The Spirits of George Perry-Smith and Elizabeth David are alive in Ashburton today!

The A38 linking Exeter to Plymouth is a super-expressway so fast that you bypass Ashburton in a blink.

Casual hearsay led us this small town on the southern fringes of Dartmoor National Park – more out of curiosity than in any high expectation. But moments after parking, we were charmed by the timelessness of the place.

In the town centre we discovered shops of real class and originality. Better still, the streets were mercifully innocent of big national brand names. No Boots. No WHS. No Next. No Pizza Express. No Burger King. No pound shops. Just a daisy chain of fabulous independents run by their passionate owners, all of them doing brisk trade on a chilly Saturday morning.

There are remarkable gems to be found in the antique shops and antiquarian booksellers’. The artisan baker had sold out by midday. Arts and crafts are the real thing. And Ashburton’s two delicatessens were so good we bought supper from them.

I should add that this is not a place for metro-fashionistas in search of the “cutting edge”! The watchword in this town is wholesomeness where values remain determinedly retro.

For me, of course, the greatest find of the day was its principal restaurant, Agaric (www.agaricrestaurant.co.uk), owned by Nick and Sophie Coiley whom I hadn’t seen for a decade or more.

Nick is a graduate of the Joyce Molyneux school of cooking. He was her top student when she ran the celebrated Carved Angel in Dartmouth. Joyce in turn, and now in her eighties, was the most distinguished disciple of George Perry-Smith, the patriarch of British chefs and the seed that finally flowered into Britain’s culinary renaissance. I guess this makes Nick Coiley George’s spiritual grandson in the kitchen! And it shows.

The significance and influence of George Perry-Smith and Bath’s Hole in the Wall, the restaurant he made famous in the 1950s, ’60s and early ’70s, should never be forgotten. Inspired by Elizabeth David, Britain’s greatest food writer, he transformed eating-out in this country and led the way for a new generation of gifted chefs. Sadly, too few young chefs these days have even heard of these two seminal luminaries. A fact I find kind of tragic – like not knowing who your mum and dad are.

Nick Coiley’s restaurant in Ashburton is as wholesome as the town – a wood burning stove in the centre of the room radiating a warmth of welcome. And his approach in the kitchen would certainly make George and Joyce proud. He bakes his own bread, cures meat and fish, makes his own pickles and preserves, ice creams and sorbets. And his menu is equally worthy of his great mentors.

To today’s ambitious young cooks, I say: Give the latest TV chef’s book a break and start reading Elizabeth David!

Kit Chapman, Proprietor, The Castle at Taunton & author of Great British Chefs (Vol.1 1989/Vol.2 1995)

Read Full Post »

Simon Hopkinson, “The Good Cook” on BBC 2. A cook for our times.

No cheeky chappie brandishing a whisk, no bosomy gastro-porn, no foodie-travelogues in foreign parts, no al fresco cooking sketches of dishes we are unlikely to try, no rants, no back-slapping, no slurping or faux bonhomie. Simon Hopkinson, aka The Good Cook on BBC 2, is the best thing to happen to TV cookery programmes since Delia Smith a generation ago.

The idea is simple. Put a great restaurant cook in his home kitchen and get him to show us how to make all the dishes we most enjoy eating. You know, dishes like steak and chips, coq au vin, salade Nicoise, sticky toffee pudding, rhubarb crumble… even the much abused Quiche Lorraine. No fancy production frills, just a careful, thoughtful demonstration of how to execute these recipes… to perfection!

I first met Simon in the early 1980s when he was cooking in a small South Kensington restaurant called Hilaire. It became my favourite London eaterie. Then, in 1987, he joined forces with Sir Terence Conran to open Bibendum in the old Michelin building a few hundred yards up the road.

For me, Simon Hopkinson was one of three seminal spirits of that era who shaped the future of modern British cooking. The other two were Alastair Little and Rowley Leigh. (You can read about them – and others – in my two volumes of Great British Chefs, published in 1989 and 1995. Find them on Amazon).

In The Good Cook, Simon turns his back on TV cookery as frothy light entertainment. What he gives his audience is the quiet, practical authority of a seasoned chef whose approach is based on the twin pillars of Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson. Substance and comfort in a time of uncertainty. Forgotten values made familiar once again.

More please BBC 2!

Kit Chapman, proprietor of The Castle at Taunton and author of My Archipelago.

Read Full Post »