Ruth Rogers is the co-founder of the River Cafe, the pioneering and multi-award-winning restaurant in Hammersmith, London, which opened in 1987. Born in New York, she moved to the UK in 1967 and married the late architect Richard Rogers. Awarded an MBE in 2010 and a CBE in 2020, she now also hosts a podcast called Ruthie’s Table 4 where she chats about food with guests, who have so far included Austin Butler, Stanley Tucci and Gwyneth Paltrow.
Best childhood memory?
A trip my parents took me on to Cuba when I was 12. It was the year after Castro became leader and there was such a sense of optimism in the air. We got in by the skin of our teeth, as Americans were banned just a couple of months later. My father was a doctor who had worked there, so he knew that this would be the trip of a lifetime and we had to do it while we still could.
