Here I am in England for a few days to see family and friends \u2013 and to join one of Charlie Burger\u2019s mysterious dinners. This is the first one he has organized in Europe and he could scarcely have chosen a more interesting location \u2013 St. John, the restaurant opened close to Smithfield meat market by English chef Fergus Henderson in 1995.<\/p>\n
\u00a0I\u2019m intrigued to find out who Burger really is. I\u2019m even more excited to eat at St. John. This is the food that changed the way the world thought about English food \u2013 changed the way the English thought about English food, come to that. Scrupulously honest cooking, using up every part of the animal, not at all fancy, substantial and satisfying, deeply unpretentious. As is the building where the restaurant is located, right across the road from the meat market, along a short passageway. Famously, it was an old smokehouse and equally famously Fergus Henderson and his partner did very little to it. One enters the bar \u2013 like a covered alleyway with a big zinc bar and some tables and chairs. Lots of people in shirtsleeves and jeans having a pint or glass of wine. I realize that I am, as so often, overdressed and quietly slip off my pencil-thin tangerine-and-cream-striped Jaeger tie, quickly rolling it and concealing it in the pocket of my off-white Brunello Cucinelli trousers.<\/p>\n
\u00a0I\u2019m very early (London traffic is not what it was in my day). I climb the iron steps and into the odd-shaped room \u2013 the dining room. The greeting is pleasant, humane, not remotely fawning. The servers \u2013 and there are many of them \u2013 have the discreet self-confidence you would expect at one of the 50 best restaurants in the world. Even if the room looks a bit like a works canteen with its high ceiling, white walls, painted but scuffed wooden floorboards. A line of coat pegs runs all round the room about seven feet off the ground (the right height given the height of the ceiling, but oddly high). They remind me of my prep school \u2013 as does the lack of any art on the walls and the reinforced glass in the windows. On the tables, white paper covers white linen; glassware and cutlery are very ordinary, the hard wooden bentwood chairs as plain as can be. The whole place, indeed, is very plain and under-decorated \u2013 aggressively so, or passively so?<\/p>\n
\u00a0That question is very much at the heart of Fergus Henderson\u2019s position in gastronomy these days. Anthony Bourdain addresses it in the introduction to the 2004 reprint of Henderson\u2019s seminal 1999 cookbook, Nose to Tail Eating. When he first ate at St. John, Bourdain was so overwhelmed and impressed by the simple integrity of the food that he read all sorts of political motivation into it. \u201cI saw his simple, honest, traditional English country fare as a thumb in the eye to the establishment,\u201d says Bourdain, \u201can outrageously timed head butt to the growing hordes of politically correct, the PETA people, the European Union, practitioners of arch, ironic Fusion Cuisine and all those chefs who were fussing about with tall, overly sculpted entr\u00e9es of little substance and less soul.\u201d Having come to know Henderson, he now sees there is no hidden manifesto, just a respectful homage to good food. I\u2019m sure he\u2019s right about the place Henderson is coming from. But that doesn\u2019t make his first reaction wrong. This food, and the cookbooks Henderson has written about it, have been incredibly influential, the influence felt in New York, Toronto, even Paris and Sydney.<\/p>\n
\u00a0The answer perhaps is in the mood of the restaurant-goers tonight. They are merry, casual, unpretentious \u2013 just people having dinner, not people making a socio-gastronomic statement. It is all very democratic but not archly so, not cocky or defiant.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Charlie Burger and the other guests arrive. Our table is positioned right in front of the open kitchen. Burger and Henderson have devised the menu between them \u2013 six courses featuring some of the chef\u2019s most iconic dishes.<\/p>\n
\u00a0The bread comes \u2013 thick slices of the crunchy-crusted, fragrant brown and white sourdough loaves that are baked at Henderson\u2019s other place, St. John Bread & Wine. A square of ordinary salted butter on a saucer.<\/p>\n
\u00a0The first course is devilled crab, served cold \u2013 huge bowls of Portland (Dorset) crab broken into large pieces, the shells partially cracked but not removed, cooked in a sauce of olive oil, garlic, ginger, chopped spring onions, fresh coriander leaves, lemon and lime juice and very finely julienned red chilies. We are all given hooks and pliers and a spare napkin. I decide discretion is the better part of fashion and remove my beige Bugatti blazer. Charlie Burger and I consider the snowy expanses of each other\u2019s white shirts and weigh up the merits of tucking a napkin into the collar. Neither of us do it. Let the sauce fall where it may.<\/p>\n
\u00a0It\u2019s a delicious dish. The chilies are a subtle warmth behind the more obvious citrus and ginger tang. The crab meat is juicy but not watery (because they were boiled in water as salty as the sea). The wine, Domaine Francois Crochet 2009 Sancerre, is an elegant match, undaunted by the sauce. It takes us almost an hour to do justice to the generous helping and there is no possibility of daintiness as we crack claws, lick fingers and pry the treasured flesh from the chitinous chambers of the crabs\u2019 bodies. Several fingerbowls and napkins later, the social ice has been broken and melted away. My shirt and Charlie\u2019s are pristine.<\/p>\n
\u00a0The second course is another Henderson trademark \u2013 trotter gear and quail\u2019s egg. Trotter gear is awesome stuff. To make it, you must blanche pig\u2019s trotters then braise them for at least three hours with onions, carrots, celery, leeks, garlic, thyme, peppercorns, chicken stock and half a bottle of Madeira until they are, in Henderson\u2019s words, \u201ctotally giving.\u201d Drain off the liquid and reserve it. Then pick and shred all the flesh, fat and skin off the trotters, add it to the reserved liquid and keep it in a jar until you need it. \u201cYou now have Trotter Gear,\u201d writes Henderson in his second book, Beyond Nose to Tail, \u201cnuduals of giving, wobbly trotter captured in a splendid jelly.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0Tonight we each receive a ramekin of warm trotter gear with a couple of quail\u2019s eggs cooked in it. It\u2019s rich, unctuous, the many subtle textures of the semi-solid gear slipping about in the looser melted-jelly cooking liquid. The eggs are cooked through and provide an island of substance. We all use chunks of bread to mop our ramekins clean. The wine takes a friendly back seat to the experience \u2013 a Domaine Jean-Claude Lapalu 2008 Brouilly Vielles Vignes.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Onto the main course \u2013 tripe and onions slow-cooked in milk with mashed potatoes. I have a checkered past where this dish is concerned. My grandmother used to cook the identical recipe for my dad. She was brought up on a farm in North Devon and this was something of a staple in those parts. It was my father\u2019s favourite dish but to me, as a child, it always looked terrifying \u2013 the yellowish sponge-like flubber trembling in the gently moving milk. The thought of eating it nauseated me. It was only as an adult that I learned to love the stuff.<\/p>\n
Henderson\u2019s recipe couldn\u2019t be simpler. He thickens the milk with a roux of butter and flour, adds chicken stock and a little mace then poaches the tripe and thinly sliced onions. Where his mastery is apparent is the timing. The beige tripe (from Irish cattle) is incredibly tender \u2013 I cut it with a fork \u2013 but still has that faint soft crunch that you also find in Cantonese jellyfish dishes. Here it is more like eating a giant morel than a sea creature, a morel bathing in chicken stock and bechamel. The firm mashed potatoes are more of a sop for the sauce than anything else.<\/p>\n
And the wine? My ideal match for this dish is a dry cider from Somerset or Brittany. We receive Domaine JP Matrot 2007 Meursault Rouge.<\/p>\n
\u00a0The fourth course is intended to keep scurvy at bay, according to Charlie Burger \u2013 a salad of watercress and soft roasted purple shallots, heaped on a platter and wet with a vinaigrette dressing spiked with crushed capers. It\u2019s tangy, rich, moist, delicious \u2013 and just refreshing enough to be welcome.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Onto the savoury \u2013 a classic buck rarebit. Melt strong Cheddar into a bubbling pan of butter, flour, mustard powder, cayenne pepper, Guinness and Worcestershire sauce. Let it cool into a paste then spread the paste as needed onto a slice of toast and put under the grill until bubbly. That\u2019s a Welsh rarebit of course. Turn it into a buck rabbit by putting a poached egg on top. Tonight, it makes an ideal contribution \u2013 spicy, rich, the crunchy toast beneath the piquant molten cheese a substantial presence. This time the wine pairing is brilliant \u2013 Fonseca 1977 vintage port, as rich and spicy in its own way as the rarebit.<\/p>\n
\u00a0The finale is Dr Henderson ice cream and it splits the party neatly into lovers and haters. This is an ice cream made from two parts Fernet Branca and one part cr\u00e8me de menthe, a drink that the chef\u2019s father enjoyed as a hangover cure. It is certainly a peculiar ice cream \u2013 bitter, herbal, minty, sweet, medicinal\u2026 Most of our group agrees that cr\u00e8me de menthe is one of the very few alcoholic beverages we hate. Burger points out that the other mass-market French mint liqueurs Jet 27 (clear) and Jet 31 (green – or is it the other way around?) are even more vile and toothpaste-like. As an ice cream, however, the combination works for me, the bitters ruling the roost. A shot of Vieille Prune cuts through it nicely.<\/p>\n
\u00a0With the bill (an extremely reasonable 145 pounds (Charlie Burger\u2019s events are not-for-profit)) come some freshly made, hot-from-the-oven madeleines. In the kitchen, head chef Chris Gillaud, who cooked for us tonight, is busy shaving a piglet for tomorrow\u2019s service.<\/p>\n
\u00a0We conclude at midnight \u2013 four and a half hours after we began. The tireless Burger leads a group to a drinking establishment he favours in Covent Garden. I head home, extremely pleased with the evening, clutching my copy of Beyond Nose to Tail, signed by Fergus Henderson with a handwritten promise that he will come to Toronto \u201csome day\u201d and cook a Charlie Burger event. That will be a home-and-home I won\u2019t want to miss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here I am in England for a few days to see family and friends \u2013 and to join one of Charlie Burger\u2019s mysterious dinners. This is the first one he has organized in Europe and he could scarcely have chosen a more interesting location \u2013 St. John, the restaurant opened close to Smithfield meat market […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[97,106,1,19,103],"tags":[72,70,71,69],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2123,"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions\/2123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}