IN PROFILE TREVOR GULLIVER

Trevor Gulliver, right, with his St JOHN co-founder Fergus Henderson

The co-founder of the St JOHN restaurants on aspiring to permanence, running a happy ship, and why Fergus Henderson is the group’s ‘director of enjoyment’

Words: Clare Finney Images: Sam Harris >

“We’ve had the plague, the drought and the flood – but we still have the farm, and we have to reseed,” says Trevor Gulliver, co-founder of the St JOHN restaurants, as he tears contemplatively into a croissant. It’s an aptly bucolic analogy from the restauranteur, given he’s just spent half his morning overseeing the brewing of this year’s Eccles Stout: a happy marriage between the 40FT Brewery in Dalston and St JOHN’s famed Eccles cake mix. We’re catching up in the bakery next door to the brewery, where a discarded sign directing people to queue two metres apart serves as a stark reminder of just how recent the ‘plague’ was. “People have very short memories,” observes Trevor. “But not long ago, people were suddenly out of work. And as Brexit and everything else has shredded the economy in the last three years, you need to look to yourselves to build your ability to deal with the future. You need to fundamentally consider everything.”

All of which is to say, St JOHN has recently opened on Marylebone Lane – making this area the home of only the third restaurant from Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver since they launched their first in Smithfield 28 years ago. In that time, the pair have become an institution on the national and international restaurant scene. They’ve pioneered relaxed, seasonal dining, a renewed appreciation for British produce and, most memorably, eating the whole animal. ‘Nose to tail’ is Fergus’s philosophy. They’ve written three books, opened bakeries in Covent Garden and Borough and established a winery in a village in Languedoc, southern France. Yet compared to other restauranteurs in London, their rate of expansion has been strikingly slow.

‘Organic’ is an overused term outside of agriculture. Yet the way Trevor describes his and Fergus’s “growth strategy” does bring to mind that long-termist, nature-led approach to farming. “We hopefully do have a native intelligence in doing things that make sense, that hold true to what’s important to us. We’ve never followed the zeitgeist; we’ve just done what we think is right at the time,” he says. The pandemic brought this into sharp relief. “We opened the bakery because people needed bread. We sorted delivery boxes so our chefs could still cook. We supplied our wine to local butchers so they could sell it alongside their meat and boost their revenue, as well as promote our wines.” As nature has been the mother of their regularly changing, seasonal menu and nose-to-tail eating, so necessity has proved the mother of their more recent incarnations – one of which proved to be St JOHN Marylebone.

For Trevor and Fergus, Marylebone presented an opportunity to see the St JOHN spirit spun out from sun-up to sun-down, seven days a week. It offered a space that could sell bread and coffee in the morning, a glass of champagne and a doughnut for elevenses – a meal Fergus famously champions – and wine and small plates for lunch and dinner. “Over the years we’ve had a lot of people approaching us who are interested in what we make, bake and do – but we need to have the capacity, and we need to enjoy the making, baking and doing. That’s when it works well,” says Trevor. Opening the bakeries reassured them they could connect with busy areas, and having been born in Westminster and lived near Hyde Park for several years, Trevor has witnessed Marylebone’s evolution. “I believe we can have a relationship with the people who live and work there. I think they’ll appreciate what we do.” Beyond that, Trevor shrugs, “we will work it out when it works out itself.”

The pair have always been patient. Somewhat ironically, given St JOHN’s launch party is a fortnight away when we speak, Trevor explains that while he certainly likes a party, he’s not a big fan of ‘launches’. “In the old days you made something, and people bought it, and came back if it was good. Now you ‘launch’ a product. It’s more… instant gratification. These gung-ho chefs are spending all their

“In the old days you made something, and people bought it, and came back if it was good. Now you ‘launch’ a product. These gung-ho chefs are spending all their time on the media and social media when they should be in the kitchen, showing their staff and customers what they do. That is the way to build permanence. Fads and fashions – they aren’t good for food.”

time on the media and social media when they should be in the kitchen, teaching, creating and showing their staff and customers what they do. That is the way to build permanence,” he observes.

“Fads and fashions – they aren’t good for food,” Trevor continues. That word, ‘permanence’, is one you rarely here in these turbulent times, either in or outside of the restaurant industry, and yet it’s one he values now more than ever. “The world is dynamic, terrible – all kinds of adjectives, and there seems to be more of a reason than ever for us to do what we do and be purposeful and engaged.” Though he accepts that St JOHN is now an institution, he points out that “we have never called it that. We still are as we are. We’ve just been practicing for much longer, in the medical sense. We’ve done a lot of operations, as it were.”

That sense of permanence is lived out in St JOHN’s kitchen, out of which have come some of the most influential and talented chefs of recent years, and to which many of the world’s most decorated chefs continue to flock. “We get three Michelin star chefs coming for stages [work experience], just to see how it works – because our kitchens are not at all big, there’s a small ratio of chefs to customers, yet it still turns over quietly.” He tells the story of a world-famous chef, who was so amazed at the quality and quantity of food they produced each night he was convinced there was a secret kitchen downstairs. “Many people don’t understand how or why we do what we do, and why it works – but we aren’t in the business of explaining, we’re in the business of doing. The best services are always the ones where no one notices.” It’s a warm buzz, a subtle energy, a smooth, easy flow from back of house through front of house to the happy, chatting customers.

Much is made of St JOHN’s alumni, which includes the Michelin-starred chef James Lowe of Lyle’s, beloved pastry chef and food writer Ravneet Gill, Tim Siadatan at Trullo and Padella, baker Justin Gellatly and many more. Even more is made of their nose-to-tail cooking. Yet the

Middle White chop, chicory and sorrel Red mullet and green sauce

tbc

Deep fried rarebit

quieter miracle of St JOHN – the one its disciples often refer to – is its happy, collaborative, inclusive kitchen culture. Trevor looks slightly bemused when I point this out – because for him and Fergus running a kitchen that way has always been a no-brainer. “Happy kitchen, happy staff, happy customers. It’s a virtuous circle.” St JOHN has never had to actively create a more diverse, less masculine kitchen, he continues, because by running it how they do, their kitchen already “reflects the street outside”.

That said, toxic workplace cultures are less endemic in the industry than they once were – making it slightly disappointing that there seems to be a resurgence in edgy kitchen-based dramas like The Bear and Boiling Point. “It’s like, really? Again? It would be more fun and more valid to do something about fast food places. There’d be much more humour and bleak reality there. But that’s not sexy,” he sighs.

Once again, it comes down to their perennial quest for permanence, and to provide pleasure for themselves and the people they employ as well as their customers. “A restaurant should be like an old friend,” Trevor says of the relationship between a restaurant and its diners. “Whenever you see them, you smile.” In the case of Fergus, the quest for enjoyment has become particularly pertinent recently as Parkinson’s – a disease he has fought valiantly since his mid30s – has started to compromise his ability to work in the way he once did. “He still loves his cooking. He uses his hands and noises more to communicate, but he still speaks great chef, and everyone loves to speak with him. But it’s harder for him to be abreast of the widespread array of things that we do, and a lot easier for him to just enjoy things instead.”

“He’s our director of enjoyment,” Trevor continues, smiling. “I want Fergus to be happy, and he is at his best chatting to chefs and enjoying himself.” Marylebone is a realisation of that. It is everything that is best about Fergus and Trevor, united under a Georgian roof and spread out across 15 languorous hours of the day, starting with breakfast. There are nods to the culinary luxuries Fergus enjoys, Trevor tells me: elevenses with doughnuts and champagne or his habitual seed cake and Madeira; bone marrow, offal and game; counter seating; caviar. There is wine aplenty, sourced by Trevor from their Languedoc winery and their growing collection of small-scale French winemakers who have, over time, become good friends.

Trevor and Fergus are often described as a double act; the food world’s answer to Gilbert and George. Like the artists, the restauranteurs dress in a dapper fashion and are strikingly different in stature. They even worked next door to Gilbert and George, when they opened their second restaurant in Spitalfields. “We once saw them coming down the street toward us. I said ‘quick Fergus, into the Ten Bells. People are laughing’,” Trevor recalls. Of their dynamic, he says simply: “We are different people, but we both have something to bring to St JOHN.” Fergus puts it on the plate and Trevor puts it in the glass, as the restaurants’ unofficial motto puts it. Yet if the pair are to cement the permanence they practice and preach, they need St JOHN to be able to outlive their tenure.

“We hope St JOHN will be around for a long time after Fergus and myself, and that it will hold true to the tenets that are important to us. I want Fergus and I to be happy with St JOHN and the people running it, and to be happy ourselves. It’s like that analogy of the farm,” he continues. “We have the farm, and we’ve reseeded. And I hope that in our dotage, Fergus and I will be on the stoop in our rocking chairs, overlooking the fields and smoking our pipes and being very satisfied.”

“Fergus still loves his cooking. He uses his hands and noises more to communicate, but he still speaks great chef, and everyone loves to speak with him. But it’s harder for him to be abreast of the widespread array of things that we do, and easier for him to just enjoy things. He’s our director of enjoyment.”

ST JOHN MARYLEBONE 98 Marylebone Lane, W1U 2JE stjohnrestaurant.com