Love at First Bite

When Fergus met Margot, it was a match made in foodie heaven. Together and separately, the pair went on to revolutionise the British restaurant scene, injecting fun, fond memories and fabulousness into what had been a very staid gastronomic landscape. Caroline Roux talks to the couple about two new projects on the horizon, as well as how it all began for an architect-trained Chelsea boy with a love for meat and a Kiwi chef lured to London by a penchant for punk rock

- By Caroline Roux

The summer of 2022, for Margot and Fergus Henderson, has been punctuated by art and travel. When we meet in early July, they are just back from Oslo, where they took in the new Munch Museum and Fergus hadn’t much liked the paintings. In a couple of weeks, they are off to the opening of an exhibition of new work by their friend Peter Doig in the unlikely location of Filicudi, an island 56km off the coast of Sicily. In between, they are sneaking in their regular two-week holiday on another island, this time the Scottish Tiree, a chilly but beautiful place where Fergus had taken Margot soon after they met. ‘Not liking it was not a deal breaker,’ she says. ‘But it helped that I did.’ Now she goes there armed with bottarga (‘it adds so much colour!’) and tins of anchovies to accompany the local lobster and island lamb for their daily picnics. A favourite location is a Pictish fort.