Nico Ladenis

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety seven, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a chef. Of Greek descent he was brought up in colonial Africa, where he received an English education and learned to like Yorkshire pudding.

Presenter0:39

He went to university in Hull and got a good degree, but his explosive temperament prevented him from getting a job. In his late thirties he opened his first restaurant in London and began the long quest for three Michelin stars. More than twenty years later he achieved his dream. Today this imperious, somewhat eccentric and completely self taught master of the culinary art runs three of the capital's top restaurants. I cannot understand people worrying about brown or white bread, butter or cream, he says. People like that should go and live in Tibet. He is Nico Ledenis, or simply Nico. So healthy eating is anathema to you, is it, Nico? It's not what cooking and eating should be about.

Nico Ladenis1:24

Not really. If you want to enjoy food, you enjoy every kind of food, every part of of food.

Nico Ladenis1:31

But I'm not saying that these days one doesn't need to be a little bit more careful with what they eat. You can hold back on the butter, you can hold back on the cream.

Nico Ladenis1:42

uh the sources that used to be so

Nico Ladenis1:45

Easily used in the kitchen in French cuisine, the Berblanc.

Nico Ladenis1:51

the um cream sauces with morels. You can create the same sauces, but you can use half the amount of cream and make them a bit lighter. And do you? I do. These days I do.

Presenter2:03

Where, Nico, is your enjoyment in cooking? Because it seems to me, knowing about you, that that it's always been such a painful business for you. There's been a lot of angst and misery in your career.

Nico Ladenis2:13

It is. For me, it's been very painful simply because I look at cooking and food as a means of getting towards a perfect situation. Not that I don't like food, it's not mechanical, it comes from my heart.

Nico Ladenis2:31

But when I create and when I cook, I like to do it perfectly, and it is for me a total involvement of my brain and my heart.

Nico Ladenis2:42

And it can make me very depressed, very angry.

Presenter2:46

Bang.

Nico Ladenis2:47

and um very unhappy.

Presenter2:50

And is that why you've got on occasions very angry with both your critics and your customers, Indy?

Nico Ladenis2:55

Yes, in fact I think I've been more angry with my critics than my customers because

Presenter3:02

Well you've been quite angry with your customers in your time.

Nico Ladenis3:04

Yes, I have. Uh I was a novice. I was an amateur.

Nico Ladenis3:09

And you know, when you're not sure of something you tend to be a bit aggressive.

Presenter3:13

Hmm.

Nico Ladenis3:13

I very readily admit the fact that um

Presenter3:16

It's a sign of insecurity.

Nico Ladenis3:17

A total sign of insecurity.

Presenter3:19

We'll come back to it. But uh tell me first of all about your first record.

Nico Ladenis3:23

It's the overture to the thieving magpie by Rossini. Rossini Gioacchino Rossini is my favorite composer.

Nico Ladenis3:33

He was very economical in his production of operas, but he was very prodigious with his with his appetite and his love of good food. And after writing two very successful operas, he was given a huge pension by the French government and devoted the rest of his life to eating truffles and foie gras.

Presenter4:54

Part of the overture to Rossini's The Thieving Magpie with the Rye Symphony Orchestra of Turin, conducted by Gianlugi Gelmetti. And you you see yourself as a bit of a magpie, Usini.

Nico Ladenis5:05

I do indeed, because I feel that I came away in the still of the night and snatched a prize, which doesn't belong in my kind of life. I come from an academic background, and there's not very many chefs with with with degrees. And um, you know, to to to go for one or two or three stars you need to be French, you need to be attached to a master craftsman from a young age. You go through the difficult parts, you go through the apprenticeship. I did nothing of that. I just came along, decided I was going to go for three stars. I made it my um

Nico Ladenis5:43

My duty and my task and my object in life, and I did it. So I feel myself a bit of a magpie.

Presenter5:49

Quite quite arrogant in a sense to set that goal for yourself when, as you say, you had none of the prerequisites at all.

Nico Ladenis5:57

Extremely arrogant.

Presenter5:58

and to insist that you are going to teach yourself.

Nico Ladenis6:00

Absolutely. And to insist that I was going to have customers come into my restaurant to eat my food whilst I was learning how to cook.

Presenter6:00

Uh

Nico Ladenis6:09

I think that is the most arrogant part of it all.

Presenter6:12

You opened that first restaurant, I think, twenty four years ago, in nineteen seventy three, in Dulwich, in South London.

Presenter6:18

And, you know, that was a time when you could only buy olive oil in chemists, wasn't it, to soften the wax in your ears.

Nico Ladenis6:25

Absolutely.

Presenter6:25

And mushrooms came in tins and so on. What sort of stuff were you cooking then?

Nico Ladenis6:31

I was actually cooking.

Nico Ladenis6:33

Brilliant.

Nico Ladenis6:35

Try to cook brilliant French fruit.

Nico Ladenis6:37

From a wonderful cookery book called Masterpieces of French Cuisine.

Nico Ladenis6:43

which was recipes from one, two and three star restaurants. And I came across ingredients I'd never heard of in my life before. To find Morel mushrooms in those days was was an adventure in itself.

Nico Ladenis6:57

I mean, one of the dishes that I did was a chicken cooked with morels, cream, and the wonderful yellow wine from the Jura. Very, very expensive. We used to pay about fourteen or fifteen pounds a bottle.

Presenter7:10

What, in nineteen seventy three? This was your version of Coco Van, was it?

Nico Ladenis7:13

Precisely.

Presenter7:14

What about the old salt and pepper?'Cause I know that you you never used to put it on tables because you thought that people should not season your food.

Nico Ladenis7:22

It was totally unnecessary. Why should I have salt and pepper on on the t on the table? I was using ingredients which didn't require salt and pepper.

Presenter7:31

But how do you know? Because you don't own the customer's palette.

Nico Ladenis7:34

What do you seek?

Nico Ladenis7:36

When you spend your time doing sources.

Nico Ladenis7:39

Wonderful sauces, getting the balance of the sauce, getting the right sweetness, acidity, saltiness.

Nico Ladenis7:48

Texture

Nico Ladenis7:50

It's a fight in the kitchen. You're fighting. You're doing it to get something perfect. If you put a bit more salt.

Nico Ladenis7:56

You destroy the balance.

Presenter7:58

And the customer is a very important person, but he's not always right.

Nico Ladenis8:04

The customer is not always right, but these days I don't actually follow the maxim to the very bitter end. I have people who work for me and it's their job to diffuse. And they do it, and I'm a very, very hap much happier person.

Presenter8:22

But in the old days you engaged

Nico Ladenis8:24

I did.

Presenter8:24

You did eject people from your restaurant. I did. You ripped up their money in front of them.

Nico Ladenis8:26

I did.

Nico Ladenis8:29

I did one on one occasion.

Presenter8:31

Why was that?

Nico Ladenis8:31

This is a very simple situation where

Nico Ladenis8:34

Somebody asked for a a well done steak uh and they were very insistent and it went on. There was a scene at the end of it all and the person insisted on paying and I said I didn't want any money He said, No, you've got to have the money So I said well, I don't want the money so I tore it up. The f I had the last laugh because um

Nico Ladenis8:55

He was crawling on all fours under the tables, collecting bits of one pound notes, because in those days you could go out and eat in my restaurant for two, four or five pounds for two with a bottle of wine.

Presenter9:09

Tell me about your second record.

Nico Ladenis9:11

The second record will bring me back to my school days, my first school, my English school, where I learnt to be part of the English traditions and the English methods and the English customs. I remember singing at the very, very top of my voice this particular hymn.

Speaker 39:38

But Christian society marching as to war

Speaker 39:46

With the cross of Jesus glory not before.

Speaker 19:47

Awesome.

Speaker 39:56

Christ the royal boss leads against the foe forward into battle see his banners go

Speaker 310:14

Onward Christian solutions, marching as to war.

Speaker 310:23

With a cross of

Presenter10:29

Onward Christian Soldiers, sung by the Morriston Orpheus Choir, and memories for Nico of boarding school in Africa, where you were born in Tanganyika, now Tanzania.

Speaker 310:38

Yeah.

Presenter10:39

Can you give me a picture of that childhood in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro, how you lived, you know, the landscape, the food?

Nico Ladenis10:48

How Mount Kilimanjaro is seared in my mind this massive black mountain with a with a white

Nico Ladenis10:59

rounded, snowy cap. And it was frightening. I remember I used to get frightened when I used to look up. It looked as though it was going to fall on top of us. And we used to, as boys,

Nico Ladenis11:12

roam amongst the coffee plantations and the banana plantations. And we used to

Nico Ladenis11:20

kill partridges and sometimes chickens belonging to the Africans. And we used to dig holes, make a fire, and this is where I took my first lessons in cooking. We used to cook the partridges and the chickens.

Presenter11:33

And and your mother and home and family. Was your mother a good cook?

Nico Ladenis11:37

My mother was a brilliant cook. She was a a real housewife cook.

Nico Ladenis11:42

you know, just give her the very basic ingredients and she could make something amazing. My father also was an incredible cook because he was a restaurateur in America. He was in America and

Nico Ladenis11:53

For sixteen years, and he had a chain of restaurants in Kansas City.

Presenter11:58

So so the table was important always in the Ledenis household?

Nico Ladenis12:02

Very, very important because also my father was a

Nico Ladenis12:06

A dictator. He was he was a very, very formidable person.

Nico Ladenis12:12

Even his slippers had to be polished to to you know, to be like a like a mirror. And a disciplinarian, when when we sat at table we had to

Nico Ladenis12:21

To eat our food we had to

Nico Ladenis12:23

appreciate what we were eating and there was no room for jokes. We couldn't joke. We could have a conversation, but n nothing

Presenter12:32

But it was a serious matter.

Nico Ladenis12:33

It was a serious business.

Presenter12:34

And you take after your father?

Nico Ladenis12:37

I think my father must have instilled that in me.

Presenter12:41

Did it make you has it made you, do you think, over sensitive to criticism?

Nico Ladenis12:46

Very much so. Very, very much so.

Nico Ladenis12:49

Because I was setting out, I thought I was going to set out to do something.

Nico Ladenis12:53

Important, perfect.

Nico Ladenis12:56

In a deliberate method. And I didn't have time for critics. I.

Nico Ladenis13:03

I know where I was going. I was going somewhere, and uh critics just got in my way and got in my hair, and I just.

Nico Ladenis13:11

I wasn't patient with them.

Presenter13:14

Record number three.

Nico Ladenis13:17

Record number three is something I will always associate with my life at the Principal School in Nairobi. There again I was shown how to be competitive, how to be a good person, how to be a Christian. And in life, all that mattered was to do well.

Nico Ladenis13:38

and to win wars.

Nico Ladenis13:40

And to go forward, and this this particular song brings it all back to me.

Speaker 313:54

God be all the Lord, He is crowning out the victims where the graves have wrought astonished. He has lost the faithful lightning of his parables with soul. His truth is marching all.

Presenter14:45

BATTLE HYM OF THE REPUBLIC, Part of a festival of male choirs recorded at the Royal Albert Hall in nineteen eighty eight, conducted by Hayden James.

Presenter14:53

So, Nico, because you wanted to do something, to be somebody, you came to Britain, you uh to be educated, you got a good degree, a 2-1 in economics from Hull.

Nico Ladenis15:01

Yeah, too well.

Presenter15:03

But, as I said in the introduction, you were never destined to be a company man. It was Schell, wasn't it, who finally told you you were unemployable?

Nico Ladenis15:10

The Shell Company, yes. I went for an interview. I spent a whole day at the Shell Center.

Nico Ladenis15:16

From eight in the morning to six in the evening, I took tests and God knows what else. And at six o'clock I appeared in front of uh a board and they said to me, You have not passed. I'm sorry. We cannot accept you. You are very difficult.

Nico Ladenis15:32

Uh person you are

Nico Ladenis15:34

unemployable, and we advise you to go out and do your own thing.

Nico Ladenis15:38

and I took it to heart.

Nico Ladenis15:40

I took it all over.

Presenter15:41

It was as well by someone.

Nico Ladenis15:42

Just as well.

Presenter15:43

But you were in your mid thirties by this time. You had a wife, you had two small daughters, and you upped and offed at this stage, and you went to Provence.

Nico Ladenis15:46

And you up

Nico Ladenis15:50

Absolutely.

Presenter15:51

and sort of ate for twelve months.

Nico Ladenis15:54

Indeed.

Presenter15:55

How could you have the courage to do that, apart from anything else? Had you already established then that cooking was what you wanted to do?

Nico Ladenis16:01

No, not at all.

Nico Ladenis16:03

I wanted to go away and to think about my life and to see if another country would provide any opportunities for me. I couldn't see how in the England I loved and in the way that I was educated in the English way how I was failing and why I was so miserable and why I could do nothing at all. And I thought to myself, Let me go to another country and see if they're all like that. If is it the country or is it me? And in France, frankly,

Nico Ladenis16:33

It was a lovely country, but I thought it was much better to live in England. The only thing I saw in France was the wonderful food, and rather than stay miserable for a whole year, we just went out, ate, eating every day, maybe sometimes twice a day.

Nico Ladenis16:50

And that's how it started. The idea started there. And we said with Donna, let's go back to England. Let's go back to England and open a restaurant.

Presenter16:58

More music.

Nico Ladenis17:00

This particular music is something that really haunts me. It's a music that comes from a film called Once Upon a Time in America.

Nico Ladenis17:07

My father was Greek. He came from Asia Minor. He went to America. And I can just about imagine him the poverty and the difficulties he had.

Presenter17:47

Poverty from the original soundtrack of the film Once Upon a Time in America, composed and directed by Ennio Morricone.

Presenter17:55

So, Nico, within eight years of setting up as a restaurateur, you got your first Michelin star. Can you recall your reaction? Were you surprised when it happened? Or did you think right, one down, two to go?

Nico Ladenis18:06

I I wasn't I wasn't surprised. Um

Nico Ladenis18:10

But when it happened

Nico Ladenis18:12

It's probably the most emotional moment of my life. It just felt as as though I was floating on air. It was.

Nico Ladenis18:20

It it was it was an amazing experience.

Presenter18:23

And by this time you'd moved to Battersea from Dunlage, in not a particularly salubrious area because it was all you could afford.

Nico Ladenis18:27

Yeah.

Nico Ladenis18:30

You could just

Presenter18:31

What sort of thing were you cooking at that time? You presumably left behind the cocoval morie.

Nico Ladenis18:37

I had just come back from a very short stint at the Moulin de Moujin with Verget in the south of France in Cannes, and I went towards that direction, as you quite rightly say. I left the the Coco Vinja behind.

Presenter18:54

And what was the new genre? How would you describe it?

Nico Ladenis18:56

The new direction was to do with brown sources.

Nico Ladenis19:01

and how to make a better and a better and a cleaner and a clearer and a more flavorsome, more uh limpid brown sauce, which are a vast subject in French cooking.

Presenter19:15

Is it what you prefer doing more than anything else?

Nico Ladenis19:17

More than anything else, I like to do sauces, because you've got your basic ingredient, you've got your wonderful piece of fillet steak or a lovely duck breast or whatever, and then you need the dress. You need to dress it. And in French cuisine, sauces are the glory.

Presenter19:19

Because

Nico Ladenis19:33

And this is where a chef shows himself.

Presenter19:37

So it it it should be possible then to create the perfect source.

Nico Ladenis19:40

It should be possible to create the perfect source.

Presenter19:42

Do you think you've done it lots of times?

Nico Ladenis19:44

I don't think so. No, no. I don't think I created the the the perfect source. There are moments when I thought this is as near as I could ever get it or anybody could ever get it. And it was this battle that really consumed me.

Presenter19:58

So you won your second star in Battersea and then you set off down the M4 in 1984 to a place near Reading called Shinfield. In search of the third star. I think that the the the basis being that if you're going to win three stars, you the setting has got to be as heavenly as the food.

Nico Ladenis20:15

Yes, and also because in London those days, if you wanted to open a restaurant which was aspiring to get three stars.

Nico Ladenis20:23

you needed to spend an on an incredible amount of money. You know, we were getting into the

Presenter20:27

Yeah.

Nico Ladenis20:29

nineteen middle of the nineteen eighties.

Presenter20:31

Uh

Nico Ladenis20:31

And, you know, it was going to be very expensive, and in the country you could do it for half the price.

Presenter20:36

But you got there, and it was a terrible mistake. You've described it as a clash of cultures. Now, what does that mean?

Nico Ladenis20:43

It means that

Nico Ladenis20:44

All my

Nico Ladenis20:46

Horrors

Nico Ladenis20:48

Of what constitutes

Nico Ladenis20:50

A bad customer.

Nico Ladenis20:55

were actually manifested in very nearly everybody who came to Eaton Sinnfield from around the area. It's not their fault, it's it's my fault because I look at them and why should I judge them? They are what they are and that's their life and it was a clash. I'm sorry, it was a complete mistake.

Presenter21:12

What did they do wrong?

Nico Ladenis21:14

What they did wrong is w there's many things which I considered wrong, which which are not wrong. Why should they be wrong? If you book a table to come at seven o'clock in the evening,

Nico Ladenis21:26

You know, I assume, if I'm at the restaurateur, that you want to sit down at seven o'clock in the evening.

Nico Ladenis21:31

But for some of them it meant that uh they want to come in at about ten past seven, go to the bar and have a gin and tonic and then another gin and tonic and it got to about ten to eight and

Nico Ladenis21:43

God knows when they were going to start eating, you know. And there was the other matter of the sorbet.

Nico Ladenis21:49

They thought that if you sat down and had a three course meal,

Nico Ladenis21:52

You needed to have a sorbet between the starter and the and the main course.

Nico Ladenis21:57

By having a sorby.

Nico Ladenis21:59

Then they were having a gastronomic evening out.

Nico Ladenis22:03

And

Nico Ladenis22:05

It didn't conform with my

Presenter22:06

Why didn't you just give them a saw bed?

Presenter22:09

Yes?

Nico Ladenis22:10

Well, exactly. Why didn't I?

Presenter22:13

We'll leave the story there for a minute and ask you for record number five.

Nico Ladenis22:13

Mm-hmm.

Nico Ladenis22:16

Record number five.

Nico Ladenis22:18

is um from the opera Carmen, because I love this woman, I love her voice, I I like the her association with one of my favorite characters in life, uh Onassis, and this is to remind me of Maria Carlos.

Speaker 322:43

La Bour, Lord, the mourner font for the Lord. Si tune pon je si je me pon dot wa si tu na ma si tu de mi pour fa

Presenter23:27

Maria Callas singing the Abanera from Bizet's Carmen with the French National Radio Orchestra conducted by Georges Pretre.

Presenter23:34

Were you during all of this time, Nico, a totally hands on chef? I mean, nothing ever left your kitchen during all of these restaurants we've talked about so far without your seeing it or having tasted it in the making.

Nico Ladenis23:45

Yes. I was always at the pass, you know, you know.

Presenter23:48

Pass is the last point at which the thing the s the food leaves the kitchen again to the bottom.

Nico Ladenis23:53

Absolutely, and you can look into the kitchen, and you can control the kitchen, you can control the orders, you can control everything.

Presenter23:59

You see everything before you get it.

Nico Ladenis24:01

Everything. You smell it, you see it.

Presenter24:04

Two

Nico Ladenis24:04

You clean the plates.

Presenter24:06

Well, wipe round the edge.

Nico Ladenis24:06

Well, wipe around the edges if you see a little mark or whatever, and you send it up.

Nico Ladenis24:13

How was it that pass?

Nico Ladenis24:15

Two years into Park Lane.

Presenter24:16

Hmm.

Nico Ladenis24:19

And after that I thought to myself

Nico Ladenis24:23

Time is moving on, I'm getting older.

Nico Ladenis24:28

Time to get up.

Presenter24:28

I'd like to get out of the kitchen.

Nico Ladenis24:30

Basically I decided.

Nico Ladenis24:32

Forget it, Michelin isn't ever going to give me three stars. So I took a back seat, I started going into the restaurant, and I was checking the food in the restaurant, meeting customers, becoming very much more relaxed.

Presenter24:46

Now we should explain that Park Lane is your five star restaurant in the Grosvenor House Hotel. It was the first marriage of its kind in the country. I mean, the earliest then were Forte and and a top chef with a big

Speaker 124:55

Two.

Presenter24:58

Hotel and Marco Pierre White, a protégé of yours, incidentally, has done it since with the Hyde Park Hotel.

Speaker 125:01

Yeah, it has

Presenter25:04

But presumably your motivation in in going into that marriage was this pursuit of the third star, really. As you say, that they could provide the financial backing you needed.

Nico Ladenis25:15

At that time

Nico Ladenis25:18

My motivation is to find shelter.

Nico Ladenis25:22

It was the recession.

Nico Ladenis25:24

The Gulf War had come and gone.

Nico Ladenis25:26

The restaurant scene had completely changed. Restaurants were falling becoming bankrupt every day. I wouldn't have lasted very much longer there if I hadn't been given an opportunity to run a large restaurant under the shelter of a big hotel without me having to fork up the money to

Nico Ladenis25:47

to establish it.

Presenter25:48

So the marriage was performed, you leaned back as you describe, you left the kitchen to an extent and went out on to the floor, you became a mellower man.

Nico Ladenis25:59

The ambition had gone out of me, the three stars.

Nico Ladenis26:03

I had discounted the three stars. I thought to myself

Nico Ladenis26:06

It's never going to happen. At least I'm on a better financial footing.

Nico Ladenis26:12

Um I'm going to

Nico Ladenis26:14

try and enjoy life and look to my retirement.

Presenter26:19

Record number six.

Nico Ladenis26:21

Record number six is um nan by Nanamuskuri. It's a it's a song called Amapola, um, which is a song that I remember since my childhood days, and Nanamuskuri happens to be one of my favorite um singers.

Speaker 326:39

Uh

Speaker 326:43

Wind is my boy.

Speaker 326:50

Sera si embre dou.

Speaker 326:54

To be a sorry

Speaker 126:57

Yeah.

Speaker 327:02

You're taking away.

Presenter27:07

Nana Muskuri singing Amapula. So there you were, Nico, in january nineteen ninety five, nearly sixty one years old. You'd had two Mishnah stars for eleven years.

Presenter27:19

And by your own admission, you are feeling stale and out of date.

Nico Ladenis27:23

Absolutely right.

Presenter27:24

When the door opened and in came two men you recognized. Yes. What happened?

Nico Ladenis27:29

My God.

Nico Ladenis27:31

I I I was flustered. I didn't know where to go, what to say, where to show them, where to take them. I wanted to run into the bathroom and start crying. I hadn't cried for a long, long time.

Nico Ladenis27:45

And um they were embarrassed by the way I was I was behaving.

Nico Ladenis27:51

And um

Nico Ladenis27:53

They waited very patiently for me to find my, you know, my um

Presenter27:58

Composure

Nico Ladenis27:58

Composure

Nico Ladenis28:00

But you knew they

Presenter28:00

But you knew they were f from the

Nico Ladenis28:02

Well, I I knew them. I knew the editor, the uh the editor of the Michelangel Guide, uh, Derek Brown at that time, and his assistant, Derek Bollmo.

Nico Ladenis28:13

No time at all the kitchen where you heard the clanging or whatever.

Nico Ladenis28:18

Deathly silence, everybody in the kitchen knew that the Mishnah was there.

Nico Ladenis28:24

The I remember Derek Brown very, very quietly put his hand on the table and he said.

Nico Ladenis28:31

In the 1995 guide.

Nico Ladenis28:34

Janico is going to have three stars.

Nico Ladenis28:38

And

Nico Ladenis28:40

There were tears in my eyes. I I felt a bit of a pain in my left arm. I thought to myself,

Nico Ladenis28:46

I wonder if I'm gonna hurt get a heart attack.

Nico Ladenis28:53

And you know, if you are in this business and you are a competitive animal and you are

Nico Ladenis29:00

Always reaching for the stars and the moon and perfection, there is nothing

Nico Ladenis29:06

There's nothing except the Mishnah. It is just.

Nico Ladenis29:09

Just too important for words. I cannot begin to describe what it means. It's ten Oscars.

Nico Ladenis29:16

Into into one.

Presenter29:21

Record number seven.

Nico Ladenis29:23

R record number seven is again a part of the music from the film Once Upon a Time in America. It is another part which I love very, very much. It really completely haunts me.

Presenter30:03

Childhood Memories Again from the film Once Upon a Time in America. So these days even you, Nico, use a blowtorch on and to brown your lemon tart, but you've never been seduced by the sun dried tomato.

Nico Ladenis30:15

No, no. I um I don't believe in sand dried tomatoes simply because I know the Italians in Italy don't eat them.

Nico Ladenis30:22

So why do people pretend they're in Italian uh Italian thing? Uh I'm sorry, it's been overdone, overhyped, over everything.

Presenter30:29

You don't approve either, do you, of the sort of large steel and glass canteens of restaurants that are that are now so popular?

Nico Ladenis30:36

So

Nico Ladenis30:38

No, I don't. I don't. Uh I I think a restaurant is very a very personal thing. It's uh between the customer and the owner and the metro dee and the and the proprietor and the chef. It's not my style, it's not my ideal of a restaurant. And I don't think these places will last very long.

Presenter30:58

And your place? Will that last long?

Nico Ladenis31:01

My three-star restaurant, paradoxically, and you've asked a very pertinent question.

Nico Ladenis31:07

I do not think will last for very, very many years because I think the life of starred restaurants is a little bit under threat at the moment because the kind of ingredients we use and the prices we have to charge

Nico Ladenis31:28

Are prohibitive in many areas, and like in France, for example, you've had two, three-star chefs who've gone bankrupt.

Nico Ladenis31:36

In the past two years, that's never happened before.

Presenter31:39

This is a desert island we're sending you to, Nico. What one dish do you believe you would like to eat there? Let's let's say it's your last dish before you meet your maker. What would you order?

Nico Ladenis31:42

Great.

Nico Ladenis31:49

It's a good thing.

Presenter31:52

Or cook for yourself if you want to.

Nico Ladenis31:54

I'm going to amaze you now. I really am going to amaze you. I would order a fantastic basmati rice concoction with a lovely curry. I think really my last meal or whatever on a desert island, it would have to be curry and rice, but basmati rice. It is my all-time favorite food.

Presenter32:15

Last record.

Nico Ladenis32:18

It's a song that my mother used to sing, and I'd like uh Luciano Pavarotti to sing it, and La Donna Mobile from Verdi's Rigoletto.

Speaker 332:49

Es empremiser, quiere safid, ki ra confira, val dauto por. Ulminon sanctasi, feri siapier kim super ser non liva.

Speaker 133:04

Yeah.

Speaker 333:12

Father, I want me

Presenter33:27

Luciano Pavarotti singing L'adone immobile from Verdi's Rigoletto, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Richard Bonning. Now, if you could only take one of those records, Nico, which one would it be?

Nico Ladenis33:38

I think it would probably have to be onward Christian soldiers, without doubt.

Presenter33:43

Just to keep you online, keep you going.

Nico Ladenis33:45

It marked my life, it provided the uh goalposts for my life.

Presenter33:46

If we

Presenter33:50

What about your book?

Nico Ladenis33:52

The book I would like to bring with me is a book which I read six times when I was a schoolboy, Beaugest.

Nico Ladenis33:59

Uh

Presenter33:59

And your luxury?

Nico Ladenis33:59

Yeah.

Nico Ladenis34:01

Well

Nico Ladenis34:02

W would you allow me to first of all I'd like to take my s my favorite knife with me.

Nico Ladenis34:09

Uh but I would also like to take a certain red shirt with the number seven on it, um Eric Cantoner's shirt um with me and I would like to wrap the knife in that shirt and take it with me to my desert island.

Presenter34:26

So you're a man you man.

Nico Ladenis34:28

Yes.

Presenter34:29

Nicole La Dennis, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island iscs.

Nico Ladenis34:33

Thank you, Sue.

Speaker 134:41

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co. uk slash radio four.