Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - What Food Teaches Us About Being Human (featuring Austin Butler) - Ruthie Rogers

Episode Date: November 11, 2025

Ruthie Rogers, Baroness Rogers of Riverside, CBE, is an American and British chef who owns and runs the Michelin-starred Italian restaurant The River Café in Hammersmith, London. Get her new book Squeeze Me: Lemon Recipes & Art Pre-order her next book, Table 4 at The River Cafe: Conversations about Food and Life Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. He is the host of the podcast Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci. A graduate of Tufts University and Harvard Law School, he lives in Manhasset, Long Island. 📚 Get a copy of my books: Solana Rising: Investing in the Fast Lane of Crypto ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://amzn.to/43F5Nld⁠⁠⁠⁠ From Wall Street to the White House and Back ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://amzn.to/47fJDbv⁠⁠⁠⁠ The Little Book of Bitcoin ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://amzn.to/47pWRmh⁠⁠⁠⁠ The Little Book of Hedge Funds ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://amzn.to/43LbM83⁠⁠⁠⁠ Hopping over the Rabbit Hole ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://amzn.to/3LaykJb⁠⁠⁠⁠ Goodbye Gordon Gekko ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://amzn.to/47xrLYs⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🎥 𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗮 𝗖𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗼 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗻𝘆! ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.cameo.com/themooch⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🎙️ Check out my other podcasts: The Rest is Politics US - ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@RestPoliticsUS⁠⁠⁠⁠ Lost Boys - ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYFf6KS9ro1p18Z0ajmXz5qNPGy9qmE8j&feature=shared⁠⁠⁠⁠ SALT - ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/SALTTube/featured⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📱 Follow Anthony on Social Media Instagram - ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/scaramucci/⁠⁠⁠⁠ X - ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/Scaramucci⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn - ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/anscaramucci/⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok - ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@ascaramucci?lang=en⁠⁠⁠⁠ YouTube - ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@therealanthonyscaramucci Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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BetMGEMGEMP operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. Everybody has a story. The other day I was there on a Sunday lunch. And it was so beautiful because there were some people, of course, who didn't know anyone. But there were some people who was like a party almost. You know, people were going from table to table. And I think that's something we really missed in COVID when restaurants were closed was that spontaneous meeting of a friend. You know, you walk in and, oh, there's someone I haven't seen for a long time or come and sit with me for a bit.

How are you? And I think we're all in the room happy to be together. If you'd ask me before COVID, what was important in the city? I would say hospitals or bookstores or parks or obviously schools, museums. I'm not sure that I would have listed restaurants, but I think when we didn't have them, people really miss them. I don't know what you do to people, but I'll tell you what you did to me. You brought me in.

We made a meal together. We were eating the meal. And all of a sudden I felt like I was transformed back into my house of my upbringing. And we were talking about things that really moved me. And I brought up Jack Gruber, who's now passed. He was a Holocaust survivor. He always waved his hand in front of his food about the abundance he had now versus what was going on in the camp. And I'm bringing it up again today for a reason.

There's something about you that you give to people. And it's the generosity of your heart and it's the warmth of your personality. But it's the combination of all these things and somehow it ties back into their ancestral home. I don't know how you do it because you're doing it for people of all different walks of life and all different types of professions. but I feel like they come into your zip code, they come into your zone, and they plug into what you are about, which is love and grace and kindness and generosity and obviously great food. Well, welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci.

I have one of my favorite people today, my podcast, Lady Ruth Rogers, who we simply call Ruthie. Anybody that's lucky enough to know her calls her Ruthie. So I'm going to call you Ruthie in this podcast, if you don't mind Lady Ruth Rogers, fellow American. A renowned chef opened the River Cafe, which is still one of the hardest restaurants to get into in London. She opened it in 1987. And it's a name forever associated with Italian food in the United Kingdom, but also other dishes. But I will say this, in addition to becoming a dear friend, I was on your incredible podcast.

And Ruthie has a podcast called Ruthie's Table 4, which is one of the most intimate, most fun podcasts. And you have a list of luminaries that I cannot believe that come on to your podcast, which is a tribute. You being one of them. You're being too generous to me. But you have several incredible cookbooks centered around the River Cafe. And this is the reason why I'm bringing you on today. I want to talk about those books. but I also want to talk about how I met you.

I met you through Jason Fox. If you remember that, he's the Special Forces Navy SEAL. He brought me in, and then you were kind enough to invite me on your podcast. But I want to go into your origin story, if you don't mind, as you, you know, it was almost opened as a canteen to feed staff from your husband, Lord Rogers, who had an architecture practice nearby, but it morphed into one of the most. famous restaurants in the world, your restaurant. So tell us the origin story. Well, the origin story. First of all, thank you. I'm so happy to be here with you. You are one of the great luminaries, if there are, that name applies to the podcast. And we had such a good time. And what we found is that talking about food, talking about recipes, talking about

one's childhood and how we eat, opens up a whole area, an area of memory. And, you know, And it was a good conversation. We all loved you in the restaurant. We love when you come in. You always say hello to the chefs, to the waiters. You make contact. And that's important to us. So thank you.

And it's great to be here. How did we start? Well, I come from upstate New York, from Woodstock, actually. And I went to London when I was in my second year of college. And then in the 70s, Richard and I moved to Paris because he was the architect with Renzo Piano of the Santa Pompeu, the Boborg. And one, to skip over quite a lot, there's a lot to talk about those years in Paris in terms of food, in terms of books, in terms of memories.

We came back with the idea that we didn't want to have an architectural office in a building in the middle of the center of the city. We wanted to be somehow a community. Richard particularly wanted to form a community, found these warehouse. houses on the Thames and bought them with his partners. And the one thing that was missing was, you know, the most important part of a community is a restaurant, a place to eat where people can sit and talk and think and dream and trade stories.

And so we put the word out. I was a graphic designer who had been working in the office in London and in Paris. And we put the word out that we, you know, were interested in doing a small cafe restaurant. and the applications came in. And I remember I was sitting with Richard, and we were skiing. And I said, you know, the only thing worse than not having a place to eat

would be to have a mediocre one, maybe I should do it. And it literally was those sort of few words that changed everything in our lives. To make, again, a long story short, Rose Gray, who was an old friend of ours and had gone to New York to work with Keith McNally. But now with Balthazar and Pestis

had her club called Nets. and she came back and she really wanted to also to work. Oh, we have a guest. Come and say hello, Austin. You come up? We have a guest. Austin Butler is here who's staying with me. Can he come and say hello?

Yeah, Austin actually knows my son. And you know Anthony's son, do you? So, Austin, you may remember my son. Oh, you're doing a podcast right now. Austin, you may remember my son, AJ Scaramoo. He absolutely adores you and says that you are somebody hopes he can stay in long, long term touch with, you know. Yeah, yeah. I really.

What a special young man you've raised. I've heard so many wonderful things about you. I'm so pleased to meet you. Well, same here. Same here. God bless you. I don't want to interrupt what you guys are doing here. See, she's the O positive friend, right?

She's friends with everybody. Exactly. Right? We all roads point back to Ruthie, Austin. It's so true, isn't it? Yeah. She's the hub of it all. I know what are you saying?

Because that gave me a year. Okay. I asked to see you. Good to see you. Yeah, I just wanted to bring you that. Thank you so much. It's so apropos to this podcast because that's you. Every person that walks through the city of London come to see you either in your house or at your restaurant.

But I got to meet Tom. If you don't mind me name dropping, I got to meet Tom Ford in your house. Oh, yeah. I'm too big for his suits. I'm too wide. I can only fit in his sunglasses, you know, but he told me he would make me a suit. That was very funny. Take him up on it.

So, so basically we did the, we did the, you know, we had the applications. And then, oh, so Rose Gray came back from New York and she wanted to open a restaurant. So I got to, got in touch with her. And we went to look at this site, which was a tiny little space where the warehouses were. you could just about fit six tables in. And we thought, well, let's do it. I'd never cooked in a restaurant. I was a home cook for lots of children.

Rose had very little experience, just working a bit with Keith and Brian McNally. And so two women kind of out of the center, who were not professionals, but love to cook and love people, said, let's do it. You know, we bought all our kitchen equipment from, you know, used places.

We went to buy tables and chairs from the reject shop. Richard helped us with the architecture, if you could call it that. We opened up a little place called the River Cafe where you could either have sandwiches, in which case, either Rose or I would make the sandwiches or a pasta and maybe some piece of lamb and some cake. and we would just share the responsibilities. And very, very, that was in 1987, 388 years ago.

And from there, we just grew very, very organically, very slowly to, I guess on Sunday, we did 250 covers for lunch. And now we can fit in, you know, a lot more tables. We have 30 chefs. We have, altogether, we employ about 140 people. and we've written 13 cookbooks. So, but slowly. Okay, but there's something you're doing.

You have a personal magnetism that it's hard to really explain unless you're in your presence. So how do we get this personal magnetism? I know that you were a Woodstock girl. I know you're the product of the late 60s in the early 70s, but there's a level of authenticity that you have that. It's not just the people in the UK, but it's people around the world are drawn to. Why is that? What is it about you?

Well, that would have to be for somebody else to say. I can't possibly talk about myself. I think I was brought up with a lot of love. It's quite simple as that. My parents were, you know, very kind. They were very patient. I had a sense of family. It was a house in the country.

My father was a doctor. My mother was a librarian. And it was a place where people gathered. and people seemed to come to our house more than we went to other people's houses. And I think it was nurture. It was, you know, just a lot of kindness around me, I suppose. And then I entered into a family when I married Richard, which was the same. He came from an Italian family.

He was born in Florence. His mother was from Trieste. And I think that that sense of community, social responsibility and when you people work for you you take care of them in a way that is responsible um nurturing we also obviously run a business which has to have rigor and has to have responsibility but behind that are the values that I think we started when we were um opening the river cafe are still there you know 38 years later I know you're working away I mean you You are a perfectionist and it shows up every night in the food that you're serving.

But why do you think Italian food? I mean, I have my opinion as an Italian American. Yeah. Why do you think Italian food resonate to nearly every culture? Is it just a taste or is there something to do with the value system behind it or a combination of the two? What do you think? I'd say it's probably a combination of the two that people learn to cook. through their family.

They eat at home very often. They have, if they're not in the city center, they have a garden, even if it just has one lemon tree in Amalfi or an olive oil tree in Tuscany. I think that there's a very, it's actually quite simple Italian food. It isn't masked. It isn't hidden under a very, you know, thick sauce, although I love sauces in French fruit. I think when you take a piece of fish and you grill it, we find the local herbs and you put them over with some olive or lemon, the integrity of the ingredient has to be there because that's

what you're eating. I remember one of the most memorable things I've eaten Italy, and I promise it's true, is when I had a brusquetta in Florence in November, and the bread was just perfectly grilled and there was a tiny bit of garlic rubbed on it. But the really incredible taste in my mouth, which I can remember, was the olive oil. And I kept thinking, what else did they put in this olive oil? Why does it have that peppery taste? And of course, it had been on the trees just weeks, you know, and so there was a sense that you, and I think that Italians really have, it's also very regional Italian food. And I think that comes from the history of Italy, not being united. You know, if you were, now it's probably different, but if I was in Venice, it would be hard to have, you know, maybe cannelly beans that were grown in Florence with that.

Chickpeas, okay, say chickpeas that were from Puglia. And if you were in Florence, you might not get the kind of risotto you would have in Venice. And so I think that, that dignity and that perfection of just local ingredients cooked in this. the season is so vital to Italian cooking. And it's also forgiving. It's generous. You dish it out. You make a pasta.

You make enough for, you know, if you're cooking for five, you make enough for 10. You know, if you're cooking, you know, for 10, you've made enough of 15. There's more. There's a room, another seat at the table. And I think, I mean, I think that goes through a lot of cultures. I think you'll find that in Greece. You'll find it in France. You'll find it in most places.

But there's something about. the warmth of Italy that I think is very immediate. Do you? Well, I think I think you're expressing you really well. I actually, I bought some of your cookbooks on Amazon and I flipped through them with my wife and she said something that I'd like to get you to react to. She said, wow, she said, I love this cookbook because less is more. Yeah. Ruthie has figured out that it's simple base ingredients, less is more. Is that part of your style? That's a that she identified? Is that something that you take with you in other aspects of your life? It definitely is. And I think the less is more might be from the architect Mies van der Roe,

who was a great architect and the Bauhaus. And it was a reaction to the complexity of architecture and design before that saying you could simplify it to a few columns and and sheets of glass and maybe one story that you had less was more. And in food, I would say less is more. And I think your wife really expresses it. And it's, I often, we write the menu every day for whatever meal the chef is on. So we do the Lodge menu is written in the morning and the dinner menu is written the afternoon. And very often when I'm there writing the menu, I put, you know,

whatever I design a plate with whatever it is. And very often I'll just go and take one part of it off. You know, it's either, it was a vegetable and the beans. Well, let's just have the spinach. We don't need the bollati or if it's carne crudeau with a crustino. We don't need something on the crestino. It depends. I mean, obviously, you know, food is also an explosion of flavor,

is its contrast of flavors. So it can be both. I mean, I love your menu. I come in. The problem with your menu, I want to eat every single thing on the menu. I hope so it. Well, it's not a very long menu. So you could.

Well, that's my point. It's a very simplistic, very big, you know, it's just great. Some of it's peasant food. Some of it is northern food. You know, it's a, it's a blend of the two. But I guess the question I have, is there one thing that's been on the menu from 1987 until today? If you had one thing, or if you mix up the menu,

you just sort of try to change it every year or seasonally? Well, I think there are few things. I do think that the squid that we do, which is the squid with the tentacles, but you just, you flatten it and you score it. And then when you put it on the grill, it curls up when we do it with the red chili sauce and just a piece of lemon and some roucola. I think that might have been there on the first day. I think the lemon tart that we have was there on the first day.

a caramel ice cream. And I think that probably, well, the pastas change every day, but you know, it's not on the menu every day, but a pasta that we go back to over and over again when there are so many fancy and complicated pastas, we just love a pasta with slow-cooked tomato sauce. You know, for me, that's my go-to comfort food. And so I think the menu, it was fun because we had our birthday the other day and a 38th birthday. We gave everybody in the restaurant a copy of the very first menu because we still had it. And there were some things we really had a laugh at, mostly the prices. But there was a pop of Pomodoro on the very first day, which of quite a few complaints from customers saying, I didn't come here to have a bit of bread and tomato. And now,

of course, you know, it's changed. I mean, your ears must ring a lot. You know, the cliche, when people are talking about, your ears are ringing because I talk to you lots of people that know you and the most resonating thing that comes back to me from the people that know you and frequent in your restaurant is they feel home. They feel like when they come through the door, the River Cafe, they're in their home. Literally, they've got a group of people that are fun. You do such a great job with your staff. I want to talk a little bit about that. But you feel so welcomed and you feel like you are now. home and you're going to sit down and relax and have this great meal.

So talk a little bit about that. How do you create that culture? Because I go to a lot of restaurants, Ruthie. And some of them are industrial. Some of them are mechanical. Some of them have great food, but they have like a time fuse on the table. They want to get you out of there pretty quickly to replace you at the table. But when people walk into the river cafe, they feel like they have an extension of their own home.

How did you manifest that? And tell us a little about how you talk to your staff about creating that atmosphere. I think that, to me, that is, you know, the nicest thing that anybody could say. And thank you for that. I think, why do people go to a restaurant when you could eat at home? You could order in. There's so many alternatives. And so, you know, I think that people go to a restaurant because, you know, in a way,

maybe there's many reasons. But for us, I think we want people to feel that they're going to leave for me happier than maybe when they walked in. They'll feel that they have been looked after. They feel that they have,

of course, had something delicious to eat. And I think if you make an atmosphere where we welcome people, we don't obviously have a dress code, we don't say the way you have to be or look or behave or it doesn't matter who you are how much you're going to spend, that you are in our home, and we want it to be as welcoming as

you would, you know, when somebody comes into my house, we greet them at the door. When they leave, we take them to the door. When they enter, we offer them a drink. When we, you know, we listen to how they're feeling. And I often say to the waiters and the staff servers, as you call them, we don't know what these people experience today. You know, they may have had. bad news, somebody in their family may have been in trouble, they may have had great news. You know, they may have had a promotion or their daughter might be getting married. They may have saved up for quite a long time to come to the restaurant. They may want to share something.

You know, so I think everybody, I always think that when I look at the table, when I look at the restaurant from wherever I'm, I think everybody has a story, you know, and I think everybody has a story. And for us, you know, the other day I was there on a Sunday lunch. And it was like, it was so beautiful because there were some people, of course, who didn't know anyone. But there were some people who was like a party almost. You know, people were going from table to table. And I think that's something we really missed in COVID when restaurants were closed was that spontaneous needing of a friend.

You know, you walk in and, oh, there's someone I haven't seen for a long time or come and sit with me for a bit. How are you? And I think we're all in the room happy to be together. If you'd ask me before COVID, you know, what was important in the city, I would say hospitals or bookstores or parks or obviously schools, museums. I'm not sure that I would have listed restaurants, but I think when we didn't have them, people really miss them. It's about our togetherness, I think.

You know, and you've captured all of that, all the elements. The food is about our togetherness. It represents a cultural totem for us. I feel like when people are sitting down to a meal, there's usually a generally relaxed setting, if you will. And I want to add, I want to flip it over to politics for a second, but not to get overly political, but just talk about a state dinner as an example. Or about how food helps us get along with each other or builds a closer bond to each other, you know, which could be from a state dinner to two heads of stages sitting down and having a meal together. or how that differentiates them from, like, saying, being in a conference room, Ruthie, where they're, you know, it's a little colder, isn't it? Yeah, I've seen that.

You know, you see how I've been, I've been to one state dinner at the White House, which was, you know, it was with President Obama. And it was incredibly warm kind. I've been to dinners at the embassy here when there's, I have to say, when, you know, there's a president whose politics I appreciate. I find, you know, it's a very worrying time right now. Yeah, no question. Well, you know I feel that way, so we share that. Yeah, I do. We share that.

And it just is, you know, at a time when we just want to be, you know, together when we want to, that's who we are. You know, we are people who welcome people, we have people who take care of people, with people who respect and, you know, are dignified. And so this what we're going through right now is deeply disturbing. But I think when you are around a table, when you have people sharing food, when you have people passing food, we often like to do plates of food that you pass around. You make eye contact. Very often, I always like to serve the person who is next to me before I take it for myself. And that kind of communication is saying, we're here together and we're taking care of each other.

And that I think is a value that is lucky. today and we need to, I think it's there, but we just need to bring it out much more. You've cooked for rock stars. You've cooked for presidents and prime ministers. You've cooked for award-winning Hollywood actors. If you're willing to talk about it, any, anyone from that whole group surprise you in a good or a bad way? You know, I think that, oh, tonight I'm actually cooking for the Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Mark. He's coming here tonight.

Great, great, great friend of mine. You know, I started at Goldman Sachs together, Mark and I. So I know, I know five minutes to party for 30, 30 plus years. Yeah, it's his wife, Diana's 60th birthday today. So we're having a birthday dinner for her here. Well, if you get a chance of my regard. Well, there's an example of a hell of a guy. What a wonderful guy.

Amazing person. So we knew and loved him because he was the governor of the Bank of England here. And I think, you know, sometimes you have a table of people, you know, well, if you have people who love to sing, sometimes you just start singing around the table and that's, again, a shared experience. I think that, you know, I can talk about the people who are, you know, either great actors or great singers, but I think for me, whoever walks into the River Cafe, and we say that to, whoever it is, you know, comes to the River Cafe, we treat them as if they were, you know, they are the most important people. And I think it does depend a lot on how the atmospheres of the people who work for you. How do you treat the people who work for you? And that's as important to me as a culture. You know, the people who serve at the table, the people who cook the food,

the people who make the drinks, people who wash the plates. You want to make a place that everybody wants to come to work. And I always think that's why I go to work every day because I think also if they know how important it is for me to work every day, they'll want to come to work. And it's treating people as individuals. It's as simple as treating through hope rather than fear. It's understanding what each person does best of his abilities

or her creative talents. It's just using the River Cafe. If it's a home to the customer, we also want to be a family to the people who work there. Anybody in history that you say, geez, I wish I had cooked for them? Yeah. Yeah. Nelson Mandela? Nelson Mandela.

So you didn't get a chance to cook? No, that was not a possibility. But, you know, for me, you know, to have had Mandela come into the restaurant would have been a huge honor. And we did cook for someone the other day who was very close to him. So there were a lot of, maybe that also brings up images of him. And I am a political person, you know, I think about a society and politics and the big pee of politics, you know, how we can govern, how we can tell the truth, how we can, you know, believe in people.

Yeah, right, and right or right wrong policy as opposed to, you know, I love about you, just common sense. You know, we're trying to make, make things better for people. Yeah. Raised living standards, which is important. You know, we don't want to have too many have-nots, have-nots. I think that creates levels of unfairness and it reduces people's ability to think that they can attain things, you know?

Mm-hmm. So table four at the River Cafe conversations about food and life. tell us about the book. Tell us about what went into the book. We have this book. What is really nice is that we have, actually at the moment, we have two books. So we have Table 4th, the River Cafe, which is coming out in March. And then we have this new book. Can I tell you about this book, which is a book that I just finished, which is actually been published. Yes. This is the Lemon Book. Yes. And it's a book that I did with Edruset, great.

artist and I've been asking it if we could do a book together for years and he finally said yes Ruthie if it's one ingredient and if it's not too big so this little book it says 50 recipes and every recipe has lemons as an ingredient and he did these beautiful photographs of it so that's come out and that's a very simple book that we've done and as you asked the question about table four at the River Cafe. That really is the story of the podcast, which we just started. It was actually, you know, during COVID when we wanted to reach out to people who were, you know, not able to come to the River Cafe. And I thought of doing just a recipe every day saying, let's just read a recipe every day. And then a friend of mine, Graydon Carter, and your friend said, you're going to have

to segue into a story. Why don't you try and think what more you can do with this? So in the first interviews, I think the first one we did was with Paul McCartney and all people who were so kind. Probably had little to do during COVID. Paul and Wes Anderson, I think Jake Gyllenall and Michael Kane. That's right. And so we did those to practice and ask them to read a recipe that they loved. And then to talk about their lives through food. Did your mother cook?

did your father cook? Did you go to restaurants as a child? Did you cook for your children? You know, and then the last question, and then stories come out of that. One of the things I've found is that very few people in my experience, if the almost 200 interviews I've done, I've grown up entitled.

So they see food almost as a measure of their success, you know, when they were able to order without looking at the prices, You know, when Paul McCartney said he had a good glass of wine, when Trudy Stiler described, you know, having to keep potatoes under her bed as a child growing up, Elton John told us about shelling peas with his grandmother. So everybody, Nancy Pelosi, who we love, never ate a meal until she left home without a tablecloth. So food is revealing, food tells you. So we did these, you know, as I said, everyone has a story.

So Table 4 at the River Cafe, this book here, I don't know if this is being filmed, was approached by Amy Bell of Simon Schuster that said, you know, I listened to the podcast, and I think it would be a book for people to read. So we, you know, they chose the, I would have liked to have had everybody who's on a podcast, but the editors chose who, it was only from series one, two, and three, I think. And the food is divided into food is family. So we have all the McCartneys. We have, who else do we have?

We have the McCartneys. We have Salman Rushdie. We have my family. We have, and then we have food is tradition. People who grew up very much with their grandmothers or families. We have food is discovery. People who really discovered food later on in their life. food is art, so we have painters, of course, Ed Ruchet. We have architects there, Norman Foster. We have

Johnny Ive, the designer, Food is Politics, Nancy, Al Gore, and others. And then we have food is food with which are the chefs from Alice Walters, Eric Rippar, chefs at the River Cafe. And so everyone, we have, the book has the introduction. I always write an introduction to the guest. and then their story and a photograph of them, which is that that was challenging because all the photographs were taken at different times with different cameras, never thinking we were doing it for a book. So to make it consistent, we did them as kind of still lives on the table. And so it's a very simple book, but it is a book that you can take to your bed and read. Well, I'm looking forward to getting it. Of course, I ordered it and it doesn't hit the U.S. until March, but I'd love to get you back on when it comes out in March.

We can talk about more. I'd love you to come back to the River Cafe. Yeah, no, of course. I'm going to come in the kitchen with me. Yeah, I'm going to be there in November. You know, you have this wonderful way of that, you, Ruthie. You know, when I came on your podcast, you, I don't know what you do to people, but I'll tell you what you did to me. You brought me in.

We made a meal together. We were eating the meal. And all of a sudden, I felt like I was transformed back into my house of my upbringing. And we were talking about things that really moved me. And I brought up Jack Ruber, who's now passed, but he was a Holocaust survivor. And about how he always waved his hand in front of his food about the abundance he had now versus what was going on in the camp. And I know, I'm bringing it up again today for a reason. There's something about you that you give to people.

And it's the generosity of your heart. and it's the warmth of your personality, but it's the combination of all these things, and somehow it ties back into their ancestral home. I don't know how you do it, because you're doing it for people of all different walks of life and all different types of professions, but I feel like they come into your Zipko,

they come into your zone, and they plug into what you are about, which is love and grace and kindness and generosity, and obviously great food. And so my question tied to this is, what do you do? When you wake up in the morning and you put the battle armor on to run the river cafe or to be Ruthie Rogers, what goes through your head? Well, I think, first of all, you're one of the nicest people.

And I remember how we met immediately became, it was so easy. wasn't it, you know, I met you, we started talking with you the same place and you're very affectionate, very kind. We don't have, we don't have armor. We have, you know, sometimes I think, you know, the phrase of it goes, you know, it's in my head when people praise me. I think if only they knew, you know, if only they knew how we, you know, challenging life is as well, you know, with our family. And we were always trying to do that. But, but, yeah. So I think I wake up in the morning, and it depends sometimes. I don't have time to think.

I just am late, and I have something to do at night. And a child is here, a phone call has come through. But I try to really think, you know, look around me and think. And I know it sounds like a cliche, but I am very lucky. I'm lucky in people like you, people like my children, the people I work with, being so kind and so good. We all need help. Everybody needs, as I said, everybody has a story. I have stories, you have stories, and we know that, you know, life is tough right now and maybe always is. I know so many people who are worried about their children, worried about their work,

worried about their finances, worried about their health, you know, and it is something we all share and we all live with. And how we get through that is, I think, by really being there for each other. And yeah, I am, I am lucky and I am grateful to be, you know, have help with, but at my times of need, because we all have times of need and we all need help. And I have that from my family and my friends and how lucky am I. Yeah, amen. We're down to the five words. So if you listen to my podcast. Me and my producer, we come up with five words, and we ask our author to respond to the five words. I'm going to say the word that you give me a sentence or two. So if I say the word home, Ruthie, what do you think about? Safe. Okay. What about the word? Go ahead. Yeah, I just

feel that when you open that door and your home, you want to feel that you're in a safe place. It doesn't have to be big. It doesn't have to be protected by. I don't mean safe in the words that has gates or codes, but that you feel that you are in a safe place. When I say the word resilience, what do you think about? I think that in this age and as I've come to think about life, I think that if I can teach my children and my grandchildren resilience, that is almost the greatest, I say two things, resilience and empathy. I think empathy and resilience is what we need to get through life. Food. Say the word food.

Food. Oh, food. Well, that would be pleasure. It would be comfort. It would be love, really, you know, way of expressing love. Hmm. That's beautiful. Rose gray.

I say the two words, Roe Gray. You say what? I miss her. You know, she was, she was a force. She would have loved her. She was, you know, so dynamic. She was such a great teacher. She was such fun.

And, you know, just as a partner, just brave and resilient and empathetic. And the last word, and I'm going to give you the last word. I say the words, the River Cafe. What do you think of? I want you to come there. Yeah, amen. Well, every time I come to one, and that's my spot. I want you to come.

You come when I'm not here. I am, no, I do think the River Cafe is all to do with the people who work there. You know, I just have the greatest group people who work, who come in in the morning and try and make it a better place. That's all we want to do is make the River Cafe better. And how long do you want to do it for, Ruthie? Are we going to be blessed with you at the River Cafe for many years to come? I hope so. I'm going to, you know, I say I'm going to die at my stove, yeah.

Good, good. I like that. I feel the same way. So we got many books, many cookbooks. But the two that we're talking about today are Squeeze Me. That's the Lemon Recipes and Art and a new book coming out about your amazing podcast, which I will direct people to Ruthie's Table 4, which is available on Spotify and Apple. And the title of that book is Table 4, the River Cafe, Conversations about Food and Life by the legendary Ruthie Rogers. Thank you so much for coming on. Oh, thank you, Ed's an open book. And I'm going to see you soon. I'm so good. I'm not going to see you this weekend, but I'm going to see you in November, right? In November I'm going to be there. Yep, I'm going to bring a group of my pals to come see you. I can't wait.

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