Rowley Leigh is former chef of Kensington Place and the FT’s cookery writer. His new venture, Le Café des Anglais, opens this summer. Fergus Henderson is founder of St John restaurant, which was this week voted among the world’s top 50 restaurants. Last weekend the two chefs met at the River Café restaurant in London to discuss their influences and how they developed their own distinctive styles.
Rowley Leigh My first memory of you was going to the Globe in Notting Hill and you were cooking but had run out of just about everything. But we had some beef, I think, and we asked for a salad. The waiter said, “We don’t have any salad but the chef says he can do a parsley salad.” I thought that was so hilarious, the idea of having a parsley salad, because I still had a very French sort of background and parsley is a herb that you use for garnishing, and this was a really strong parsley salad with eggs and vinegar and mustard, and I thought it was fantastic. I saw you a couple of times there but remember you mostly being tucked in a corner poring over a cookbook. Those must have been very formative years and I think of you as an autodidact and as somebody who’s taught themselves mostly from books.
Fergus Henderson Books and also this side of eating in restaurants and thinking, “Ooh, that’s a rather nifty notion.” I’ve been allowed to follow my own perverse thoughts happily.
RL I was wondering what books you were reading then. They looked quite old and battered.
FH Well, they got quite a lot of use at that time. I think Paula Wolfert, Cooking in South-West France, Marcella Hazan’s The Classic Italian Cook Book...
RL Nobody would believe that an ounce of Marcella Hazan has filtered into your cooking style.
FH Well, I think it has in a strange way. It’s sort of Italian cooking, that business of slices of meat on a plate, a bit unlike today. You don’t today have just a slice of veal on a plate and that’s it. But that economy of eating had a big effect on me. This sense of if a thing is well-cooked and well-sauced, then it needs nothing else. I never did pasta or risotto because I felt there’s enough pasta and risotto bouncing around London, that another restaurant serving it was not necessary, and also there are people who do it better. When Italians are doing it, you’re watching them doing it and you do exactly what they do and it’s not as good. There’s some vibration that goes from the Italians... So I thought best leave it to those who know what they’re doing.
Then there was another book that had no recipes but it is just the best food book ever: The Taste of France by Robert Fresson. To sit and look at the pictures gets you going and makes you want to cook. There are marvellous big ladies with rosy cheeks holding some buttery, yeasty doughs and things. It’s strange, though, I mean I’ve got a few “olde worlde” English cookbooks which go to bizarre places but...
RL That’s what I’d always imagined, that there was some countryman’s cookbook from 1837. You were digging out these obscure recipes to “take a spleen” or...
FH There’s a bit of that. There’s one I have that’s a farmer’s housewife’s cookery book of 1856 or something.
RL The one person I come back to and always use as a really reliable metronome of good taste and proper English cooking is Eliza Acton and I just think she has perfect pitch: “Take a wild duck, put him on a brisk fire, serve him up with a little orange salad and watercress,” you know, that sort of language of cookery, which is exactly what you want. What is interesting about your reading of all these foreign cookbooks is that you’re the most English chef there is. Gary Rhodes has done a fantastic job of reinterpreting classic English dishes but he does it in a purely French style. So I’m fascinated that you think that Italian food has contributed so much to what you do, that “the vibrations” contributed.
FH It all seems quite straightforward and common sense. I’m English, live in England, use English produce. I follow the seasons and basically the work’s done for you and nature writes the menu. And when nettles or peas or English asparagus come in, use them.
RL Presumably you grew up in that sort of comfortable, bourgeois postwar society that embraced and adored French food. You told me before that you only served French wine on the grounds that Aquitaine was English, but do you think you’ve consciously turned your back on French cooking?
FH Well, it certainly was a comfortable upbringing. But, no, I’ve never set out my stall as a plan or any kind of statement or conversion, or...
RL No, I know you’re not that obvious but I can’t help feeling that you have some sort of manifesto or desire because you make such a very strong statement in what you do, I feel there must be some sort of motivation or manifesto behind it.
FH It’s back to the common-sense thing. It’s what’s here and what’s in season. It’s really simple.
RL I think we’re both very European and children of the European mentality, looking elsewhere. Yet you’ve ended up having a specifically English approach but one that has been nourished by Europe. That seems incredibly cheering, actually, the fact that you’ve forged and defined a very English identity at a time when outside influences have predominated.
FH I’m not doing it for jingoistic reasons...
RL It’s not jingoistic... and yet you slightly betrayed yourself. You said you’re not doing it for jingoistic reasons but you admit you’re doing something. After all, Nose to Tail Eating was subtitled “A Kind of British Cooking”.
FH Well, that’s my common-sense thing.
RL You agree you’re doing something?
FH Well, OK, I agree. [laughs]
RL I know, but people don’t understand that, I think. People used to come and ask me in the restaurant: “How do you manage to think of so many new things every day?” And I said, “It’s perfectly simple.” There are new things in the market every day, new combinations every day, and although I spend every May exploring asparagus, morels, langoustines, peas, broad beans, there’s always a new combination in the fridge, a new way of looking at them, a new way of exploring those themes.
FH I remember a fantastic piece of advice you gave me in the Globe.
RL What was that?
FH Wait until peas are in season, then use frozen. [laughter]
RL I was being a little facetious but I’m fascinated by peas and people’s approach to peas. I saw a chef the other day put frozen peas in a Pacojet [frozen dessert maker], add some sugar and water and then claim that he was producing something brilliant and wonderful. My scallops with pea purée was always made with frozen peas but I added stuff to it. I added some lettuce and mint and onion and cooked them slowly...
FH . . . and added a bit of love. I haven’t got to Pacojet yet. People find my approach to peas very weird. I serve peas in a pod and that’s the best way to eat them I think.
RL But I always think that’s one of your little jokes. I was having lunch at St John with a friend and we ordered chestnuts. I thought I’d really like to see what Fergus does with chestnuts and the answer is Fergus does very little with chestnuts. He roasts them and then serves them in the shell and then he sends them out and leaves the customer to struggle with trying to take the shell off. My companion comes to you all the time, and he said, “Well, I think sometimes he puts these things on just to have a look to see how the customers react, and he’s actually hiding in the kitchen, watching to see what we make of it”.
FH And what’s better than having chestnuts to wrestle with or peas in a pod? That’s the whole thing that the process shouldn’t stop in the kitchen. Sometimes, the eater’s only role is to make a mess of it but at least with chestnuts you make a mess for a reason.
RL Well, what you call common sense is, without being too flattering, actually a sort of genius, but I think it’s also the advantage of your auto-didacticism, in that you haven’t taken on this huge body of received knowledge and that gives you a clarity of vision. I just wonder how you learnt the technique of cooking.
FH Well, I do have the benefit of seven years of architecture, which has proved quite useful.
RL Why?
FH Well, that exact question, knowing to ask why? You learn to ask yourself why. Certainly in building, any gesture you make is, in theory, a permanent gesture, so they’re serious qualities and you’ve got to know why. You have to explain to yourself why you’ve done that. You ask yourself “why” in a kitchen, and you almost ask yourself “why” when you start a restaurant, why am I doing this?
RL Well, that’s just radicalism – of appraising from fresh in that way. I’ve always thought that there are two kinds of cook. One is the intuitive, fix-things-as-they-go-along, cook, which is what I am, and the other is the scientific approach of somebody who wants to know exactly where they’re going to end up before they start, which is what I call the scientific or the pastry cook.
FH I am definitely the intuitive kind.
RL How typically perverse of you because the pastry cook, that is to say, the scientific approach as defined by Carême, was one of the branches of architecture – the way they use sugar as a construct and as a building material.
FH But that’s just it. My food isn’t architectural in any sort of structural sense, it’s architectural, hopefully, in a way that architects should create space to define people’s manner of occupation, you feed them food. In the same way that you create space in a certain way, I try and feed them food that requires a certain kind of behaviour and manner of occupation, inside and out.
RL That seems quite ambitious.
FH It’s quite ambitious when you open a restaurant and try and feed people. Restaurants I tend to think of as gastronomic crutches for the punters. A bit of music so they don’t feel anxious because they’re not talking, all marble and art and brass rails and stuff, so they know they’re having a good time because they’re going out. But we’ve skipped all that and offer them a fairly pared down menu in a fairly pared down space. But the enjoyment becomes the decoration.
RL You are a sort of minimalist in a way, I suppose, but one without the least interest in technology. I know you have never used a computer and would imagine the technological approach and molecular gastronomy is not quite your thing?
FH I see some sort of potential and Heston [Blumenthal] is a very enthusiastic, lovely guy, and so I can understand. I can understand where he’s going, and good luck: I’m glad he’s doing it. If someone’s that enthusiastic and pursuing something, you want to say stop mucking about and do something proper, but I don’t think that. He’s truly doing what he’s interested in, which is great.
RL I think, funnily enough, that he’s only doing what people in banqueting and other things have been doing for ages. All this cook-chill-hold and slow cooking...
FH It’s always been my modus operandi to get a whole beast in and work our way through it. The chefs, having had a relationship with this carcase and butchering it, can then take a certain pride in the cooking of the thing, which then transfers that pride and happiness to the eater. It’s a sort of healthy happy chain thing.
RL And that’s one of the sad things that has happened, certainly in the past 20 years, is that people like you and I – and to be honest I’ve never really known why I want to do it – have always wanted to keep all food preparation completely in-house. And the fact is that the vast majority of people don’t do it and that’s probably a very important trend actually. Nobody fillets their own fish any more. People have buy-in, ready-trimmed racks of lamb. They say they’re going to do a signature dish so they buy a rack of lamb and they buy racks of lamb 52 weeks of the year, ready trimmed, bought in. It’s that cycle, isn’t it, that’s been broken. That’s your whole “nose to tail” idea.
FH I’ve got another book coming out in August, called Beyond Nose to Tail.
RL And what is Beyond Nose to Tail?
FH Well, hopefully, it’s Fergus grows up a bit.
RL Nose to Tail was hardly childish but I think in a way it’s done you harm as well as good because everybody seems to associate the restaurant with offal and they think that, because you do the nose and the tail, you don’t do anything in between.
FH That’s fortunately changing. “You’re offal but we like you,” or, “Are you offally nice?” The puns are becoming less frequent, which is encouraging. I felt I needed to talk about some things in a little more depth. The last book was especially thin on pastry and baking, so there’s a lot more of that. I’ve got another book in me as well, which is weird but interesting. It’s based on the Diderot encyclopaedias. You know his drawings? In the 18th century, he did these wonderful studies of craft industries in France and they’re rather like recipes, the drawings, because they explain on one page where you have an explosion where a chap’s making gunpowder, or making snuff or whatever. But as the world isn’t that simple any more, a modern-day Diderot might make a sort of commentary...
RL I didn’t realise you were a draughtsman. Do you use ink and pen?
FH It’s something slightly left over from my architectural days, using a rotary pen and vellum paper and a bit of collage. So it’s a bit of a weird one, that.
RL There’s not enough line drawing. When I did my book, I got Lucinda Rogers to do these drawings, which I thought were fantastic but I didn’t think they got enough credit really and so when we did the paperback reprint, I said, “Right, no photographs, we’ll just have the drawings.” It’s such a nice way to conjure up food. There’s not enough originality in food books in terms of their graphic content. I can think of very few. Len Deighton’s Où est le Garlic? was brilliant and I always thought the original pictures in Nose to Tail were brilliant. I loved the brill, which was just a sort of carcase and a few hands on the table and bits and pieces of fish.
FH It was strange when they bought the proofs from Macmillan, everyone said they wanted something different. I did the photos with Jason [Lowe], and we had quite a lot of fun with that, just making a different set of pictures. Those photos in the first book I thought were fantastic because they expressed that eating is about making a mess and enjoying yourself, which is more interesting than a weird representation of restaurant food on a plate in a cookbook, which is not going to help anyone. All the reader thinks is, “Why doesn’t mine look like that?”
RL We still remain people who want to say something or do something in some way and we do it, I think. Every time we write a menu, we’re making some sort of statement. I’m not exactly sure what it is, any more than a composer when he writes a piece of music knows what he is trying to say.
FH Hopefully it’s the moment of saying, “Have a good lunch,” really.
Careers in and out of the kitchen
ROWLEY LEIGH
1950 Born in Manchester
1955 Moves to Ireland.
1960 Returns to England and attends Clifton College.
1969 Attends Cambridge University and enthusiastically embraces the current cultural mores. Narrowly avoids incarceration. Begins cooking, mostly curries.
1971 On being thrown out of university, embarks on a series of failed careers, including farming, journalism and novel writing. Gains a measure of proficiency at snooker. Cooks from Elizabeth David and Julia Child.
1976 Employed at the Rock Garden restaurant. Graduates to the Joe Allen restaurant.
1978 Starts work at Le Poulbot restaurant, owned by the Roux. Graduates to the brothers’ Le Gavroche after a month despite an attempt by Albert Roux to sack him. After two years, becomes sous-chef and then head chef at Le Poulbot. Cooks French food.
1987 Opens Kensington Place with Simon Slater and Nick Smallwood. Cooks a mix of French, Italian and English food.
1996 Begins writing about food for British newspapers. Wins Glenfiddich award for cookery writing three times.
2001 Publishes award-winning cookery book No Place Like Home.
2006 Leaves Kensington Place to set up new London brasserie de luxe, Le Café des Anglais, opening in August.
FERGUS HENDERSON
1963 Born in London. His father, an enthusiastic diner, and his mother, a keen cook, were both architects. Attends King Alfred’s School and goes on to train as an architect. Starts cooking seriously.
1987 While studying at the Architectural Association, takes a job at Smith’s Restaurant in Covent Garden and begins his career as a chef.
1988 Starts as chef at the Globe in Notting Hill before going on to the French House pub in Soho.
1994 Opens St John in Smithfield with Jon Spiteri and Trevor Gulliver. Henderson’s simple, pared down cooking earns critical acclaim. The restaurant, noted for its use of offal and often neglected cuts of meat, goes on to win many awards and has been named four times among the world’s 50 top restaurants by Restaurant magazine. Last year,
it was chosen as Best British Restaurant by Time Out magazine.
1999 His book Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking is published. It goes on to win the prestigious André Simon Award for food and drink books.
2001 Sets up HGW wines with Trevor Gulliver.
2003 Opens St John offspring, St John Bread & Wine in Spitalfields.
2005 Receives an MBE.
2007 Working on Beyond Nose to Tail Eating, a sequel to his award-winning book, due to be published this year. Contributes recipes to The Perfect Marriage – The Art of Matching Food and Sherry Wines from Jerez.
