Artistic Tastes
Interview | Caroline Stacey With its shepherd’s pies, hot pots and Bakewell tarts, Oliver Peyton’s restaurant in London’s National Gallery is leading the British food renaissance WHEN CLUB PROMOTERS grow up and settle down, the restaurant trade calls several to join its number. One such who has made a lasting impression on London’s culture as a restaurateur [...]
Interview | Caroline Stacey
With its shepherd’s pies, hot pots and Bakewell tarts, Oliver Peyton’s restaurant in London’s National Gallery is leading the British food renaissance
WHEN CLUB PROMOTERS grow up and settle down, the restaurant trade calls several to join its number. One such who has made a lasting impression on London’s culture as a restaurateur is the art lover Oliver Peyton.
But then the Irishman has always cut a dash, regularly being listed in the best-dressed lists of men’s glossies. From a career that began with a nightclub on the Brighton seafront in the decadent 1980s, the fast-talking, fast-living entrepreneur is now banging on about how the perfect Victoria sponge should be baked for his restaurant in that bastion of high culture, the National Gallery.
“It’s about culture for everybody,” says the tall, angular dynamo before me. “I’ve always been into art. I’m a Radio 4 person at heart. I probably wouldn’t have admitted that years ago
because it was too uncool.”
After opening a club called Can in Brighton, where he’d studied design and textiles, he emerged on the 1980s London club scene with Raw, started importing Japanese beer and the Swedish vodka Absolut, then convinced a generation of twitchy clubbers to sit still and dine smart. When he launched the glamorous Atlantic Bar & Grill, which he converted from an art deco ballroom hidden below ground near Piccadilly Circus, A-listers started getting chummy with the doormen and crowding into the cocktail bar. The inner sanctum of cool London became Dick’s Bar, named after head bartender Dick Bradsell, credited as one of the most-skilled ‘mixologists’.
Peyton gave beer his blessing with the microbrewery Mash, made fusion food sophisticated with Coast off Bond Street, and did chic French food at the Admiralty in Somerset House. Although these have all since closed, along with Isola in Knightsbridge, Peyton has always kept his finger on the pulse.
So, when he opened Inn the Park, serving only British food just a few green paces away from Buckingham Palace in St James’s Park, it chimed in with the makeover that the country’s traditional cuisine was undergoing. Three years ago, he opened the National Dining Rooms, planting his flag in Trafalgar Square, among one of the finest collections of paintings in the world. Now, as his latest venture, The National Cookbook illustrates, there’s nothing passé or folksy about British food. His book brings together the recipes and visual treasures from the gallery in a feast for the eyes.
In the middle of filming another series of Great British Menu for BBC Two, the state of the nation’s food is uppermost on his mind. “There is more pride in British cooking now based on ingredients and the quality of them has just gone berserk. Last week I had salmon – beautiful, slightly peachy pinky salmon – and some amazing pork. The quality is not just good – it’s world beating.”
But the picture’s not all rosy. “To buy cakes you have to go to French or Italian shops. It mystifies me considering we do it far better than they do.” He’s on a roll and it’s certainly not Swiss – he wants us to appreciate Victoria sponges and Bakewell tarts. “British baking is one of the cornerstones of our culinary heritage but nobody knows how to bake any more.”
Given that he is known for not holding back on this opinions, Peyton, 48, made it clear from the start that he didn’t want it to be the book of the institution – a collection of heritage dishes with corny still lives. Recipes are arranged by season.
“The seasonal element was just bonkersly important. I’m obsessed with the idea of eating seasonally.” Meat, fish and vegetables get equal billing. “This book is about modern Britain, everybody eats vegetarian food, and there are so many good vegetables around at different times of year.”
Although he quit the martinis years ago, Peyton can still put on a good time by mixing music, drinks and great food together. Slipped in after the Lancashire hot pot and carrot fritters with purple sprouting broccoli in the spring chapter is a rhubarb martini and a pink lady. After the lavender ham and gooseberry fool of summer are recipes for Pimms and raspberry-tinis.
He couldn’t resist, could he? “It just felt right. Cocktails are easy to make so I tried to choose English ones that were accessible.” And of course it helps make it less of a straight-laced cookbook and more like the café.
Free admission to museums and galleries is one of the wonders of Britain, he believes. “But many people are not digging the fact that you can go and look at some of the finest paintings in the world for nothing.” Then of course tuck into anything from a sandwich and a cup
of tea to a three-course lunch.
The marriage between art and eating was sealed in the book to reflect the closeness between the National Gallery and its restaurant. “A lot of artists were interested in food. And I think there’s a close link between the people who go to galleries and food – a sensuality.” Creating the book meant touring the gallery with a team of experts – “Some know everything there is to know about fruit in paintings” – to pick paintings that aren’t just a predictable selection of old favourites.
“It took a long time to get it right so it wasn’t naff.” Sure there’s a still life with oranges and walnuts but the cheeky juxtaposition of Scotch eggs and a close up of the Virgin Mary’s parents embracing is pure Peyton. The selected food paintings include his favourite, the Four Elements: Earth by Joachim Beuckelaer, the 16thcentury Dutch painter. “I walk past it every day. There are 62 pieces of fruit in this picture.”
Once known as a non-stop party animal, Peyton’s life is now much calmer, living in west London with his wife Charlie (of the Forte hotelier family), and their two children. “I cooked bacon and sausages from the farmers’ market for the kids on Sunday,” says the family man.
Yet, growing up in County Mayo with an obsessive interest in music, collecting records by “X-Ray Spex or whatever the band was,” and a penchant for punk clothes, he couldn’t wait to get to the bright lights of Britain. “Probably because I’d spent my whole life looking at buckets of blood,” he laughs, recalling the black pudding his mother made. “I grew up with my mum killing geese in the kitchen. You just break their neck and they do a lot of flapping.”
As soon as he had any money he started collecting work by British artists such as Sarah Lucas and Chris Ofili, who he hung out with in clubs and restaurants. Which painters does he hang out at the National Gallery?
“Vermeer if I’m in a romantic mood and Caravaggio for drama. He was a bit of a nutter, a wild man. In today’s world he would have been every single rock and roll star and artist in one.”
The National Gallery Cookbook (£25) is out now. National Dining Rooms, Trafalgar Square, London WC2, +44 (0)20 7747 2525, www.thenationaldiningrooms.co.uk
