Scented with garlic, it was fork-tender, no more gamy than a guinea hen and quite delicious in its juniper-flavored gravy. But I tried the squirrel, off-putting as I found the idea. But alongside memorably meaty crabs, inch-thick slabs of roast beef and crackling-clad roast pork, it serves gray squirrel - legs braised loin wrapped in bacon livers, kidneys and belly meat in a puff-pastry case. With an unadorned wooden floor and a wine list studded with famous names (Jermann, Guigal, Dagueneau, Tollot-Beaut), it is reminiscent of an upmarket American steakhouse. Take the Butlers Wharf Chop House, a typically big, buzzy entry from the Terence Conran stable. "You can't get much more English than this." Hopkinson, now retired from the kitchen, as he pored over the menu at St. When you have cleaned your plate - and you will, believe me - there are English desserts as a reward: a trifle, steamed treacle pudding or Eccles cake with Lancashire cheese. John, feasting on foie gras or crayfish or the increasingly scarce native oysters, or you can eat low, tucking into cold sliced beef or veal cheeks or pork belly. Only once in our lives have my wife, Betsey, and I tasted their equal, in a tavern in Budapest. His roasted marrow bones, delivered whole and steaming to the table, challenge any diner to dig the soft, savory treasure from their center. In the process, he has earned himself accolades and acolytes around the culinary world. Instead of chasing the latest fads, he has returned to the gutsy half-forgotten dishes of his childhood, refining them to bring out their best but resisting prettifying them.
John is unadorned to the point of starkness, and so is his food. (He trained as an architect before turning to the stove.) His restaurant St. THE current cynosure of English cooking is a soft-spoken chef named Fergus Henderson, who wears Corbusier-style glasses. Howard, Gordon Ramsay, Tom Aikens, Marcus Wareing and other setters of London trends. But dishes they applaud, like potted shrimp and Lancashire hot pot and Welsh rabbit, have had tough going against the more eclectic "modern British" and "modern French" creations of Mr. English food has had its champions in recent decades, including the culinary writers Jane Grigson and Clarissa Dickson-Wright (one of the "Two Fat Ladies") and a host of television gurus. Philip Howard, who runs a much-praised Mayfair restaurant, the Square, entered a television cooking competition this summer with a succulent golden pie made from venison, rabbit, partridge, pheasant and other game birds, which he called "a wholesome, hospitable, humble and very English dish." But when I pressed him for dining tips, he responded, "English food in London restaurants is basically a minefield." Negotiations have begun for a United States edition. Reprinted by its original publisher, Ebury Press, it vaulted to the top of the Amazon best-seller list for Britain, overtaking the latest Harry Potter volume. Simon Hopkinson's 11-year-old "Roast Chicken and Other Stories," packed with homely native dishes, was recently voted the country's most useful cookbook of all time by a panel of 40 experts.
It's not that interest in traditional English fare has dried up. But then, who wants to be plugged into the wall seven days a week? The style, reassuring rather than electrifying, seldom ventures near the cutting edge. The range is surprisingly broad, though some of those raw materials, especially game and offal, may offend squeamish foreign eaters. The best English food depends, more than most, on prime raw materials, simply prepared. Where does a visiting New Yorker or Parisian - or for that matter a country squire in town for a night or two - turn for a first-class English meal? Amid the profusion of nigiri sushi and chicken masala, where to find an immaculately roasted rib of beef or flawlessly grilled Dover sole? There are answers to these questions, a few of which I'll enumerate shortly, but London sorely needs more deluxe showcases for British products, well-chosen, seasoned with flair and cooked according to classic precepts. Today London is one of the world's great eating towns, acknowledged as such by knowledgeable gastronomes everywhere, including France.
But that stereotype is as stale as a year-old baguette, as dated as the Englishman's belief that his French cousins wear berets and reek of garlic. LONDON - EARLY in July Jacques Chirac, the French president, said that Britain has the worst food in Europe, except perhaps for Finland.