02.06.17 london food month edition
fame hungry The cult restaurants loved by the A-list
angela Hartnett clerkenwell boy and the A to Z no food lover should be without
A taste of things to come London’s new gen foodies
Grace Dent How she ate her way to the top
editor’s letter ‘Sure, LA, New York and Tokyo have great restaurants, but if you read Grace & Flavour every week here in ES, you’ll know I think London is the most exciting place on earth to eat. As creative director of the first London Food Month, running throughout June in every corner of the capital, I’ve decided to prove it. This fabulous ES food special, guest edited by me, is designed for glamorous yet greedy sorts who love to slurp, nibble and daintily gorge. It’s for those who love carousing and cocktailing. We give you the inside scoop on London’s celebrity dining cliques: where they eat, who’s at the table and what they’re ordering. In ‘Made in Manhattan’, we look at why the chefs and restaurateurs who’ve conquered the Big Apple are so obsessed with bringing their magic to London. Frankie McCoy has written us the definitive summer 2017 food-fuelled A-Z, with all the buzzwords you need to fake it as a foodie. I turn the tables on Instagram royalty Clerkenwell Boy and set him loose on my Grace & Flavour column, while I take you on a journey from Wimpy to The Wolseley explaining the peculiar turn of events that led a little girl from Carlisle who likes the supermarket chiller aisle to be, albeit temporarily for June, the queen of London’s food scene. Bon appétit. Remember, you can always start juicing again in July.’
COVER Grace Dent photographed by Morgane Lay & Jonny Cochrane. TIBI dress, £715, Fenwick of Bond Street (020 7629 9161). MARNI earrings, £460 (020 7245 9520)
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The Ivy at LFM Night Market ‘The Ivy is bringing glamour to the street with its only food festival appearance this year — it will be serving its classic British shepherd’s pie at the Night Market.’ Wendy Tee, acting art director
PS. Look out for the stamp throughout the magazine to discover all of the exciting events on in June.
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The ES team pick five LFM events they are looking forward to
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Mews of Mayfair at LFM Night Market ‘Mews of Mayfair is starring at the new Night Market and I’ll be first in the queue for its signature truffle cheeseburger.’ Matt Hryciw, chief sub editor
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Ketel One Dutch Brunch at Paradise Garage with Symmetry Breakfast ‘Brunch with Ketel One vodka? Yes Please! Plus it’ll be super Instagramable what with it being in partnership with Symmetry Breakfast.’ Helen Gibson, picture editor
Lunch at the Groucho Club ‘I can’t wait for LFM’s collaboration with the iconic Groucho Club, with guest chefs such as Tom Oldroyd and Ren Patel hosting lunches throughout June.’ Natalie Salmon, social media editor
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Bloodshot Supper Club ‘Not for the fainthearted, Bloodshot will finally be opening its doors to the public, having previously been for industry folk only. I can’t wait to see what weird concoctions Robin Gill has up his sleeve!’ Clara Dorrington, picture desk assistant
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@ESmagofficial
Editor Laura Weir Acting Editor Charlotte Ross Deputy editor Anna van Praagh Features director Alice-Azania Jarvis Acting art director Wendy Tee Fashion director Nicky Yates Fashion features director Katrina Israel
Jonny Cochrane, Eyevine
Commissioning editor Dipal Acharya Beauty editor Katie Service Associate features editor Hamish MacBain Features writer Frankie McCoy Lifestyle assistant Lily Worcester
Acting art editor Andy Taylor Art editor Jessica Landon Picture editor Helen Gibson Picture desk assistant Clara Dorrington Social media editor Natalie Salmon Office administrator/editor’s PA Niamh O’Keeffe
Merchandise editor Sophie Paxton Fashion editor Jenny Kennedy Fashion assistant Eniola Dare Chief sub editor Matt Hryciw
Contributing editors Lucy Carr-Ellison, Tony Chambers, James Corden, Hermione Eyre, Richard Godwin, Daisy Hoppen, Jemima Jones, Anthony Kendal, David Lane, Annabel Rivkin, Teo van den Broeke, Hikari Yokoyama Group client strategy director Deborah Rosenegk Head of magazines Christina Irvine
ES Magazine is published weekly and is available only with the London Evening Standard. ES Magazine is published by Evening Standard Ltd, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, Kensington, London W8 5TT. ES is printed web offset by Wyndeham Bicester. Paper supplied by Perlen Paper AG. Colour transparencies or any other material submitted to ES Magazine are sent at owner’s risk. Neither Evening Standard Ltd nor their agents accept any liability for loss or damage. © Evening Standard Ltd 2016. Reproduction in whole or part of any contents of ES Magazine without prior permission of the editor is strictly prohibited
02.06.17 es magazine
VICTORIA BECKHAM dress, £1,395, at mytheresa.com. MARNI earrings, £450, at Fenwick of Bond Street (020 7629 9161) Make-up by Sally Bahri using Tom Ford and Armani Luminous Silk Foundation. Nails by Georgia Hart at Stella Creative Artists using Illamasqua
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From
wimpy to The wolseley
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She grew up on Findus Crispy Pancakes and mince, but that didn’t stop Grace Dent becoming one of London’s most influential foodies. Here she spills on the highs and lows of the best job in the capital PhotographS BY morgane lay & Jonny cochrane
t’s 1983, on my 10th birthday and as well as Union of The Snake by Duran Duran on 7-inch vinyl and a can of Impulse ‘Suddenly Sassy’ body spray, I’m in for an enormous treat. I’m off to a fancy restaurant for a slap-up feed, as Minnie the Minx might say. We’re going to the Wimpy in Carlisle for a hamburger. Perhaps even with a slice of melted cheese on top just like Arnold makes it in Happy Days. Furthermore, if me and my little brother David behave and ‘don’t show my mother up’ throughout the first course, we may be permitted something so magical I can hardly breathe with anticipation all day at school. A Wimpy Knickerbocker Glory. This, for the uninitiated, is a tall glass filled decadently with ice cream, lurid red sauces, squirty cream and topped cheekily with a glacé cherry. Stacey Henderson in my class reckoned she had one on her ninth birthday but we all reckon she’s making it up. Stacey also says her uncle is David Van Day from Dollar. What a dreamer. To put my joy for London’s food, seen every week in this magazine, in context, one must understand that the Cumbrian culinary landscape in the 1980s was a siltshaded smorgasbord of boiled potato, Mother’s Pride loaf and Findus Crispy Pancakes. Sometimes my father, who had been abroad with the Army, would make his exotic spag bol: mince stewed in Campbell’s condensed tomato soup. Sometimes we’d have liver, which I still hate to this day,
following years of being sent off on errands to the Walter Wilson butcher’s counter for half a pound of lamb’s internal organs. I grew up in a mono-cultural Protestant landscape untroubled by spice or herb. It was meat and two veg, except after the big Asda arrived in Carlisle and we bought our first trunk freezer — the veg was frozen because peeling stuff was now considered a waste of time. I still adore supermarkets to this day. Jetlagged and homesick in LA, I can often be found in Trader Joe’s, not buying, just pushing a trolley, looking. Back at the Wimpy, that cold afternoon in October perched at our little table with immovable plastic seats welded to the walls, I have my very first taste of being a culinary trend-setter. ‘No, I don’t want the Knickerbocker Glory,’ I say, sensing that my 10th birthday was time for new swagger and maturity, ‘I’ll have a Brown Derby.’ The ‘Derby’, I know already, is a classier affair. A warm sugary doughnut, smothered in cream and drizzled in chocolate sauce. This, I know, is the kind of thing Simon Le Bon would definitely take you for after serenading you on a beach in a Save A Prayer video. Later on, high as a kite on refined sugar and trans-fats, I plan my bragging rights for tomorrow morning at Bishop Goodwin Juniors, to tell Stacey Henderson while we finish the giant mural of St Francis of Assisi made of old eggboxes. I’ve learned an important lesson today about the life-enhancing nature of food. My anti-foodie upbringing is pretty unusual in my genre, and is no doubt why I always feel slightly different from the majority
of food scene folk. The landscape is teeming with moist-eyed souls claiming to have mastered souffle ‘at their mother’s knee’ or tasted langoustine during family summers circumnavigating the Aegean. I am not an anti-posh foodie, far from it. Some of my best friends spend weekends eating rhubarb grown in their father’s prize-winning organic estate, and shooting grouse that are normally too overfed to run in the name of sport. But due to various complex socio-economic and social mobility trends dating back at least 100 years, which I could explain with graphs and flipboards, there are just not many foodwriters around who existed during the Eighties on Mr Kipling individual apple pies, McCain oven chips and Space Dust.
“Becoming a restaurant critic was an accident. A huge, happy one, but unplanned” Or, for that matter, who are the first person in their ancestral line to use chopsticks for anything other than to push up their nose and pretend to be a walrus. ‘But Grace, you’re a breath of fresh air!’, TV and radio bookers say, which we all know means ‘a bit common’. On any judging panel I am a semi-passable, diversity box-ticking foil to three white men in corduroy jackets called Caspar. Becoming a restaurant critic was really an accident. A huge, happy one, but unplanned nevertheless. I was a writer and author
02.06.17 es magazine 21
The taste m
Ja
David Carter smokestak chef/ owner
Imogen Davis
native co-founder
Seb Myers
Elizabeth Allen
Snackbar co-creator
Shibui chef/owner
Freddie Janssen
Snackbar co-creator
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e makers Jamie Strachan Dark arts head of coffee
r
Zoe Adjonyoh
Zoe’s ghana kitchen chef/owner
Adrian Luckie Mama’s Jerk owner
Mandy Yin Sambal Shiok chef/owner
Andrew Clarke brunswick house chef director
They’re young, they’re talented — and they’re spicing up the capital’s food scene with their game-changing creations. Frankie McCoy meets the new guard bringing London Food Month to life PhotographS BY Louise Haywood-Schiefer
Elizabeth wears ZARA shirt, £29.99 (zara. com). BDG jeans, £50, at urbanoutfitters.com. Seb wears FRENCH CONNECTION T-shirt, £25 (frenchconnection. com). Imogen wears H&M top, £12.99 (h&m.com )
02.06.17 es magazine 31
my london
angela hartnett as told to lily worcester
Home is… East London, Spitalfields — I’ve lived there for 14 years now. I’ve got a little garden, which is nice, and my partner and I have just got some bees, so we are waiting for our first honey, which should be fantastic.
Best meal you’ve had? One recent highlight was Elystan Street, Phil Howard’s place in Chelsea. The food (right) is just delicious. I went for Sunday lunch with friends at one o’clock and we were still there at half past six. That’s a sign of great lunch, that you’re still there five hours later! Biggest extravagance? Before Christmas we had people round for supper and had loads of white truffles, so that was quite an extravagant one. It was a great day.
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Who’s your hero? Fergus Henderson from St John. His influence on London restaurants is second to none. So many chefs have come out of his kitchen and now run their own restaurant. To me he is a great culinary hero. Favourite pub? The Golden Heart (below) around the corner from where I live, run by a lady called Sandra who’s had it for about 40 years. She doesn’t do food, just crisps. It’s a proper old boozer.
The LFM star collects Elizabeth David books, shops at Spa Terminus — and has been known to enjoy a KFC when hungover Earliest London memory? Probably visiting Fortnum & Mason — my grandmother, if she came up to London, would always go there to have Welsh rarebit. Best thing a cabbie has ever said to you? I was going to work at The Connaught and I’d been out the night before. I was a bit hungover, so I was eating a KFC sandwich in the back and the driver goes, ‘Gordon’s not going to like that is he Ange!?’ I said, ‘Gordon doesn’t have to know.’
Favourite London shops? I love La Fromagerie in Marylebone. Patricia Michelson’s produce (below) is incredible; she gets the best of the best. She’s been doing it for more than 20 years now, so she really knows her stuff. Down at Spa Terminus in Bermondsey you’ve also got brilliant shops — there’s The Ham & Cheese Co, which does lovely charcuterie, The Little Bread Pedlar, which does wonderful breads, and then you’ve also got Steve the honey man. Best place for a nightcap? If it was after work probably Little House, which is across the road from Murano.
Who do you call when you want to have fun? Jason [Atherton] and Marcus [Wareing]. But if you really want a fun night, you go out with Margot Henderson. We usually end up dancing on the tables and drinking too much. Best piece of advice you have been given? You’re only as good as your last meal. Gordon always talks about consistency, making sure everything is as it should be. Angela Hartnett will headline the Night Market at London Food Month. 7-18 June. (londonfoodmonth.co.uk; muranolondon.com)
Alamy
Where would you recommend for a first date? I once went on a really unusual date with a choir boy — choir man, rather — at Westminster Cathedral (above). I met him there and he showed me around the whole cathedral. I was there while they were practising and then we went for lunch.
What do you collect? Elizabeth David cookery books (above); I’ve got first editions of most of them.