Beyond pub grub
For the second time during my week in London I’ve come perilously close to swallowing a piece of lead shot. I was wise to the one lodged in a pigeon breast because of a small-print disclaimer about ‘game and waterfowl’ at the bottom of the menu at St John. But the first I mistook for a very hard peppercorn while enjoying rillettes d’ecreuil or less euphemistically, squirrel paté, with cornichons and a pint of Mauldons Brewery Mid Summer Gold at Great Queen Street. It’s also my week of initiation into the world of squirrel meat, which is deliciously nutty.
“I try to put as many pests as possible on the menu,” says Great Queen Street head chef Tom Norrington-Davies with a completely non-threatening smile. (The grey squirrel is alien to England.) However, the plates circling us also carry larger-than-life globe artichokes and layers of Hereford beef bresoala centered by a glistening fig, all of which inspire instant food envy. I came to know Tom’s cooking through his acclaimed cookbook Just Like Mother Used To Make and, although Great Queen Street didn’t technically start out as a pub, it’s identifi-able as sister to Anchor & Hope, which did. And Anchor & Hope chef, Jonathan Jones, happens to be ex St John.
At St John, Fergus Henderson explains his fi rst squirrel over mid-morning espresso and Fernet Branca. It was a combination of a kind gesture from a butcher in Wiltshire where his mum lives, and Fergus’ ability to “find a plate for most things”. “He took her a whole lot of squirrels saying, ‘I think Fergus might like these’,” explains Fergus. “And being a dutiful mother, she said, ‘Darling, I’ve got some squirrels for you.’ So we slowbraised them with dried ceps, which are also quite musky, and some leafy greens, like their environment. And then I did a show on Radio 4 about it and received death threats because everyone thinks of Squirrel Nutkin [of the red squirrel family, native to Britain].”
But these men have more in common than squirrel; both are linked to kitchens that defined a new era in British food. It all began in Clerkenwell at the heart of The City, where rumbling lorries start offloading for the Smithfi eld Meat Market at midnight. I hear them from the Fox and Anchor, a pub with rooms across the street, and when curiosity gets the better of me I’m addressed by a butcher in a blood-stained smock drinking a cappuccino, “Mind your toes sweetheart!” This neighbourhood, where black-suited businessmen on cellphones compete with the carcasses for pavement real estate, isn’t visited for the sights but for coming close to understanding an evolution in British food.
During the early ‘90s, beleaguered breweries looking to be rid of licences for urban pubs (less frequented because of the recession) made way for a new breed of restaurateurs. Keen young lads such as David Eyre and Michael Belben (now co-founder of Great Queen Street) who founded London’s first gastropub, The Eagle, were given a leg-up with cheap rents on empty properties. “Gastropubs are why we have the bistro culture we have now,” says Tom, who joined The Eagle in 1996.
Their ‘big flavours and rough edges’ brasserie-style was heavily Med-influenced. “British Smitish,” says Tom, another smile as he hands over a print-out with the day’s menu. “You can see we’re only pretending to serve British food.” The irony isn’t lost, it might be panzanella on the side but the grilled Mackerel comes from nearby. The Middlewhite and Tamworth Ploughman’s refers to the rarebreed pork and, with Scotch egg, looks set for an Enid Blyton picnic scene. More food envy.
Fergus Henderson speaks fondly of another Tom, Tom Pemberton of Hereford Road, also schooled in the philosophy of St John. It’s what Fergus calls “letting nature write the menu”. “We have such rigorous seasons here,” says Fergus. “First it’s sea kale and gull’s eggs and peas, and then grouse follows and then after that woodcocks. It’s about letting nature help you. Let it fall from the sky and swim in and then decide what you’re going to do with it. What we do is good food, cooked well, for now.”
If gastropubs started the revolution then Fergus Henderson is what some might call the godfather of contemporary British cuisine. Fergus protests at the title, “Oh no, that makes me sound so old!” So Spiritual Leader let’s say. About three years after The Eagle opened, at an old smokehouse in a street not too far away, Fergus began applying what he calls plain common sense: staying attuned to the seasons, referring back to classical British recipes and dining habits and adopting old-fashioned methods of using the whole animal.
For supper at St John, I pause between sips of Champagne to snap peas out their pods, eat devilled kidneys on toast with a glass of Burgundy – provenance is just as emphasised on the wine list of like-minded French vignerons, “quite often a little mad but nearly always evangelical”. To end, Brown Betty Teapots usher in a plate of warm madeleines large enough to be cradled in both hands. It was just right for so many reasons, not least because it could be enjoyed in a dining room that’s blasé about Birkenstocks – turning up in spangley Barbie sandals will most likely leave you feeling overdressed.
“We lost our way for a while with eating out,” says Fergus, “with the tassles and marble and brass railings but these are crutches.” And in contrast to his sparse, white dining hall, not unlike what you might expect to find in a boarding school. Menu prose is pruned for lessis- more effect. “Sometimes menus can take it too far. It’s too much information between you and your lunch. I like to keep the menu clipped, it should get your juices flowing. Then once the food leaves the kitchen, your waiter is the sentinel.” Tom Norrington Davies calls it the St John effect, “I want my customers to put their hand up and ask.”
Just around the corner in an old sausage factory, Mark Hix joined in with Hix Oyster and Chophouse. More recent but in the same spirit, here are skillfully cooked dishes close to the nation’s heart. Like the beef flank and oyster pie, typical during a time when abundant oysters padded out a pie containing hard-to-come-by meat – of course, these days it’s quite the opposite. Silky oyster and slow-braised beef are linked arm in arm by Hix Oyster ale. From a family brewery in Dorset the description reads like a wine: “Pours a pleasing deep brown, almost black colour and throws a fi ne-bubbled, long-lasting thick head. Quite smooth, with hazelnuts, cocoa and caramel, the dark malty flavours display a hint of sweetness... but not too cloying on the palate.”
Local brews are served in traditional glass-bottomed pewter tankards – according to legend, to keep an eye on your enemy and any surprise punches thrown while your mug is tilted. And I spy the Rick Stein-commissioned Chalky’s Bite brewed with wild Cornish fennel. Like the roll-up-your-sleeves feast of whole roast chickens with baked new season garlic, much of the food cries out for a refreshing ale. But pork scratchings have moved on, now we have Blythburgh pork crackling with Bramley apple sauce.
When it comes to pubs, as the barman serving some lesser-spotted bottled beers at the Fox and Anchor rightly advises, supporting a ‘free house’ not controlled by a single big-name brewery ensures a more interesting, artisanal selection. Under the dark cloud of the current recession, punters found it cheaper to drink at home and the future of pub culture looked bleak, but as if offering some hope of the good that can come out of recessionary times, 2009 was also the year The Eagle cookbook was reissued.
Tom had alerted me that it was Midsummer’s Eve, the last day for eating asparagus before the plant is left to bolt. At Hix I notice a robust-looking gourmand dining alone, his trousers raising the curtain on a pair of pink socks as he crosses his legs. He orders a platter of rock oysters (Maldon? Portland Pearls?), followed by steamed asparagus and hollandaise. He then lights up a cigar, a solitary celebration of the passing season perhaps. “I like to think that what we’re doing has a sense of permanence,” says Fergus Henderson. Long may common sense prevail.
WHERE TO EAT
Great Queen Street
32 Great Queen Street, London
Anchor & Hope
36 The Cut, Waterloo
St John Bar and Restaurant
26 St John Street
www.stjohnrestaurant.com
Hix Oyster and Chophouse
35-37 Greenhill Rents,
Off Cowcross Street
www.hixoysterandchophouse.co.uk
Hereford Road
3 Hereford Road, Bayswater
www.herefordroad.org
WHERE TO STAY
FOX AND ANCHOR
Locals gather around the Victorian-era bar for cask (not keg) ales, half pints of prawns, pork pies and pickled eggs. There’s a carvery trolley at lunch and hearty bacon butties for breaky. Burrough market and Anchor & Hope are within easy reach, but if you’re sleeping in, slip the ‘nursing hangover’ sign on your door. www.foxandanchor.com
THE ROCKWELL
Restored wrought-iron banisters and Victorian mosaic oor downstairs and neat, modern rooms upstairs. The leafy address, a short walk to Earl’s Court and easy access to central underground lines, makes this a sensible choice for London accommodation. www.therockwell.co.uk
DEAN STREET TOWNHOUSE
Located in Soho but within close proximity to Covent Garden and Great Queen Street, rooms range from ‘Broom Cupboard’ to ‘Bigger’ with little luxuries like Cowshed products and a bedside Roberts Revival Radio (tuned into the classical channel). www.deanstreettownhouse.com
