with string and sometimes you can put sage or bay leaves rosemary on the cop on the beef don't you and then we roast the whole thing as a whole piece and rest it well so it's served pink beautifully pink and then you can serve it with the roast trevis hearts very romantic and maybe some polenta with butter and parmesan or something that seems luxy i think you some people put a bit of wine in i I personally actually like it without wine because I think it overpowers the flavour of the beef fillet.

7:38But it's a really nice dish. I think it just feels quite elegant. It's quite celebratory. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. But would you have a main course or would you go with the beef fillet? If I was going to have fish and I didn't want meat and I was at the River Cafe, I think I'd have to have a Dover Soul because it's a lovely thing to share, actually, although you might not want to share. and it's a really elegant fish, it's flat, it's just cooked. Would you like to tell how to cook a Doversoil? Yeah, the River Cafe, we do something that I've not seen elsewhere in Britain actually, is we scale the Doversoils, so we leave the skin on rather than take them off.

8:20And we scale them and then we cook them always on our wood fire. And really, you don't need to do much more else than season them with some olive oil and put them in a fire. But if you don't have a wood oven at home? You can put them under the broiler. Temperature. Are you grilling them? At home you can. I think that works quite well actually. And I would put on top capers and anchovies and a herb with a strong flavour. Like often dried oregano is really nice so that it has a real impact on this fish. And the fish is obviously a complete and utter treat at Doversoil. but it has that the mixture of being firm and yet giving at the same time that I really enjoy and I find it very smart and we see them a lot you know because we are buying scores every day but it's really nice sometimes just to stop and reflect and just think that's what I would really enjoy and then for the grand finale there are not many desserts you can make in the shape of a heart but we do and we're selling them online uh the heart shape nemesis it's cool because we've got We started doing that when we did Shop the River Cafe, didn't we?

9:28For Valentine's Day when we were closed in lockdown. But it's one of the things that we still get demand for. And the picture that we have is the heart-shaped nemesis with the knife stuck in the middle of it, which is quite funny. They're not on the menu, though, but you can still buy them. Yeah. Or you can make your own. It's quite fun. I like a heart. I love a heart. I think what we should do is take the people listening to this into the room, into the River Cafe. because I think it does, you know, whether we have different flowers or we give the sweets and we've had piano. The waiters' uniform, loosely using the word, is to wear a shirt of just has to be one colour.

10:08It can't be a patterned shirt in a bright colour of your choice. But actually on Valentine's Day, usually we try and encourage everyone to go for like pinks and reds, not to be too cliché, that's extremely cliché. But it looks quite nice. so the lights are super low yeah the temperature's super warm it's dark outside and the waiters will be wearing those lovely color palette against the bright blue carpet it looks really really nice doesn't it i think it's a real another just example of how the river cafe is so malleable all year it changes every day on the weather the evening this wonderful room that has all these different um atmospheres the whole time and you can't fight them can you they just it just happens We always say people do very private things in a very public place.

10:56So you've been here nights when people have proposed. There was one a couple of weeks ago. It was a really nice couple on table one with their brand new son or daughter. And they were just sitting there having a nice time. And, you know, I was working away, but they were right close. And I looked over and the lady shed tears in her eyes. And then it became apparent that she'd just been proposed to. Because you look on the table and I saw this box with a ring. and what an uplift to your day at work you'll be there cooking away in the literally just to my right there's a couple deciding to spend the rest of their time together it was so nice nice and quickly the news spread because you can't keep it secret and we're all going over and congratulating them yeah a photo at the wood up in the photo do you remember a proposal do you remember i don't i literally don't think i that's something that happens on many of my shifts i like to create a hostile atmosphere.

11:52I did say to the groom, this is it, this is your anniversary place now. Yeah, exactly. You already talked about that, so I think that's like, this gets set in stone, and I've definitely seen people returning every year. Yeah, it's an important thing to remember in life. So what we all have thought after talking about Valentine's Day is that we love it, we enjoy it, we celebrate it, and once again, love is more powerful than anything else. I love you Happy Valentine's Day Happy Valentine's Day Marry me

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12:55I'm Bowen Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers. During this season of the Two Guys Five Rings podcast, in the lead-up to the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, we've been joined by some of our friends. Hi, Bowen! Hi, Matt! Hey, Elmo! Hey, Matt! Hey, Bowen! Hi, Cookie! Hi! Now, the Winter Olympic Games are underway, and we are in Italy to give you experience from our hearts to your ears. Listen to Two Guys, Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?

13:34Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle? A shady hypnosis scam? Or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.