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LPL Financial Representative
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Michigan Business Representative
So what if you could Paid Advertisement Investing involves risk, including potential asset Principal LPL Financial LLC Member FINRA SIPC Adventure
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Venture Global Representative
Global we think about what can be done, not what's usually done through innovation. Venture Global is not only building some of the largest energy facilities in the world right here in the United States, but delivering American energy at a fraction of the cost in a fraction of the time. So while others are busy talking, we're busy building. That's Venture Global. That's unstoppable energy.
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LPL Financial Representative
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Ruthie Rogers
Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio national news.
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Venture Global Representative
You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Massar and Tim Stanvik on Bloomberg Radio.
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Interviewer
Well, she is an award winning chef, co founder of a Michelin starred restaurant, author of 13 cookbooks, a native New Yorker has a podcast where she talks with the likes of Paul McCartney, Tina Fey, David Beckham, Mel Brooks, Martha Stewart, Francis Ford Coppola, Mark Carney, Bob Iger, Johnny I've whose comfort food by the way is okay.
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Co-Interviewer
I like that.
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Interviewer
Who would have known. She has also, full disclosure, talked with Michael Bloomberg, of course, founder of Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies. She has talked with many, many folks. All of it comes together in a great book. It also comes together like a great meal with amazing company. Her new book is entitled Table 4 at the River Cafe, which as we understand is a highly coveted physical table located near the restaurant's open kitchen. Here to tell us about it and more is Ruthie Rogers, co founder of the River Cafe in London, host of her podcast Ruthie's Table. She joins us from London. We are so delighted to have you. We know it's a little bit later there in London. Congratulations on the new book and we were thinking about where should we begin and if you had to pick one single thing, Ruthie, as to where you are Today, why you got there, Your restaurant, iconic, well known in London, award winning. You've got now a five year old podcast. What might that thing be?
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Ruthie Rogers
I think that, you know, from the very beginning we started with the values of a restaurant. What is a restaurant? Why do people go to restaurants? What do you look for in a restaurant? And I was just downstairs just now and I see that the way people are greeted, the way people are made to feel welcome, of course the food, we change the menu for every meal. We write a menu. We rather like you do at home. We see what is fresh, what we have, we bought the day before and of course always what is in season in the Italian market. So I think every day is a different day. We have great people working here who we, you know, the whole kitchen is open. And so there's a kind of way that we all work together. And I think, you know, you want really people to come to your restaurant and leave, I always say, quite simply, happier than when they arrived.
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Co-Interviewer
So tell us about, for people who haven't been to the restaurant, the coveted table four.
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Ruthie Rogers
Well, you know what, Michael Caine always used to sit at table four. But then, you know, when Nancy Pelosi came in, we sat at table one. And there might be a table who prefers somebody who prefers table, table 10, which is near to the entrance. Table four is slightly also a pun on the word four. So it's a table number, but it also is a table for Michael Bloomberg, a table for any of the other people who are in the book. Because what we wanted to do during the, when we, we had to stop the restaurant because of the pandemic, we wanted a way to reach the people who ate in the restaurant. How could we reach them? We thought about reading a recipe every day and then that segued into the story. Because when you think about, when we, when we talk to people through the lens of food about their memories, it's very thoughtful. It brings back. If I asked you, did your mother cook, did your father cook? Did you go to restaurants? It brings up other stories.
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Interviewer
I love that aspect. Being from a large family, food was a big part. My mom loved to cook. And you know, especially around holidays, birthdays, a relative in town, she would cook and make sure there was things for everybody who liked, you know, even if she had to do like five different vegetables to make sure everybody was happy. But we would sit Ruthie at that table for hours. And I feel like that's where you're coming from.
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Ruthie Rogers
The best things happen around a table, I think. And the Sad things happen around a table. But I think it is around a table that we all meet. It doesn't matter. We could have a sandwich around the table or a drink around the table, but there is something of that conversation. And when we interviewed Elton John and David Furnish, the woman who worked for his chief of staff, who said she'd worked with and heard so many interviews over 25 years, but it was only when Elton started talking about politics, potting peas with his grandmother, or how they tried, you know, the people who use food, you know, to seduce, to impress, to give joy, to share. It's, you know, and I'm also, you know, I meet a lot of women who don't cook or men who don't cook, and that's fine. It's not about the cooking. It's about somehow being together.
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Co-Interviewer
Well, let's talk about the podcast a little bit and the way that these interviews have come together in this new book, as Carol mentioned, a host of names. These are not your favorites. These are just some of the interviews that the publisher picked up.
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Ruthie Rogers
We should know clear, because so many brilliant people are not in the book, but they'll be in volume two.
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Co-Interviewer
Well, what is the connection between the podcast and the restaurant and the way that you try to bring what you bring to life in a restaurant to an audio format, that you invite people to sort of be at the table with you?
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Ruthie Rogers
I think there are two things. I think a friend of mine came into the restaurant the other day and he said, you know, oh, I don't, you know, I'm having trouble with one of my children. I'm not sure that I can join this crowd. Look at this room, Ruthie. There are so many people at this table looking so happy and celebrating. And I said, you know, if you went to every table in this restaurant, everyone has a story. Everyone has a story. It could be a happy story. Their daughter might have graduated, or they could have been fired that day, or their mother might be sick, or, you know, there's so many stories that people have. And I think what I wanted to do is talk to people and. And have their stories told, as I say, through the lens of food. And you discover we have different sections. We have the chapter of Food is Family, and so we have the McCartney family. We have the Beckham family. We have the Harry Russell and Matthew Rice. We have. And that's families. We have the art. Food is art. And we have Tracy Emin, and we have Jony I've, who's a designer. We have the political artists Politics. We have, as you said, Mark Carney. And it's not about famous people, it's not about celebrities. It's about people who have stories that we all want to know about, you know, and so I think it's quite democratic, you know. Yeah, it is, it is.
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Interviewer
And the approach is really fun to kind of go through. I want to ask you, though, I think your first podcast was September, back In September of 2021, Jake. Jake Gyllenhaal. Was it? Was it Jake?
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Ruthie Rogers
And if so, yeah. Why?
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Interviewer
How did that come to be? And why Jake being the first?
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Ruthie Rogers
Well, we never thought. We never. Jake is a really good friend. I've known him for a long time. And I said, would you do this with me? Because I don't really know what I'm doing, but we're going to try and do this podcast. And it really came from my husband and I used to give evenings, one every year in which an actor or a singer or a writer would perform in the living room of our house. And, and we would give the money to, you know, to charitable cause we believed in. And one night we had Ian McKellen. And Ian, you know, he told an anecdote, he sang a song, he recounted something that had happened to him in the theater. He did a sonnet of Shakespeare. But the last thing he did was to get one of our cookbooks, the first cookbook, and read a recipe for a soup. And you know, I always say a recipe is half science and half right. And to a recipe is actually, there's something rather beautiful about listening. So I said to Jake, help me out here. And so he. He did one, the first one, I think, and Wes, it was Wes Anderson, who's another good friend. And
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Interviewer
listen, Ruthie, we have to jump and go. 10 seconds though. What's your comfort food?
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Ruthie Rogers
My comfort food would be real quick. Tomato sauce.
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Interviewer
Ah, a good one. Ruthie, thank you so much. We've been looking forward to catching up with you. Ruthie Rogers, co founder of the River Cafe in London. Her podcast Ruthie's Table for her new book, Table 4 at the River Cafe.
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Michigan Business Representative
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- [10:27]
Co-Interviewer
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The Hartford Representative
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