Guy Ritchie

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0:30with kids, pets, or anyone who loves an easy-to-clean, spotless sofa. With a modular design and changeable slipcovers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style. Whether you need a single chair, loveseat, or a luxuriously large sectional, Anabay has you covered. Visit washablesofas.com to upgrade your home. Right now, you can shop up to 60 % off store-wide with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Shop now at washablesofas.com. Add a little to your life. Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. You're listening to Ruthie's Table 4 in partnership with Montclair. Around 40 years ago when Abe Rogers, my stepson, was 12, he asked if a school friend, his best friend, could join us for lunch.

1:20I know you're going to love him. And three hours later, we were in the company of one of the greatest kids ever, Cheeky, funny, bright. Hi, my name's Guy Ritchie. I am a chef, and that's my day job, and my second job is a film director. Here we are, we've been cooking outside on the gentleman's table, the wild table, a rather thick ribeye steak. Now, when you ask Guy Ritchie to do a podcast, you don't just get Guy. Today, he's been in the garden at the River Cafe with his chefs, setting up his wild kitchen to cook a ribeye steak for us all to try you just bring this with you yeah yeah as you do as one does exactly right here we go going around to here this is a great song thank you what do you want to untie the umbrella that great no it's fabulous it's fabulous now if you want you're gonna have the whole thing like that.

2:19I would just let that nibble away a bit at its centre. Now the next time it comes off, I think you'll be done. I've been in contact over the years with Guy in and out, eating in his pub, The Law of the Land, drinking the beer from his brewery, the Gritchie Company, having him and Jackie, his children and his friends and his family in the River Cafe, and most of all watching his movies, from Lockstock to Smoking Barrels, and his most recent, The Covenant, with two friends and actually guests of the podcast, Jake Gyllenhaal and Josh Berger. Now you've already got a seer on, but because it's such a thick piece of meat...

3:02Right, we've got to hack through that. You've got to hack through it, because I've got to get on with it. That's absolutely beautiful. It's got to go, it's got to go. We've got the rest of it to go.

3:17Here we go. Here comes the lubricant. Fernando, this is Guy. Thank you, Fernando. Pleasure. So, Guy, do you want to talk about, before we go into your movies and food and food and life, do you want to talk about grilling a steak? What do you like about a ribeye? I like the fat. Yeah. I like the crispiness of the fat. It seems to be the right ratio of fat and meat for me. But that's usually what I eat, is a ribeye five or six days a week. And I'll play with other things, but in the end it's easy for me to cook and I don't really want anything on it other than salt and recently pepper but I have a feeling pepper's a crush and it won't last for very long and I'll just creep back into salt you and I like it the same way which I hate going to a restaurant and telling the waiter how I like something cooked and I rarely do that but when I have a steak or if I have a piece of the only other thing I do is a salmon is I like a really dark crust and then a quite medium rare inside rare.

4:17Yeah, well, I'm with you on that. To me, everything's about the patina of the meat. Yeah. And you can only really get that patina if you've got the fat. I think you and I are probably in agreement on this. I want the combination of that fat just before it's become completely incinerated, but I want it to be crispy, and then I'm in heaven, and it never gets boring.

4:41okay so going from the beginning of the beginning we would talk about growing up in the richie house before you went to boarding school were you at home with your parents your father was a friend a friend of mine john sommerill and they said he loved food and wine yeah yeah yeah my father liked wine more than he liked food but yes he was a good friend john sommerill used to live on the same street so we he was about five doors down but they were yeah he was a big foodie we were like the only middle-class family, and apart from John, in the street. So when we moved in, it was an old-fashioned, in theory it wasn't a sort of cottony community, but it was an old-fashioned English community there.

5:22So this is in 60, they bought that house in 69. Where are we talking about in 1910? No, no, in Fulham. And they were like foodies and boozies then, which is quite early doors. and that house then in 69 was 8 ,000 pounds. Yeah, there you go. So you grew up in a house that loved food and entertained? I did. My mum was a very good cook. What did she cook? My favourite was watercress soup. Oh, really? Yeah, it was quite exotic. Yeah, it was very Robert Carrier, isn't it? I have no idea, but she was a very good cook. I used to like baked eggs and watercress soup. And would you sit down to dinner like most nights?

6:00Who's in your family, your brothers and sisters? No, one sister. a sister and a mother and so would you sit down to me with a kind of family supper i heard something earlier on that um i've not can't remember which generation we are but we are still the sort of the i spoke maybe the last generation that lived more outdoors than we did indoors so i knew all the other kids in the street yeah so you were never indoors you were always out with your mates and we were on bicycles i remember you used to cycle to quite far afield and we were on bicycles when we were six so you went to school local school local i went to 13 schools i went to 13 you went to 13 okay yeah local schools dyslexia or that no school could cope no no educating no school could cope and i sort of picked up the reputation that it was because i was naughty and it wasn't because I was naughty.

6:56It was just I was remarkably slow in understanding what they were trying to translate and I had no ability to translate it. So I was very promiscuous with schools and I went to about five local schools and then gradually, I mean, even the one I went to school with Abe, that was subsequently shut down. Most of the schools I went to were subsequently shut down because they were all learning disability schools. And they didn't know it. Well, they sort of fumbled around as best they could, and I'm sort of grateful for their efforts, but there was only one person I met that was more dyslexic than me, and that was Abe.

7:34I've been to my kids' schools, you know, whether it was Abe or it was my children, and I remember saying the only, I don't care if they learn to read when they're 8 or 6 or 10 or 12 or 14, what you never want your child to do is to feel stupid, you know, because I said those are the people that come into the River Cafe and they almost come in and they say, I don't want to sit here, I don't want that, I don't want this. And I almost want to say, did you have a hard time in school? You know, because it takes you out of it. I'm going to challenge you there. Okay, challenge me. I'm going to challenge you that the best roses come from the worst manure.

8:08Okay. So I think a certain amount of adversity is rather essential and I don't think it did me much harm being told. You were never told you were stupid. It was implicit. No, but did you feel that you were, yeah. Well, it was clear that you couldn't follow, right? And you were clear that kids that weren't that quick were following quicker than you could follow. So you knew there was an issue. But no one was actually cruel enough to explicitly say you're stupid. But you found after you were on school 10 that there was an issue. And then you kept meeting experts that would sort of have men in white coats that would give you sort of blocks to play with and boxes to tick.

8:53And then it quickly, you'd see their eyes, eyebrows would raise by the time you'd finished, and you could quickly deduce that you were not firing on the cylinders that they wanted you to fire. But fair play to everyone. They never actually called me stupid. It was just implicit. But I would argue, though, that that gave me a sort of a myriad of skills that otherwise I would never have developed. And feeling like you're an outsider of some description, feeling diminished at some point, in the end I just don't think that did me any harm. You and Abe became, and Richard, my husband, became stronger because of it, but there might be a lot of people around who gave up, you know, who didn't fight back.

9:37They just maybe... Yeah, I'm sure that's true. It's about, I agree with you about a lot of that. I mean, I agree with sort of self-esteem. I used to think self-esteem was the most important thing. Now I think maybe not. There's a paradox in that, isn't there? Yeah, there is. There's a paradox. Okay. Well, going back then, 13 schools. Do you remember any of those 13 schools having good food? Yeah. You'll be surprised what kind of food I can enjoy. Yeah, tell me. Everything. My mum wasn't fussy, and I've never been fussy. The only thing I couldn't eat was rhubarb. and even that I can eat now. And I'm quite interested and enjoy industrial quantities of food.

10:21It's not necessarily to consume, but it takes on certain qualities. They used to do like school lasagna. When you're cooking for a few hundred kids, it takes on complex characteristics that are impossible to derive if you're using quality product. So, yeah, I liked school food. out of 13 schools which one did you did you do something like graduate from a school or did you just leave school at a you just left how old were you um 15 right and it was anticlimactic sort of i left and then they said don't bother coming back that was at stanbridge that was at stanbridge yeah nice yeah and your parents were they were they worried about you yes yeah yes because i had no qualifications at all i can barely spell my name yeah but i was i mean i was working yeah by the time I was 15.

11:11Not far from here, actually. St. Peter's Square in Hammersmith. Yeah, I worked in Island Records, which I don't know if it's still there, but I worked as a two-boy in Island Records. Were you living at home? Did your mom still cook for you? No. I left home early door. So from 15 onwards, I was in and out. And what were you eating? Do you member um no there's the answer to that no because then it was it was all work from 15 to now it's really all been work although there's been sort of messy periods along that way i've been working pretty much since i was 15 we talked about your mother but what about your father he was he more into wine as you said did he teach you about wine i didn't like wine until i was 40 40 how old are you now i'm 54 okay and what changed all that and then what didn't you like about why it just meant nothing to me and you could see the price disparity and and that had no impact on me i was what you know i was happy on two pound 50 as other people were on 250 and i couldn't i did the nuance was wasted on me and then at 40 a light bulb went off do you remember where you were you know i think it's your friend josh burger had something to do with it and i think it was like a weekend away somewhere and someone brought out the big guns yeah and like on the third bottle where i was sort of taking the mick and then all of a sudden something happened and once it happened then i i lost a decade did you to enjoying fine wines and then i did the wine tours where did you go well i'm a bordeaux man that's recently recently drifted into Burgundy.

12:55But I'm on terra firma with the Bordeaux. So the classic obvious ones. Which ones do you like? It's boring because they're clichés, but Le Tour will be my go-to if I was going to go for an event of some description. So I'll go for all the obvious, the Moutons, Lafitte, Margot, Lynch badge, you know, all the well-known ones. And what about Italy? Supertuscans, Manicetto and so on. But do you like them? I do. Do you have a wine cellar then? I do. And do you go down and say that tonight we're going to have this? Yeah, I mean, I'm essentially French, right? So I am prejudiced towards the French in the sense that I think both food-wise and wine-wise, the layers of sophistication that the French developed over however long.

13:58My first love of real food was French, and I was tremendously impressed by the layering. When you call layering, you mean the way that they... I felt as though every nuance was investigated. There was a place on Pimlico Road that was run by those brothers. Yes, do you remember? Yeah. It was next to Le Poule Pot. Yeah, Poule Pot, that's the one I was thinking about. It was Poule Pot. And there was a little supermarket that was next door, a little shop and a little French shop, not much bigger than this room. And when I was a van driver, I used to go in there and it was absurdly expensive. But the quality was mind-blowing.

14:38You've run a career off the quality of your ingredients, though, really, haven't you? I always say that about French food and Italian food, that there's nothing I love more than a piece of fish, both beurre blanc and spinach on the bottom. As you say, almost layering the way. But there's something also when you go to Italy and then you have a piece of sea bass and nothing. You just get this bass and maybe, if you're lucky, a bit of salsa verde or lemon. And so if you're going to have only two ingredients, a lemon and a sea bass, or sea bass and a bit of wild oregano. The wild oregano has to be wild, and the sea bass has to be incredibly fresh because there's no masking of it.

15:15You're not looking at the hollandaise or the bernays or the other stuff. So I think the River Cafe definitely is very ingredient-based. Yeah, we are. I went fishing for sea bass this week, actually. Did you? Where? Portland. Anyway, so I caught four very healthy bass. Well, I actually caught 14. We returned 10 of them. I went fishing with my 10 year old who's obsessed and English bass is a fantastic bass. It is we get all our fish off the coast we don't bring any tuna or anything in they'll all be line caught your bass too we once had one of my favorites was we had we call it the end of service so at 11 o 'clock at night we know how much bass we've sold how much turbot we've sold and we know that the next day we're going to change the menu So we never have the menu.

16:06It just depends what there is in the fridge and what there is in the sea. And then we got a call from the boat, and he said, I've just reeled in a turbot, and it's so big that either the River Cafe takes it or we put it back in the sea. What do you want? And we took it. How big was it? Oh, I can't remember. Maybe, I don't know, eight kilos. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds about right. And I came past here one evening with Josh, and I had your turbot. Yeah, it's not bad. I have to tell you. Did you like it? Yeah, I did. We do it on the tranche, so you have this thick bone, and then you have the thick turbot.

16:42So we put, you know, it depends what the chef wants to do. I think last night we did it with zucchini and zucchini flowers, and today we might do it with capers and, you know, black olives. No, it was a real winner. It was a real winner. Would you, by your nature, go sea bass or turbot? Oh, it depends. Probably bass. I love bass. But if I have the turbot in the wood oven, It's a very rich fish. It's fatty. Your sea bass is fatty. Yeah. The thing about fish for me is I love it on the bone. I always think. I love it on the bone. I know that you don't. So it's really nice to have a whole sea bass.

17:18Yeah, agreed. So what happened to the fish that you reeled in? Where are those bass now? Well, I ate them. All of them? Yeah, yeah, yeah. My son's very insistent on eating them as quickly as possible. That's right. But you've got to wait. We find that we have to wait 24 hours because you've got to get over the rigor mortis. Yeah. The idea that you can eat fish that fresh, it doesn't work. No, I know. You've got to leave it. I know, I know. They say just that. Sure, but it's the same thing. Even Dover's soul. I mean, so anti kind of what you would think, but the idea. Soul lasts forever too. I'll show you.

17:45Can you pass me that? I'll show you this because my son is now obsessed with fishing and that means I'm now obsessed with fishing. Do you get seasick at all? Well, this is all on the shore. Oh, I see. You're not on a boat. But it's not. So I don't have the picture of the bass, but I'll tell you. Look at the size of this brown trout that he caught. wow look at that wow that is amazing i mean that's how much did that thing weigh six and a half pounds but that will like that'll feed you know you know what it'll feed feed 10 but most of the photographs on there are fishy that's rafa that's great

18:34Did 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 shoptherivercafe.co.uk.

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20:50Visit washablesofas.com today and save. That's washablesofas.com. Offers are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply. I'm always in the kitchen. You're always in the kitchen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, actually, I'm not in the kitchen. I mean, I'm outside in the kitchen. Yeah. But the internal kitchen, as I was just explaining to your chefs, I've become increasingly frustrated with because I've got quite nice knives and people have bought me good knives. And subsequently, no one wants to sharpen them because they're frightened of sharpening. They don't want to mess them up. And what I quite like is a cheap knife with a brutal sharpener.

21:24and I want it accessible. So you buy a good knife, a fine knife for 12 quid, sharpen every couple of... How do you sharpen it? How did you... Well, I have a brutal sharpener. It's really hard. What is it? I buy my sharpeners for two quid, two and a half euros, and I drag them through that nasty V-shaped thing. Oh, you just drag it that thing. Yeah, and I don't do that. That's too posh. I find that you do the brutal one and it shaves off quite a capacious amount of steel and your knife's done off. But it lasts a year and it costs 12 quid. We had, I remember, we used to have somebody who used to come and sharpen the knives.

22:04Did you ever read that? We had Bellsides Grove when it was growing up, so that must have been when I first came to London. Can you imagine this American girl who didn't know what anything was and they delivered bottles of milk and you didn't lock your door and the man came to sharpen the knives and sell onions. They used to sell onions like on the back of their bicycle. This must have been in the 70s. Well, yeah, it was in the 70s. We used to have the Rag and Bone Man, any old iron they used to see as they went by. Then you had the Knife Man. The Knife Man, I definitely remember. By the way, it's a good system, the Knife Man, actually.

22:35I know. Why don't we still have a knife? Maybe we should bring back Knife Man. Yeah, Knife Man worked. And then you had the milk. The milk, definitely. Yeah, but you had the – Yeah, and you also got that like creamy stuff at the top. but you could have like a different silver. But the billman used to sell everything. He used to have everything on there. And then he just went from selling everything to not existing anymore. Yeah, no. So when we're going to talk about work and food. So when you go to a set in Spain with you and Jake and Josh and all your people, do you worry about what they're eating?

23:05Not really. No. No, because if no one complains, then I don't stick my nose into it. And they don't really complain. So they're sort of happy. You'll find out at some point or another if the caterers aren't winning. but recently there doesn't seem to be too much complaints. I barbecue every day. I've got a sort of old wooden trailer that we reside in where we have communal meals. I play mother and I usually do a, we've got a stove in there and I cook in there. And we'll cook in a very similar fashion to just how we cook in there. I'll don a kebab it. I'll put it in, take slices off the side, put it back in again.

23:40And we'll do that five days a week. Yeah. You just invite various people from there. There's usually 10 people in there. Yeah, Jake's a good eater, isn't he? Yeah, he knows that. He really cares about food. Yeah, and carries no weight. Yeah. Carries no weight, doesn't drink much. Say he's in good nick. But he really cares about food. But he cares about his food. And he rather sadly sends me pictures than I send him pictures of food. But what about other actors you've worked with? Do you think that... I'm yet to come across someone that's not interested in food. Yeah, do you think? Yeah. Almost no one I know is not interested in food.

24:10But sometimes you have to switch off and see food as fuel. and as soon as food is fuel, you tend to lose weight. And when you go to a set, like you were in Spain for the COVID, being Afghanistan, do you think about where you're going and the food they're having and what that will be like? Or do you think wherever you are, you're kind of eating what you... Yeah, I mean, I'll go local. We spent quite a lot of time. The last two movies I've done are outside of the Covenant, which is in Spain. We did in Turkey. I remember that. What was that like? I like Turkey. What did you like about it? I like the Turks.

24:44And I can't believe there's a country as large as that that people don't talk about much. We were just very impressed with it. We love the people and we love the food. Food is great. I was in Istanbul three weeks ago and I hadn't been there before and I was blown away by the Bosphorus sitting there. And then the food, we went to all these different restaurants, some on the Bosphorus, some in the little town, some and they i thought it was a fantastic food culture it is but everything in that part of the world is do you think i do i mean you're still sort of you're you're you're tethered to the med so i don't know if you've done tel aviv you've done tel aviv the food culture in israel is insane we spend quite a lot of time in the middle east yeah we like them at least i didn't know that Where?

25:35We got mates in Bahrain, so we go every year for the race. A little bit in Saudi, quite a lot in Israel. Yeah. And the food-wise, do you have one place that you actually, the Middle Eastern food that you have most? Well, Israel's sort of nicking it at the moment. But then Dubai, I don't know if you've spent any time in Dubai. I have to tell you, the Dubai, I mean, it's a cliche, and it is for a reason, because it's pretty brilliant. Yeah. There are a lot of, you know, I've been asked to open a restaurant in Dubai. I think there must be, I think there's no, but there are quite a lot of Western restaurants there.

26:09I've been with lots of people that have been talking to you about opening places over the years. And you never seem to open anywhere else. I went to look at a site the other day with our friend who does all the architecture for us, you know. And he said, I was sitting in this place near Grover Square and I heard this guy going, and Ruthie, you know, look at this space. You could have your kitchen here and you could do this and you could do that. And he said, I want to say, listen, you know, she's not going to do it. But that's not true. I go, I would do it. Why don't you do it? I don't know. It's interesting.

26:42I think we just haven't found the right site. You spent some time talking to them. Yeah, we went to L.A. But the fact is that it's a long answer to a short question. Why don't I do it? I think I still would do it. We could just do another restaurant in London. We don't have to go abroad. Although, you know what would be quite interesting is it would break a cliché. I know you're not going to go to Dubai, which I would quite like you to do, just because it's unpredictable. And I think it's important to be unpredictable, and I think it's important to prove yourself wrong. Okay, I get it. I'm constantly doing things which, against my better judgment, I do, because I have to or I'm forced into a corner or whatever, and then subsequently I'm very grateful that I did and thought, well, hold on, I probably should have started doing this a long time ago.