If you talk to a chef, food writer or simply a keen foodie who stalked the dining rooms of London in the 1990s, mention of St John is likely to garner a happy, wistful smile. Fergus Henderson, Trevor Gulliver and Jon Spiteri’s restaurant arrived on the scene in 1994 and raised some eyebrows with its audacity to serve something as simple as humble carrots with a soft-boiled egg. Those who work with food and are involved daily with all of its presentational tricks, swirls, swipes and complexities often hanker for simplicity. While Paul Heathcote and Nigel Haworth were bringing refinement to modern British food, Fergus Henderson was launching nose-to-tail eating – the sustainable practice of consuming as much of an animal as possible. And with warm pig’s head, jellied tripe, deep-fried lamb’s brains, blood cake and fried eggs, the menu was enough to make vegetarians feel like they’d entered the nightmare world of Sweeney Todd and Mrs Lovett’s pie shop. Such simplicity was brave, deliberate and inspiring in the mid-1990s.
