W hen I wake up in the morning and walk downstairs, I pass a drawing by Cy Twombly and a painting by Philip Guston. They remind me there is another part of the world we have to be in contact with—something we need to see and take pleasure in. Though I don’t look at them and think I’m going to cook something different, the things in a house should inspire. They shouldn’t feel separate from your life.
I grew up in Woodstock, New York. My father was a doctor, the son of Hungarian immigrants, and a very cultured man in the best sense of the word. He bought things he loved, be that a poster, a chair, a painting. He was a great friend of Philip Guston—we all were—and I remember them working and talking together. Philip died in our home. My father never really got over it. What I took from both my parents was a way of living with objects: not many, but chosen and lived with closely.
I came to London in 1969, intending to stay for a term and then go back to the United States, but I was so happy here that I wanted to remain. My parents said I could, as long as I went to school, so I enrolled at the London College of Printing. I studied graphic and typographic design, and I loved it—the mix of students, the setting of old-fashioned type into trays. After that, I worked at Penguin Books, designing covers. There was a unique feeling of freedom–imaginative but rigorous. It taught me how to think about color, about space, about how something looks and feels. I’ve never really stopped thinking that way.
At Penguin, I worked in the art department with David Pelham, in a small team on St. John Street. The main office was out in Harmondsworth [near Heathrow], but we were a very compact group, and it felt incredibly creative. You could try things out. I remember doing a series on the works of Simone de Beauvoir, with Matisse cut‑outs on the cover. It was a very good place to learn.
Richard Rogers and I met in this period. Everything then changed when he and Renzo Piano won the competition to design the Pompidou Centre. We moved to Paris, which was a revelation. I worked in the office there, doing graphics—coloring in the drawings for the back facade of the building in the primary colors that were so radical at the time and still feel exceptional now. It was another way of thinking about how things come together: color, structure, use. Those ideas stay with you.
One of my favorite phrases is, “Give a big party in a small space.”
When we returned to London in 1977, we made our home by combining two houses in Chelsea. It was always important to us that it felt like a family house—a place where you can sit, talk, do your homework, have a rest. The furniture, the paintings, the way things are arranged—it’s all part of that. Richard never thought of design as separate from living. It’s about how people feel in a space, and how they come together within it.
When we opened The River Cafe in 1987, it grew out of the same instincts. Rose Gray and I wanted to cook what we’d eaten and cooked in Italy, and to do so in an atmosphere that reflected the way we lived at home. We still write the menu every day. At the beginning it was by hand, and although that has changed, the idea hasn’t.
The restaurant has always been about people as much as food. I like a room where people can gather, where you’re sitting together. One of my favorite phrases is, “Give a big party in a small space.” Food is part of it, but it’s also conversation, noise, movement.
I began my podcast “Ruthie’s Table 4” in reaction to the separation we all felt during COVID. We missed people coming to the restaurant. The idea was for guests to talk about memories through the lens of food because it’s a universal language. We’ve recently published an accompanying book titled “Table 4 at The River Cafe: Conversations about Food and Life.”
You can judge a society by the way it feeds people—by how it treats children, how it treats those who need care. Food isn’t separate from that. It’s part of how we look after one another, how we live together. I think that is what has always interested me. Whether it is a conversation, a meal, or the things you live with at home, it’s about how you connect to other people and how you remember.
