Ruthie's Table 4

Food is key to life. And today, more than ever, journalism is also key to life. Our guests, Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel are two brilliant, inspiring journalists who bring us news, analyse news, and present news, helping us determine our lives and the choices we make. They're smart, they're warm, they're funny, and they tell me they are always hungry.

These two journalists crave food. This chef craves journalism. Join us on today’s episode to hear us talk about food, memories and more.

Please rate & review the podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to:

Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/ruthiestable4
Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/

For any podcast enquires please contact: [email protected]

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favourite shows.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Yotam Ottolenghi and I were introduced years ago by a mutual friend, Ari Sharpio. “Ruthie,” he said, “you’ve got to meet this guy. You think the same way.”

Yotam and I believe in the people we work with, valuing them and their creativity. We also share a food geography. Mine, an Italian landscape of the Renaissance, his farther east, a beautiful Biblical landscape of desert and sea.

We both live and work in London—a city far from where we were born. As a chef, cookbook author, and restaurateur, Yotam has pioneered a new approach to Middle Eastern cooking, while changing the way we shop and eat with his inviting gourmet markets. Sitting here in The River Cafe today, we will talk about separation and connection, Eastern and Western, food, family,  friends and thinking the same way.

Listen to Ruthie’s Table 4: Yotam Ottolenghi today. 

Please rate & review the podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to:

Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/ruthiestable4
Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/

For any podcast enquires please contact: [email protected]

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favourite shows.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I first met Olivia over food one night in the river Cafe, she was with Maggie Gyllenhaal, and they had just wrapped filming for their movie the Lost Daughter in Greece. It is not an exaggeration to say they pretty much ordered everything on the menu. We immediately got into talking about feeding our kids, cooking, and inflicted distance from family when working. This was a conversation that could have lasted for hours, but I had to go back to the kitchen and she needed to finish her lemon pasta before it cooled down.

Today we are here in the River Café and she is the one cooking the lemon pasta - we are going to pick up where we left off a conversation with a woman, I admire respect and adore. Lucky me. 

For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to:

Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/ruthiestable4
Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/

For any podcast enquires please contact: [email protected]

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favourite shows.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In our previous episode, we spoke to Jamie Oliver about childhood, moving to London and getting started in television. On today’s podcast, we'll be talking about his school-meals campaign, but not before we send him back into the River Cafe Kitchen after a 20-year absence to prepare a River Cafe classic.

For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to:

Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/ruthiestable4
Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/

For any podcast enquires please contact: [email protected]

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favourite shows.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I can't say how many times when arriving at The River Café in a taxi, the driver will turn around to me and say, ‘Is this the restaurant where Jamie Oliver cooked?’ The other day, one even informed me that The River Café was owned by Jamie, and I thought, why correct him? He is the prodigal son or the brother, who knows when he walks in the restaurant, he is home.

For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to:

Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/ruthiestable4
Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/

For any podcast enquires please contact: [email protected]

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favourite shows.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A few months ago, I shared a panel with Vanessa Kingori, celebrating International Women's Day. Listening to Vanessa, it became apparent that it really wasn't necessary for me to be there. It was her views on social justice, women in business, creativity and leadership that everybody wanted to hear. Most of all, me. 

Her path towards Chief Business Officer of Condé Nast International is a story of a young girl from Kenya climbing heights in a British world through sheer intelligence, motivation and determination. This we all know. But for me, the revelation was Vanessa talking about the food of her family, her culture, and especially the cooking of her grandmother. 

Today we will hear more about memory and food, change and connectivity. As always, I will listen to Vanessa with awe, respect, and admiration.

For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to:

Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/ruthiestable4
Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/

For any podcast enquires please contact: [email protected]

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favourite shows.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of my most cherished possessions is a River Cafe menu with the word YUM painted on it by Ed Ruscha. Ed is an artist, friend - and cook, but we really bond over words; words as art, words as books, words as recipes, words as love. Our worlds and words converged recently when he had an exhibition at the Tate and The National Gallery - a first for an artist. We celebrated with lunches, dinners and breakfasts together. 

Ed has a little garden behind his studio in California, its conditions are dry and dessert like, but he grows the most amazing fruits and vegetables there. He is the first guest on Table 4 to bring his own recipe to read – a cactus omelette. We will discuss art and food, food and YUM.

For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to:

Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/ruthiestable4
Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/

For any podcast enquires please contact: [email protected]

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favourite shows.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Michael Mann and I met through architecture. On a trip to London about 25 years ago, he asked to visit the Lloyd's Building, designed by my husband, Richard Rogers. For us, it was an honour. For if Michael was a fan of Richard's architecture, Richard was a huge fan of Michael's movies. In fact, when watching Ali, Miami Vice or Collateral, my arm would be constantly squeezed.

Not due to a dramatic moment of fear or tension or mystery, but at the way the buildings, streets, airports, bridges and interiors, even elevators, were portrayed on screen. Over long dinners, Richard and Michael often compared making a movie to making a building. Michael once said, ‘Well, at least, Richard, in a building, you can say to a client, if you remove a column, the building will fall down. Try saying that about a scene to a producer.’ 

Of all the movies Michael has made, though, the one that I consider the greatest is 60 seconds long, shot entirely underwater in a swimming pool. Michael and his wife, Summer, with their children, swimmingly, wishing a happy birthday to Richard. No architecture in this movie—just love.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Watch Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, listen to The 2000-Year-Old Man, read his autobiography, All About Me, and you will know why. But for me, having known Mel for 25 years, ‘funny’ is not the first word I would use to describe this extraordinary man.

Fiercely proud of his children and grandchildren, the first one to pick up a phone to a friend in trouble, refusing an award in opposition to the Iraq War and waiting to accept it later from President Obama. To Mel, food and wine are crucial—many of his life's important moments occurred in restaurants. And, as for wine, he will tell you himself. Today at his home we are together. Lucky me.

We're going to talk about movies, family, memories and more. And be prepared to laugh because Mel Brooks is indeed funny.

For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to:

Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/ruthiestable4
Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/

For any podcast enquires please contact: [email protected]

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favourite shows.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you were in London in November 2020, then you might have been, as I was, lucky to see ‘Fly in a League with the Night’ by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at the Tate Britain. A retrospective of 70 of her works from 2003 to the present. Forced to close after two weeks due to the pandemic, the show reopened in November 2022 - the first time the museum has done this.

Lynette is a writer, a painter, and as I discovered, a magical baker. Today, after a visit to the pastry kitchen, we’re here to talk about writing, painting & cooking - all the ingredients to make something beautiful.

For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home.

On Ruthie’s Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers.

Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks. 

Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation.

For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/

Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/

Instagram: www.instagram.com/ruthiestable4

Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/

For any podcast enquires please contact: [email protected]

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favourite shows.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.