Fergus and Margot Henderson are the beating heart of modern British cooking

Matters have not generally been uncomplicated the very last time I achieved Fergus, a several several years in the past, he explained the romance between himself and Gulliver as “tricky”. The romance involving Margot and Trevor has at instances been chillier Fergus describes “a bizarre slipping-out. A good disgrace.”

When I put the exact query to Gulliver, he states: “There’s a ton ahead of us and a great deal of superior issues.” If there have been ability struggles, he does not disclose them. “I adore Fergus dearly, he’s one particular of the fantastic men,” he claims. “He and I go back again such a extended time, and St John was tough function for the 1st 5 decades. At moments, in the entire world of dining establishments, naivety is a great point.” Following St John hit what Gulliver describes as “an iceberg” throughout the pandemic, “we lost hundreds of thousands of kilos in turnover,” he claims. A mantra of action and positivity appears to now be in position. The “good things” include a new St John web-site opening soon in central London, refurbishment of the bakery, a even larger on the internet retail giving and a St John outfits collaboration with Drake’s. But there is function to pull the organization out of its “debt pile”, in Gulliver’s words and phrases.

At Rochelle, Margot is also having difficulties with the capital’s new flavor for hybrid doing work. “London is quiet!” she booms. “I want to be a bit bossy and say ‘we need to have to be again in the office’.” She bangs the desk. “Restaurants! Outlets!”

She despairs of how London is modifying. “The people in serious estate are ruining it. Greed is ruining it. There aren’t any corner outlets in Covent Garden any more, it is all about promoting some unguent,” she claims. “And restaurant price ranges in Soho – I consider it’s just disgusting.”

Specified the possibility once again, she would do lockdown otherwise, she says. “I would not be concerned about function.” Alongside Rochelle Canteen, she and Melanie Arnold are patrons of a catering undertaking at the ICA, which had to be place into voluntary liquidation because of the pandemic. “We had been just rocketing into pink figures,” she says. “It was a great business enterprise, but it was not successful. The beneficial is we have this seriously wonderful tent [clear plastic over the outdoor tables]. We have got a lot less and we have hunkered down.”

When her employees returned from lockdown, she sensed that quite a few of them had also been “lying on their beds imagining ‘is this exactly where I want to be?’ That was my 1st feeling when we came again. I could perception it, I understood some men and women were being on the lookout for a alter. Persons really don’t want to be doing work each shift under the sun. Cooks are acquiring superior hours and wages – it is a good time to be in the field.”

She is turning to consultancy, way too – she and Hector are producing a sandwich line named Margot’s Delight for a new food stuff current market at Centre Point. The enterprise is led by Karam Sethi and JKS Dining establishments, who have correctly backed the likes of Bao. In the exact vein, she is arranging the meals for a pub in Somerset, outside Bruton, with art dealer Max Wigram. But there is a little sense of nagging annoyance that she and Fergus didn’t become very long-expression associates in the kitchen area, as effectively as at property.

Soon after a malt chocolate ice-cream pudding, Fergus cuts outdoors for an additional cigarette. We’d been enjoying a Mr & Mrs quiz, and now it is Margot’s turn. She guesses accurately that Fergus stated his favourite culinary city was Paris, that her favorite food was at Ikeda in London, and that her excellent breakfast is toast. Not all of the solutions have been the exact same, having said that. When I asked Fergus which kitchen employ he’d just take to a desert island, he replied, “a sharp knife”, but Margot experienced other ideas. “He’d get a spurtle,” she suggests. “He enjoys the aesthetics of them. Or, realistically, a corkscrew.”

Right after lunch support the Rochelle Canteen kitchen workers acquire spherical grown-up Hector for a chorus of “Happy Birthday”, and his mother and father stand on the sidelines, hunting on and singing. In the course of the lockdown in 2020, the Henderson clan regrouped into a bubble at house in Stockwell, consuming “far as well much” in the afternoons, Margot says, obsessing around dashi and daikon cake recipes and having fun with “a lot of joyful times”. There is a boozy wholesomeness to the impression and a complete-hearted pleasure of family members life that is mirrored in their technique to dining places: “good lunch, great supper.”

“I believe St John is a position wherever Fergus ought to sit in his old age,” Margot states, invoking the sort of restaurant you may come across in some sunshine-dappled courtyard in France, or Italy – Venice, most likely. Somewhere timeless, welcoming. “Isn’t that what you want from a cafe, even if the pair functioning it are a little bit outdated and gnarled?”

Pictures by Charlie Cummings
Hair and makeup by Michelle Leandra utilizing SUQQU

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