Ruthie's Table 4It was in our private dining room three years ago when I wrote to Ridley Scott asking if he’d be the first guest for a podcast idea I’d had about food and memories.
Ridley wrote back saying, ‘Yes Ruthie but I’m directing Gucci.’
A year later, ‘Yes Ruthie but I’m directing Napoleon.’
A year later, ‘Yes Ruthie but I’m directing The Bee Gees.’
Then a few days ago, whilst sitting in the River Cafe garden with his family, he drew a beautiful drawing on the wine list with the words: ‘Ruthie, how about next Tuesday?’
Ruthie’s Table 4 is made in partnership with Moncler.
You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair, like knowing.
Where you were when you heard a song you love, where you were when you shared a meal with one of your children, or where you were when you discovered a painting that stayed with you forever. I know where I was when I saw Blade Runner London, Thelma and Louise Harris, and Napoleon a few months ago in l A. I also know that I was in this room in the River Cafe three years ago, writing to Ridley Scott and asking him to be my first guest for this idea I had for a podcast about food and memories. Ridley wrote back, saying, yes, Ruthie, but I'm directing Gucci. A year later, Yes, Ruthie, but I'm directing Napoleon. A year later, Yes Ruthie, but I'm directing the bee Gees. Then a few days ago, sitting in the River Cafe garden with his family celebrating the night Grand Cross he'd been awarded at Windsor Castle, he drew a beautiful drawing on the wine list with the words Ruthie, how about next Tuesday. In preparation, his son Jake and I met to talk about his father, how he exposed him to every food possible, cheese with maggots and sardinia, steps in the door, doin on the set of Duellists, and the magical experience of producing wine at their vineyard, Mars Day and Fermiere. Like knowing where you were when you saw a movie. I know that in years to come I'll remember exactly where I was Hammersmith when I sat with Ridley Scott talking about food and memory, food and family, food and wine, food and love.
Yes, Ridley, thank you, and answer that I'm honored.
We would love you to read The recipe.
For asparagus an anchovy buttered with parmesan rynch dry and roughly chopped. The anchovies in a bowl, Mixed together the answes with lemon juice and black pepper, and with the fork mixed the butter. Boil the esparats in salted water until tender. Drain season and drizzle with olive oil. Place the asparagus on warm plates, Spoon over the anchovy butter and scattered with parmesan shavings, and my jaw is dripping the salagra. You know I used to come by here the famous Italian dish, which is the.
Funny little piece the.
Farinata.
No, no, it's like a soup.
Oh yeah, the task of bean soup, cannellini bean soup.
Yeah.
So I got so taken with it now. Every time I drive pasta pop in for lunch and the guy said, I know what you want.
You want to yes, please?
And then eventually the chef, because I had two bowls, and the chef said, you really like this stuff? I said, yeah. I said, what's the secret? Because I wish I was a cook. You said, it's pretty simple to bring out to the boil said, he said, and I take one carrot, chop the carrot, drop it into that.
Don't overcook it. I said.
One of the black pieces, He said, that is the secret. Is that as a bit of black cabbage cavalodera. He says, there you got it. I said, to kind of have another bowl.
It's a very simple look says everything about Tuscany. It says, you know, beans, olive oil and the cabbage and that's it.
You know.
I'm from the North of England and it took a long time for me to discover my mother was a good cook. But we were as a child, we were on rationing warriors. So my mother made the most of what she could. And the thing I used to love most.
Was mince and dumplings in the mince.
Okay, I love that. Or she made something what she called beef olives. It was cheap beef slender bead which she'd roll into into it. Something in the middle was magic. So my mom always bread and us always good food, but very plain. Then I'm at college, and at college you can't afford very much. At also there was no restaurants and near the world comes you were. And I then became known pretty fast. I got to advertising, and I went off like a bolt of lightning, and suddenly I had money to spend because of good restaurants, and like other places in the world, can be expensive, right, And so at that time there was this big, fashionable, small restaurant in Kings Rope called Alvaro, and right there, for the first time in my life, had tested what it was called kim at the heading of Italian Tarazza food and Alvara, did you have a messing?
I think he came here right when we opened in the ages.
And then Alvara then evolved really fast and became very faster.
With like white tiles, and they not in.
The place was tiny, and he moved so quickly, evolved so quickly. He owned a club, discotheque and restaurant just across the road, down the street, and in there would be the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, even Warren Beatty. I started eating there regularly because I could afford to it. That's where I came across Protruter and things and the magic of Pastor. The story is he got so successful the mafia approaching them wanted a piece. They scared him off. He stopped completely and then open years later in a restaurant at World's End in Chelsea, San Lorenzo.
I'm known for.
Years and years and years Mora and Mara. They were Sardinian and so on their advice, I had one of the best holidays. I went up the coast to a small village that some Italian prints had built, like a fake fishing village, and we enjoyed the sud Indian food like that.
Jake told me that you bought the cheese and you took it home and it had maggots in it, that's right. And then you took it back and the man said that's what it's supposed to.
Yes, but I but I also love the sud Indian wine.
I kind of like the food.
Yeah, I like the food. I like the food from do you have potarga? You have that fish row, every and every everything may but then the.
Evolution into America, I tend to lean towards Italian cuisine always. I don't know why it's the most.
Maybe it's simple. If you like that bean soup, it has three ingredients, you know, simple.
And I don't like hamburger. I tend.
I tend to know as I've got older, to towards being nearly vegan.
Yeah so, but I like curries.
When I was at college, the cheapest restaurant near me was Indian.
And i'd go in there. There.
I discovered that they're very careful about what meat they have, the vegetable use it, and the food was great.
Because let's go back to your parents. Your mother and her cooking.
I always remember cooking was really excellent.
And would your brothers, Tony and Frank and you would meal times be very important, would you?
Well?
He liked her food, and she liked the fact that we liked her food, and it tended to be Stew's whatever.
You lived in Germany as well? Do you remember that at all? Living in Germany and eating Germany?
Nineteen forty seven, ninety fifty two, my dad became important in Germany. So my dad the end wasn't acting brigadier general, and he was there for the Marshall Plan, and he was initially involved in D Day and designing something called Maulberry Harbor, which is how we got all the truths in the Normandy landing. So when forty seven came around, he said the war ends. September forty five, he said, we're going to Germany. And I was ten, and I love the idea of that. And we went to Hamburg first. Hamburg was as if we dropped the hydrogen box.
I was going to say it was it completely.
It was like we dropped an h BOM. And then we worked there.
He worked there briefly and said, I'm now going to south to Frankfurt and Manz, I'll be working in Eisenhower's office at the Eager Farm building.
Do you remember food there? Did you remember?
You know?
Here's where it comes. He said, I'm going to show you something going to like He took me and my frank Tony was about to be born, and he took me to the American p X, which of course is a supermarket. I didn't know what that was, and i'd been on rationing. He said, this thing is called a soda fountain, he said, and the guy the hat that he's the soda jerk, he said, I advised that you have a Raspbey milkshake.
He said, Oh, by the way, do try that coca cola. How well were you ten?
So I got hooked on coca cola when it was in the glass bottle, on the small glass bottle, and I'd do six bottles a day.
To me, I still got one.
And so in there was Hamburger, and it was the American food in the American way.
Of life, so there was no immersion into Germany.
You know, I loved what I saw because everything is shiny and large, and the supermarket apples that are redder than in snow white, right, and they eat him their.
Tasteless just bigger.
That's bigger.
Yeah, the taste doesn't matter.
But you know, we got I didn't get over that for a while because I was very impressed by the American way of life.
And then you came back to England. In England and then and then we settled down, it was rationing, still going.
No, no, no, that was over.
Then, but my dad had to Suddenly the war is over and all these guys who enjoyed the high ranking positions suddenly joined the real world and get a job. So my dad ended up getting a job in soccer on Tees north of England, and we were there for the next eighteen years.
Were they excited that you were going to the Royal College? Were they you're there to be artist? Where they were?
No?
Because I traveled so much with my father as a army officer, growing to become a high ranking person. I did ten schools, so I was academically inept in those days. Parents would say you'll catch up. Of course we never did because you moved from one school to the other. Teachers don't care, and teachers that time in my generation hated the pupils and the pupils hated the teacher.
But you knew you could draw.
I did nothing but draw three years old. I will draw you three seconds? Okay, all right, okay, and there you got.
It, Ruthie, Oh pick up, thank you.
And so what happened was when I came to this decision, what do I do University of what my dad said, go to art school.
He did. He said, you go to our school. Do what you'd love to do. Draw He said, you'll probably be an art teacher. Be an art teacher.
You were thrust into the world of London as you were describing the world of artists and art and Indian food and different cultures and abilities.
But the Royal College eventually really opened me up because I'm on you're on your own.
Did you have money, No.
There's no grants.
So I'd work taskin I'd lay runways out concrete. I'd work in ICI Imperial Chemical Industries, where I'd packed night shift dry cold which it drives from the ammonia plants. And I'd do post office work every.
Christmas and then go to school every day.
And then that they were the holidays. Now save that money. It would enable me to then my dad at that time would be on a magic salary of twenty five pounds a week. People can't believe that. And the magic salary of twelve hundred pounds a year. When I started BBC, I started on a salary should take more than my father earned his lifetime so I started BBC as a designer Tormentazia twelve hundred. Yeah, and believe it, you breakfast, so.
That food again, going back to that culture, if you couldn't afford to eat out, but you could eat it. You discovered Indian restaurants and probably Greek.
And I was good with bad cook yourself.
Yeah, you would cook so you knew what good food was and you wanted to eat it.
I think if I want to, I'd be a good chef because it's about being precise. It's also having a good sense of taste.
I just say, if you want to eat well and you can't afford it, you have to learn to cook.
Yeah.
And so even when I was in West Horleypool Arts School, there would be the day and then i'd have night school.
There'd be a two hour gap.
So instead of getting fish and chips and go to the local shop and buy good cheese, some good bread and go and have half a pint of cider, that's a meal. But it was selective, selective. Yeah, and I never ate badly. As students, you didn't know. I mean a mom made sure of that. She said do this, do that, and make sure you don't and she did you don't eat wonder loafs and stuff like that?
That's it? What did you educate your children that way as well?
Do you think I didn't have to do? There? All great?
They are.
The Jake is almost professional cook. Yeah.
When he came to see me the other day, we sat and he was he just bought red mullet, and so we had a long conversation of how he was going to cook the red mullet, whether to grill it, whether to do it.
He's really good and.
He was serious cook.
And his daughter and look is a serious cook.
And your granddaughter she Cuba apparently, is going to come and cook with me here.
You'll be in shock. She's so clever.
Yeah, so you so? And the women that you married, did you? Did you?
My first wife was mother Austrian, and that's why when I was eighteen, I was wooing.
My wife would be my first wife.
Eighteen nineteen twenty I went to the Royal College and I'd go up. She lived in this town called peter Lee in the north of England, just north of Holeypool. Her mom was Austrian. It's the first time I tasted garlic and I thought, God, the garlic is wonderful, and I go home. My mother said, what's that terrible smell? Are you even in garlic? And that's how it was introduced to garlic.
So she cooked and then she was a.
Very good girl. And I didn't say that.
My mom actually better, may be married well, and Felicity could always cook. So Felicity was the mother of Jacob.
Yeah, he said.
From that she the all evolved. They could both call.
The River Cafe, cafe, steps away from our restaurant, is now open in the morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti, chiambella and crostada from our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon, ice cream coops 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. In advertising, you were making building a company. So was were you like in mad Men? With you the sort of Don Draper of londd You have those long martini lunches.
And no bar office.
We opened the office in London and it took off, and then I opened an office in Paris and it took off.
Did you eat well in Paris? Yeah?
I love preferred.
Then I don't know what happened to Paris now.
Yes, Paris then there were a lot of brasseries, either because it was fresh and new to me because I really enjoyed the French cuisine at that point. I'm not sure I enjoy it as much now.
There's still a very strong culture of food in France. You know, you can get into a taxi cab and the guy will tell you how to cook a sea bass. Yeah, but I think there is. It's probably changing, but I think there is.
But didn't things kind of slightly modernize And I noticed that the modernization of the French food is better than the becomes more interesting when it's done properly, when they lose all the sauces and like that.
Yeah, the world. We were just talking about the three ingredients a lot. There's a lot of and you have to you know, if you're going to have three ingredients, they have to be really good, don't they. You know. Yeah, So you're with Alan Parker and David Putnam.
We were so competitive, we weren't friends. It was highly competitive. And there used to be this thing called Monday Morning Newcomers and I'd sit there with a cup of teena cigarette and see who did that? Adrian and I damn who did that? Alan Parker?
Damn?
In reality at that moment that the Alan Parker, Adrian Lyne and me, then we were the leader of the pack. We all had our own production company, were separate, absolutely in competition, and so in the English advertising and they called the English Light got leaked into France and leaked into America, so that I shipped out frequent shooters commercials in America.
And that's to when I then opened an office in.
An Agencies would come to you and say, yeah, they look at.
The real what was it like?
If we can, we can talk about one ad which was about Brett Food, so well, tell me about Hovis.
Hovas was the companies said we have a campaign a series and look, I would look. I think I'm blessed with a good eye. I have a very good eye. And while doing commercials, I discovered it's better to be in a kitchen the chef can stir his own concoction. To me, it was better to operate. So I'm a very good camera operator. So I did camera operated on two and a half thousand commercials, everything handheld, the whole goddamn nineer. So then when I do the duelist, that's me on one camera. When I do Alien, that's me on one camera. Later under me. So all this evolved into the exercise and art of that, and photographing.
And in advertising. We were so successful.
That's a lot of very good, over the top lunches where we'd have it and lunch bloody Mary followed by a bottle of wine and go back to work, which is not a good idea.
It doesn't work.
Do you do that now? No, you said that you made an advertisement like a feature film.
The thirty second commercial I regard as a film, and you could tell a big story in thirty seconds if you don't what you're doing.
I did Steve Job's first commercial.
I know the matt.
I met the agency.
They came into the chair of paper, said George Orwell at the end, he said, we're going to show you how nineteen eighty four ain't going to be like nineteen eighty four.
I said, what is this? Is it? What's it for? They said, well, it's a computer, So we don't talk about a computer. You don't show a computer. No.
I said, well, who's this girl running down a corner? Well, that's freedom. She's being pursued by Orwellian threatening people. I said, oh, it's George, okay, for what's it for?
Computer? For what.
Domestic computer? I said to this was and Steve I said, what you need a computer? Right shopping list? What's the matter of the pattern pencil? It just laughed.
I was on a film set the other day and George Clooney was there and Adam Sandler and they did you know, take after ten I've never been on it. Gave me a little part. Hint, hint, he gave me a part in movie. So Ridley Ridley, Yeah, he gave me a little part in his movie. So next time a little Ruthie Rogers cameo. I said, not one word, but it was really interesting to see.
I do two takes. Think about it.
I'm casting a good actor and he's got a script. He's had the script for a month or two. He is, she has prepared what she's going to do. There's nothing worse in the morning. Then they walk in and the director starts to talk about the meaning of life. They want to just get on.
With it, and how are you on set?
Is it?
Is it fun to be on a Ridley scot movie?
I think I think they keep coming back.
I'd like to talk about food in movies. So we can remember Blade Runner and the noodles. They can remember Alien, well.
That was yeah, grain drive food.
So would you talk to me about movies and films?
Well, in making a movie is all to do with research, and I have a great team, and so I've worked with my costume designer, Janty since the first Gladiator.
But before that there were other costumes.
Arthur Max I've worked for he's the production designer since just after the Timber Luiz.
I've worked with different people.
And over the years it's simply easier to take up rains of the people, you know, because we are so fast.
As I finish, I'm already prepping the next one.
Yeah you're prepping Begs now.
Now Yeah, I haven't quite delivered the Gladiators. So that's for me's normal, but the means I mean.
No, it's practical.
I hold onto the team, letting it go. They're gone and I need the team. Keeping my team makes me more efficient and they like it because they never stopped working.
And so when you're thinking about when you let's take one movie. Take a movie and talk to me about the food in one of your movies.
Oh, alien would be one of people to eat in space. It would have to be dried food. It would have to be water that somehow you generate from condensation in the ship. Is there condensation in the ship? There is now, because Harry Dean Stanton died in a landing leg group was dripping with water. So I made that up to that was old bullshit. You'll say, what is a conversation from what you said?
Well, you know, and I also by then you've learned to absorb your chemeras from your own body.
Which would be turned in reconsumption. Now in space, that packaging is edible. So all the packaging is light, but it's there to be cooked. And actually, Martian to me is one of my favorite recent films in a way because it's a comedy in a way because Fox accommodiss a comedy. Why well, anybody survives by eating their own ship, it's got to be good. You're right, okay, So, but I think it was such a blow by blow logical piece of science, and yet it was amusing. I thought it worked perfectly. It's good.
Good for.
He said to me, Squeeze Matt, Matt Damon, He said, with tomato ketchup.
I love tamato ketcher.
You just said, you said should have borded more ketchup because he was living on potatoes, so you had to eke out the ketchup, the potatoes and ketcher? Why is why are potatoes so marvelous?
I will let you answer that question.
Well, there can be chips, cream potatoes, bad potatoes.
It's no what is a marvelous staple? It's a great food, isn't it?
And the food is Gladiator? What did they eat?
Eggs?
Chicken, grain? But if you are upper class, it's another story. How ab what you want? Eating everything from?
Probably?
And I think probably the challenges were healthier than the bread. Who would eat hung meat which is rotting without vegetables because they didn't like vegetables.
Do you think about food when you wake up in the morning and do you think about what you're going to eat that day?
Plan?
It's I got blueberries, cherries, breakfast with Greek yogurts, expresso, that's it.
And lunch, lunchtime protein with salad.
Evening only vegetables and vegetables cooked in some clever way.
I like curried vegetables.
How long have you been on this regime ten years and it works. It's good for.
You're still here. I do drink after dinner. I don't drink with dinner.
But when you go to a restaurant, do you break the rules?
No? No, I tend to stick with the rule book.
Yeah, and when you try, well, do you think about that? Right now? Where are you shooting the beaches?
Oh? Probably the beach A lot of time in England. I've got to do Miami.
What's your favorite beg song?
Massachusetts?
If you like listening to Ruthie's Table four, would you please make sure to rape and review the podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Thank you, Ridley. Most people with the success you've had might have bought penthouse apartment in Central Park, a fabulous yacht, but you bought a chateau. And I'm making award winning wine. So I just thought, before Christophe and Melina come in, both some ayas from the river cafe, you could tell me why did you do this?
My gluten for punishment and I liked to evolve and I bought I had a farm in the cost Hole years ago, and I loved it. To death for ten years, but it always rained, so the kids got bored and wouldn't go down, and I got into horses in a big way.
I had sheep, so we.
Sold it, and I always missed that farm. And then I then did a film, The Duelists. I experienced the Door done, and I loved that part of France, and I thought, but the door Durne rains as well. Then I really missed it. And so eventually twenty thirty two years ago, I decided I'm going look for sun for sunshine, and I started looking anywhere beneath Leon and I made fun of the trip, and somebody was looking for me, and then took about six months. Is one day I was in the camp Film Festival and he calls it. I think I've got it. So I drove the two and fifty kilometers there and I bought it by lunchtime. And because I've known by now, I've had big houses and medium sized houses, big houses of pin and that you do not need twelve bedrooms. And so this is a manua, which is a smaller sized. It's not a chateau.
How many acres of vineyard do you have?
Well?
He had actually eleven hectors, and I discovered later years that it belonged to General Robert of the Napoleon Army, and that was his house and his vineyard.
I was buying his eleven hector.
And when I was buying it, the people when you're looking for house, people who usually died or they getting divorced. The couple getting divorced, they've done quite good things to what is already a bit of a gem, like stone floors and double glazing, but matching the windows the way they should be et So I bought it, and from that I did know what to do with the eleven hectors. So I got a local calf to say, we'll take it out as long as you keep the venue on neat. I don't want to do wine, as long as it looks chronically neat, and I drive in and looks like a garden.
Good. And so they did a good job until after four years they caught and said, we've just got a.
Gold in a Paris following you. He said, we've got a gold and a silver on this for the wine in Paris. And so the guy who was kind of giving me advice to that moment, my lovely uncle Denny Long said you know, suddenly we should and your grape is way better than you and imagined he said, I think we should try and take it back. So we took it back and there we have the reverse of where we went to. So suddenly I had to get involved in this science of making wine.
And I love it.
And what is the science of making wine?
It's precision. Everything's precision, and everything's taste, and so it is personal. I think it's personal. So in the funny kind of way, wine making is as creative as making a movie.
All right, So we're here in the River Cafe dining room and we're doing a wine tasting of Ridley Scott's wine. I think we should start by the white wine.
We try the wine just before, just to open the wine. Yeah, and he's they.
Are very fresh.
There's a lot of freshness on the wine. Yeah.
Very elegant.
Yes, and yeah, I mean it's lovely.
I stole a great vintner from a very elevated car in France. I want to say where. And he now, he is the man who puts all this stuff that crystal barrel, and he puts all the he blends everything right, And so he said, describe the kind of white we're looking for, And I said, I tend to always drink for a quick kind of knee jerk reaction. Say what do you want to say, a Pinot grisio or salt, because the funny kind of way, the simple wine, simple white wine. I find the French red white can get shabbies can get heavy, the show can get heavy, and I don't like heavy wine.
That was that.
I think that's one point meant love drinkability straight away?
What is the wine is?
You get this lovely freshness and then you get this beautiful like lime flower notes, you know her base show's nose almost like asparagus. You know it just it just feels like summer. You like, Yes, I love it works perfectly. It's in fact, Aspargus is a very difficult dish to pair with wine, and it's like so many a nightmare like such things like also to pair with art chalks as well, it's quite difficult. And I agree with Chris said, the acidity is lovely. You have this freshness, so it's not you know, crashing, crushing the dish. So I think it's really a good compliment.
And shall we move on to the Yeah.
The roses is one of our biggest outputs. It's retracted a bit. Why is that because there's too many bad roses? Is the first time teaching the.
Rose it's very proven, very pale.
Yes.
I think you know the roses, especially because you know, like it's a great and a perry tip glass of wine. But I can see prepairing so many kinds of dishes like car patches style of food, or like lobster salad or anything that's fresh and seafoody.
I just think it's delightful. We talk about food as creating a movie. We talk about food is growing grapes for wine. We talk about food is your children. In Sarginia, we also talk about food is comfort. So when you need comfort, even within the plan that you have, is there something cheese.
I don't take chocolate, I don't have sweets.
I love cheese, okay, any particular type.
All of it. But you know, the King would be probably still did you grow up with that good cheese?
Will always assumed, and the Americans both struck Turbot boadshow, don't quite understand cheese. And but in Beverly Hills right now, there's a very good cheese.
There's a good well I remember there was one on.
Yeah, He's moved to a lot is evolved two Little Santa Monica. It's really good, but I do love cheese.
Cheese. All right, well let's go have some cheese. We have some cheese before you go French.
Have you got the French?
And we have some very good Italian cheese. Very with your wine.
Thank you, Ridley Scott, thank you, thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair
