Emily Mortimer

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1:14Last night, Emily Mortimer came to Thanksgiving dinner with her family at our home. And as is a tradition, at the end of the meal, we all sang, You Are My Sunshine, our favorite family song. Looking down at the table of 40 people, our eyes met and stayed there for all four verses. In those moments, memories flooded back with a girl I knew since she was six, the time we spent with her father, John, playwright and barrister, and her mother, Penny, fly fisher, and tennis player who managed the no small feat of smoking while playing the game. What Emily does now is impressive. She's an actor, a writer, director, Notting Hill, The Pursuit of Love, Newsroom, Matchpoint, The New Look, an Apple show with Juliette Binoche, and Paddington 3.

2:00When I see Emily, our conversation is mostly about what she did rather than what she's doing, for she was one of the first employees of the River Cafe in 1989, when being 17 and totally inexperienced was no obstacle to being a waiter. Here in the River Cafe today, we're going to talk about food and memories, for she is my family and most of all, Emily Mortimer. You are my sunshine. Oh, Ruthie, oh my goodness. I'm going to cry before I even begin. That was so nice to see you.

2:39You're back in the fold, Emily. I know, fully. Yeah, you're fully back. We're going to get you back in here. But do you remember what it felt like or what it was like? Yes, I do. It was just the same. It was just smaller. I mean, was it like half the size of the... You used to come in there. This was the kitchen. Yes. We had a bar going across here. Yes, that's right. The bar was here. I definitely remember where the bar was. And that bar was a wall. The kitchen was this end. Yeah, I can remember that very clearly. But there were tables outside sometimes in the summer. Yeah, yeah. And we all...

3:11Do you still get them... the waitresses and the waiters do the prep yeah that was the most amazing that we've really kept i really i mean that really is what taught me to cook i think is coming here and having to like grate parmesan and sweat the peppers and oh yeah kind of thing yeah peel the peel the peppers you know and um and and get the food ready and then you kind of a part of it which is just such a cool thing. So we'll start with the recipe that you chose, which was a pear and almond tart. Pear and almond tart serves 10 to 12. Six ripe commis pears, 350 grams of blanched whole almonds, 350 grams of unsalted butter, softened, 350 grams of caster sugar, three eggs.

4:06Peel half and core the pears. Place the pear halves face down and in one layer in a pre-baked sweet pastry base. Put the almonds in a food processor and chop until fine. Cream together the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until pale and light. Add the almonds, then the eggs, one by one. Pour this almond mixture over the pears. Bake for 40 minutes or until the filling is golden brown and set. Leave to cool and serve with a dollop of creme fraiche. We do a version of the pear and almond tart all year. So in the summer we make a tart with raspberries with the almond frangipane, don't we? Or the strawberries.

4:52But I do think, for me, the best is pear. The combination. It's a classic. well I just love it because it's the sort of most amazing bang for your buck of a pudding because you just people can't believe that a human mortal made it and you didn't just buy it in a sort of you know boulangerie or something it really does and it's so simple and easy as all your recipes are but it just is so sort of delicious and really impressive people are always just like did you really make this? did you make the pastry? Sian would you do the pastry? The pastry is 375 grams of plain flour, 250 grams of unsalted butter, which you pulse in a RoboCoop or MagiMix kind of machine.

5:38Then add 100 grams of icing sugar, give that a little pulse. Then bind it together with three egg yolks, and it will make a firm dough that you need to refrigerate for a couple of hours. And then the secret of the almond tart is that we actually grate the dough into the, using a thick cheese grater, isn't it? And then break that into the pastry tin and press it out. Don't try and roll it because you'll probably never achieve it. Yeah, exactly. The secrets of our recipes. Press it into place. You can make it as thick or as thin as you like, but as long as you pre-bake it before you put the almonds in, isn't it?

6:19Yes. You might put the cake mixture in. And it's probably one of the desserts that's been on since, you know, for how many, 35 years now, 36 years? Oh, my God, 35 years. I can't believe that. I hadn't actually done the maths on purpose.

6:39So let's carry on back to those early, early days and to being a waiter here. You were 17? Yeah, I was 17. That's pretty amazing, yeah. Do you remember the story of why you came or what happened? I just was trying to make a bit of money on my summer after I left. Was it your gap year? Yes, it was the beginning of my gap year, and it was really the beginning of my life because I was a very, very shy, believe it or not, child and still am as a person. And actually, cooking, I have found in my life, has been the greatest sort of way of counteracting being shy because you can sort of have people over and have parties and friends, but you can sort of also be hiding behind this thing.

7:26And I think coming and being a waitress was really the first time that I had sort of been in life. Like I knew I was going to go to university and I knew I was going to go to Russia before I went to university, having never really kissed a boy hardly, having never really kind of hardly got drunk, having really lived a very secluded life. and this was my sort of gateway to the beginning of my life coming here and I think my my parents had just said you need to make a bit of money and and and why don't you be a waitress and they probably just asked you and and and you very kindly had agreed to have this completely callow sort of just demented I'll change the attitude to have this absolutely fabulous beautiful charming open I had you know I think shyness is a really interesting conversation because I was at a dinner the other night and I said to somebody that I stood outside the door I hadn't been to like a big dinner party for a long time and it was for Graydon Carter and I said I kind of stood outside really not wanting to ring that doorbell go into a room of a whole lot of people and he said well I was at that doorstep too because I didn't want to go into a room and And there are people who you just, they just assume that you're not shy.

8:42Or that things don't bother you. When in fact, there is that terror. And I sometimes do that of heading into the kitchen to talk to the people. Yes, it's a safe place. Because I think, oh, Ruthie Rogers is here. So I'm really interested. But you just feel safe when you're in the kitchen. And you can hide behind the business of getting something ready. And you don't actually have to sort of properly be dealing with the sort of responsibility of talking. You tell me that when she has a dinner party, you keep your apron on so you don't have to talk to people. Thanks for divulging that. I find that if I wear my chef's outfit, I'm more confident than if I was in my normal clothes.

9:19When I was trying to buy my car, I was trying to... Don't tell me you were with your chef's. No, I was doing the deal when I had my chef's outfit on because I was much more, like, assertive. Tough. Yeah, I was, like, in the role. I can totally imagine that. Super hero. Yeah. We don't need psychiatrists anymore. I think we should all have a chef's outfit. I'll give you my mind to take home today. It's a natural barrier. Like if I have to talk to people, if people come to my house, I keep my apron on. It keeps me in the persona. I'm like really nervy. Totally. Well, it's funny though. Also, I was thinking about last night and coming to your incredible dinner and just thinking it's, and as is coming to your restaurant, It's like you're entering this world.

10:08And in a funny way, it feels like, because people think as an actor you're not shy because you're performing all the time and you're putting yourself out there. But as I said, that's really the only way you can, I can exist is by forcing myself into this. But it's like putting on a show in a way, like having a dinner or having, it's putting, it's, it's, you know, having a, having a restaurant or whatever. but even having people for dinner in your own home, I always feel like that. You make it look nice and you sort of put the music on and you sort of light the fire and you can create this kind of world that people...

10:43A stage set. A stage set. But it is all a kind of illusion and really the sort of behind the scenes, you're sort of going... You're definitely shouting at everybody to tidy their bedrooms. Anyway, so I feel very, I think, coming to as a young... Yeah, so let's get back now. Hello, you. Yeah, coming. To this magical place, it felt like, it felt the best way of sort of forcing myself into life because it was you and your family and Rose and just, it was a family. 1989, we opened in September 87. Did we teach you anything? Yes, and you taught me, basically taught me how to cook. You taught me, but that's even more scary.

11:26We opened the restaurant and the 17-year-old was in the kitchen cooking, yeah. No, you didn't. I wasn't cooking, but I was grating. Yeah, of course you were. As Vashti was saying, they still do that here, the waiters, that you really become very familiar with the food and you're making it. You have to get in earlier than most waiters would come to do a job in a restaurant. So you get in a few hours before and you grate the parmesan, or a lot of the time was chopping up the basil and the parsley and things like that and just sort of becoming. and I can always remember you saying and my mum says that to me, Ruthie always says and I said I can remember her saying it just get a good smell going you know and that's true, I always think of that as I'm cooking now, you know it's going to be okay if you've just got this good smell going and then What about being a waiter, who taught you how to wait a day?

12:17No one and I still am I think you're training, that's the training at the River Cafe I mean it really was, I really was a fairy dad, what was the story about the nemesis and the glass. You said you broke a glass over a nemesis, a whole nemesis. I'm sure I did. I mean, I broke everything over everything. I just remember the dry cleaning bills that you guys were having to pay on my bar to people that had red wine dropped in their laps. And I think I've come to the conclusion that actually being a waiter is a very difficult job. And people don't really... Does it make you be nicer to waiters when you go to a restaurant?

12:55Yes. there's so much going on in your head at one time where you really are having to try to remember and you could generally you can get from starter to main course that's okay you can remember because you can see you've taken their plates away but then you take the main course plates away and then you just forget about them for hours because you just forget totally to bring them their pudding menus or and then once they've had their pudding you're just like you totally You don't have to pay a bill. No, don't worry about the bill. That was always the bit that undid me, was remembering. But then I was remembering the other day, there was this awful thing where I still feel guilty about this man called...

13:35I mean, I don't... I think his name was Dougal McDougal, and he was eating his lunch here, and it was a big Christmas lunch, and everybody was going bananas, getting ready for, you know, this service, and then this lunch full of people, and it was a Christmas thing, and so all the people from all the offices were having their Christmas lunches, and the phone was going off the hook bananas. This phone kept ringing, and no one had time to pick it up. That's when we had the phone in the restaurant, and people picked it up and took a reservation, yeah. And I remember finally picking it up and thinking, because I thought maybe this is something, you know, somebody needs to deal with this phone, and I picked it up, and I said hello, and the woman said, oh hello you know you've got a Mr.

14:18Dougal McDougal dining with you today and he's urgently required to the telephone and I I said oh yes absolutely I'll find him for you and I put the phone down and I thought how do I find Dougal McDougal and all these people and then I looked around and I saw this man and I just thought I think you're Dougal McDougal and he had he had a sort of he He was so sweet looking. He had a sort of mullet hairdo and then a suit that was slightly ill-fitting, but he looked really lovely. And anyway, I just thought, you're Dougal McDougal. I think you are. And I went over and I said, are you by any chance, Mr.

14:52Dougal McDougal? And the man said, yes, I am. And I was so victorious. And I went to the phone and I picked up the phone and I said, he's just coming. And he went and all lunch long, and he had his phone call and it was all good. All lunch long, I was just so happy and laughing about this story to myself. And it got me through the lunch. and then at the end of lunch I started telling all the other staff and the waitresses and the chefs and all about it and everybody was laughing uproariously and I said, and I saw this man and I just knew out of everybody in this restaurant full of people that had to be Dougal McDougal, sure enough it was and I described his mullet and his badly fitting suit and then this little voice went, I'm still here, you know and it was Dougal McDougal and he'd gone to the loo while I was telling the story and come out and heard me and I still to this day wake up in the night just feeling bad.

15:43Well, Dougal McDougal, if you're listening to this podcast. I have a big apology to make. I really feel bad. The other night when you had somebody came up to me, this man came up at the house and he said, my wife is dying to meet you. I said, okay. So I went over and I said, I hear you're dying to meet me. And it was the wrong table. I'm not dying to meet you. We're just trying to have our dinner. I'm not going to come to my table and say you're dying to meet me. So things, you know, it was 35 years later. It's still chaotic. But I do remember, the other thing I remember was that cell phones had only just started.

16:22And people were, they had phones in their cars. And they were, some of these men, these sort of guys that were trying to show off and be fancy, would go to the car park and phone in their putting orders from the car park to show off about their phones. We once had somebody, very often we had somebody who was using their cell phone outside, and a waiter went up and for some reason said, you know, we'd prefer you not to use your cell phone. It's disturbing other people. She said, well, I was trying to get the attention of a waiter. She was actually calling reception to ask a waiter to come to her table.

17:01so I mean being a waiter is hard it really is hard it really is hard it really is hard it requires an awful lot of concentration and your brain has to be in about 25 places at once did you ever work anywhere else no of course not I mean I was just I mean I was unemployable as a waitress at home it would be good to try it one more time I should do one I think you should come back here service yeah it will happen to do it yeah

17:31did you know the river cafe has a shop it's full of our favorite foods and designs we have cookbooks linen napkins kitchenware tote bags with our signatures glasses from venice chocolates from turin you can find us right next door to the river cafe in london or online at shop the river cafe That's morning,

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19:47Shop now at washablesofas.com. Add a little... to your life. Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. Going back to before you were 17. So let's talk about growing up in the Mortimer household and food. What were meals like at your house? Well, yeah, Dad could really cook and loved food, but he always said his idea of good food is food you don't really need. teeth to eat like no like sorts of mashed potato or keggery was his favorite thing a sort of comfort food and i remember as a little little girl my dad always cooked me boiled eggs and toast soldiers that was the thing i was i used to say get my eggs you bugger come down in the morning and send them back if they weren't i mean i was a very she said that i was a very shy child but i was not shy with my dad and so i would yeah i would send back the the eggs if they weren't exactly cooked to my my you know certain specificity and um if the toe soldiers weren't perfectly lightly blonded i was very you know annoyed um but food i mean our family was such a sort of a place of love and also as all families quite dysfunctional in lots of wonderful ways but the one thing that they really always got right my mom and dad was was was meals like we always i can't remember not having i mean we just always ate together where whether it was at um at you know dinner at home with with mum mum normally cooking or sometimes dad or in a restaurant um and restaurants are we just from our dad both me and Rosie my sister have inherited just a love of restaurants and his attitude to restaurants was that it was just sort of that there was no problem so great or sort of heart so broken that it couldn't be slightly made better by a delicious meal in a restaurant with a white tablecloth and preferably a glass or three of champagne and that that you know you that that there was something so cheering about going out for lunch or dinner in a nice restaurant and and I think Rosie and I just still have that we're addicted to restaurant are you yeah I just I just it just feels like such a treat it never stops being a treat and just sort of that feeling of being cozy and with people you love in this kind of special place and and again another thing of that of wherever you are in the world finding a little key into a it's a way of getting to know people and getting to know the place you're in and and and finding some sort of you know place that feels authentic to where you are and and being there generally you're with people you really like eating good food and it tells you about the culture and the place you are did you because I always think of your parents as being incredibly social as well you know yeah they were very social your father was his you know playwright and his you know voyage around my father and he was defending oz magazine was it was he was the oz trial and the sex you know and the sex but you know he's a really radical lawyer who was you know um on the forefront of every case that was happening or everything that was contentious there was john mortimer and yet such a gentle and gorgeous man and penny i was i say the first time I met Penny, she was sitting on his lap, you know.

23:09And I think it was just, they were such a kind of important people in our lives. And so they were able to have this life of going out or people entertaining, and you still felt very part of that. Yeah, it's very much part of it. And, yeah, we were always, I mean, Dad loved young people and children, and he just thought children were sort of, you know, the best type of people. and he was always so sympathetic about being a young person. He said it's just like life will never be as hard as it is when you're young and school is awful and it's just like these terrible hours, unpaid labour and, you know, given terrible food at lunchtime and he was very just completely sympathetic to the plight and the loneliness of childhood.

23:57So he was very inclusive and lunches and dinners or whatever it was, it was always like we were never sort of expected not to be part of it and so I really think no matter sort of how much life is falling apart at the seams which it always is of course like if you can manage to kind of corral you know I mean the people that you love and uh together for lunch or dinner or whatever it is it just does make a difference it feels and so it feels it just feels really comforting to me to be sitting around a table with people and because that was the part of life that I think really was functioning you know when I was little it was really nice and when you left this joyous home of being sitting around the table and you and you left you went to Oxford yes no you went to Russia first I went to Russia on my gap and did you manage to find a home that was like that in Russia or were you sort of in the middle of nowhere I was in Moscow and I do remember eating there a lot I can remember the food very well and there was always I mean I I love Russian food because probably I associate it with that time, but that's quite sort of stodgy, like sort of palmeni little dumplings with cream, but also lots of dill.

25:12They put dill on everything, and I still cook lots with dill. Somehow that really kind of brings me back to being there. And then I remember I cooked my first and last goose in Moscow. I went to a market to buy, because I was going to try and cook a roast chicken. And then I went to the market and they didn't have any chicken, but they did have a goose. So I called up my mum. It was very difficult to get through. You couldn't really make phone calls back and forth to England. What year was that? 89, 90, so it was probably 90 then. And I had to go to this hotel and pay with a credit card for my phone call that cost about sort of£50 pounds to sort of have a five minute phone call back to to england and i remember mom looking up the recipe for a goose she kept saying a goose is very different from a chicken darling anyway i remember spending just all day long with this goose and i finally i remember put taking it out putting it into the oven and because it was like you had to take the wings off and the breasts off and then prick it and primp it and i don't really remember but i've i can remember putting the goose in the oven saying, I'm so sorry, I feel like I've really got to know you so well over this time.

26:27I feel terrible about cooking. It's quite intimate. Yeah, intimacy and cooking. And then you went to Oxford. Did you care about that you didn't eat well in Oxford or did you eat well in Oxford? Did your parents rescue you from? I can't really. I went to Lincoln College, which was famous for its food, but I don't really remember eating much. I think I just went to lots of parties and slept and didn't do anything apart from plays. I didn't really cook there, no. I did. I just, yes, as I said. Would you go home for family meals? Yeah, I'd go home because I could drive back home. It was about a 45-minute drive back home.

27:04And so I'd go home at the weekends and things and take my washing and get a good Sunday lunch. and um yeah Sunday lunch is something I really sort of remember from that time of my life because I mean and then when I was in my late 20s I moved to America where they don't really have Sunday lunch but the the sort of smell of Sunday lunch cooking and my dad listening to the radio and Radio 4 and the sort of the smell of something delicious sort of um cooking you know is something that I really miss. And coming back here when it happens, I just sort of immediately just feel full of nostalgia and happiness.

27:43But now that you're a mother of two, do you replicate any of those traditions? Yeah, I do. I do try to. I do. I mean, I do like a sort of race, whatever. You do have Sunday lunch. Yes, I do. But it's hard to keep up that tradition when the culture isn't doing it. They have brunch. So they have brunch. In New York you have brunch. Yeah, brunch is a whole thing, and I never really know what to do for brunch. If you had to cook a brunch, what would you do? I think probably I'd go and get bagels and cream cheese and isn't that what they eat? Yeah. I find that going out to lunch in New York on a Sunday is really challenging because you can't have lunch.

28:20It's a brunch. And so it's kind of, by that time, it's 12 and maybe I've had something in the breakfast and then it's breakfast all over again. I think they say it's lunch, but it is really pretty breakfasty, isn't it? Yeah, it's basically glorified breakfast. Yeah, I know. And then I panic because I feel like I've got to, I don't really know how to do a brunch, so I sort of, I go really over the top, and then it's like sort of brunch at the Four Seasons, or something, it's like quiches, and there's just too much. But yeah, no, Sunday lunch is, but you have to, if you do a Sunday lunch in America, you have to sort of make a thing of it, because people don't really carve out that time on a Sunday to just sit around doing nothing.

29:01Do you think it is a really different culture of eating in Brooklyn and London in terms of going... Do most of you... Do people go out to dinner? People go out much more, yeah. It's starting here too now, I think. You know, I think they're... Do you go out to people's houses for meals or do you mostly go to restaurants? I'd go to people's houses. Yeah. Probably more now. I'm older than I used to, I think. I was talking about it with one of the young chefs today. and he was saying he'd gone to eat in another one of the chef's house and they felt really grown up because he was saying most times you'd go to the pub or go out to a restaurant, whereas now they're starting to go to people's houses because people are starting to get houses.

29:42Right. You know, I think maybe it kind of times in with when you have a property or something or somewhere big enough to host maybe. I like, I mean, I always like a home. You know, I love when I go to a foreign city and eat at home. Yeah. You know, because as you say, that kind of what you were saying before about certain restaurants, but it does tell you about the culture, doesn't it? Yes, totally. It tells you about how people are and you sit around. It's nice. There's so much in a cooked meal from somebody that, you know, at home, because their whole history and all their culture and all their, everything is baked into whatever it is you're eating in the most kind of, But it's so specific.