True Brit

First they declined switching to the euro, and now they're forsaking the continent's culinary hegemony. Yes, the British are sticking up for their neglected, and too often maligned, culinary traditions. Andy Lynes surveys the chefs who are looking forward by looking back.

Andy Lynes
Posted: March 18, 2010

When coined in 1987, Drew Smith, then editor of the Good Food Guide, used the expression "modern British cookery" to denote the emerging band of British chefs who rejected the constraints of classical French cooking in favor of an eclectic approach influenced by nouvelle cuisine, Cal-Ital, and Italy itself. But things have changed. During the last two decades a growing number of British chefs have turned their backs on the Pan-European style that once dominated much of the higher end of the United Kingdom's restaurant scene. In its place has emerged a new wave of modern British cooking that employs the ever increasing quality of the native larder to present updated versions of traditional dishes.

"British regional cooking disappeared around the time of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century when there was huge social change," says chef and food historian Shaun Hill. "Now we're rediscovering our national taste buds' that have always been dictated by climate and tradition. There's more confidence in British food and increasing interest in using what grows around us. The next logical step was always going to be to look at how it was prepared in the past and adapt it for a modern audience."

Chef and broadcaster Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has led the retreat back to the comfort of the British national culinary identity with his River Cottage organization that promotes "self-sufficiency, food integrity, and the consumption of local seasonal produce." What started out as a TV series about his attempt to live off the land at a Devon small holding has become a serious business incorporating a farm, cookery school, a food store, and River Cottage Canteen restaurants in Axminster and Bath that serve the likes of deviled lambs' hearts on toast and organic pork sausages with mash, greens, and cider gravy.

But Fearnley-Whittingstall wasn't the first chef to see the value in traditional British dishes. Nigel Haworth has been promoting British produce at the country house hotel Northcote Manor in Langho near Blackburn for over 20 years and now runs four high-quality gastropubs spread across Lancashire and Yorkshire, all serving British food-for example, Ribble Valley beef steak/kidney/beer pudding with runner beans, mashed potatoes, and roast gravy; reared Bowland lamb Lancashire hotpot with pickled red cabbage; and frumenty, a Yorkshire dessert made with wheat, milk and raisins.

The menus at The Three Fishes, The Highwayman Inn, The Clog and Billy Club, and The Bull at Broughton all feature a "regional food heroes" map that shows diners exactly where Mrs. Kirkham produces the Lancashire cheese that's sprinkled over the traditional fish pie made with seafood from the nearby port of Fleetwood.

In London, acolytes of Fergus Henderson's St. John restaurant are opening their own back-to-basics restaurants inspired by their mentor's nose-to-tail ethos. Tom Pemberton serves gutsy dishes such as brawn (headcheese) and pickles and diver-caught plaice, sea cucumber, samphire, and sea aster (a fleshy leaved plant found in salt marshes) at his Hererford Road restaurant in Notting Hill. At Great Queen Street in Covent Garden (partly owned by ex-St. John chef Jonathan Jones) comforting dishes such as crab on toast and braised Hereford beef with carrots and dumplings are on the menu.

Finally, for once in my life when someone asks me what kind of food I cook, I can say British, says Clive Dixon, the head chef of Heston Blumenthal s Hinds Head pub in Bray, who won a Michelin star back in 1994 for his French-influenced cooking at the Lords of the Manor country house hotel in Gloucestershire.

Paul Faulkner's CV includes stints at the late lamented L'Odeon restaurant in London with eclectic French culinary genius Bruno Loubet and at Level 41 in Sydney, Australia, cooking Asian-influenced French food. Now, as head chef at the chic Modern restaurant and bar in the heart of Manchester, he's more likely to be found cranking out a batch of marmalade or making his own piccalilli. "When we opened in 2007, the idea was always to make the menu as British as possible," says Faulkner. "It made me realize how much I'd relied on things like risotto in the past."

For Mark Hix, whose growing restaurant portfolio includes Hix Oyster and Chop House in Smithfield Market in London and the Hix Oyster and Fish House in Lyme Regis on the Dorset coast, leaving behind the sort of eclecticism that defined his 17 year tenure as chef director of Caprice Holdings has been a stimulating challenge. "Cooking British food means you've got boundaries you've got to stick to, which doesn't make it uninteresting," says Hix, who in his former job oversaw the Italian menu at Daphne's and the Southeast Asian-influenced food at Bam-Bou in addition to looking after Caprice Holdings flagship Ivy and Le Caprice restaurants.

For both Emily Watkins, chef/owner of The Kingham Plough gastropub in rural Oxfordshire, and Stuart Gillies, head chef of Gordon Ramsay's smart urban Boxwood CafÈ (expected to find a new home after it vacates The Berkeley hotel in April) in London's Knightsbridge, it was time spent working in Italy that eventually led them to focus on British food. "I love the honesty and freshness of ingredients in Italy and that they are always very local, regional, and seasonal," says Watkins, who spent two years working at a Florentine restaurant before returning to work first for Blumenthal at The Fat Duck and then as a private chef. "I used the Italian influence but in an English version-I'd make gnocchi with horseradish, for example, which the Italians would never do-and as time went on things became more and more British."

Cooking in Italy as a young chef left an equally deep impression on Gillies, who will also run the Savoy Grill when the Savoy hotel reopens this year after a $162.5 million renovation. "It was like a big slap in the face. It made me realize that life's simple-amazing produce, amazing food, and family. That's it, nothing else is important."

The Italians' reverence for raw ingredients now makes sense in a British context thanks to the ever growing band of artisan farmers and producers. "There wasn't so much quality produce being grown in the U.K. back in the '90s as there is now," says Dixon, who has seen a radical change in British produce over the course of his more than 20 year career. "Now there are more suppliers around, and it's a different ballgame. Even the French would have to hold their hands up and admit we're pretty good."

"British meat and fish are the best in the world," enthuses Gillies. "For example, I get amazing sea urchin roes off the coast of the Orkney Isles from a supplier called Orkney Rose, who has a stall in Borough Market in London. I use them to make a sea urchin butter to go with a baked Orkney scallop, which I serve with an apple and watercress salad."

"Quality wise, its the best I've ever used," agrees Faulkner, who aims to use not only as much British produce as possible but to keep it local too. He raves about the High Peak lamb he sources from nearby Glossop, just 20 minutes from Manchester city center. "The animals are out on the moors, eating grass, flowers, and heather, which make for a really tasty and tender meat. We braise the shoulders down and serve some of the meat with the roasted rack and pan-fried sweetbreads."

In addition to focusing their menus on local British produce, the new wave of modern British chefs also shares a passion for DIY (do-it-yourself), albeit of the culinary variety. Hix serves "De Beauvoir smoked salmon Hix cure'" as a starter at his London restaurant, curing and smoking it in his own back garden in the De Beauvoir area of North London. "I use Loch Duart salmon and cure it in sea salt and molasses for 12 hours. I cold smoke it with oak and applewood chips in an American smoker that looks like a little domestic fridge, which can take up to 16 sides at a time," says Hix. "I serve the salmon cut slightly thicker than usual. In London everyone is obsessed with slicing it so thin you can see the plate through it and you end up not even tasting the fish."

At the Kingham Plough, Watkins cures and smokes all her own meat, including the best-selling venison and wood pigeon ham, and uses the pub's chimney to smoke whole legs of pork.

These unabashed Union Jack cooks don't hesitate to look to the past to help define what it is to be a modern British chef and often raid family recipes and old English cookery books for inspiration. Dixon is updating the Lancashire speciality of butter pie, a simple dish of potatoes, onions, and butter served in a short crust pastry case, traditionally served on Friday in Catholic communities in towns such as Chorely and Preston, when no meat could be served for religious reasons. "I'm going to try cooking the filling sous-vide at 83 degrees, although I'll sweat down the onions and butter before they go in the bag," says Dixon.

Lancashire also serves as inspiration for the whiting "specials" on the Hix Oyster and Chophouse menu: a simple but delicious dish of whiting fillet sandwiched between "scalloped," or sliced potatoes, deep-fried in batter, and served with homemade tartar sauce. "My grandmother comes from Lancashire, and she used to cook us specials, but they were just the battered scalloped potatoes. I was chatting to fellow chef Robert Eyre of Eyre Brothers restaurant in London, and he told me that his grandmother used to do the same but with fish, so I really got the idea from him during a drunken conversation at the bar," laughs Hix.

Memories of childhood inspired Faulkner to include traditional Yorkshire parkin on his autumn menus. "I'd always eat it on Bonfire Night [November 5]. It's a spicy loaf made with loads of oats, treacle, syrup, ginger, flour, and eggs. I cook it so it's crispy at the edges, soft in the middle, and serve it with caramelized pears and vanilla cream."

Watkins has teamed up with a local food historian to track down not only widely published texts such as Florence White's 1932 book Good Food in England but also 19th and early 20th century recipe books compiled by local housekeepers. The herb dumplings served with a loin of Cotswold lamb and casserole of summer vegetables come from Recipes from an Old Farmhouse by Alison Uttley, which dates back to the Victorian era. Watkins mostly sticks to the original recipe, which calls for "two handfuls of flour, a handful of chopped beef suet, a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda. Into this a collection of chopped herbs was tumbled-marjoram, sprig of fennel, parsley, and dandelion-and mixed with some beaten egg and put into greased basins and boiled or steamed for two hours." She adds her own revisions, of course. "The dumplings are steamed first, then baked in the oven to get a crisper edge. We put clarified butter over them to keep them juicy. The first batch we made were a bit dense tasting, so we lightened them with some lemon zest."

At the Pipe and Glass gastropub in Beverley, East Yorkshire, chef James Mackenzie came across the opportunity to revisit a small slice of the region's culinary history quite by chance. "The local council was moving offices, and a 250 year old recipe for East Yorkshire sugar cakes fell out of a financial file," says Mackenzie. "It's basically a spiced shortbread made with equal quantities of butter, flour, and sugar. But there was so much mace and clove that it was virtually inedible, so I've adapted the recipe and substituted cinnamon and mixed spices." The cakes are always on the dessert menu and might be served with updated traditional British desserts such as lemon/rosemary posset (a hot, sugar sweetened milk drink flavored with wine, ale or Sherry, sometimes thickened with eggs), warm blood orange compote, or a Yorkshire rhubarb/ginger trifle.

The tasting menu at Stephen Harris' Michelin-starred Sportsman restaurant in Seasalter on the Kent coast features an updated version of the 17th century English salad called salmagundi. Originally a mixture of cooked meats, seafood, vegetables, fruit, leaves, nuts, and flowers, Harris' refined take features home grown salad greens, poached duck egg, and his own air-dried ham.

Gillies' refined version of British family staple shepherd's pie is a big seller at the Boxwood Cafe. "I always use lamb breast rather than minced lamb for shepherd's pie," says Gillies. "It costs me about £1.40 a kilo [$2.27 for 2.2 pounds], which is very cheap. I skin and braise the breast for four hours. We pick the meat, which is then recooked with diced onions and carrots, and that forms the base of the pie, which we top with mashed potatoes as usual. The end product is amazing because the breast meat is so mild and sweet."

British food has often been associated with the lower end of the catering market (e.g., fish and chips, pie and mash), but that hasn't proved a barrier for the new wave of modern British chefs, either in terms of location or price point. In addition to his casual Oyster restaurants, Hix has revived the grand dining room of Rocco Forte's Brown's hotel in upmarket Mayfair with a British concept. "The menu at The Albemarle is very similar to the Chophouse, and I've stripped back a lot of the hotel's formality. You get your bread on a wooden board, and you don't get offered bread rolls any more, for example," says Hix. The mix of British classics, such as fish pie and Lancashire hotpot, with more modern dishes, including pan-fried Cornish scallops with spring leeks and Cumbrian black pudding, has proved so successful (the restaurant opened in 2008 to rave reviews and has been awarded three rosettes by the AA Restaurant Guide) that Forte is considering rolling the concept out to his hotels in Prague, St. Petersburg, and New York City.

In the equally well-to-do area of Knightsbridge, Gillies can charge £12 ($20.29) for a starter of fried wild West Mersea rock oysters with fennel, but he admits that using British produce does have its downsides. "Everything I buy that's British I could get up to 40 percent cheaper by using imported stuff. But I'd rather have a different job than do that," says Gillies, who carefully plots his menu to ensure he's able to use native produce and still hit his margins.

Over the past two decades, British cookery has changed out of all recognition. Now the natives aren't restlessly looking toward the continent. Rather, they're confidently displaying their British heritage. But it's an evolution, not a revolution, and the process is far from over.

Andy Lynes lives in Brighton, England, and writes about restaurants and travel for Independent on Sunday and the BBC's olive magazine.

Heston Hops Aboard
When Heston Blumenthal opens his first and as yet unnamed central London restaurant in the Mandarin Oriental hotel in autumn 2010, the menu will be heavily influenced by his ongoing research of historic British gastronomy. Blumenthal's fascination with the subject dates back to 2003, when he first met Hampton Court Palace-based "food archaeologists" Jean-Marc Meltonville and Richard Fitch. The trio developed Tudor-period recipes such as quaking pudding (a blancmange-like dessert of eggs, sugar, milk, and cream, originally poached in muslin) for Blumenthal's Hinds Head pub in Bray. Adam Tihany's interior design for the 140 seat restaurant will use traditional materials such as wood, leather, and iron in contemporary ways to reinforce Blumenthal's revival and modernization of traditional British recipes. "I've always shared Heston's enthusiasm for English recipes, so I'm delighted to be partnering with The Fat Duck Group on this exciting new venture," says David Nicholls, Mandarin Oriental's corporate director of food & beverage of Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group.