Table Manners with Jessie and Lennie Ware - S9 Ep 13: John Legend

Episode Date: April 29, 2020

Zooming straight in from LA, this week John bloody Legend joins us on Table Manners. The EGOT winner (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar & Tony award winner...mum didn't know what that meant either) sat down to chat to us whilst eating his wife’s home cooked chicken soup and dumplings. John talks about being in charge of breakfast in the Legend/Teigen household, growing up in Ohio, stockpiling A1 sauce, being a pro chair dancer and we get to the bottom of the ‘eating chicken wings before a show’ situation! What a Legend...enjoy! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to Table Manners Special Circumstances. I'm Jessie Ware and I'm here with my mum, Faya Asoum. Hi mum. Hi darling. How are you? Darling, I really am watching the daisies grow. I'm fine during the day and then I go to bed and think it's going to be exactly the same tomorrow. Or maybe a little bit more depressing. Who knows? No, I'm not getting more depressed. I'm less depressed. I'm not as anxious, but I've become more superstitious. Oh,

tell me about this. So I do certain things in a ritualistic way because I'm worried if I don't do it that way, something terrible will happen. But is that from the kind of OCD of the washing and the cleaning the food and the hands? So maybe it's kind of... Jessie, do you see me as an OCD type person? No, only about my bedroom. Crikey, Jessie, OCD about your bedroom. I think that is pushing it.

You're a slob. I am so tired. Why? I don't know. I mean, I had a bit of a mental day today. I did Graham Norton. Did you do it? Yeah, but, you know, so Graham Norton is doing his TV show remotely.

And so, you know, it's an absolute honour to do Graham Norton. He's amazing and the show's great. But we had to think of an idea of how to self-shoot it. And, you know, no glam squad. I can deal with that that's fine it was quite funny doing getting Patrick Wilson to tell me how to tong my hair Jessie was so crap I'm so crap at it anyway that's because you never let the other tong come over on the top I watched you backseat driving even from bloody COVID-19 bloody hell um anyway who knew that Nick Grimshaw has a whole disco party thing at his

house that he lent to me for this so I had I had a laser we had a smoke machine from somebody else we had these wicked neon lights all in my daughter's bedroom because it was darker in there because it's the only place with blackout blinds and so we made it like this ravey club but then with my daughter watching Masha and the Bear on the iPad and my son causing havoc so it was highly stressful but not because I was doing a you know a national television performance but more because I had about 10,000 gizmos at the same time because I was shooting on phone and laptop and having to do my vocal into, I mean, yeah, it was bizarre, but quite funny. And I don't know if I think it went okay. So yeah, that's what I did today. And I'm just a bit knackered. Adrenaline, darling. I've got, I've got a twitch in both eyes. That's because you're tired. Anyway, mum, what did you

eat today? Oh, I've made delicious food today actually so for my lunch I had a small piece of salmon that I grilled and had just with lettuce and I made a lamb and aubergine kind of Iranian stew for tonight it was really nice I just put some diced lamb in that I I had two little like leg steaks which were very nice and I just fried an onion, fried up some aubergine, put the lamb in, added two tomatoes and some tomato puree and a little lamb

stock and just let it simmer for two hours. And was it delicious? I just had it with couscous, yeah. I've got some aubergine in the fridge. It's really nice with lamb. So this is a massive deal for us tonight

darling we've loved him for a very we've loved him and we're not ordinary people because we've got the

best best John Legend on I forgot he sung that song it's the best it makes me want to

cry all the time what ordinary people yeah but don't you just remember how much we used to play his record once again? Yeah. Loved it. Loved it.

Loved it. Loved. He's so brilliant. And he is one of my favourite singers. I absolutely adore him. Me too. And I'd quite like to be married to him. Would you?

Or Chrissy Teigen, to be honest. She's fabulous. She's gorgeous. I'm kind of hoping, because they're in lockdown, that maybe she'll sneak her head in. Their children are so gorgeous. They're so cute. So cute. It's going to be just a little disclaimer from old producer Alice,

who's obsessed with sound and likes to make you all hear. Can we just give a clap for Alice? Fantastic. Because her sound is wonderful. Yeah, just a little disclaimer. It may sound a little different because john is in the states um doesn't have a mic with him i don't think so it may just sound a little bit more iffy and i'm sorry about that so john legend has a brilliant new song called bigger love out and

he's got a new record coming out a new album i think so he's doing the old lockdown album out um situation but seems to be smacking it you know singing together at home um at his piano singing a duet with Sam Smith at the weekend and yeah I like this new record it's really good oh no I like the new song it's got a really catchy beat but not as much as I like your new song my darling Mum. Ooh la la. Yes, I have a new song out called Ooh La La and it's out now and it's on my new album that's coming out on June the 19th

called What's Your Pleasure. Can you pre-order it, darling? Yes, Mum, you can pre-order it. Oh, good. Have you pre-ordered it? Of course I have. I've already downloaded two songs from it. Oh, thanks, Mum. So it'll just be completing the album. Because, of course, I'm the only person in the whole wide world that still buys records. Well we'll see on June the 19th. John Legend coming up on Table Manners Special Circumstances. John, bloody legend.

We're sitting kind of opposite you. Yes. And you've got your meal ready. Yes. What is there? What is that? We made chicken and dumpling soup last night. And these are the...

Oh, you're kidding And these are the leftovers. So what are your dumplings like? Is it a dumpling like a matzo ball that mum would do? Or is it like a dumpling how you and Chrissy? Yeah, it's kind of like a ball. How do you make it? Chrissy has a great recipe in her book, her second Cravings book. her second cravings book and uh yeah the the dumplings are just flour butter uh baking powder um eggs milk and I think that's it I helped her make it last night so I'm trying to remember but

I think that's all that's in it and then they're kind of like you you know, they're doughy and they're balls. Let me see. Oh, yeah. That's a big ball. Yeah. That's a big ball. We did like one tablespoon scoops of dough and each one made a ball like that. Oh, nice.

Well, John, it's such a pleasure to have you. I have to say, mum and I and, well, everyone I know is such fans of you. And I... Thank you. No, but but really and I'm not just saying that once again we played on repeat the whole time and mum had had a sister called Maxine so it was like anyway yeah yeah I want to know who Maxine was once again is one of my favorite things I've ever done as an artist. And when we were writing that song, I was writing it with a group called Sara. They were a really cool collective based in L.A. Yeah. And we were writing together and we had written almost the whole song.

And it was based on the idea of catching your lover out with another person. And the whole conceit of the song was similar to a song that Nancy Wilson used to sing called Guess Who I Saw Today where she describes this beautiful story about this lovely couple and how gorgeous they look together. But the catch was that the man in the couple was her man. And he was stepping out on her.

And this was her roundabout way of telling him that she had caught him cheating. And so we wanted to write a similar song for Maxine. But we didn't have a name picked out for who this character was that was cheating on me until the end. And we didn't even know that we were going to put a name in the song but at the end while we were writing i thought it'd be fun and funny to just call her out because the whole song we're kind of alluding to the fact that it might be someone that looks like her and then at the end yeah it may not be you but yeah and so by the end we thought it'd be cool to just say hey it was you and we were trying to pick a name that sounded a little quaint, you know, like a little bit older school and something that kids weren't really being named at the time we were writing the song. And we picked Maxine. We thought it sounded nice and it just felt right,

had the right vibe. And turns out my grandmother's middle name is Maxine. She was so happy that I used Maxine in the song. Unfortunately, it's happy that I used Maxine in the song unfortunately it's about someone I'm mad at I'm mad at in the song but doesn't matter he was still happy did for grandma how's um how's uh lockdown treating you you know how are you getting on how's kind of how's things change you know well I saw we saw you perform last night well you did it on the saturday right but it was well we we filmed our performances earlier in the week and then uh got it then the producers put the whole show together they did a masterful job it was great yeah they did a great job of putting everything together and i did a duet with sam smith uh we did stand by me and then We did Stand By Me. And then a group of us did A Prayer, Celine Dion, Andrea Bocelli, Lady Gaga, and Lang Lang. And then I did a debut performance of my new song, Bigger Love.

It's gorgeous. So we're doing lots of performances from home these days, having to learn how to self-film and self-record and all kinds of things. And, you know, that's what we're doing professionally. And then with the family, it's just hanging out with the kids most of the day. I think they like it. I don't know about you, but I'm listening to so much more radio at the moment. And I'm listening to music a lot. Well, because I've actually got time

to listen to music with like cooking and whatever but like I want to know I mean this is about food this podcast and a lot of other things but what what have you been cooking a lot of I'm most uh most responsible in my house for cooking breakfast so I cook pancakes for the kids uh omelets for me and Chrissy waffles french toast pretty much any breakfast you can imagine bacon sausage all that stuff I'm responsible for and I like to play music while I'm cooking yeah so I'll often stream sometimes I'll do a playlist of stuff that I've already put together of some of my favorites of this or that artist. And then sometimes I'll listen to an album. But most of the time it's actually a playlist.

I want to get your playlist. I want to get your playlist. Oh, I have some good ones. I've published a lot of them. Oh, really? Who's your favorite at the moment? My favorite artist? Oh, I don't know if I have one favorite.

I've been listening to all sorts of things. I've been listening to Jhene Aiko's new album, which I think is very good. I love James Blake. I listen to him a lot still, his last album. It's great. Rhapsody I've been listening to. She's a new rapper, relatively new rapper.

And we actually have a song on my upcoming album together. She's amazing. I listen to all sorts of things, but I do make a lot of playlists. So I listen to a lot of old school, like Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin and Nina Simone. It's a good mix. Is that what you listened to when you were growing up? Growing up, I listened to a lot of gospel.

So I grew up in a house where when we were young, gospel was the main music we were allowed to listen to. We weren't even allowed to listen to secular music as children. But as we got a little older into our kind of preteens and teen years, then I was freed up more. My parents got divorced. And once they get divorced, they kind of let things slide a lot more so I grew up um at that point listening to a lot of soul and a lot of R&B that was current at that time uh so artists like Boyz II Men and Jodeci and oh you went like heavy into like the sexy shit yeah like the new New Jack Swing era was big for me.

Well, that was what was hot for us when we were growing up. So I'm 41 and I was growing up in the late 80s, early 90s, mid 90s. And so a lot of the fun records that I loved at that time were like Mary J. Blige or Guy or D'Angelo a little bit later and Aaliyah, different artists during that era, Jodeci. All those artists were like the current hot artists that me and my friends would talk about all the time.

And we would do little boy groups, you know, in our high school, like where we would try to mimic Boyz II Men and Jodeci. That was a big part of our musical influence at the time. But I also loved Motown. So I loved like Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye too. So were you in a choir at church? I was in a choir at church, I was in the show choir at school, I sang in an acapella group in college so I've been singing with groups of people for a long time. And so where were you brought up in Los Angeles? I was brought up in Springfield, Ohio, it's a small

city in the Midwest and a blue collar town. My dad was a factory worker. My mother stayed at home with us. Both of them were tailors and they made clothes for us and tailored clothes for us and our, you know, people in our community. And did your mom sing or your dad sing too? Both of them like to sing. They're not professional, but my mom used to sing around at our church she was the choir director at our church my grandmother was a church organist uh on my mother's side and uh my grandmother on my father's side uh sang and played a bit too and sang in the church choir at her church um so we had lots of music in our house and in our church and so it was it was surrounding me

all the time what was dinner like you know What were your parents cooking? What was so memorable about your childhood? Who did the cooking? And what's a memorable meal? Well, it's interesting because I started doing a lot of cooking when my parents got divorced because we lived with our dad. He wasn't so great at cooking. And we all as kids had to like take over a lot of duties. And I liked food more than any of my brothers and my sister. And so I decided I would start cooking. But we were all like doing chores around the house, dishes, laundry, we all got assigned to do things, because our mom wasn't there. And so I started cooking by the time I was like 11. I was cooking almost all the meals in the house. So occasionally I would make like nice meals from scratch,

like roasted chicken or something like that. But most of the time it would be kind of the easy meals, like a Kraft mac and cheese or a rice-a-roni or hamburger helper. What's a hamburger helper? Oh, you guys don't have that there. So we, it's just, use some ground beef, brown it, and then you mix it with the packet that comes with the, it's just like a pre-made.

Like the seasoning. Yeah, it's a pre-made mix. And then they have like some noodles that go with it. It kind of creates a kind of like a pasta bolognese for you, but it's a lot less classy than a pasta bolognese. And then and then I would make like chili or spaghetti using some scratch ingredients, but also some stuff in the cans. But we just made do and we kind of figured our own breakfast out. We usually just eat cereal or something cold um but I've made dinner almost

every night wow but you still and you still cook now but I mean you do you're you're married to a pretty incredible cook I gather I mean yes yes so how does that work are you just like babe can you give me a night where I can just do dinner tonight no she loves it she loves it when I cook and she gets tired of cooking sometimes especially when she's finished with her book. It's almost like, it's almost like when I finished touring, I don't want to sing for a little while. I think she feels the same way when she's just finished a book. She's like,

she's over it for a while and she's not feeling creative at that moment. And she's like, you know, have at it. And so she's happy to have me help. And, and sometimes I'll take over the whole meal sometimes I'll be her sous chef and we'll do it together sometimes I'll do breakfast or lunch for the kids um but she'll make dinner for me and her so it's kind of all over the place and sometimes we order in fair enough did you know she could cook when you started dating her was that one of the attractions? No.

She is gorgeous as well. It was high on his list of what he had to ask her when he saw Chrissy Teigen in real life and was like, yeah, do you cook? Where did you meet? We met actually on a video shoot. So one of our good friends, it's a mutual friend, but we didn't know each other at the time. We had a mutual friend, but we didn't know each other at the time. We had a mutual friend named Bill Elderkin. He's a photographer and he was wanting to become a director early in his career, but he had only been a photographer up to that point. And he was like, John, I want to make a video for this song you have called Stereo. And it wasn't a single,

but he just liked the song and wanted to make a video on spec, which basically meant he was going to pay for it. But he wanted to use it as his calling card as a video director saying, hey, I can do this. Look what I did with John Legend. So he said, I'd love to make this video on spec for this song that I really like. And I have this girl that I know that I've worked with before that I think you would really like. And I want to cast her in the video. He showed me pictures of her. And he was like, I think you would like her too. And so he cast her and we hit it off that day. And we've been basically together ever since. We were living on separate coasts at the time. She was living in Los Angeles and I was living in New York.

And eventually we started living together on both coasts and fell in love. And, you know, the rest is history. And the cool part about that is Nabil is still both of our friends. cool part about that is Nabil is still both of our friends and um he shot the video for all of me um seven years after we met and we got married seven years after we met and at Lake Como and he shot the video there wow it's it's a full circle moment Lake Como's magical so John I'm really interested in singers what what they eat or what they won't eat before they perform and i'd heard this myth about you somebody told me that you would eat chicken wings before a show to line your voice and i don't know who told me this but i was like that has blown my

mind because i am very neurotic and i would be like, I'd be like, oh, I must drink water, you know, lukewarm water with honey. And, and is this true? I don't eat chicken wings before my show. Um, they used to be on my rider. Um, and they would be like a snack kind of earlier in the day. Um, but I took them off the writer cause I was eating too many of them, but I do eat chicken before my show. So I'll have like a rotisserie kind of roasted chicken sitting there with vegetables. I won't eat all of it, but I'll kind of eat some of it. And I do like feeling the, I don't know, just the juices of the chicken in my voice right before the show. So I won't eat a lot of it, but I'll have a bit of it before the show.

So this is a true myth that came to't came to me from some it's not a myth anymore it's fact yeah I used to be I had wing wings are kind of a separate thing so they used to be on the right or two and then the roasted chicken would be there for my actual dinner but I still have the roasted chicken for dinner yeah and when do you eat how long before you perform uh it's usually like 45 minutes maybe oh my god yeah you're like you're wild John are you not burping on stage the things I don't do though I don't have dairy I don't uh okay drink alcohol on tour pretty much at all um we're drinking wine here i i drink wine all the time when i'm not on tour and i'm definitely okay definitely not on tour now i have my own wine brand actually oh do you do you yes it's called lve lve legend vineyard exclusive so it kind of almost spells love so it hints at love basically oh where's your vineyard we do most of it in california

and napa valley so we have a napa cabernet sauvignon we have a napa red blend that's mostly a petit syrah and then we have um a napa chardonnay um and i love all of them but my favorite is the cabernet sauvignon um and then we also have a couple from fr France we have a rosé and a sparkling rosé from France and then we have a sparkling white from California as well oh my when did you start doing that oh it's been a while now our first Cabernet was a 2013 which came out in 2015 I believe yeah bloody hell but do you like feel like you're cheating on your vineyard if you drink something else? I drink my own most of the time, honestly. Really? I'm probably my best customer, especially during this quarantine.

But the next thing for you to do now is open a restaurant, surely, no? I think we should. I always tell Chrissy we should. But it's hard to run a restaurant. Obviously, now would not be the time. But yeah, i think we should do it i think it'd be fun and it's such an expression of who we are uh we both love food so much we ask everybody what their last supper would be so starter main and we call it pudding but you call it dessert and a drink of choice i think I know your drink of choice perhaps would be the Cabernet Sauvignon,

but I don't want to put words in your mouth. But go, what would it be? So starter. Hmm. Oh, that's a tough question for the starter. I know what I'd do after that. Okay, so start after then. The main body of the meal, I love fried chicken and I love mac and cheese.

I love soul food, as we call it here. And I would have a soul food meal as my last meal. So I do fried chicken, mac and cheese, collard greens. And my dessert would be, I love cobblers and crumbles. So I like the taste of a fruit pie, but with the crust of like a crumble type thing. So I love like an apple crumble with a vanilla ice cream or a peach crumble or peach crumble.

A la mode. Yeah, a la mode. Mum says that to every American that we interview. And if they say with ice cream, that's her call. Yeah, sorry, carry on, Mum. John, I've got to ask you, because I follow you on Twitter, not least of all because of your political messages and allegiances. Do you think Donald Trump will be a one-term president? I actually think he will be.

I'm terrible at predicting things. I predicted he would lose last time. But I'm looking at predicting things. I predicted he would lose last time. But I'm looking at the numbers and I feel like people want to return to sanity and some kind of normalcy. I think Biden offers that. He's a person that's shown that he's got empathy and he's steady and he feels like somebody that everyone knows and loves. And I think they need that right now during this crazy crisis. Biden wasn't my first choice for the Democratic nomination, but I think he will. Who would it have been?

It was Elizabeth Warren, actually. Me too. I mean, not that I can vote, but I adore her. I think she's brilliant and empathetic and energetic. And I feel like especially now we could use someone like her to be a problem solver. But that's not going to be the case. And Biden's our nominee. And I think he's clearly an extreme improvement on what we have right now.

And will Elizabeth Warren be his running mate? She might be, but he's also looking at other people that I really like, like Stacey Abrams. But it's going to be a woman, isn't it? Yeah, he's promised that it's going to be a woman. So I think he's looking at Kamala Harris. He's looking at Gretchen Whitmer, who's the governor of Michigan. I love her. So he's looking at a few different people. Yeah. Okay, we still have the starter that you have to do in your drink of choice. okay starter let's do a soup let's do a soup for my starter okay which soup um I love Chrissy's uh french onion soup I think that would be really good yeah lovely she has a french onion soup in her latest book and it has a croissant as the bread on top wow and it is so so good that makes a lot of sense because it's a

really dunkable thing yes it's and it's buttery and it's oh it's so good yes yes oh my god that's an excellent idea so do you have the cheese melted on the croissant yes melt the cheese on the croissant don't start mum you'll be then we won't be able to get you out if like if we do i won't be able to get i'll be out like what's eating won't be able to get... I'll be out, like, what's eating Gilbert Grape soon. They won't get me out the front door, I'm telling you. I want to ask like obviously it's weird time to be putting music out but also people need music people are like consuming it more in a different way and I think it's kind of I don't know about

you but I feel like people are appreciating music in this different space with being able to have time time and space to be able to listen properly maybe and it not be this deluge of like, you must have this. But you are an EGOT. Is that what you can be called? Is that what one can be called? Yeah, he has a Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.

Wow. Yeah, he's a big deal, mum. Yeah, but like, so what? He's a big deal. How can we add another, like, initial to that? So what would be like, what else is there to do? I need a Brit. That's what I need is a Brit.

Yeah, you do. You should get a Brit. I don't understand why, yeah, well, I mean. I think I was nominated for Best International New Artist when my first album came out, but I haven't gotten any noms since that I can recall. Your new song's great. I love it.

Thank you. Thank you. So we've got three of them out now. So the first one we put out came out when it was on This Is Us, the NBC show here in the States. I love that so much. It's on This Is Us. Yes.

Oh, my goodness. That one was called Conversations in the Dark. What series? The third series? It was, it aired in the Dark. What series? The third series? It was, it aired in January here. I don't know when it aired there. Okay. I've got, I'm up to series three, but I haven't finished it.

But I don't know whether there's a fourth series in the States. I'm not sure. I haven't got up to, I haven't got up to a song. So we, we put a song called Conversations in the Dark in that show and we released it then. And that one's really doing well. It's just a sweet ballad, kind of one of those songs you might get married to or something. And then,

uh, Oh, you're good at that job. I, I, you know, got a good track record and then, um,

you fucking do. And then we put out a song called actions, uh, which the chorus is, uh, actions speak louder than love songs. Um, and it's a fun song.

It's kind of based on the same sample that Dr. Dre used for a song called Next Episode. So it's kind of a good hip hop R&B fusion. And then we just put out this weekend a fun kind of Caribbean inspired dance song called Bigger Love. I listened to that. That's the one we just put out.

And we're actually doing a the one we just put out and we're actually doing a challenge that we just issued today um to get people if they want to be a part of the video we're trying to be creative with how we're making videos uh we want people to um you know dance for the camera uh if they want to be in the video and we'll make a kind of compilation of the viewers submitted uh videos that we get. So that should be fine. John, you're always sitting down because you're at your piano, but can you dance? I'm not that great of a dancer.

Oh, John, don't say that. I wouldn't say I'm terrible, but I think all the time that I spent at the piano has made me good at chair dancing. Very good. me good at chair dancing. It comes in handy when I'm on The Voice, which I'm sitting in my chair a lot. And so I've become a very good chair dancer. But when I'm actually standing up, I'm just okay. Can Chrissy dance? No, neither of us are very good dancers. My daughter loves to dance, though. She's been taking dance class. She's only four years old.

You have the most gorgeous children in the world. Thank you. Thank you. So, okay, you're a seated dancer. What's your karaoke song? I like to rap. I like to rap when I do karaoke because my belief is it's not fair for me to be doing karaoke. I mean, it's the whole point of karaoke is for like amateur singers to feel like they're stars. And if, you know, I shouldn't be there trying to show everybody up. So I figure I'm an amateur rapper, so I'll rap.

So what do you rap? I like Jay-Z, I like Biggie, you know, artists that I've listened to a lot and would be able to mimic their flow enough. I wanted to ask whether you will be doing musicals again. I loved doing Jesus Christ Superstar. It was so fun for me. And I would do something again if I loved the role and loved the team around it. It was really a fun, beautiful process working with that team with Sara Bareilles.

Oh, she's amazing. Yeah, Andrew Lloyd Webber was producer on the broadcast and we got to spend some time with him. Our director is a Brit named David Laveau. And we had such a great team and it was so fun and so inspiring to do the the show I would do another one for sure so which part would you like to play I don't know I I I have to think about the next thing I would like to do but maybe I'll write something yes that I'll be in yeah you should do

that what was the thing that you when you were when you when you're getting your orders in what's the thing that you feel like you can't when you, when you're getting your orders in, what's the thing that you feel like you can't live without? Because I know that we had Dua Lipa on, and when I was like, I know you're not a stockpiling doer, but what did you go into the shops and you were like, I need this. And she was like, hot sauce. I got like four different hot sauces, which I probably didn't need. So is there anything that you kind of stockpiled, but not like, I'm not saying you stole it out of the hands of another person, but, you know, something you were like, this is absolutely essential. What's funny is Chrissy had already been stockpiling A1 sauce.

She loves A1 steak sauce. I don't know this. A1 steak sauce. Oh, it's a bit like our brown sauce. Yeah, it's kind of like a tangier ketchup. It's like tangier, smokier ketchup. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And do you have good table manners? I'm sure you do have good table manners.

Not especially good. I'm not very formal about a lot of things. I just think you should be kind and you should have consideration for other people. But I'm not very formally into etiquette and manners. I just want to enjoy myself. So what's your worst table manner in someone else? Ah, my worst table manner? Well, I eat too fast.

Oh, okay. Okay. I do too. Jesse, you and him shouldn't share a table. But it's so I can have a second plate quickly. You know, well, I think it was, I don't know how many siblings you have, but I had three other siblings. And we, I felt like we didn't have a lot of food when we were growing up we had enough but it was you know right on the edge so if you wanted seconds you had to finish quickly

and I think that's that's why I ate fast and then I started traveling so much for my work um and getting so busy that food would be like in the way. If like if I took too long to eat that I couldn't get all the other stuff I wanted to get done. So I don't know. I've just gotten used to eating really fast, except for this meal, because I'm talking so much. Because of me, I'm so sorry about this. But, you know, you know what? It's funny. And also, I think with children, we eat around the dinner table together and it's always a really romantic idea that you're going to eat around the dinner table

and then you're feeding one and you're trying to shove it. So I feel like I go so quickly now because of trying to kind of steer the ship when it's a mad kind of dinner party with my toddlers. But I wanted to, no, you've eaten all around the world. You know, you've traveled, you've toured. Where are some of your favorite restaurants?

I mean, L.A., I'd love, you live in L.A. now. And like, where, like, are some of those places that you and Chrissy can't, like, live without where you always go? We love a place called Inaka. It's Japanese food that is, some of it's sushi, but some of it's just all kinds of really cool things. Very, it's just so delicate and precise and beautiful. Every presentation is beautiful. It's an experience. You go for a couple hours.

it's an experience you you go for a couple hours it's like you really just enjoy the care that's put into the food and it's just every bite is so good and so beautifully curated um so you should definitely try that place whereabouts in new york because like you lived in new york for a while so new york well we had all kinds a range of places we liked in New York. Your friends have David Chang. Yes. We love David. Yes. So we've been fans of him for a long time. Um, and very early on when he started Momofuku, uh,

the noodle bar, uh, we were living a few blocks from there. So we would walk over there and eat all the time. And, uh, we love it. We had one of Chrissy's birthday parties there. We truly love his work.

And that was before we were friends with him. Now we're friends with him. Chrissy's producing a show with him and has been a guest on his other show. So we love David Chang. Anything he does, he does a brilliant job. We also love a little Italian restaurant in the neighborhood called Frank. I've been going there since I moved to the East Village, which was way back in the year 2000. And it's been a neighborhood staple for a long time. But then we also like some of the elevated places like La Bernardin and Eleven Madison. What's the Italian place we love? Del Posto, which is amazing, too. Oh, I didn't know that. It's the Italian place we love? Del Posto, which is amazing too.

Oh, I don't know that. It's a whole range. We like the really elevated stuff, but a lot of the noodle bars and local joints we love too. Is Frank right by where East Village Radio used to be? Yeah, it's right over there. It's on 2nd Avenue. Oh, I love that.

Yeah, I love that place. It's great. If you had to choose one country's cuisine, would it be Italy or where would it be? Italy's right up there. I also love southern food in America, which is really good. And I love East Asian food or even South Asian food, too. I love Indian and Thai food. I love Japanese restaurants. I think the restaurant scene in Tokyo, I think may be the most impressive overall restaurant scene in the world. But they have all kinds of cuisine too. Some of it's Japanese cuisine, but they also do really well at everything else. It's just a really great food city, Tokyo is.

John, it's been such a pleasure to chat to you. My pleasure. I feel so guilty with you. You've got your bloody soup. It's going to be absolutely cold now and the dumplings are going to be a bit sour. I'm going to put it back in the microwave.

It's leftovers anyway. But thanks so much for doing this. Thank you. It's honestly such a pleasure. I've been such a fan of you for so long. Thank you. It's my pleasure. It's an honor.

And your voice is just gorgeous. Beyond. And I think I'm going to start doing roast chicken before I go on stage. I'm going to fan of you for so long. Thank you. It's my pleasure. It's an honor. And your voice is just beyond. And I think I'm going to start doing roast chicken before I go on stage. I'm going to see if that works. Oh, we are ordinary people. Oh my God, you should have got him to sing. Why didn't we get him to sing? Wow.

He's not ordinary, is he? No. He's a legend. He's very regal. He's just so serene. They have a lovely time. They have a lovely life. I'd just love to be quarantined with Chrissie and John. I know.

Thank you, John Legend. It's a shame Chrissie didn't come round, but I'm sure she was busy looking after the kids. Yeah. And cooking something delicious. You know how it is, Jess. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Jessie Ware. I'm a bit tired. I'm not going to lie. I'm going to

go to bed with my twitchy eye. Oh, I thought you were winking at me, darling. Oh. Why am I the most tired during quarantine? My friends thought I was stoned on the quiz yesterday. I was like, no, I just can't see anymore because I'm so tired. Wear your glasses, darling. Yeah, maybe I need to wear my glasses more.

Yeah, I think you need to wear them more. Squinty McGinty. All right. Mum, night, Mum. Night, darling. Thank you for listening. The music you've heard on Table Manners is by Peter Duffy and Pete Fraser. Table Manners is produced by Alice Williams.