Hopkinson and the top one hundred
Reading Paul Richardson’s fascinating interview last week with Simon Hopkinson in The Telegraph that marks the former chef-patron of Bibendum in London and cookbook author’s 70th birthday, I wondered how many chefs on the new National Restaurant Awards top 100 list will be interviewed in a national paper on their 70th birthdays about their signature dishes? (In Hopkinson’s case, Richardson says that means ‘the sublimely no-fuss recipe that taught a generation of home cooks (myself included) to smear four ounces of butter over a chicken ‘with your hands’ before roasting until ‘buttery, lemony juices of a nut-brown colour’ have collected at the bottom of the pan’).
Gordon Ramsay probably, but because of his fame and filthy gob rather than his contribution to British cuisine. Clare Smyth, as the first British female chef to hold three Michelin stars? Maybe. But what about Brett Graham who tops the list with the three Michelin-starred The Ledbury, or Tomos Parry at number two with Mountain, his wood grill-based restaurant? Is growing mushrooms in a cabinet next to your loo (Graham) or popularising ‘retired’ dairy cow (Parry) enough to put them in the pantheon of the all-time greats?
Will Gareth Ward of Ynyshir in Wales (number 5) still be talking about his 30-course menu plus disco ball in thirty-odd years? Will Simon Rogan of L’Enclume fame (number 20) be waxing lyrical about how he sold a load of old weeds for £250 a pop transformed British fine dining with his farm-to-table cooking? Who will interview Jeremy Chan and Iré Hassan Odukale of Ikoyi (number 10) or Roerbta Hall-McCarron of The Little Chartroom (number 45)?
It’s not that any of these chefs might be less interesting to talk to or any less talented than Hopkinson. But as one of the architects of what came to be known as ‘Modern British cooking’ Hopkinson can lay claim to helping to lay the foundations of the UK restaurant scene as we know it today. The late 80s to early 90s, when Hopkinson headed up the brigade at Bibendum, was a period of radical change that saw chefs struggling free from the straight jackets of bistros, trattorias and tavernas and creating something more personal and nuanced. That change could only happen once and everything since has been a process of iteration and refinement.
Although he retired from the professional kitchen in 1994 after Alain Ducasse went into the kitchen at Bibendum and asked him for his steamed ginger pudding recipe (that’s an odd straw to have broken the camel’s back but that’s literally what happened, read the interview linked above if you don’t believe me), Hopkinson’s influence is still evident, most obviously on the menus of Bibendum alumni still cooking today.
You’ll find his rabbit with bacon and mustard sauce on Henry Harris’s menu at Bouchon Racine (number 4), Piedmontese peppers on Bruce Poole’s menu at Chez Bruce (number 70) and pesto glazed aubergine at Phil Howard’s Elystan Street (not a top 100 restaurant). Although many people associate the resurgence of offal on menus with Fergus Henderson, Hopkinson was serving a salad of calf’s brain with sauce ravigote in 1989, five years before St John opened. Now, you may well find calf’s brain on Neil Borthwick’s specials board at The French House (number 54).
It may seem strange to call a chef whose style was described in 1996 by the AA Restaurant Guide as ‘influenced by the recipes of Elizabeth David, the cuisine of the Mediterranean and the Far East and the reworking of British traditional dishes’, as revolutionary. But that mix only sounds so familiar because Hopkinson helped establish it as a basis of so much restaurant cooking in the UK.
Will his influence still be felt in another 30 years’ time? What disparate elements that make up the restaurants in this year’s list - live fire cooking, fermentation, meat-dashi-umami heavy cooking, highly intricate experiential tasting menus, farm-to-fork sustainability, ‘authentic’ Thai, classic French etc - will be reflected in the National Restaurant Awards 2055? Will we (well, some of you at least, I’ll be long gone by then) look back on the 2020s as a golden era of British restaurant cooking? Or will we agree with Hopkinson who says that ‘‘The food in this country has gone completely bonkers’? I’m off to mull over that question while massaging a chicken with four ounces of butter. I may be some time.
Review of the reviews
Giles Coren, The Times
London Shell Co, London (9.67)
I’ve enjoyed writing Smashed #29 but, as you will come to see, it hasn’t been a vintage week in terms of the restaurants under review or the reviews themselves. So come on Giles me old son, pull it out of the bag, slam it into the back of the net, get a hole in one, ace it, knock it for six, get it out for a duck, pedal to the metal, take no prisoners, don’t suffer fools gladly, drop it like it’s hot, smoke 'em if you got 'em, fight the power, fight the powers that be, block the path of the horses, melt the stars, become a sacred fountain and, er, write a good review, there’s a good chap.
Coren addresses the use of hyperbole in his columns, which is something I’ve remarked on several times in the past, although his prompt was below-the-line comments rather than this newsletter (I might do an entire edition just talking about below-the-line comments, they are so much fun as you’ll see when we talk about Jay Rayner’s review). Coren confesses that (or should that be ‘breaks his silence’ or ‘hits back at hyperbole hassle’. You’ve got to get the page views somehow haven’t you?), ‘saying, “This is the best restaurant in the world,” after a meal is like saying, “I love you,” after sex. It’s a hormone rush. It feels true at the time; it’s an honest feeling. But it doesn’t mean you’re not going to be saying it to someone else next week.’
So now we know. Don’t believe a word Coren says immediately after he’s gobbled a gypsy tart. This week a small restaurant inside a fishmonger in Highgate ‘is absolutely, positively the best restaurant in the whole wide world ever, I mean it’. But now we know he doesn’t, so that’s OK. And that it’s not worth the 9.67 he’s scored it. But we’d all probably worked that out before Coren said anything. Everything’s better with a large pinch of salt, except this newsletter which everyone says is the best in the world and really ought to be taken at face value.
It does sound lovely: the freshest of seafood cooking simply but with some verve and imagination. But before you hightail it to Highgate to experience the best (not the best) restaurant in the whole wide world ever, it’s worth remembering that Coren is a local and a regular and sometimes he wants to go where everybody knows his name and they’re always glad he came. So, do go for the ‘sharing John Dory (£60)’ that ‘comes with mushrooms and chicken butter, the Dover sole with a curry mussel butter (£31)’ and ‘the butterflied red mullet with a crab and lobster risotto (£33)’. I have no doubt they will be great and that you’ll get the sort of service from ‘ebullient waitress’ Eliza Rogers that has made Coren think of her as ‘my queen’. Just don’t expect it to be the best in the world.
Or maybe it is.
I’ve got a headache.
I feel an overwhelming need to lie down.
Best line: Not that sort of review. It’s just not my week.
Worst line: See above
Did the review make me want to book a table: If I was a local…
Jay Rayner, The Observer
Gaia, London
This week, Jay Rayner has decided to review a very expensive ‘Greek’ restaurant owned by a Dubai-based Russian where the fish sold by weight includes mackerel at £100 a kilo. Rayner says he knows none of his readers will go to. It’s such a pointless exercise that I’m not going to review the review. Instead, let’s look at a few of the 887 highly illuminating below-the-line comments that the dog whistle write-up was obviously designed to elicit and see what it tells us about the Observer’s readership and the current state of broadsheet journalism.
‘Fireangel’ says, ‘Marks and Spencers do thick sirloin steaks for £10 to £19 - so this is absurd really’. Quite right Fireangel, steak sold in a high street retailer is an excellent benchmark for what you should expect to pay for an entirely different product in a Mayfair restaurant aimed at the super-rich.
‘MarvinH2G2’ has some great advice for people reading a restaurant review in the hope of inspiration for their next night out: ‘For that price: buy a good T-bone, a good bottle of wine, buy a sous vide machine, heat to perfect 55 and then pan sear (or better BBQ) the outside. Even 1 steak will break even, and thereafter the need to eat out expensively will decrease.’ Cheers MarvinH2G2, you’ve really hit the nail on the head. I was going to book tickets for Carmen at Glyndebourne but after reading your comment I realised I could save myself £285 by staying at home, making hand puppets of Aigul Akhmetshina and Evan Leroy Johnson by drawing their faces on some old Greggs paper bags and then simply singing the entire score myself.
Ricj45s says: ‘I’ve no real qualms about people spending fortunes on things they like (provided it’s not like child trafficking, illegal poaching etc)’. Er, thanks for that Ricj45s but if you’re spending a fortune trafficking children or poaching ‘illegally’ then you’re doing it all wrong. Drop me a line and I can put you straight. You’ll soon be earning enough to eat at Gaia every night of the week.
PetetheTree tells us that he ‘bought a Charlie Bigham's Chicken Jalfrezi from the reduced section a few weeks back just to see what the fuss was about, and have since become a convert’. That’s great news PetetheTree! Charlie will be delighted. Please keep us updated with any other reduced supermarket lines you’ve recently become enamoured with. Perhaps you could set up a BlueSky account dedicated to the subject?
SuedeNym says, ‘Makes me feel sick. Starving millions obviously not a problem for the greed of this company nor its clients. I wouldn't give it column space, even for a laugh.' Quite right too SuedeNym, there’s obviously a direct correlation between world hunger and posh restaurants. Maybe they should make the posh restaurants bigger and then all the starving people could get a reservation. Just a thought.
Best line: ‘Gaia, which hilariously describes itself as a “refined taverna”, much I suppose as the Ritz across the road is a refined Travelodge’
Worst line: N/A
Did the review make me want to book a table: I’ve spent all my money on child trafficking, illegal poaching etc
To keep reading the Review of the Reviews and For Old Dine’s Sake, subscribe to Smashed. You know it makes sense.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Smashed to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.