It’s a gloomy day in London when I ring up Ruth Rogers—grey skies, a bitter wind, June only in name—but the River Cafe co-founder is buoyant with the promise of warmer days ahead. “Hello, darling,” she says (her standard greeting for everyone she meets, but no less charming for it).
Baroness Rogers of Riverside—known universally as Ruthie—is fitting me in after a light breakfast (a nectarine, a cappuccino) at her home near Sloane Square, whose gleaming chrome kitchen and River Cafe-pink cloakroom were designed in 1983 by her late husband, Richard Rogers, the architect behind Centre Pompidou and the Millennium Dome, among myriad other projects. The rest of her day will be spent organizing the launch of The River Cafe Cafe, orchestrating guest appearances on her podcast Table 4, and, somewhere in between, overseeing the restaurant she co-founded with Rose Gray 37 years ago—and yet she’s warm, maternal, in no way tense or hurried. “We love the summer, we love the produce,” she drawls in her mellifluous Transatlantic tones. “You say goodbye to one fruit or vegetable and hello to another. Right now you’re saying hello to the melons, the zucchini…”
It’s true that the River Cafe, and its waterfront terrace space, is at its loveliest in summer—and it’s Richard whom Ruthie credits with making it paradise-on-Thames when the sun makes an appearance in Hammersmith. “When he established the offices for his practice in Thames Wharf in the ’80s [among which The River Cafe sits], he actually tore down one of the warehouses so that he could create a green space for everybody who worked there, because that’s what people do in a city – we gravitate towards parks, we gravitate towards piazzas,” she tells me now. It’s easy to forget how revolutionary this decision was at the time, long before the concept of living cities took root in our cultural consciousness—so revolutionary that the New Yorker made it a focus of its seminal 1996 article on The River Cafe, which ferried Ruthie and Rose’s fame across the Atlantic: “There are people in London who believe that the renovated warehouse area, with the Cafe as its heart, is a kind of purposeful demonstration piece on the part of Richard Rogers… a vision of what he would like London to be in the next century,” wrote Adam Gopnik. “People think that he wants to show how wonderful the city would be if it were opened to the river, as it hasn’t been since Shakespeare’s time. A new balance would be struck between the north and south banks, and there would, of course, be a powerful Italian influence everywhere.”
While Richard was reimagining the riverbank and the future of urban living, Ruth and Rose’s focus in the ’80s was on the granular, the “domestic”, feeding architectural and construction workers with grilled lamb and pappa al pomodoro. “When we started, we had a tiny space, no money, and were restrained by licenses, which meant that at the beginning we were only allowed to open for lunch,” Ruthie recalled in British Vogue’s October 2012 issue ahead of The River Cafe’s 25th anniversary. “But, in fact, the restrictions in those early days worked to our advantage, because we were able to develop slowly—and we learned so much as the restaurant got bigger.”
If the restaurant was feeding close to 500 people a day by 2012, in the years since, it’s only continued to grow, if not in size, then in influence. There have been further bestselling cookbooks (including The River Cafe Look Book), a homewares shop (and a collab with Summerill & Bishop), and, of course, the launch of Table 4, which sees Ruth interview everyone from Wes Anderson to Linda Evangelista, Massimo Bottura to Olivia Colman, about their lives through the lens of food. (A compilation of the interviews in book form is currently in the works with Simon & Schuster.) She’s just spoken to Moncler’s creative director, the “interesting and thoughtful” Remo Ruffini, she says, with Johnny Ives and Maria Sharapova due to sit down with her in the coming weeks.
It’s The River Cafe Cafe, though, that represents the most significant expansion of the restaurant in more than three decades, with Rogers and her team converting what was once the offices of Richard Rogers Architects into a more casual (and affordable) space than The River Cafe proper. In the mornings, there will be espresso and pastries (ciambella, cornetti, crostata), while in the evenings, guests can sip aperitivi beneath canvases from Damien Hirst’s “Cherry Blossom” series. (The YBA’s studio neighbours the Cafe.) Savory dishes, too, will be available throughout the day—platters of zucchini blossoms and grilled peppers; a selection of salumi and formaggi; bruschetta topped with Vesuvius tomatoes and lardo di Colonnata – along with various dolci (including Chocolate Nemesis), all meant to be enjoyed either beside the river or gazing out at it through floor-to-ceiling windows. “It’s really the first ‘opening’ we’ve done since we started,” Rogers muses, “but, in so many ways, it harks back to the nature of The River Cafe in its infancy.”
Here, in honor of The River Cafe Cafe’s opening, Rogers shares some of her favorite summer recipes.
Raspberry Sorbet
Serves 6
- 1 thick skinned lemon
- 400g caster sugar
- 800g raspberries
The riper the raspberries, the better the sorbet. Cut the lemon into 1cm (½-inch cubes), removing any seeds. Put the lemon into a food processor with 350g of the caster sugar. Blend until pureed with visible bits of lemon skin. Add the raspberries, then blend again until well mixed. Pour the mixture into a freezer-proof container and freeze for about 2 hours, stirring with a spoon to break up the crystals every 30 minutes until solid.
Zucchini Trifolati
Serves 6
- 12 small zucchini, trimmed
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
- 125ml boiling water
- A handful of fresh mint or basil leaves, roughly chopped
In The River Cafe kitchen, we all have our way of cooking this—some like zucchini with more color, others paler—but we all agree that the most important thing is that all the water is absorbed into the zucchini. Cut each zucchini at an angle into 3-4 slices. Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan, add the garlic and then the zucchini, and cook slowly for 15-20 minutes. When brown on all sides, add the boiling water and stir, scraping up the mixture that will have formed on the bottom of the pan. Cook until all the water has been absorbed and the zucchini are soft. Add the mint or basil, season with sea salt and black pepper, and serve with prosciutto di Parma or mozzarella.
Slow Roasted Tomatoes with Basil
Serves 6
- 12 ripe plum tomatoes, halved lengthways
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 2 cloves garlic, very finely sliced
- 24 basil leaves
Cooking this on a very low heat dries out the tomatoes, concentrates the flavor, and makes them sweeter. Preheat the oven to 110 degrees Celsius or the lowest temperature. Put the tomatoes on a baking sheet, side by side. Season well with salt and pepper and drizzle with half the olive oil. Top each tomato with a thin piece of garlic and basil leaf. Roast in the oven for two hours 30 minutes. Every 30 minutes, gently flatten the tomatoes with a spoon, releasing their juices and concentrating the flavor. Carefully remove from the oven and serve at room temperature, drizzle with the remaining olive oil.