What the Fuck is the River Café Podcast?

As we reach peak celebrity food podcast, Simran Hans explores how Ruthie’s Table 4 uses the great leveller of food to consolidate an elite brand.

Good morning and welcome to Vittles. Each Monday we publish a different piece of writing related to food, whether it’s an essay, a dispatch, a polemic, a review, or even poetry. This week, Simran Hans goes deep on the bizarrely compelling Ruthie’s Table 4, the star-studded River Café podcast which feels like a throwback to another era of celebrity.

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What the Fuck is the River Café Podcast?

As we reach peak celebrity food podcast, Simran Hans explores how Ruthie’s Table 4 uses the great leveller of food to consolidate an elite brand. Artwork by Dan Biddulph.

Here is a small selection of text messages I have either sent or received about Ruthie’s Table 4, a podcast I am quite simply obsessed with:

‘Rag and Bone man on River Cafe pod’

‘SJP talking about Genes on river cafe podcast’

‘The Austin Butler episode of the River Cafe podcast. He is the perfect himbo’

‘salman rushdie today! “Salman Rushdie, my friend”’

‘NOT RUTHIE AND WYCLEF RAPPING TODAY’S RECIPE?’

For more than a hundred episodes, its host, legendary restaurateur Ruth ‘Ruthie’ Rogers, chef-patron of the River Café, has gently bullied her celebrity customers (‘Who have become friends,’ she insists) into being interviewed about food and memory. A-listers like Ridley Scott, Will Ferrell, and Laura Dern are grilled about what they ate as children, whether they cook now, and, more importantly, how much they love the River Café (the fact that many of them probably work with nutritionists and employ private chefs is ignored). Guests are also made to read out a recipe – specifically one of Rogers’ own – from one of the River Café’s twelve published cookbooks, most of which were co-written with the late Rose Gray. On a recent episode, Rogers and Wyclef Jean rap the method for making her chargrilled peppers with anchovy and capers. ‘Fifty salt capers, soak soak soak! Let’s go y’all!’ he ad libs as Rogers reads the ingredients out with a stilted, staccato rhythm. ‘Hold up! 100 salted anchovies! Wyclef that refugee, c’mon!’ This somehow continues for a full three minutes.

As this suggests, listening to Ruthie’s Table 4 is a bizarre, surreal, and often unintentionally hilarious experience. Each week, I marvel at the calibre of the show’s guests – who, unlike most celebrities who appear on the interview circuit, are rarely there to promote anything specific. Which begs the questions: What the fuck is the River Café podcast? And: Why on earth does it exist?

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The interior of the River Café post-2008 redesign. Source: Stuart Forbes

Ruthie’s Table 4 is named after the best seat in the house at the River Café, which is in earshot of the bustling, bright yellow pass. It is a wry nod to the restaurant’s lore – which, if you’re listening to the podcast, you’ve probably already bought into. You’ll be at least somewhat familiar with the sleek chrome bar and plush blue carpet (which evoke the feeling of a modernist spaceship permanently parked in the 1990s), the famed ‘Chocolate Nemesis’ dessert, the fact that its alumni include April Bloomfield, Sam and Sam Clark, and Jamie Oliver. You’ll be aware of its lingering association with New Labour politicians, as well as numerous artists, actors, and musicians. I certainly was, the one and only time I ate at the River Café, in 2022, on my thirtieth birthday. The atmosphere was undeniably glamorous: I spotted Bryan Ferry dining a few tables away.

The podcast has a similar feel of a particular, timeless scene. ‘Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen are just some of the people who love to call the River Café home’ declares the iTunes description, a line-up that reflects the odd specificity of the restaurant’s starry milieu. Guests tend to be old-school famous, but usually that fame has peaked. Since it opened in 1987, the image the restaurant has cultivated is of a bohemian artists’ salon, but perhaps it would be more accurate to describe it as a saloon for the bohemian-posh, for people who are left-ish in their politics but all firmly members of the establishment. Former US House speaker Nancy Pelosi is an archetypal guest: powerful, wealthy, and ‘liberal’, with immaculately coiffed hair. Rogers doesn’t book influencers or TikTokers on Ruthie’s Table 4, and neither has she interviewed a grime or reality TV star (or at least not yet), emphasising the River Café’s singular aspirational tastes. And although the podcast has welcomed a number of guests of colour, almost all of them move in elite creative circles: filmmaker Savanah Leaf, painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, architect David Adjaye, former British Vogue editor Edward Enninful.

Nearly every episode is recorded at the River Café, a strategy that appears to remove a layer of formality from the proceedings (either that, or Rogers’ guests are simply very comfortable in chic, expensive restaurants). Faux-relatable questions like ‘Have you ever worked in a restaurant?’ become comical when asked in such a rarefied setting, surrounded by dainty plates of primi and £450 bottles of Bianco Breg. Sometimes guests reflect on their class origins, but never on how class shapes their food choices today – any of the guests who came from more humble beginnings have surely transcended them now. The podcast tends to stick to safely apolitical territory, with food positioned as a great equaliser, but hearing Sarah Jessica Parker talk about going to the supermarket to buy Burford Browns, or Linda Evangelista reminisce about eggplant parmigiana, feels recherché rather than relatable. The world of the podcast is dramatically divorced from the realities of most listeners – it may even be divorced from the realities of the guests’ actual eating habits. But it doesn’t matter: it’s all part of the fantasy.

Source: The River Café

The universe of Ruthie’s Table 4 is a cosy one, full of delicious food and soothing anecdotes. ‘What’s your comfort food?’ Rogers asks at the end of every show (she, of course, has made her name by elevating Italian comfort cooking). The answers are alternately playful – a packet of salt and vinegar Discos (David Beckham) – and nostalgic – mashed potato and onion gravy (Judi Dench); basic – cold cereal and milk, medium soggy (Jeff Goldblum) and indulgent – coffee ice cream and Oreos (Glenn Close). Sometimes they are obviously made up – ‘One of your thin vegan pizzas’ (Al Gore). Such softball questions mean the podcast stays firmly within the bounds of publicist-approved conversation, producing positive – if bland – coverage for Rogers’ guests. After Victoria Beckham’s episode, outlets including Vogue ran stories about her highly specific diet, as if Posh Spice being a fussy eater is some kind of revelation.

If the podcast is meant to be an advert for the River Café, it’s something of a gamble. The recipe reading is particularly baffling. Having some of the most well-known voices in the world read out your work is undoubtedly a flex, but has just as much potential to sound awkward as it does charming. While it’s delightful to listen to Wes Anderson narrate the recipe for roast pigeon stuffed with cotechino with a cadence straight out of one of his films, or to Jude Law reading the method for pear and almond tart as if it were an erotic poem, Pete Davidson rattles through the recipe for zucchini and cannellini bean soup with considerably less conviction. By the end, he sounds relieved the ordeal is over. ‘My first time reading a recipe,’ he admits, later joking that he often makes instant noodles with hot water from his coffee machine.

Bemusement and occasional mild horror – the feelings that this segment evokes (in this listener, at least) – generally do not translate into cookbook sales or table reservations. What the podcast is more successful at selling, however, is a narrative; Ruthie’s Table 4 is the natural extension of an already-media-savvy brand. After all, Rogers and Gray were pioneers of the now-obligatory restaurant cookbook, and fronted several TV cookery shows in the mid-nineties. It was former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter who told Rogers she should start a podcast: a consolidation of her media empire as well as her social scene.

Rogers’ personal address book has allowed her to secure significantly higher-profile guests than many of her competitors. The celebrities on Ruthie’s Table 4 are already likely to be found at the River Café, unlike those dining at Jessie Ware’s mum’s house on Table Manners, or at James Acaster and Ed Gamble’s fantasy restaurant on Off Menu. Importantly, the interviews rely on her relationships, not her research. Rogers is a chef, not a journalist, and certainly not a podcaster: there is no expectation that she will deliver something polished, so stumbles, pauses, and crosstalk are rarely edited out. The seventy-five-year-old is a warm host, charming, convivial and flirtatious (if not exactly slick), her soft mid-Atlantic drawl conveying a mix of charisma and authority. It means she can get away with interrupting her guests’ anecdotes with near-constant ‘Mmhmms’ and ‘Yeahs’ (as she does with Nigella Lawson).

It’s telling that the podcast was rebranded as Ruthie’s Table 4 after initially debuting as River Café Table 4. For Rogers herself, the benefits of the podcast are self-evident: each episode showcases her seemingly authentic personal relationships with the A-list, and positions her as utterly central to London’s food scene. These celebrity endorsements are more subtle than sponcon, wiped clean of the déclassé #AD and #PaidPartnership declarations required by social media. In the show’s inaugural episode, a self-conscious Jake Gyllenhaal frets about having to follow Ralph Fiennes and Michael Caine (Rogers had sent him rough cuts of their recipe readings). ‘I should give up now,’ he says with a nervous chuckle, concerned he can’t compete with their refined English charm. Gathering himself, he smoothly improvises an intro: ‘I’m Jake Gyllenhaal, and there is truly nothing like Ruthie’s slow-cooked tomato sauce.’ Guests are not obliged to wax lyrical about the River Café, but given that the interviews take place at the restaurant, more often than not, they do. Being on home turf further consolidates this odd imbalance, with Rogers seemingly holding all the power.

In many ways, Ruthie’s Table 4 feels like a throwback to the TV chat shows of the nineties. The energy is loose, the stories are ridiculous, and it’s impossible to guess who Rogers will host from week to week. Crucially, listening to the podcast is actually fun, and every Tuesday I find myself excitedly refreshing my podcast app. Where else could you hear Keira Knightley’s husband (formerly of the Klaxons) bragging about spending £100 on imported citrus at Leila’s Shop and eating so much of it that he vomited, or Austin Butler recounting a bleary-eyed breakfast at Baz Luhrmann’s after a post-Elvis bacchanal. (‘Austin is a brilliant actor, a beautiful singer, a poet, and a true friend. And Austin is my family,’ says Rogers, without a flicker of irony.) Ruthie’s Table 4 is smug and delicious, appealing to listeners’ nosiness about how the other half shop, cook, and eat. Against my better judgement, I can’t help but pull up a chair. 

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Credits

Simran Hans is a writer in London. Her work has been published in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Observer, the Financial Times, GQ, VICE, and many others.

The artwork is by Dan Biddulph.

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