Nicholas Lander - On the Menu

Nicholas Lander views menus from a highly unusual perspective as the only restaurant critic to have owned and run one of Londons most successful restaurants. He established LEscargot in Soho in the 1980s when he was among the first British restaurateurs to write his menus in English and to change them according to the seasons.

For the past 27 years he has reviewed restaurants and menus from around the world in his role as restaurant critic for the Financial Times .

His first book, The Art of the Restaurateur (Phaidon, 2012), profiled 20 of the worlds best restaurateurs and was named a Book of the Year by The Economist .

This edition first published in 2016

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Nicholas Lander, 2016

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Art Direction by Mark Ecob

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78352-242-2 (trade hbk)

ISBN 978-1-78352-243-9 (ebook)

ISBN 978-1-78352-304-7 (limited edition)

Printed and bound in Italy by L.E.G.O. S.p.A.

For Jancis

Dear Reader,

The book you are holding came about in a rather different way to most others. It was funded directly by readers through a new website: Unbound. Unbound is the creation of three writers. We started the company because we believed there had to be a better deal for both writers and readers. On the Unbound website, authors share the ideas for the books they want to write directly with readers. If enough of you support the book by pledging for it in advance, we produce a beautifully bound special subscribers edition and distribute a regular edition and e-book wherever books are sold, in shops and online.

This new way of publishing is actually a very old idea (Samuel Johnson funded his dictionary this way). Were just using the internet to build each writer a network of patrons. Here, at the back of this book, youll find the names of all the people who made it happen.

Publishing in this way means readers are no longer just passive consumers of the books they buy, and authors are free to write the books they really want. They get a much fairer return too half the profits their books generate, rather than a tiny percentage of the cover price.

If youre not yet a subscriber, we hope that youll want to join our publishing revolution and have your name listed in one of our books in the future. To get you started, here is a 5 discount on your first pledge. Just visit unbound.com, make your pledge and type ONTHEMENU in the promo code box when you check out.

Thank you for your support,

Dan, Justin and John

Founders, Unbound

This book, long lurking at the back of my memory, would never have seen the light of day without the intervention of my friend Bill Emmott. It was he who, in the summer of 2014, kindly pointed me in the direction of Unbound.

Therefore, it is to this one individual and my eventual publishers that I owe the biggest thanks. My eternal gratitude is owed to all the team at Unbound but particularly to John Mitchinson, a man whose appetite for food and menus seems to be as unlimited as his interest in books.

And, of course, via everyone at Unbound, to the over 130 friends and those interested in the whole subject of menus who have so generously funded the publication of On the Menu .

To my old friend, Danny Meyer, I owe great thanks for suggesting the title of this book, so much better than its original title. To the late Bill Baker, and his wife Kate, whose house near Bristol provided the scene for the chapter The Menu as Travel, and to Michel Roux Jr for the time spent at Le Gavroche and for writing such an inspiring foreword.

To all the following chefs, restaurateurs, bar gurus, sommeliers and designers whom I interviewed, my grateful thanks:

Michael Anthony

Jonathan Arana-Morton

Paul Baldwin

Robbie Bargh

Joe Bastianich

Mario Batali

Shannon Bennett

Enrico Bernardo

Heston Blumenthal

April Bloomfield

Massimo Bottura

Daniel Boulud

Ferran Centelles

Claire Clark

Sally Clarke

Terry Coughlin

Arnaud Donckele

Peter Gilmore

Bill Granger

Shaun Hill

Miles Kirby

Frank Langello

Mary Lewis

Bruce Poole

Ren Redzepi

Ruth Rogers

Xavier Rousset

Shaun Searley

Charlotte Sager-Wilde

Marie-Pierre Troisgros

Michel Troisgros

Charlie Young

I would also like to thank two lawyers from Olswang, Marcus Barclay and Joel Vertes, without whom the chapter Protecting the Menu could not have been written. And I would like to thank Eugen Beer of Love Menu Art in New York and Henry Voigt of The American Men u, based in Wilmington, Delaware, for providing many of the menus reproduced in this book..

I would also like to thank all of their PAs for making their time available.

Finally, my heartfelt thanks go out to two very different groups of individuals. Firstly, to all my friends and family who have shown such faith in me and in this book. And, secondly, to chefs, past, present and future for writing their menus, their interpretation of the piece of paper that undoubtedly gives the world the greatest pleasure.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

A s a chef and restaurateur, I know and fully appreciate the importance of a menu.

Growing up with a father who was a chef, I was privileged enough to be exposed to the culinary world from a young age. I remember my mother and father sitting down at the kitchen table discussing food and wine to compose a menu, toing and froing from our heaving bookshelf of old cookbooks to finally agree on what should be served at the next family reunion. Given so much importance and attention were placed on creating a meal at home, you can imagine how much thought had to go into a restaurant menu.

Those childhood memories are one of the reasons why I became a chef; curating a menu is as creative as the cooking itself.

A menu is a reflection of ones self; so much can be seen and revealed by a menu. It should have a personality, akin to looking at an artists canvas a story is set before you to excite the senses, to entice, to question and to enjoy.

I have a vast collection of menus and, much to my wifes chagrin, it keeps on growing. Some are framed and well over a hundred years old, others are from royal banquets, delicately woven in silk and featuring particularly unusual dishes that you would not find on a menu today.