MANILA, Philippines - Who is the British chef and writer, best known for her Michelin star River Cafe and who had a profound influence on a new generation of celebrity chefs like Jamie Oliver, Theo Randall, and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall?
She was born on Jan. 28, 1939 in Bedford. Surrey. Her family later settled in Guildford, and she studied at Guildford College of Art, where she gained a BA in Fine Art, and became friends with Richard Rogers and his first wife, Su Rogers Miller.
Moving to London, she taught fine art at a girls’ school in Shoreditch from 1960-63; during these years she married, started a family, and began to take a serious interest in cooking. The couple designed self-assembly paper lampshades and furniture, and with a friend started a company that sold into Habitat, Liberty and Heal’s.
The growing family fell on hard times, and moved to Tuscany in 1981, to New York in 1985, and back to London in 1986, where she and Janie Longman began running a dinner party catering business.
Later that year, she joined Ruthie Rogers who had the idea for a restaurant in the Thames Wharf space where Richard Rogers’ architectural practice was going to be located. They had a budget of £28,000, which they used to buy furniture and crockery from the Reject shop and second-hand stoves, and the River Café opened in June 1987.
Their common ground was Italy. Both women knew, were influenced by and had cooked with Richard Rogers’ mother, Dada. “She, for her part,” wrote Michael Bateman in a 1995 feature about the restaurant, “came from an intensely food-conscious family. Her grandfather, a former president of the Royal Horticultural Society, had been a serious gourmand.”
The two women agreed that “we wanted to cook the kind of food we ate in people’s homes in Italy, which you couldn’t find in London – the bread soups of Tuscany, such as pappa al pomodoro, or ribollita; or slow-cooked meats such as pork cooked in milk; or the bollito mistos with their essential sauces like salsa verde, salsa di dragoncello; vegetables served at room temperature with extra virgin olive oil; and strong-flavoured ice creams.”
With its Italian home-cooking, served in the most stylish premises of any London restaurant – they were designed, after all, by Richard Rogers – the restaurant was an instant success, and despite its difficult location on the river in Hammersmith, it has always had a waiting list to book a table. In 1988 they were awarded a Michelin star and have kept it ever since.
Moreover, their books were all best-sellers: The River Café Cookbook, the River Café Cookbook Green, River Café Pocketbooks: Salads and Vegetables, and the River Café Classic Italian Cookery Book. She later presented a twelve part television program for Channel 4, the Italian Kitchen in 1998.
And because they had enormous audiences for their television programmes, and trained many of the younger generation of star chefs and front-of-house people. Jamie Oliver was “discovered” there when Channel 4 was filming its 12-part series; and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall trained with them. She once said, with more than a touch of irony, “the River Café is not really a business; it’s a finishing school for the children of our friends.” And it’s certainly true that it’s the only restaurant in London where high-up BBC executives, heads of publishing houses and leading politicians of the day were regularly served by the son of a famous novelist, by the daughter and son of a celebrated poet.
They had also a great influence on the way Britain eats. They did much to popularize the view of Italian cuisine as comprising simple techniques coupled with the use of good ingredients, both because they caught the receptive foodie moment of the late-1980s, and because they reached a considerably larger audience than several, excellent predecessors who preached the same Italian food gospel. In 1996 Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker praised the Riverside as the best Italian restaurant in the world, to a mixed reaction of outrage and glee.
In 2001 she was diagnosed with breast cancer; in 2004 she became a breast cancer ambassador and was also co-founder of the Cooks in Schools charity. She and Ruthie Rogers were both awarded MBEs in the 2009 New Year’s Honors List. She died in her home in London in February 2010.
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