Hello and welcome to Table Talk. I'm Olivia Potts and I'm Laura Prendergast. Today we are joined by John Atashru, who is the head chef of the Tate Modern. Alongside the seasonal alacart that the restaurant serves, John curates menus based around the gallery's exhibitions. And this morning, we're delighted to be talking to him ahead of the forthcoming Andy Warhol exhibition for which a nine-course

menu has been created. John, welcome to Table Talk. All right. Thanks for having me. We'll start where

we always start, which is at the beginning. What was food like when you were growing up? Well, my dad's

had one dish. I think he called it a Persian omelet. So you take tomatoes,

you fry them in butter, an obscene amount of butter, you throw some chili in there, and then when

it's kind of getting all pretty smushed up, you crack a few eggs, and then you serve it with

kind of burnt bread. It's amazing on a hangover. But my mum's a great cook. My mum, so my background,

my dad's from Iran and my mum's English. And we grew up eating a lot of Persian food. So I was

probably eating rice maybe six nights a week. Yeah, a roast dinner on a Sunday. I was always,

always looked forward to. But then,

you know, we had a nice variety of food through the week. My mum was a full-time working mum,

but then she cooked a lot. I don't really know how she found time to do it. I think it's because she probably didn't sleep. but a lot of Persian cuisine, a lot of rice,

you know, the occasional curry.

Was your parents cooking something you were interested in from the early age, or was it just

part of the scenery?

I think it was probably part of the scenery.

I don't really remember actively being involved.

I think it was more, like I would be given broad beans that I needed to peel or something like that

to kind of help out for one of the Persian dishes.

But it wasn't like I was coming in and cooking.

You went on a stool next to her apron strings?

No, I think one of the first things I learned I had to make was Satsiki, and then I got

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