As the Italian restaurant celebrates 30 years, we catch up with Ms Ruth Richards about her new cookbook.

How do you improve upon a classic? It’s a question that we seem to be constantly chewing over in this era of endless re-boots and revivals. But it’s been a particularly pressing one recently for Ms Ruth Rogers, the co-founder (alongside her late friend and business partner Ms Rose Gray) of beloved London restaurant The River Cafe. This year, The River Cafe is not only celebrating 30 years since its foundation in 1987, but 22 years since Mses Rogers and Gray published their original tome, The River Cafe Cookbook. Something of a landmark title, this was an instant hit upon release, bewitching home chefs with its disarmingly simple, utterly delicious formulations of classic Italian recipes and quickly becoming a familiar sight in the homes of the wise and tasteful.

The prospect of revisiting it for a new, 30th anniversary edition was therefore more than a little daunting. But Ms Rogers, alongside her co-authors Ms Sian Wyn Owens and Mr Joseph Trivelli, have more than risen to the challenge in producing River Cafe 30, a new River Cafe cookbook that, as well as compiling and updating a gratifying number of classic River Cafe recipes, offers an insight into the history of the restaurant. Key among its many contributors – from Mr Jean Pigozzi, who shot atmospheric images of the restaurant’s interior, to Messrs Damien Hirst and Peter Doig, who drew upon menus to the River Cafe to create original artworks – is the photographer (and MR PORTER Style Council member) Mr Matthew Donaldson, who first met Ms Rogers while shooting a film about her home for the fashion film site NOWNESS, and who is responsible for the book’s fresh, crisp and gloriously unfussy food photography (which was shot in the restaurant’s famous garden terrace). MR PORTER met them both over a plate of taglierini to discuss the book – here’s what they had to say.

Mr Matthew Donaldson: All of us were sort of making it up as we went along. Everyone listened to what everybody else was saying. Which doesn’t happen that often. I’ve not been to the River Cafe a huge number of times in my life, but there was an instant familiarity for me. I felt very safe in the company of Ruthie, and everybody here. You have a good idea of where you’re going and where you should be going. But also you’ve got the confidence that if it doesn’t work, you can go back and revisit it. Which is what happened. We started to take the pictures one way. Ruthie suggested we take the pictures another way…

Ms Ruth Rogers: The sun came out!

MD: The sun came out and then Ruthie said, “Maybe we could shoot outside,” and I said, “I’m not going to do that!” And of course, in the end it was a good idea.

RR: We must have photographed the pappa al pomodoro… how many times? It became a joke. Every time we were seeing Matthew, we said, shall we give him a pappa al pomodoro to photograph? It wasn’t the easiest one…

MD: I got snowblind. I didn’t know what I was looking at, in the end.

RR: We were each other’s editors, that’s what I feel. We didn’t ask Matthew to take the pictures and then send them off to the designers to design. We didn’t ask the designers to design and then we did the text. We were all sitting round a table, talking about it. It says in the book that it’s authored by three people – myself, Sian Wyn Owen and Joseph Trivelli – but it really was all of us. And the guiding light of the book was the photography. I hate to be immodest but I think the first book that we did was quite groundbreaking. It really was the first cookbook without a person on the cover, without food on the cover. We just had typography, and then, for the photographs, Rose and I would cook the food and put it on table two, and then we’d photograph it and that was that. There was no styling, no extra lighting. So for us to do this new book was really hard – how do you move forward, and yet do what you like to do? And that’s what Matthew did. He really has done that with his photography. The way he has with the shadows, he loves these lines… I literally do look at this book just for the shadows… Matthew’s a genius, he is, really. The point of this article should be: he really is the best there is. He’s just got such an eye, such an intelligence.

MD: I might have to walk away now. This is where, if I were a smoker, I’d go and smoke a cigarette.

RR: You can walk away. It’s fine. This is really funny… this conversation about praise… We have four sons, and one of them, the other day, was in the country with one of his brothers, and his brother’s wife, who’s this tough Chicago girl. And he made a zucchini pasta. He brought the pasta to the table and he turned to his own wife and said: “What do you think of this pasta?” And my other daughter-in-law said. “What is it with you Rogers and praise?” [Laughs] I agree with her, there’s such a thing as too much praise. But as a chef, when you put something down, you probably cooked it for hours. And you want to know! I mean, of course, our waiters aren’t allowed to ask anybody if the food’s OK. They’re never supposed to say, “Is everything OK?” Because if it is, then why do you need to hear it? And if it’s not – the customer will let you know.

RR: You’ll have to ask somebody else. I’m not very good at saying why I’m a success. But I think we just do what we do.

MD: It’s about consistency. You don’t eat food like this in that many places. It’s as simple as that. You don’t get this experience. You don’t have this staff. If you come here regularly, you see that there are people who come here every day. There’s a family… it sounds like a cliché but it’s true.

RR: I can’t think of very many restaurants that are just one restaurant. You know, I think that probably also has something to do with it. Every day, we’re all here.

MD: Would that be weird, having another restaurant? Have you ever thought about it? You’d have to split everyone up. It would be like splitting your children up. Sending one off to boarding school.

RR: I know, but we should probably be able to do it though. It’s a bit pathetic that we don’t. I don’t know. We did come close a couple of years ago. The people who didn’t want to start the second one, interestingly, were the customers. Really, they were like children. You think it would be more convenient for them, to be in Mayfair. But they didn’t like it at all. Very conservative.

**There are some great stories about customers in the book. **

RR: Yes, I always say that people do very private things in very public spaces. They go to restaurants to get divorced or get fired, or have an affair, or to propose. Waiters tell me that people cry in restaurants, people walk out. It’s quite a drama. Of course, sometimes you just come for dinner. But it is interesting that sometimes I see people who are coming after something quite difficult has happened. You think they’d want to just go home and go to bed, that’s probably what I would do. But somehow you go to a restaurant and you’re taken care of, I hope, when you walk through the door, there’s a feeling of warmth. Like it’s OK, we’re here.

River Cafe 30 (Ebury Press) by Ms Ruth Rogers, Ms Rose Gray, Mr Joseph Trivelli and Ms Sian Wyn Owen is out on 5 October