Overall ranking: 91
Chef ranking: 15
Snapshot
Fergus Henderson is the chef and co-owner of St John, a meat-lover’s mecca in London’s Clerkenwell area near Smithfield meat market. Henderson, a champion of robust British cooking, is famed for serving unusual cuts of meat that other chefs would not dream of looking at and St John is one of the few restaurants where you can dine extensively on offal such as spleen and tripe.
He also co-owns St John Bread and Wine near Spitalfields market in London.
Career guide
Henderson attributes his passion for food to his mother’s skills in the kitchen and his father’s hearty appetite.
While training to be an architect in London, Henderson and two friends persuaded the owners of Smith’s restaurant in Covent Garden to let him and two friends take over the kitchens on Sundays. They cooked lunches for up to 300 friends at a time.
He got his first chance to run his own kitchen for a month when a friend opened a club, The Globe, in Notting Hill. Henderson then landed his first formal job as a commis chef back at Smith’s, where he worked for eight months.
In 1992, he opened his first restaurant, the French Dining Room above a pub in Soho with his wife Margot (an experienced chef) and partner John Spiteri.
Henderson, Spiteri and Trevor Gulliver (owner of the Fire Station restaurant in Waterloo) then opened St John in a former bacon smokehouse in October 1994. St John Bread and Wine followed in May 2003.
What we think
Henderson has played a major role in popularising British cuisine and has had a major influence on the development of the gastropubs. His cuisine, which is described as gutsy, butch and tasty, has revived little-used skills such as brining and preserving but he regards his style as neither traditional nor modern but ‘permanent’ British.
His approach is summed up by the title of his 1999 cook book (which won the André Simon Award) which is called Nose to Tail Eating – A Kind of British Cooking (or The Whole Beast in its US publication).
His carnivorous menu makes room for almost every part of an animal, from its innards to its extremities. As well as the commonly-used shoulders, loins and leg of a pig, St John will serve up the heart, liver, spleen, lungs, kidneys, belly, skin, trotters, tail, small intestines and head (snout, ears, tongue or cheek).
The menu also features tripe, ox tongue, calves heart, duck’s neck, lamb’s brains, veal bone marrow and – on one controversial occasion in 2002, braised squirrel. Despite its focus, the restaurant does also cater for vegetarians.
Henderson’s simply-presented food is stripped to its basic ingredients and avoids garnish, an approach that demands the use of the highest-quality produce. Dishes are listed simply by their main ingredients.
St John won the both the London Restaurant and British Restaurant of the Year accolades in 2001 London Restaurant Awards. Its offspring, St John Bread and Wine incorporates a bakery, bar and open kitchen and offers wines, bread and food to eat in or take away.