And I remember meeting a very well-known chef and he just goes, "You're a [__] disgrace to our industry because you're telling everyone that they can cook." A lot of my heroes that I loved were awful to me. Absolutely like not very nice at all.
He's quite simply the most recognizable face in global gastronomy with The Naked Chef. He revolutionized TV cooking with projects like 15. He transformed lives and he brought an entire generation back into the kitchen. Welcome to Rolling Pin Talks, the podcast by Rolling Pin. Jamie Oliver, my name is Jan Steelinger and I have to ask one question in the beginning. You met Tim Meltzer yesterday, your old buddy. How was it?
Beautiful. I mean, I always love seeing Tim. It's always emotional because, well, firstly, he's a good friend, a dear friend. But you know, we've got to a certain age now, over 50, where when we think back at when we first met, when I was 18 and he was probably 21, 22, such young lads. The beginning of our career, the world was our oyster. We were stuck in a basement flat — not flat, kitchen — where it was, you know, you go to work in the dark and go home in the dark. And you know, we had Gennaro there, and it was a very precious menu. I keep saying the wrong words today, menus, flats, what's going on? To be honest, I think it might have something to do with Tim because he gave me quite a lot of wine last night, so I'm slightly hungover. Apologies to all the Rolling Pin crew. But no, they were beautiful memories, you know, young boys in the kitchen, in the old days where you used to do a lot of hours. Special spirit, very amazing spirit. There was a completely Italian kitchen apart from one German and one English boy. And it was chaos. It was beautiful. It was passionate. So I always see that Tim, and now I see him, you know, as a husband, as a dad, as an entrepreneur, as a restaurateur, as a TV personality, and all the incredible documentaries he's done, you know. So it's always lovely to see him, and I guess a little bit of me sees myself, because we've had a very similar path. But he's, I think he's also, he's just, it's been a pleasure to watch him evolve as a chef and a person. And yeah, we went to this beautiful restaurant last night and they were actually closed, so they opened on a Monday. And Tim did a beautiful speech at the beginning just talking about each individual because different chefs had come from different places as well as the owners, and he knew very much their career and their trajectory. And it was a very warm, mentoring, sort of fatherly, supportive chat.
So you meet really seldom in the last years, or do you stay in contact?
No, I saw him a number of weeks ago, months ago in London. When I come to Germany, I try to make sure I see him. But yeah, I don't see him enough. I'd like to go skiing with him and, you know, have a nice time up the mountains and eating mountain food or something similar to that. But I could always do with seeing more of him.
Also, Gennaro is here these days. You met him, I think, half an hour before. He served, you know, only coffee, also some tissue to help you out.
Yeah. He also opened up a new restaurant right now.
Did you help him in this case?
Yeah, of course. Yeah, I mean, you know, Gennaro is the godfather, right? So of course we help him in any way that he wants. Look, he's 78. He has a vitality, he has an energy. Of course, he still gets tired, but it's very obvious he's not going to take risks mentally, financially, like when he was 20. So it's his restaurant and I try and help organize it happening and becoming a reality. But look, I think he's still got a lot to give. He's got the recipes, like he can train, you know, multiple chefs beautifully. He can still represent the restaurant. Like I promise you, he'll be in there a lot, like we'll be kicking him out, like go, go, go. But I think he's an amazing example of, like, you know, what does the future look like? When are you supposed to retire? Like, I know even the concept of retiring is an interesting one in general, like, you know, because you just got to do what you love, because typically if you're a chef, like a real chef, in your heart is hospitality. In your heart is the enjoyment really of seeing people enjoy food or an experience. And, you know, just because you get to 65 or whatever the age is in your country, like you have to stop, you stop, you know. So I disagree in that, but I do think that we should respect our elders, and I think that I do believe in that hierarchy. And I also think that they have, like, my job on planet Earth was to exhaust all the information from Gennaro's brain as possible, and I've done a good job of that. But he still comes up with stuff, like curveballs, left field, like crazy-ass incredible recipes that are bonkers, delicious, intelligent, historical. Like, where the hell did that come from? He can surprise you until today, constantly. I'm like, you little bastard, where you been saving that one under the pillow? So I think Gennaro opening this new restaurant is a real sign of his wisdom, his verve for life. And the early signs are it's really working. Yeah, it's really working. Like, it's really cheap, it's really affordable, it's really small. The model is beautiful. It's very aspirational to young chefs. It's a very simple model. You know, it's very high risk opening restaurants, it's very expensive employing people. So if you can make a little bit of money, right, on a small project that is beautiful and from the heart after all those years of cooking, we don't need fancy this or fancy that. And God bless all the fancy stuff, by the way, it's all part of the beautiful industry. But the fact that a 78-year-old can do like the most humble bolognese with homemade pasta.
That's why it's called Bolo.
Yeah. Yeah. Because even like he's got a polpo, an octopus ragu, which is made in the same energy as a bolognese and still using wine, and it's like it's the same but different and beautifully different, you know. So the menu is very, very focused, very small, and the early signs are the young people love it. So I'm excited for him. But look, I mean, like he's family to me. Like for me and Tim, like we call him our kind of like Italian dad. And I know that Tim Meltzer is equally as passionate and emotional about Gennaro, but he's here. I mean, I don't know where he is. He's probably, you know, chatting someone up around there. There was quite a lot of German women out there, so he was probably chatting them up. But yeah, he's amazing.
I think Tim Meltzer, he told me last year on the same stage, like we are talking afterwards, that Gennaro had to leave Italy because of stories with women, but we don't want to dive deep now.
Yeah, it's very true. Yeah, it's very true. Mhm.
But you mentioned the keep it simple thing, and this is looking back to the past, the idea of Naked Chef was in fact keep it simple as possible some years ago. If you think back, what comes in your mind first? What is your mind thinking of the time that 1999 you started with it?
Yeah, look, I think in Germany and the UK, maybe more in Germany, by the way, the way that we were accepting food into our life through communications, through media, TV, magazines, was quite, I don't know what the right word is, like austere, quite professional, very cheffy. And very much the wisdom of the older generation, which is completely fine, but I think you want to have an industry and a food industry and a communication industry that is diverse, right, in age, in cuisines, cultures. And it definitely wasn't in the UK. And, you know, when I first started working in Germany, just the way magazines looked, the way it was photographed, who was being — there was nothing wrong with who was being celebrated, it was just quite mono. And so The Naked Chef really was about representing the young people. Also, I took my chef whites off. Like, I was a chef, that was my job, but it was about being at home with friends and family. And it was very much about that youthful — I was 24, you know, so I had been cooking since I was 12, so I knew my way around the kitchen, and I was still obviously learning. And, you know, I was probably like — we didn't have a structure in the River Cafe, but I was running services at the River Cafe at that stage, so you would call me a sous chef, I guess. But I loved it. But it was about home, friends, saving money, beer, you know, music, and being young. And I think that it really, really resonated in the UK. And then I remember very uniquely, I worked in Germany for a bit and nothing happened. It was like it was not working. And then one week — you didn't understand it or — it was just like I come, I do my book signings, I do my interviews, I do this and that and the other, and it was like tumbleweed. And then one week it just exploded. And, well, it's a really good question. Why? My philosophical opinion was a version of what I just said. Like, there was the old way of communicating food in Germany, and it just felt like there was a rush of new, younger, more diverse German representation of food. I was probably part of it, but like I was surfing the top of the wave of it, right? Because I remember the week it happened, and for a foreign boy in your country, you know, we blinked and we'd sold a million books, which even today is like impossible. So, you know, I think Germany is probably my second biggest territory in the world. And I don't really broadcast TV here because of the English language, obviously. So in a way, my relationship with the German public is probably the most authentic because it's my editorial, it's my book relationship. You know, it's not really, how can I say, I've never been broadcast efficiently in Germany. So it's not like my personality and my programs, like they've always been hard to find. You know, I'm not on a prime-time network.
But I remember my generation, and I'm a little bit younger than you are, I was fascinated. And in Austria, I know it was broadcasted. I don't know where, but on the internet.
Yeah, Austria was different. And actually, Austria per capita is my most successful territory on the planet. Yes. Well, I don't know what happened in Austria. I probably need to thank Austria, but I go skiing there twice a year. But I really don't — per capita it's like gone crazy, and it always has been crazy. But yeah, look, I just felt — I mean, I was a young boy when I started, and I was very grateful, but also being grateful, being young, traveling, trying new foods, it all kind of was part of the same energy.
Coming to the times right now, there's I think 31 books. Yeah, I counted, I was right. 50 million copies, something like that.
Yeah, I think it's going — it's going down. Yeah, 54.
54. I've heard a few different numbers, but it's a lot. It's a lot.
Right now, you have a barbecue book on the market. And I heard in an interview you said that you want to feminize it a little bit, that more female people are included, feel included with it. What's the idea of this book now? What is the barbecue book that more the female spirit is in it? Precise it a little bit.
Okay. Well, first of all, barbecue is kind of a genre that is quite guarded. I don't really like guarded areas of food or the culinary world. But if you were to look at, say, 30 barbecue books, there's a pattern of quite a lot of masculinity, a lot of tattoos, a lot of beards, a lot of brisket. And it's all great and I love it and I respect it and I admire it. I've gone to America, I've done the barbecue competitions, you know, I've been there with the biggest names having a go. And, you know, it's been a pleasure to come second, third, and fourth against really good people. They're amazing. But the truth is, when I opened my restaurant, Barbecoa, which was a really unusual restaurant in London, it was like no gas, no electric, just wood, fire, charcoal, ash pits, Texan smokers, you know, robata grills, you know, all these different kinds of grills from different countries, different ovens. Like, it was a complicated, genius kitchen. You know, I did my research, and actually a lot of the historical writings of barbecue go back to women. And when I opened Barbecoa, bearing in mind everything that I just said, I had 46 chefs and we had good people apply for the job. It was a mega kitchen. In the first week and a half, we lost over half the brigade, and they were all men. So we were left with mainly women. So I'm not trying to say it for any dramatic reasons other than like in the masculinity of the cooking, in my opinion, like there was no buttons. There was no one to five high or low. It was just fire management, you know, and for some reason the women found it more natural. And if I can be a little bit of a hippie about it, and people will say, "Oh, [__] bullshit," but a little bit like a fire or a waterfall or a rainbow, I think some things are just in us. And when I watched the women managing the fire initially — well, not initially, but they just seemed to learn fire management quicker than alpha, testosterone-driven men, like robust men, great cooks. That was really interesting for me. So when I went to write the book, I wanted to tune into that a little bit. So it wasn't just — it's not a political statement at all. It's more that, you know, if you really trace it back, it all goes back to an advertising campaign in the '50s that put men in the barbecue outside, and then it became a man's job. But look, there's world-class female barbecue experts, but it was more than the male or the female. It was more about, you know, having a barbecue book that did more than just meat. You know, you've never eaten vegetables until you've used live fire or cooked them in ash, you know, and then brushed them off and redressed them. And the concentration of flavor and the skin flavor that comes out, the skins, like you've never ever tasted before. Probably because you've peeled them, you know? And it's just like, and then you're kind of looking at like whole fish and then using herbs or leaves to protect things so you can [__] them up, and then underneath it's steaming, smoky, sort of char-steaming. It's like, whoa. And then you're kind of, you know, blistering tomatoes and chilies and creating salsas. And it's like, and then obviously from a mentality point of view, you use one of those fire chimneys. So you can be ready to cook in 15 minutes. Yeah, that's really quick, right? And you can fill half a kettle barbecue, and on a Wednesday night when you've come home from work, if you want to, you can cook some stuff fast and have a whole meal cooking for three or four people really quickly. So I think like in England, I don't know about Germany, but we typically say barbecuing is for summer and special occasions. Yeah. And I like to push that away and go, "No, no, no." Like if you've got the chimney, like we can be going in 15 minutes, just like warming up an oven. And actually, my goodness, if you've got a thick steak to share between four people or two people instead of these crappy little steaks that you always overcook them, right? Yeah. And I think it's just — so that's what I tried to do in the book. And look, the book was a massive success, thank goodness. And unsurprisingly, not that it bothers me in the slightest, but I did get quite a lot of criticism from alpha men. "What the [__] is Jamie Oliver doing a barbecue book? [__]" And it's just like, it's like, dude, honestly, mate, like unless you understand what I did at Barbecoa, if you saw the expense of it and the hard work and collaborating with my friend Adam Perry Lang, probably one of the planet's best barbecue experts, like we had our own butchery, we had like 30 grand worth of meat hanging at any one time, we had like a butchery and a hanging unit, like you can't imagine. It's like, so it's funny because I'm a TV chef, yeah, they think, well, he can't be a chef, he can't be a barbecue connoisseur, like, you know. So there is like a kind of, there is kind of like, what's the word, kind of a cliché of what people should be in the industry. And I, from day one, Naked Chef, disagreed with that. You know, the Naked Chef was about saying, boys, get cooking. And yes, it was at home, it wasn't about chefs. And I remember meeting a very well-known chef very early days, and he just goes, "You're a [__] disgrace to our industry because you're telling everyone that they can cook, telling everyone that anyone can cook." And we've been training for years. And it's just like, oh, here we go. It's like you've completely lost the point. Like, no one's cooking. Like, if more people cook at home, then more people are going to be curious about your restaurant. Are you kidding me? So again, like, there's a passport to cook, but insecurity. So what's the reason for this?
Well, I think it was jealousy.
Jealousy. Yeah, because what you have to remember is when I became very famous very quickly. It wasn't my choice. It was the public's choice. I didn't go and buy millions of books. They did. Like a lot of my heroes that I loved were awful to me. Absolutely like not very nice at all. And it took about seven years. And bearing in mind in the world of TV cookery, like normally the machine eats you up and spits you out after three years. It's, I mean, it's kind of like — it's like hardcore product. Yeah. Yeah. So I kind of like immediately, I didn't even know what I was doing. I started a production company and started making my own stuff and started hiring the cameraman and choosing the lenses to get the close-up. And, you know, as a dyslexic person, like I wanted — I couldn't rely just on words, whether it was written or spoken. So I wanted — in the books, I think this is why they were quite successful. In the books, we use step-by-steps, wide shots, mid shots, macro shots. And so I started realizing it was the same for TV. Like literally, like I need to show something rising in the oven. How are we going to do it? I'll tell you how we do it. We get an angle grinder and we cut the side of the oven off and we stick bulletproof glass on it and we get a lens on it and we light it and we film it and we do a time-lapse. And of course you can see like a little bit like David Attenborough through — Yeah. But you can learn a lot through imagery. So my passion was just to get more people cooking, and I was excited to use any medium to get people cooking. And it's still the same to this very day, whether it's children's stuff, kids' stuff, cartoons, TV, documentaries, film, pictures, Instagram, you know, like whatever the social media, like —
Inspiring every channel you can find.
Yeah. I mean, I think even for your audience, like I know your audience is going to be very foodie, but they might not realize that certainly in Britain — Mhm. I don't know about Germany, but certainly in Britain, we've never cooked less. Ever in history. Ever.
You've never cooked less than today.
We've never cooked less than today. And we've never eaten less vegetables since the Second World War. Right. So then they're going to be going, rightfully so, well, Jamie Oliver, you clearly haven't done a very good job because people have never eaten less. But the truth is the way that lifestyle is going, the way that men and women are working now, the responsibilities of life, the fact that we're not taught to cook at school, the fact that our family units have changed a lot and we're not learning to cook at home, and the fact that people are having babies younger and the grandmothers are not around as much for, you know, like this passing down of techniques and making and filling pies and flavor, like it's vanishing. Like cooking is like a rare breed pig. It's really rare. And so for sure I know I've done a lot to keep people cooking, but the uberization, the digitization of food where you have the whole world that they know lots about the top line, the broad strokes of Korean, Japanese, this, that, and the other, different, you know, like fermenting this. Ah, but have they eaten it? Maybe. Have they ever made it? Probably not. So we know like the only truth, the only truth in both of our countries is what people buy in supermarkets, and that you can get access to that data. And the truth is very depressing, and it's very clear about death and disease and diet-related disease and [__] farming practices, and it's like the list goes on. So, you know, I guess everyone in the food industry really is trying to promote, support, mentor ourselves to not consume our dinner through — I mean, like we just did a survey in Britain. This is a [__] up survey, right? 25% of Britain now would rather drink their food than eat it. Okay. Like there are some products on the market suggesting — Yeah. Like this is the perfect meal in a thing. And obviously as a nutritionist, I can tell you this is not the case, and like this is not the life that we want to crave. And your body is doing more than just processing nutrition. Like chewing is massively important. Talking to people and sitting and eating is — the latest science proving that sitting down, talking, and eating is, you know, better for your metabolism and anti-inflammatory and hugely powerful. I mean, a lot of the blue zones where people live the longest — yeah, we've done a book on it — but like sitting down and eating like the French do and not eating on the fly or at the computer, this is important. But yeah, the fact that 25% of people don't want to even eat because they're too [__] busy is crazy.
Nearly 50% of households don't have a table. So, you know, in the world of food, it's all very glamorous. It's all very beautiful, and it is beautiful, and it could be glamorous. But food, of course, can be everything. It can be every emotion. But I don't know, if people are not cooking, there's no tables, and people want to drink their dinner a little bit. Yeah, I'm a bit frightened.
But I know you're trying to work against it. You have programs where you help children at schools to show them how to eat right, maybe to say. Give us some insights. What are your plans? What can you effect on young children?
