Some revolutions are explosive, cathartic affairs, transitioning from old to new in spectacular fashion. In others, the seismic changes happen so quietly as to go unnoticed at first, as was the case in London’s fine dining scene , which can trace its silent revolution to 1994 when Trevor Gulliver and business partner Fergus Henderson – often considered the daddy of modern British cuisine – opened St John in a former smokehouse in Smithfield, east London , with little fanfare. Their restaurant, now celebrating its 30th anniversary this month, transformed our approach to food so thoroughly it’s hard to imagine life before it.
St John tiptoed into a mid-90s haute cuisine landscape still caught up in rococo presentations, foam and gold-leaf raspberries, and redefined the concept of fine dining through Henderson’s pared-back, ‘nose-to-tail’ ethos. Every part of an animal, particularly pigs, should be used, he believed (his manifesto book Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking tells us how). If it can be prepared in a way that makes it delicious, why throw it away? St John elevated offal and other neglected ‘peasant’ cuts to their rightful place on our plates and became famous for dishes like roasted marrow bones with toast and parsley (pictured below) .
Diners were treated to pig’s ear soup, crispy fried pig tail, jellied tripe, and tête de veau amid spartan interiors devoid of art and music but offset with a crisp, white-tablecloth freshness. There w.