Maria Sharapova

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast.

0:30Experience cloud-like comfort with high-resilience foam that's hypoallergenic and never needs fluffing. The sturdy steel frame ensures longevity, and the modular pieces can be rearranged anytime. Check out washablesofas.com and get up to 60 % off your Anabay sofa, backed by a 30-day satisfaction guarantee. If you're not absolutely in love, send it back for a full refund. No return shipping or restocking fees. Every penny back. Upgrade now at washablesofas.com. Offers are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply. You are listening to Ruthie's Table 4 in partnership with Montclair. It may not seem obvious at first, but tennis and cooking have a lot in common.

1:14Chefs and tennis players are both rigorous. Preparation in the kitchen, courtside rituals. When the match begins or when the restaurant doors open, both need to be ready, focused, and adaptable. Meeting Maria Sharapova at a grand dinner in Milan, I discovered a food lover whose story off the court is as amazing as her performance on it. In 1986, pregnant with Maria and wanting to protect her, her parents fled Belarus, escaping the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. A few years later, she and her father moved to Florida with just$700 and not a word of English. Every year must be an anniversary for someone like Maria, who hit her first tennis ball, age four, was spotted by Martina Navratilova, age six, and became one of only 10 women in history to win a career grand slam.

2:05But this year is especially special. Maria is celebrating 20 years since winning against Serena Williams, becoming at age 17 a Wimbledon champion. Today we're here in the River Cafe to celebrate. As a businesswoman, She is uniquely creative and inspiring. Other magical ingredients needed in a kitchen or a tennis court. We're here together, two women talking about food and memories with stories to tell. And maybe before we finish, we'll have a celebratory chocolate nemesis with 20 candles. I genuinely cannot believe that Ruthie Rogers just did an introduction on me. It's so special. Thank you. It was kind of love at first sight, that dinner, because we were in Milan at the Montclair dinner.

2:53Yes. And we just kind of just fell into each other. It was a very charming evening, wasn't it? It was dark and moody, a little bit eerie. And then it was toward the end of dinner when I think things were wrapping up that I came across. You're in a hallway, maybe at the bathroom line. I think it was maybe at the bathroom. It was in that corner. You never know who you'll meet in the toilet room. We never know, and that's where we go. But it was lovely. It was for Remy Ruffini. It was. Remy Ruffini. Yes, who I've gotten to know in the last few years and you as well. And what a charming, very charming man and has done incredible things with Montclair.

3:29And there's just a very joyous atmosphere in the room, I thought. Everybody was there to celebrate him, to celebrate each other over food. When we talked last week about doing this, you know, we always start with a recipe. And there's something about hearing someone, you know, we've done Nancy Pelosi or Al Gore, people who you'd never think saying, take a tomato and squash it, you know. And so when I asked you what you wanted to cook, you said that you'd like to do a recipe that reminded you. It reminded me of my grandmother. Yeah. Yes, the years that I spent in her kitchen. You chose a recipe with potatoes.

4:06That was based on potatoes. And you said there was a potato cake. There's a potato. My mother makes these delicious potato pancakes as a treat. And if it's a holiday or, you know, every, on my birthday, she usually likes to make potato pancakes. And then Alexander orders a little jar of caviar. And that is our, that's our ultimate and absolutely sour cream. Yes. Well, these are potatoes Lucchesi because it comes from, well, Lucca is a beautiful city in Tuscany. It's near Pisa. Would you like to read the recipe? Okay. Roast potatoes from Luca, potato luchesi. One kilogram of waxy potatoes. One medium red onion, finely sliced.

4:49Careful with your fingers. Six garlic cloves peeled and kept whole. Four sprigs of fresh rosemary and sage. And one glass of dry white wine. Extra virgin olive oil. Let's preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Peel the potatoes and cut into thick slices. put into the cold water to wash off excess starch, then drain, pat dry, and put in a large mixing bowl. Add the onion. Onions are my favorite, by the way. Do you? Yes, shallots and onions. Onions with potato is just the best combination. So add the onion, garlic, and herbs to the potato bowl and the rest of the ingredients and toss well. Choose a baking tray large enough for the potatoes to be spread out in one later.

5:37Cover with foil and bake in the oven for 25 minutes. Remove the foil, then, using the back of a large cooking spoon, break up the potatoes and herbs to make a rough mash. That's the fun part. Drizzle with olive oil. Return to the oven and roast for 30 minutes or until the potatoes are brown and crisp on top and still light and fluffy underneath. Serve cut into slices. So it is a bit, it's not a potato pancake, but we tried to find the recipes. It sounds delicious. It is delicious. Can you please sign this recipe for me? With love. We talk about this quite often, about how much we really respect and love women who cook.

6:21You know, that cooking is a way of sharing, it's a way of expressing love. But we also have to really respect and admire the women who don't. Yes. Well, that's me. And I do. And I think that I have a friend whose father would never let her in the kitchen because he didn't want her to cook. And I was sort of slightly equated to learning how to type, that, you know, growing up in the sort of 70s and thinking, you know, we were women who were going to work, that if we learned how to type, we'd be secretaries. Yes. And luckily, my mother forced me to go to typing school now that we all use laptops, you know, knowing how to type.

6:58Yes, that's very handy. But there are, as women, sort of categories that we're thrust into and we're judged, whether we're a good mother by the way we cook or a good wife by the way we cook. Very much so. But now I think it's also spreading to men. I think everything is acceptable now. And we're also looking at men and how they cook and how they shop. Yes. And even cooking as a form of seduction, you know. Yeah, I think of some of my relatives. My mother, when you ask her if she enjoys cooking, I think her answer is no. But she enjoys cooking knowing that somebody will enjoy it. And when she cooks, the process is meticulous.

7:39She does it in advance. She does it off of a recipe. She makes sure that it's very precise. And I think that also seeing her go through that process taught me a lot about discipline. Because cooking, I mean, there's different ways to cook. You can just take ingredients from the refrigerator and just whip it right up. But her process was very meticulous and in particular and the ingredients that she chose based off recipes. And she wanted to know that if it worked for someone, it would work for her if she did it well. And her kitchen is always clean. And I think that's, you know, that's the energy that she that she taught me to perform with is that you have to put everything that you have.

8:16You have to do it with a way of discipline and time and get it done and know that you have no regrets in the end. I agree. I always say that very often about Julia Child's cookbook, this American cookbook writer, that she did it, it was so precise. She never said take a ripe tomato, but she would say take a tomato that's, you know, two inches wide and four inches high and put it in a dish. But it was like science. Right. And therefore you never had a failure because if you followed it, you know, that it would be a failure. And that gave you the confidence to then be able to not follow the rules.

8:48And even if you did fail, I think you would carry a sense of knowing that you performed it at your very best. Because then you're not looking back and regretting, which is one of the worst feelings that you may have. That voice, yes. Yeah, that says, oh, I didn't prepare enough or I didn't do that enough. At least when you prepare the very best that you could. And in my sport, that was so important. We just briefly discussed it. But doing your homework and going overboard with your homework so that, you know, no matter what result, because, you know, you show up on the day and things can go wrong.

9:23You can be as prepared as you want to be. You know, you can be as confident as you want to be and as you are. And you did everything to your best knowledge and ability and it just doesn't work out. But at least that's, you know, you know that's life and that happens. But you did everything to get to that moment. You did it 100%. It gives you resilience as well. I think if you have that. I love that word. I love it too. I was thinking that now everybody talks about teaching, and it's very, very important, their children's self-esteem. I sometimes think self-esteem is overrated, but anyway. That's another...

9:56But I do think resilience, if I could... And I've seen it in this restaurant. I've seen the times that we've had hard times or different issues. And they're the ones who are just able to... Not to hide it, not to shun it away, but to take it and then carry on, which is, I think... I was so nicely surprised to see how young your staff is. They are. They are. I think they, you know, some of them, it's interesting. It used to be that in the kitchen, you had chefs who started very, very young and sometimes academically were challenged. And so they found a skill that they could do, which is great. Now we have that.

10:35And their, you know, question, I'm looking at Adriana, I think who studied history and got a degree and then always knew she wanted to cook. It's very performance-led, a restaurant. You know, the curtain. It's an art. I would say it's so probably comparison to sport, but also to theater. Ready, set, go. And it's collaborative. You know, that if you don't chop the chilies, the sauce chef doesn't have it to make your sauce, doesn't have the chilies. If you're late for work, it's very often not the boss who's across, but your colleague. Yes. I noticed another similarity with sport and particularly in tennis and working at a restaurant is that when the curtains close and all the people leave, it's just you and in this very quiet and eerie place.

11:25If you think about leaving center court and walking back through a tunnel and going into the locker room where you are, I mean, it's fairly lonely, right? It's just you and your bag and you go in the shower and you have some of your rivals and compatriots in there. But it's just, I don't know, it's very intimate. And just a few minutes prior to that, you were in a room that was in this arena that was full of thousands of screaming fans. And then it's just you. Tell me how that relationship was between your grandmother and her mother and cooking. My mother was a very young mom. She was pregnant when she was 19.

12:06With you? Yes. I'm an only child. And she was still in university at the time. And so her mom, she had a job in a local market. And where was this? Like a local in Sochi. Sochi, which is where? Which is in the south of Russia. It's on the Black Sea. I was born in Siberia while my mother was pregnant with me. Actually, both of my parents are Belarusian. But during Chernobyl and the explosion, my parents moved to Siberia. I had some close relatives there, and so they found that that would be a safer place for my mom to give birth at. So at 20, she gave birth to me. So we were very young, a very small family, and we were very close until this day.

12:49We remain that way. My mother has been a huge influence in my life because so much of what I did was about sport, but so much of her influence was outside of the court. Of course, she was very involved in making sure I did the right thing in my career, But most of her influence was making sure that I did my homework, was that I studied well, was that I immersed myself in a different world that wasn't connected to sport, that I was curious and interested and different. What did your father do? My father had a little construction firms around the country, and he was traveling quite a bit. So we would actually rarely see him because he was working full time as my mom was young and was raising me.

13:34And so you grew up in Siberia? Grew up in Siberia for the first two years, and then at two years old, we moved to Sochi. Why did they choose it? Sochi was known for a place where a lot of people from the north of Russia would come to relax and go on their summer holidays. And they had these sanatoriums where you'd spend several weeks getting healthy, swimming in the sea, of doing natural therapies. There's a lot of people that worked in oil and coal mining. You know, they would go to just breathe fresh air. And it was a very warm city in the summer. It reminded me very much of Florida, actually.

14:18The River Cafe Cafe, steps away from our restaurant, is now open. In the morning, an Italian breakfast with Cornetti, Ciambela, and Crostata from our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon, ice cream coupes and River Cafe classic desserts. Come in the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in the bar. No need to book. See you here.

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16:04The food in Russia is very regional, but would it have been different in Belarus to Sausage? I definitely remember the tastes of the food being very different. In both places. No, my grandmother's food was very flavorful because it had a very rich profile. There were a lot of stews and a lot of soups. And within a borscht, I mean, there's more than 10 ingredients. You had the beets and the peppers and the meat and a few spices. And then I went to the United States and it was a grilled piece of chicken. It was a very different experience. And I miss sour cream. I grew up eating sour cream on everything.

16:43and all of a sudden it was ketchup. Yeah, oh God. I was born in upstate New York in Woodstock and my father, the real treat, he would take us sort of once a month to New York and he'd drive and we'd see the ships and then we'd see a musical and then we would go to the Russian Tea Room. Yes. The tradition of a samovar and drinking tea is such a, I mean, any time I would enter my grandparents' house, They would cut a piece of rye, like a big rye bread, and they would cut it in many slices. They would put a thick layer of butter and then red caviar because that was cheaper than black caviar. And it was welcoming your family.

17:29They were so proud to see their granddaughter walk through the door and their children. And I remember this beautiful plate. And presentation is everything. You know, the china was, they would take out their most beautiful china. And they didn't have much. I mean, they didn't grow up with a lot of money. They didn't have a lot of money. But, you know, when they would sit at a table, everything had a meaning. The food had a meaning and a purpose. And it was about having a nice time and sharing memories and laughs and just being a family. Over food, of having conversations. And I really miss that.

18:08Yeah. Can you create that in your own world? I try. There's nothing like going to your grandmother's home. I know. There's really, there's really not. I also have a more minimal approach to decoration and the way I set a table. Yeah. And it's quite a contrast to thinking of, you know, arriving at my grandmother's house where everything is more oriental and detailed. and there's even the way that she serves, and there's a lot. You went to Miami with your father. I went there with my father because my mom couldn't get a visa for the first two years, and it wasn't planned. It was just difficult to obtain the visa, and so I spent the first two years just eating takeout food with my father.

18:58Did he cook it all? The only thing I remember him cooking was white rice because he would wake up super early because my training would be early. And he would find random jobs that he could take. And most of them were on golf courses because he had a construction background. He did a lot of jobs on golf courses. And his work would start super early. So he would make rice for me while I was still sleeping in the morning. And he would leave it in the pan. and he would put it under a pillow. And so when I would wake up, I would eat this rice as my breakfast on my own. I would put some milk in it.

19:35So you were at seven, though. Yeah, I was seven. And you were training. I was already training. How did that happen? My father enjoyed the sport. He's no brilliant athlete, although he claims to be. I grew up going to tennis practice with him because he enjoyed the sport. He played at a leisure level. He played with his friends. This was in Russia. This was in Sochi, yes. Sochi. Yes, and we only moved to the United States because of tennis. It was very specific to going to this very famous academy in Florida where a lot of tennis players went. And it was mostly because there's a huge facility and you have other kids your age that you play with.

20:16You have some of the best coaches in the world going there. And you just don't need to leave, which for an athlete is incredibly important And just to have a base where you feel like I'm just focused on this one craft. I do it every day. I have no distractions. And it just happened to be in the middle of nowhere in Florida. Did they think about feeding children who are athletes in a certain way? Or was it just? I honestly just think they cared about making money. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. That time, food wasn't a priority for athletes. I talked to Savannah Leaf. Do you know Savannah Leaf? I don't. She's great.

20:50She was an Olympic volleyball player. and she's now a filmmaker and an artist and wonderful and we and we were talking about when and how the awareness of food and athletic ability 40 years ago 30 you know it's not no big deal yeah that people didn't think people didn't think about what they would eat prior to a match or after a match it just wasn't and now players travel with their own chefs because it's it's become a critical component of an athlete's life right because the difference of number 10 in the world to number one in the world is very small. And so, you know, having, you know, having a perspective that's different to others, you know, or having a game plan that's smarter than others, right, or treating your body like it's, it's an incredibly important tool is vital.

21:39How did you merge the academic with the athletic when you were a child of seven, and they were, and you were in the academy. They must have been regulated, no, to give you an academic course. Absolutely. It was something once my mother arrived, besides giving me a fresh haircut and changing all my clothes because she said, what is your father buying you? And cooking home-cooked meals. She was, I remember, you know, education was a big part of her contribution And even when it came to high school, right, I was a teenager and she sourced because I traveled so much as a teenager. She knew I couldn't go to a school in Bradenton, Florida, that we'd have to find a school that I could do online.

22:32And she sourced a place. It wasn't like a popular school. But I finished high school. I finished that part of my academics while I was traveling and competing and playing at Wimbledon. And she would, when the school would send all the books, my mother would cut it in four portions for each semester. And she'd put it in a folder and she would print all the material that I had to execute. And I would travel, you know, with these, you know, quarter of books with me. You'd have exams. Did you have exams? And I had exams online, yes. I thought school was a really healthy distraction for me. or studying was because it taught me things that tennis could never teach me.

23:19Like what? Art. Yeah. You know, just understanding that there are things outside of hitting a yellow, you know, fluffy ball or history or mathematics and numbers. The discipline of, you know, coming back after a match and being in a hotel room in the middle of nowhere and sitting down in your hotel room at this little desk and taking out your material and taking your mind off of the grind of the tour and practice, you know, and being with my father all the time and listening, you know, to his advice on the tennis court, it was an escape for me to study. And so I really loved the process of it.

23:57Did your father always travel with you? He traveled with me until I was 21. And then I won my third Grand Slam. And then I wanted to do on my own. He was still heavily, very much involved in my career and we speak almost daily. Were you becoming aware of food? What made you a better athlete depending on what you ate? I think travel. I think travel was what brought out my curiosity in food. My food choices when I was young were very simple and only because we didn't have a lot of money. They were flavorful once my mother arrived because she would make the meals herself. And I just felt comforted by the fact that I had someone at home cooking for me.

24:41And when I'd come back from practice, first thing I would do is she'd give me this long rope and I had to stretch. And then I had to hang off a rod just to loosen my body because there was so much physical exertion. She didn't know anything about forehands or backhands, But she knew that my body was, at a young age, was going through a lot, was going through such intense workouts. And she just wanted to make sure that I was stretching. So this was her. And was she interested in what you ate? She wasn't interested in a way that she thought or studied or how I would feel after. Would I be energized by the food?

25:21She just wanted to make sure that I was fed. That was her goal. Yeah. You wrote a rather beautiful sentence, which when we talked about management, I don't know where we found this, but it said, did you do enough and more to prepare for your next opponent? You've taken a few days off, your body's losing that edge. That extra slice of pizza, better make up for it with great morning session. And is that the metaphor of a pizza, the idea of a pizza? It's the balance with life. The balance of discipline. It's a balance of giving yourself a break in life, but being disciplined and courageous and taking chances and knowing that life is not all rainbows and butterflies and great moments.

26:07Life is hard. And accepting the fact that it is hard and that you're going to face moments of discouragement, of low confidence, of people having difficult opinions of you. It's part of the ups and downs, especially in athletics, especially in a world where you're caught in journalism, where you're constantly judged for how you perform, even if you win, by the way. Yeah, yeah. I suppose, did you go from the rice in the morning to a different breakfast? Tell me about your eating regime if you were playing a game. So eating as an athlete is about keeping things clean. It's about clean ingredients.

26:51It's understanding, you know, when does your body need more protein and when does your body need more carbs? You know, are you loading on, you know, more energy 30 minutes or an hour before you go out on court? How long did you play for? Was your match an hour or was your match three hours? And to be honest, it's not even about, you can have a set schedule and you can have an idea of what you're going to do and how you're going to prepare and what you're going to eat. But I think what makes the best teams and the best athlete is being able to pivot based on how things go and reacting on the occasion.