Transcript
00:00:04
Speaker 1: I think like you, I.
00:00:07
Speaker 2: Really pushed myself, and I also I think I should stop. You know, you're not never going to please anybody.
00:00:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're never going to please anybody.
00:00:13
Speaker 3: That's so funny as opposed to you're never going to please everybody.
00:00:17
Speaker 1: You're never going to please anybody.
00:00:18
Speaker 3: My dad used to say that because you know, the phrase is I can't have everything, and my.
00:00:22
Speaker 1: Dad used to go, oh, well you can't have anything.
00:00:26
Speaker 2: I like that.
00:00:28
Speaker 3: Hello, I'm Mini driver. I've always loved Preust's questionnaire. It was originally in nineteenth century parlor game where players would ask each other thirty five questions aimed at revealing.
00:00:40
Speaker 1: The other player's true nature.
00:00:43
Speaker 3: In asking different people the same set of questions, you can make observations about which truths appear to be universal. And it made me wonder, what if these questions were just a jumping off point, what greater depths would be revealed if I asked these questions as conversation starters. So I adapted Pru's questionnaire and I wrote my own seven questions that I personally think are pertinent to a person's story. They are when and where were you happiest? What is the quality you like least about yourself. What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you? What question would you most like answered, What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most? What would be your last meal? And can you tell me something in your life that's grown out of a personal disaster? And I've gathered a group of really remarkable people, ones that I am honored and humbled to have had the chance to engage with. You may not hear their answers to all seven of these questions. We've whittled it down to which questions felt closest to their experience or the most surprising, or created the most fertile ground to connect.
00:01:51
Speaker 4: My guest today is the chef, author, and broadcaster Romy Gill, a truly wonderful, self made powerhouse whose food is well. Last time I ate at one of her pop up restaurants, it was an extremely quiet experience because nearly everyone in the restaurant was quite literally in a silent reverie over her food. Her cookbooks are warm and insightful, and the newest of which is out this September and is entitled Romy Girls India.
00:02:28
Speaker 1: Where and When were you Happiest?
00:02:31
Speaker 2: So I'm going to take you back to my childhood. Those long train journeys. If anybody hasn't experienced that, children's born in nineteen seventies, eighties and early nineties, when Indian families will understand what I'm talking about. In India is such a big country and those long train journeys were something so beautiful, so amazing that we would embark on this journey. My dad worked in a steel plant in West Bengal, but my parents are both.
00:03:02
Speaker 5: From north in Deer and we would take this.
00:03:04
Speaker 1: Long journey from Bengal to the Punjab.
00:03:07
Speaker 2: Jah which is a north then investment goal is to East India. So I think that journey was more than twenty four hours on a train on the train and you know, and dad would make this beautiful picnic that needed to be last the whole more than twenty four hours, and we would look in the uniqueness of that. I think it's rare now because everybody flies so quickly from one destination to another, and that train going from different regions of different state, and then the trains would stop and my dad and mom hagging and bartering for mangoes. You know, if it's like one hundred of fees give it for sixty rupees or something like that to kill it.
00:03:46
Speaker 1: And all those food.
00:03:48
Speaker 2: From different regions or states, you would only eat when you're going on that journey, because you have to understand it's so diverse. We are such a diverse country. We speak different languages, a food is different, and as a child, that was for me something I don't know. I was so eager to wait for those delicacies, to eat those food.
00:04:10
Speaker 3: So as you go into each region, you'd get a difference, so you'd know we're going into mango region. Now that's what we're going to be looking forward to.
00:04:19
Speaker 1: And then that's so lovely.
00:04:21
Speaker 2: And strain would stop, and then we would need Like some places there was a katori or body, which is like a deep fried bread with potato curry, which is so delicious, so simple, and you know, just digging that bread in soaking aludum, we would call it just heavenly. As a child, those things were so important. You know, you understand we didn't have that technology. We are brought up in a very different environment, in a very sheltered environment. You know, grew up in a steel plant. So I think for us, especially for me, those strange journeys, I think is my happiest place.
00:04:57
Speaker 1: Still.
00:04:58
Speaker 2: It still gives me joy when I talk about it. It's just it reminds me how I would meet people from different states going on that journey. You make friendships, and my system met her husband on the train. You fell in love and got married.
00:05:11
Speaker 3: No, Oh, my gosh, that's so incredibly romantic. That's amazing. Would food become I mean, I'm assuming it would. The different regions and the different times, and the different things that you would eat, I'm sure became markers of time on a very long train journey. What you were going to eat next would be then sort of next focus. I mean, eating is an excellent way.
00:05:34
Speaker 1: To excitement, isn't it.
00:05:35
Speaker 2: And then there would be little street vendors coming with chai, which is Indian tea, or child moor, which is like an Indian snack of things like that. They would get on the train and sell I mean even at mango or raw mango with little chili flakes and black salt, and you bite into that sourness and sweetness and chile. I mean, I just cannot tell you how magical the food. And I'm so.
00:05:59
Speaker 5: Happy that I I'm a chef, and I.
00:06:01
Speaker 2: Have those wonderful memories that I can create those dishes as well. I think that will always be my safest place and a happy place.
00:06:08
Speaker 1: Oh how lovely.
00:06:14
Speaker 3: What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you?
00:06:19
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've seen or heard a film called Lunchbox. It's a beautiful, beautiful movie. It came out in twenty thirteen. It tells a story of a mistaken lunch box delivery in Mumbai, where it leads to an unexpected, beautiful friendship between a loona and a housewife who's very neglected, and they started exchanging notes in the lunch box. And that relationship, I can't tell you, gives me goosebumps because it's such a beautiful movie the way it's made, Because if you see Bollivard movies, there are movies dancing around the trees and many other things. But we have very very good films as well, and they develop, I would say, a deep emotional connection despite not ever.
00:07:12
Speaker 5: Meeting face to face.
00:07:14
Speaker 2: They do decide to meet, and then circumstances happen and they don't meet, and they leave you in a kind of a situation.
00:07:21
Speaker 5: You can make up your mind and think.
00:07:23
Speaker 2: That they might meet it, or they might not meet I think the brief, profound connection that impacted their lives. I think that for me is a remember of power of how you don't have to have a connection through just you know, sexual or anything like the connection they had through those letters through the food. For me, that I think defines a relationship or love. I think it's beautiful. I think you will love that movie.
00:07:53
Speaker 3: I'm definitely going to check that out. I love the sound of that. I think it's not astonishing to me that the idea of a conversation through food is something that really appeals to you, because that's what your food is, and it's what your books are like. They are like having a conversation with your My favorite cookbooks are that way.
00:08:14
Speaker 1: You feel like.
00:08:14
Speaker 3: You're having a conversation with a person who wrote them because of their conversation with the food. And when you've cooked for me and all the other people who were there the night that we ate your food, you couldn't hear anybody talk because everyone was so busy eating. But I love that idea of the literal and the figurative communicating through a lunch box. That's so beautiful. It's a beautiful movie.
00:08:52
Speaker 1: So what question would you most like answered? Do you know what I'm thinking about this? For ages? Just I don't know.
00:09:01
Speaker 2: I think finding meaning and happiness in my life? Should my life be about finding meaning and happiness?
00:09:13
Speaker 1: If I know the root to one.
00:09:14
Speaker 2: Of those things, I think I would have also found the.
00:09:20
Speaker 1: Way to the other. If you find meaning and happiness in my life? Oh, I see.
00:09:26
Speaker 3: So do you not feel like those things are present in your life anyway?
00:09:30
Speaker 2: They are?
00:09:32
Speaker 1: Yes?
00:09:32
Speaker 2: Meaning for me, meaningful with be I'm just chasing this dream of being the best chef or a good author, or a good mom or you know, things.
00:09:43
Speaker 5: That are meaningful for me.
00:09:45
Speaker 2: And happiness is where my family is, my friendships are There's two different things for me. They are in my life, but I'm still chasing them.
00:09:55
Speaker 3: So as your question, how you would combine both of those, how to conect them both.
00:10:00
Speaker 2: How to connect them, and how in that way would I be able to find join together happiness?
00:10:07
Speaker 5: I don't know.
00:10:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's the balance of it comes back to kind of the work ethic and feeling like there is huge meaning in our work, huge meaning in our family. Yeah, but how to connect those in a way that is balanced. I feel like that's pretty much everybody. I mean, well good people who are kind and loving and want to explore how it is to combine those things.
00:10:32
Speaker 1: But it's tricky, it is.
00:10:34
Speaker 2: I know, I'm very happy with that what I do, but I'm just pushing and pushing and pushing you know when it's going to be enough. But I think that to balance. Like you said, yeah, yeah, I mean good luck. But you're not alone feeling that way. It's like something that I said in my book. I was always complaining to my mother about the hustle and having to always work so hard and constantly trying to keep things going. And you know, I'm self employed, always have been.
00:11:02
Speaker 1: That's what you do.
00:11:03
Speaker 3: Too, and because getting exhausted with that, it exhausted with how much constant worry and work that takes. But she would always say that's why she got out of bed in the morning, and that if you took that away, we probably wouldn't be happy. In quotes, you know, it's really tricky because it's kind of counterintuitive. I think the stuff that you think if you got rid of that, you'd be happy, but I don't think. No, if I got rid of hustling really hard every day for everything, every job, everything that I write.
00:11:39
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know who doesn't.
00:11:41
Speaker 3: I sit around and I sometimes make lists of people that I think have it really easy, and then I read it out to my boyfriend and he's like, no, I don't believe it.
00:11:49
Speaker 1: They had this thing. No, they wake up at four.
00:11:51
Speaker 3: In the morning and they remember when they did that. No, they made that film. It was rubbish. You know.
00:11:56
Speaker 1: It is one of those things I think. I don't know.
00:11:59
Speaker 2: Maybe I'm Indian, and I just think coming to this country and my daughter's a first generation here and living in a very white town on where I live in near a village, opening a restaurant or it's just constantly trying to prove myself.
00:12:12
Speaker 5: I think it's.
00:12:12
Speaker 2: Never going to be enough, you know, like you said, never going to be enough. It's just everybody has to do it, so it's.
00:12:17
Speaker 1: Not just me. Where was your restaurant in the Cotswolds, Yeah, South Gloucestershire. Yes, God, your food is amazing.
00:12:24
Speaker 3: But I think about that, like, did you in creating that place, that incredible restaurant, did you think about where you'd come from? Like was that part of the journey of opening it there did it add another level of I really really understand where I came from because I'm in a place that is so extraordinarily different from It's not even London, you know London at least it's super multicultural, and you know it wouldn't be such a big deal, but that must have been such a big deal for you.
00:12:51
Speaker 2: It was, but my daughter was six months old, meaning and I really wanted to be where my kids are.
00:12:57
Speaker 5: If something happened, I could just rush quickly. I want to be around that.
00:13:00
Speaker 2: It affected my relationship with my kids, my husband because I wanted to open there. It took me nearly four years. The banks won't give me a loan. I sold all my jewelry, all the gold jourally my parents and my in laws had given me, sold all the jewey to invest in it, and my husband helped me along with it. But I think it was hard. But I didn't want to do it anywhere else. But people did support me, and people came from far places to eat.
00:13:26
Speaker 1: I know they did.
00:13:26
Speaker 3: I mean because it was incredible and it actually it wouldn't have mattered where it was, I don't think because it was so incredibly delicious, and that must have been amazingly satisfying for you to have created something that was really hard to create in a place that was local to you but not lots of people, and then to see everybody coming from all over the world.
00:13:47
Speaker 2: I think sometimes people say, oh, passion, you do the passion, because it's no.
00:13:51
Speaker 1: You have to have the pushing you. I had to be there.
00:13:54
Speaker 2: I had to be continuously sleek, push myself and be there like fourteen hours, killing myself. But I think the restaurant made me what I am today. I would not change anything about where I opened, and I think if I didn't open it there, I wouldn't open anywhere else.
00:14:10
Speaker 5: I think the restaurant is what Romi is today.
00:14:14
Speaker 3: How amazing I mean clearly. I mean everything has grown out of that. All of the books and all of the rest of the cooking has grown out of what began there.
00:14:22
Speaker 2: Right, It's a little seed and that was my foundation and now it's all the branches.
00:14:26
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, what person, place, or experience most altered your life.
00:14:35
Speaker 1: God, it's got to be Gundi. It's got to be my husband.
00:14:38
Speaker 2: I know it's People might think all that, but if you have to understand Indian men. And I always wanted a husband like my dad, who's really calm, really placid, very helpful to my mom. My dad is fantastic and I Gundhi was one of those people that really encouraged me. You know how we met and eventually opening the restaurant. Anything I sa said, he was there for me. He changed my life for many things. Also, anywhere in the world I go, he's always there to hold my hand and say, even if he's here, I'm there. He's always there. He's never said you can't do this and you can't do that. He's always been very supportive behind me. And a lot of people say, very se your husband. We never see him. He's very shy. He doesn't look like to go out anywhere. But he's always there for me. I think if he didn't support the way when I open the restaurant and looking after our daughters, I wouldn't be where I am today.
00:15:33
Speaker 1: I think, you know.
00:15:34
Speaker 2: And when some you know potwasher didn't turn up, he would go to the restaurant and wash the dishes for me in front of the house. Thing he has done, I can't tell you how lucky I have. I've known him for twenty seven years and I think he's one of those people that has really really changed my wheels on many things. I think he keeps me grounded because I am a very hyper person. He's a very calm.
00:16:00
Speaker 3: Were you a chef when you met him? Were you already a professional chef?
00:16:05
Speaker 1: No?
00:16:05
Speaker 2: I was not at that time here when we met, because my mom had cancer when I was growing up and doing my A levels. When I got to know and I said to my dad, I want to be a chef, and he said no, because they're very handful of women chefs in India and you just won't survive.
00:16:19
Speaker 1: And in a way he was right.
00:16:21
Speaker 2: I think when you have in you whatever you want to do, you eventually when I met gun Deep and I said, this is what I want to do and I want to be in the hospitality.
00:16:30
Speaker 1: Were you in India? Was this happening?
00:16:32
Speaker 3: So? When your dad said no, there are too few chefs, it's not a stable life. What did you then go on to do?
00:16:39
Speaker 1: I went on to do arts.
00:16:40
Speaker 2: I did literature, history and philosophy and completely different from what I did. And when I moved here and met gun Deep and I said, I want to open my own restaurant one day. We were like two in twenties and he looked at me and he thought, this woman is going to do it.
00:16:56
Speaker 3: So wait, how did you get from philosophy and the arts in did you go to college in India?
00:17:01
Speaker 1: Yeah?
00:17:01
Speaker 3: So what brought you to England? And how did you get from philosophy in the arts to I'm going to open a restaurant.
00:17:07
Speaker 2: I came here when I got married, you know, mad Gundi back in India, and then I just followed him.
00:17:12
Speaker 5: And then you're married.
00:17:12
Speaker 2: Here, so I think that kind of we met in a wedding and then we've just followed each other and I knew he's a keeper.
00:17:21
Speaker 1: He's a keeper. I'm not going to let him go.
00:17:24
Speaker 3: And how did you just never let go of that dream of having a restaurant, even when you were studying other things which were interesting and great. Were you still harboring those feelings of I'm going to open a restaurant one day?
00:17:37
Speaker 2: Always, always, always, aways, always I wrote to different chefs. Micheline started chef's cookery schools men when I came here in and I was like, don't give me money, don't pay me. I want to learn I want to learn all the techniques. Everything up front of the house is very important. Everything little detail about restaurant is not just about cooking. And a lot of the chefs did reply, and a lot of the cookery school did and didn't pay me.
00:18:00
Speaker 1: But it was okay.
00:18:01
Speaker 2: I was prepared to do things that I could learn, the techniques, the method, how it's done. I think you have to have that and you have to learn from people.
00:18:11
Speaker 3: Who was the first chef who really taught you beyond your mother and back home.
00:18:17
Speaker 2: Chef Manjid Gil who is in India. He was executive chefs of ITC in India and I always followed his vision.
00:18:24
Speaker 5: He used to be on television as well.
00:18:26
Speaker 2: And I wrote to him from here that I want to learn from you, and he did reply. Those times, calling India was so expensive, so I used to beautifully write letters and I got and replied back and he said, yes, I would love to teach you.
00:18:43
Speaker 5: I love to meet you. He's my mentor and he still guides.
00:18:46
Speaker 1: Wow.
00:18:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like you know, he's one of the I never met him and I wrote to him and then I also should really give credit to Utule culture as amazing restaurants.
00:18:58
Speaker 1: He was the first mission chef, was it the first mission to start Indian restaurant.
00:19:01
Speaker 2: And he really helped me to be on TV. And he was doing this Master Chef in his restaurant and he said, I really like Romi to be on it as a guest judge. And my restaurant has just opened. He was really really encouraging. He said, Romey has opened this restaurant. She's really feisty, and she's really good at what she does.
00:19:20
Speaker 5: She knows the food.
00:19:22
Speaker 2: And you know, I always always mentioned the couple of people that really pushed me in my life. I think you should never forget those people. They're really important. People come in your life that really encourage you. He was the one who put intelligence and restless history. It's because of our all. And you know, Ali like meeting you talking about your book on Radio four, I know was incredible.
00:19:45
Speaker 3: It's an amazing thing that all of these things that connect us, like the appreciation of each other's art. I wish it happened more. I love it you reaching out to tell me that you love my book, or then all my friends hearing you on radio food Cha that they've listened to forever or me coming to eat in your pop up and bringing my friend and now her having your cookery books, and now us making your food together. Like there's such a beautiful exchange that I think it's lost or we forget it. In all of the hardship and the awfulness that is happening in the world, we forget there are these extraordinary moments where we lift each other up, whether it's a mentor helping you to begin what's a pretty fantastic journey on television that you're so good on TV and on the radio, or I don't know, like people hearing about my book from you.
00:20:32
Speaker 1: I love that exchange.
00:20:34
Speaker 3: I think it's so important. You're the person I've wanted to ask this question to more than anybody else.
00:20:52
Speaker 1: Ever, what would be your last meal? My last meal?
00:20:57
Speaker 5: I wish one day I'd take you to India.
00:20:59
Speaker 1: You have to travel with me. I have never been. I will come with you, I think.
00:21:03
Speaker 2: Because I write for New York Times and many other publications and things, I put food and travel together. So I lost my mom in twenty nineteen, and I was going to write an article for in Himachal Pradesh. I was going to take my mom on that journey just before they commissioned me this article. And suddenly my mom passed away in February and I had to go back to India to write the article in March, and I said to my editor, is there anyway I can take my dad on a journey. I've lost my mom. I'm still grieving and my dad is We are grieving in two different ways. Dad, who's been with my mom for fifty two years and I have just lost her. And she said, O, yes, just take your dad going this journey together and.
00:21:48
Speaker 5: See what you find.
00:21:49
Speaker 2: And last day off my trip, I was going to do this paragliding and just before paragliding, my dad was really nervous of.
00:21:58
Speaker 1: Me doing it.
00:21:58
Speaker 5: You know, I'm crazy and do all this things. And so Dad, are you hungry?
00:22:01
Speaker 1: He said yes?
00:22:02
Speaker 2: And we found this taba, which is a roadside food eatering and I saw so many people queueing there and I said, it's only vegetarian and we stopped there. Maybe I had the most amazing vegetarian feast.
00:22:19
Speaker 5: I could have Italian. It's so cheap. That will be my last meal.
00:22:23
Speaker 2: It was curry chowol CURDI is like a yogurt diish made with crumb flower, which is black chickpa flower, not the chickp flower people. I think it's crumb flower, and we have these pecoras in it. Then kidney beans is a char which is a pickle tandooi rotti and dhal mcknee which is dull, and all these vegetarian feasts.
00:22:43
Speaker 1: My moutha is still watering.
00:22:45
Speaker 2: I know I cook and eat everything, but for me, vegetarian food is soulful because I grew up as a Punjabi eating a lot of vegetarian food, and we are naturally plant based, we are naturally vegetarian. We aren't even thinking, so I think that would be my mind.
00:23:01
Speaker 3: You wow, oh my god, I'm so hungry right now, and I want your food.
00:23:07
Speaker 1: I have to come and cook for you. Oh my god, we're going to have to figure that out.
00:23:11
Speaker 3: I'm just imagining black chicky flour and I'm imagining percoras.
00:23:16
Speaker 1: So do you think that.
00:23:17
Speaker 3: It was the fact that you're there with your dad, your mama's gone, You're on this journey together, and I'm sure that it was exquisitely deliciously cooked. But do you think it was also the connection that this is food from your childhood and that they're in this moment, that that food, that the idea of the connection to your past is what makes this explode, because you must have eaten a thousand pcoras a thousand beautiful delicious vegetarian dishes, but like at that moment in your life, in your dad's life, to eat that delicious food quite unexpectedly, I imagine.
00:23:51
Speaker 2: It was, and we just stared at each other depping in those blood breads pod. It was just I think my father found and happiness in a sense that he was with me and it was comforting the food that my mom would cook.
00:24:07
Speaker 5: As well, similar food.
00:24:08
Speaker 2: I think it was where the comfort of us being together was just literally six weeks ago lost Mom and we're together eating the food that mom would cook. I think that's why probably, like you said, very very true.
00:24:23
Speaker 1: Wow, gosh, can we go one day?
00:24:26
Speaker 3: Can we take trains and go from the Punjab all the way down to Carol.
00:24:31
Speaker 1: I hold you to that. We will do that.
00:24:33
Speaker 3: I've dreamed of that to start in the Punjab, where my mother traveled all through India all her life, just dreamed of making that journey. So maybe we should do that, and maybe we should make a TV show out of it.
00:24:43
Speaker 5: Two women on long train journey in India.
00:24:46
Speaker 3: Two women on a long train journey in India. By the way, that is a really good time long, but that's what the journey would be.
00:24:54
Speaker 1: I don't think it would be a hard cell to tell you the truth. I think it would be amazing. You're an angel.
00:24:58
Speaker 3: I so look forwards to two women on a long train journey in India, and to seeing you again in person, and to eating your extraordinary food. You know your cookbooks keep me company, so you're a germ.
00:25:12
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
00:25:19
Speaker 3: Mini Questions is hosted and written by Me Mini Driver, Executive produced by Me and Aaron Kaufman, with production support from Jennifer Bassett, Zoe Denkler, and Ali Perry. The theme music is also by Me and additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Special thanks to Jim Nikolay Addison, O'Day, Henry Driver, Lisa Castella, a, Nick oppenheim, A, Nick Muller and Annette wolf A, wkpr, Will Pearson, nicki Etoor, Morgan Levoy and Mangesh had Tigadore.
