A choice of this year’s cook books

The revolving doors of the 1990s’ restaurant scene saw a cast of great characters, sadly now on the wane. One of the so-called ‘modern British’ movement’s greatest champions, Terence Conran, has departed; we have lost Alastair Little and Andrew Edmunds, and only last month Joyce Molyneux, of Carved Angel fame. Who? What? If you never ate in Little’s Frith Street restaurant, lapped Simon Hopkinson’s deliciousness at Bibendum or indeed revolved through the doors into Rowley Leigh’s Kensington Place, you will wonder what I am on about.

Call it a movement, a style – it laid down the marker for all that is good about eating in Britain today: the best, freshest, most carefully sourced ingredients, cooked simply. So accustomed are we to finding seasonal food in pubs and high street restaurants, it is easy to forget that at the outset of the 1990s there were only about four decent restaurants in London. Those modern British chefs changed their menus frequently, if not daily, and had produce delivered direct from farmers, fishermen and walled gardens. They nodded to Mediterranean ingredients and read Elizabeth David. They were more relaxed than those pursuing Michelin stars, and often cooked in full view of their customers. And they tended to wear a commis chef’s apron rather than chef’s whites. Among their greatest achievements was to put an end to French sneering (almost).

So it’s possible that Jeremy Lee’s Cooking Simply and Well, for One or Many (Fourth Estate, £30) may be the last truly ‘modern British’ cookbook. Lee is the head chef at Soho’s Quo Vadis, and was previously Conran’s favourite, cooking at the Blueprint Café for 16 years. His smoked eel sandwich is on the Quo Vadis menu every day.