Hello I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.

Radio 4. My castaway this week is the chef and restaurateur Ruth Rogers.

The River Cafe, the culinary institution she heads, is revered by foodies and chefs the world over and has been

going strong for more than a quarter of a century.

Along with her dear friend and business partner, the late Rose Gray, she rewrote not just the menu, but also the rulebook of what it means

to dine out well. Forget glossy reductions, timbals or sugar-spun nests, and think instead of

the very finest ingredients prepared with

rustic sentiment and unyielding rigor, served up in a minimalist space in a decidedly

unglamorous part of town. She is by nature a perfectionist

sleeping overnight in far-flung Italian bakeries to better understand how loaves are

made or traipsing the length and bread for the same country every November

to find just the right olive oil to drizzle on wood-roasted turbot or chopped raw veal.

Her Michelin star and cult status are all the more impressive, given that she never set out to be a chef.

She arrived from America at the tail end of the 60s, studying graphic art and falling in love with a young architect who would later go on to design her

now world-renowned restaurant.

His name was Richard Rogers.

She says, I think the table and food is for conversation and contact. So welcome Bruce Rogers.

If it's about conversation and contact with other people, how important is the actual meal?

Oh, the meal is crucial.

You know, we're chefs, we're every minute thinking about the food on the plate,

...