The River Cafe Look Book: Recipes for Kids of all Ages

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The River Cafe favours ‘zucchini’, the Italian loan-word commonly used for this vegetable in the US, over ‘courgette’ , the name more commonly employed in Great Britain. They began playing with the recipe photographs Matthew had already taken, as well as dipping back through his oeuvre.

Part look-book, part cookbook, this sure-fire bestseller encourages kids of all ages to connect with food and achieve great results - with The River Cafe as their teacher and inspirational guide. It might seem peculiar for the chef-founder of the River Cafe—arguably London’s most famous restaurant—to release anything designed for children, but, as Rogers affirms, her dishes are “actually quite simple. Having leafed through the ‘Look’ section of the book and settled on your chosen dish, drawn in by the photograph alongside its curiously beguiling pairing, you’ll find the page number for the written recipe noted below. I always say that a recipe is half science and half poetry,” Rogers reflects, “and these ones are really for everybody. The following year Richard and Ruth’s younger son Bo drowned in his bath at the age of 27 following a seizure.Cut flush and beautifully printed in Italy, every single page is a different color, fronted by a rainbow cover designed by Michael Nash Associates and emblazoned with the playful title: The River Cafe Look Book: Recipes For Kids Of All Ages. Cut flush and beautifully printed in Italy, every single page is a different colour, fronted by a rainbow cover designed by Michael Nash Associates and emblazoned with the playful title: The River Cafe Look Book: Recipes For Kids Of All Ages. I did a stint working in the kitchen for a week for a story in the millennium year, when Richard Rogers had just been appointed head of a new “urbanism unit” in London, charged with making the city more livable. William ‘Billy’ Tallon, the fabulously camp, larger-than-life character in a dashing tailcoat and starched white shirt, who was the Queen Mother’s devoted servant for 51 years. Then you turn to the ‘Cook’ section, which starts by setting out some helpful principles, such as ‘begin by reading the recipe twice – that is a good tip,’ says Ruthie.

The River Cafe Look Book’s opening pages reproduce delectable images of the featured dishes, alongside crisp, surprising, inspirational photography.Tobias greets her old boss in her new place at noon sharp with a mix of affection and a slight nervousness, the more so when Rogers, who is an avid hugger, but quite steely of eye, asks her what we should eat: “I’m told you do fabulous quiches? The restaurant is doing well, she says, in spite of wider problems with staff and supply “that have been part pandemic and a lot of Brexit”. Beside these dishes, The River Cafe Look Book presents beautiful, inspirational photography to inspire and spur on home cooks keen to capture some of the cosmopolitan joie de vivre often found in this restaurant’s kitchen. Created for therapeutic purposes, ‘done by a photographer, a neurologist and an artist, perhaps… for people with autism, for brain dysfunction and damage, for dementia,’ the two volumes contain a series of large, black-and-white photographs, one per page, chosen on the basis of ‘pairing images that would be compelling’.

The New York Times The first cookbook from London's iconic River Cafe written with beginner cooks and children in mind - a collection of more than 50 delicious and easily achievable recipes, including a host of River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted for new cooks This highly anticipated cookbook is more accessible than any other to have come from the kitchen of Ruth Rogers' legendary Michelin-star restaurant The River Cafe, set on the banks of the Thames in London. Rogers quickly scans the short, simple menu, a little homage to her own practice of shifting seasonality. Championing ingredient-led, regional Italian cooking long before seasonality was the buzzword it’s become today, the two friends and chefs (both mothers themselves) also set out to create a restaurant where exceptional food didn’t equate to a stuffy, unwelcoming atmosphere.

Vogue may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. She summarises: ‘The one thing about The River Cafe in all my experience is that whatever happens… there is never compromise on the quality of anything. But [the photographer] Matthew Donaldson and I thought perhaps you could do a book that works for 12 year olds and 82 year olds. They found they effectively had ‘two books’: the collection of images and the recipes themselves, ‘which were, for quite a long time, black text on white paper,’ says Ruthie.