So tell me about what you’re doing
with your organisation.
How does that relate to the Bronx?
Yeah, so like with Ghetto Gastro,
the reason that it started was like...
food for me has always been like
an escape for me, you know?
My mother, we bonded over
going to restaurants and eating out.
She was one of those single parents
that was going to school,
working a job.
But we spent our quality time
going out to eat
because she was an epicurious person.
So, I got it, honestly, from her.
And as I was like a young adult
going out to eat in Manhattan,
I often saw, or like you heard
like hip hop playing
on the soundtrack of a restaurant, right?
But then when you look around
the restaurant, you don’t see
black or brown people dining.
And you look in the kitchen,
you don’t see many black or brown people
working in the kitchen,
except maybe the dishwasher.
Right, so I was like, alright,
what’s the way that we could use food
as a medium
and a language to celebrate
the culture of the Bronx,
which is largely hip hop
and also, like, kind of create
this Pan-African idea of food,
taking things from the past
and bringing it into the future.
And the book, you’ve just done a book.
We did just do a book.
I just did a book,
so we can both talk about our books.
Yeah, The River Café Look Book.
It’s amazing.
Yeah.
And when I looked at it, I’m like:
“Oh, we’re speaking the same wavelength.”
Yeah, we sort of are.
Our book was really trying to think of
how we could inspire
young people to cook.
But actually, anybody any age.
And the idea was that very often
you open a book,
a cookbook,
and you see a recipe which is very long,
and it might put you off actually making
because it looks intimidating,
it looks so many ingredients.
And so we thought, what if we didn’t put
a recipe in until page 117
and we just put photographs
in the beginning
for the first sort of 115 pages
of the food, and then somebody might say:
“I want to make that.”
And then we went through the archives
of the photographer
and then matched the food,
so it was kind of a fun idea.
I love the pairing of the food
and like the lifestyle photography.
So it could be a river,
a highway...
A pink telephone
next to strawberry sorbet.
So like for us, like because
my vocation is more of a visual vocation,
and my partners, like, have
the culinary background,
I’m like: “How do we tell a story
with these recipes?”
So bringing in like photographs,
bringing in artwork from our friends,
like to really tell a cohesive 360 vision
with the Black Power Kitchen.
So I definitely feel like our books
are relative.
So with the book,
what we really wanted to do,
because Ghetto Gastro
is such an abstract project in concept,
we wanted to approach it like
if we were really trying to distil
what the ethos is of our project,
how do we put that between the pages?
So we approached Black Power Kitchen
like if this was our first book
and our last book,
how do we give the people enough?
And it’s really like...
when we started with the outline,
we wanted to start with the Bronx,
of course, which is our foundation,
but also look back to Africa
and like how that connects
with the different foods
that are celebrated in different regions.
So looking at the Caribbean,
the South America, like...
And then also,
because we don’t have a restaurant,
a lot of our stuff is international.
So our travels have definitely changed
our perspective, like trips to Thailand,
trips to Italy,
trips to Japan have informed
how we approach and cook.
So we wanted to really celebrate
all of these things. We did a chapter
dedicated to our mothers, you know,
because like the foundation of all of us
are black women.
So how do we celebrate them?
And so I always knew Rose,
she was older than I was,
she had children who are older,
but I always knew her.
And, you know, we went to live
in Paris because my husband
built the Pompidou Centre
and she went to live in Italy.
And then when I came back,
I wasn’t sure what I was going to do,
having worked on the building.
I was a graphic designer.
And we knew that we didn’t want to have
an office in the middle of London
that was just in a kind of tower.
We wanted to have a community.
So Richard found
these beautiful warehouses
on the river in Hammersmith,
slightly out of the centre,
about 20 minutes out of London,
and they tore one down and made
a kind of green space in the middle.
And then people who made
architectural models took one floor.
And then there were people who did
stained glass windows
and there were framers,
there were designers,
and it was a kind of community,
but there was no place to eat.
And so I remember
we were looking at proposals
for this little space that we had
for a restaurant café.
And I said: “Do you know what?
Maybe I’ll do it.”
And it was such a kind of
shocking thing to think.
And then I called Rose.
We went and looked at this little site
in this beautiful space,
and we said: “Let’s do it.”
And so we started together.
And, you know, sadly,
she passed away in 2010.
But, you know, we had a good...
25 years together, you know, working.
That’s incredible.
It was a great partnership, yeah.
I feel like the best things
happen out of that type of...
organic curiosity.
I agree.
Like, let’s do a thing.
Yeah, that’s it. Yeah.
You know? And see what comes of it.
How do you find working
with a group of people?
How do you actually do what you do
with the people you work with?
We have a saying that we say:
“Community builds immunity.”
So we feel like
the more heads at the table,
sometimes there can be too many cooks
at the kitchen,
but I think the nature of the partnership
within Ghetto Gastro is like,
everybody has a different expertise
that complements each other,
so I think this kind of subversiveness
to challenge stereotypes
and what people might expect
when they see people that look like me
and my partners
and like culinary was like the last thing
that they were thinking about.
And now I think we’re thinking
a little bit differently.
Like to be able to have a place
for people to come.
We have a spot in Tokyo
that we kind of use as a hub
for collaboration
and let other people come
and use the space,
but we’re starting to think about
maybe having like a little test kitchen
in New York City.
I was really interested
after the pandemic.
If you’d asked me,
you know, what’s important in a city?
I’d say museums
or obviously schools
and hospitals and galleries and parks.
And then when we had to close restaurants
for six months
and we opened again,
people came back and they were crying.
You know, they just...
Somehow being out in a restaurant
where other people were eating,
seeing your friends
you didn’t know were there.
The spontaneity of food,
it brings people together.
It’s real community,
and it’s also just
a very human thing, right?
We all have to eat.
Like you say,
the connection with memories and...
a dish, a smell,
a taste,
you know, the environment.
I think that teaching
where our food comes from is something
they take with them when they leave.
And you know that feeling
when somebody comes up and says:
“Ruthie, I have to talk to you.”
And I go: “OK, how long?
When are you going? Where are you going?”
And I always say:
“Well, as long as you continue to cook,
you know, go, as long as you know
you can always come home,
if things don’t work,
you can come back.”
And I think what they take, I hope,
is the values.
The values of how you behave
in the kitchen, that we don’t shout,
that we’re polite,
that we teach through hope
rather than fear.
I always say people don’t remember
what you did to them,
but how you make them feel, so...
Or what you say,
how you make them feel.
I think it’s such a kind of privilege
just to sit next to you
and hear what you’re doing
and the work that you’re doing,
the people you’ve inspired
and the social implications
of what you do,
so I really appreciate you being here.
The privilege is mine.
Thanks.
We’ve got to do it again.