TABLE 4 AT THE RIVER CAFE

A high-toned tasting menu in words, celebrating one of London’s poshest restaurants.

A native New Yorker who, as a teenager, learned to make Julia Child’s version of beef bourguignon (“It cracked open not just my palate, but also my mind”), Rogers co-founded the River Cafe in 1987. It started as a lunch-only place, catering to workers on the Thames wharves, but ratcheted its way up into the fine dining realm: pasta served until 11 at night, and no more stevedores, at least not ones who haven’t robbed a bank. Building on her podcast, Ruthie’s Table 4, Rogers here offers interviews with the hoiest of the hoi polloi: Paul McCartney, for one, and leading the pack, recalls how he came to be a vegetarian after looking up from his leg of lamb to watch lambs gamboling outside. Want to get to Sir Paul’s heart? Serve him his favorite comfort food, a quesadilla: “It’s like a pizza turned inside out.” Daughter Stella, who extols her late mother’s cooking, would go for tagliatelle with truffles. And as for Elton John? A bacon sandwich, “proper English bacon, not Danish, not streaky.” Some of Rogers’ customers express choices that are most definitely off the menu, such as Bob Pittman, the rural-born founder of MTV, who says, “Squirrel is my reference meat.” Other customers—Victoria Beckham, say, who digs the cafe’s roasted sea bass, and U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, who pines for a truly good vegan pizza—are attentive to food as health; some are less so, such as Michael Bloomberg, who confesses to a fondness for Cheez-Its. Most interesting of all are the witty Stephen Fry (“My theory about food is that certain ingredients know when you’re scared”) and food maven Nigella Lawson, who extols all food: “It reminds you that you’re alive and you’re talking pleasure, and to be grateful.”

A pleasant exercise in eavesdropping at the tables of the rich and famous.