Keeping it in the AG family

WHEN Time Out London was looking for a suitable place to do a photoshoot with popstar Jessie Ware and her mother, they chose Les Ambassadeurs Club. They used the Club as the backdrop to their interview to promote their upcoming tour, based on their wildly successful Table Manners podcast.

The premise is simple – Mercury Prize winner Jessie and her mother chat food and family with celebrity guests from their dinner table. Those original ingredients of a chat across over lunch or dinner have made for a new fanbase for singer songwriter Jessie, have made a star out of Lennie (she claims she was mobbed on stage in Edinburgh during their recent tour), and now include a cookbook and the live tour.

The podcast transports you to a cosy chat about the guests’ lives told through food – where did they grow up? Who cooked when they were young? What is their signature dish? What food do they dislike? (It is sultanas in food for Jennifer Saunders). And so on. Central to the appeal is the fun, sparky, bickering relationship between mother and daughter.

But, of course, food is the real star. There is always a dish to cook, discuss and enjoy. Lennie has always cooked for her family, and it became part of the fabric of their lives. ‘It was just part of our day that we absolutely always ate dinner together,’ Jessie told Time Out. ‘I remember her whipping up a béchamel sauce with such ferocity. That’s how I learned to cook, from watching her doing things like that.’

The Table Manners podcast has featured foodie stories from celebrities that include Jennifer Saunders, Sir Paul McCartney, actor David Schwimmer, musicians Ed Sheeran, John Legend, Dolly Parton, and even London mayor Sadiq Khan.

Read the full article https://www.timeout.com/london/music/how-jessie-and-lennie-ware-became-the-first-family-of-food

Photo credit: Jess Hand