THE CAPITAL ACCORDING TO...Jackson Boxer

Rob Crossan talks to the dynamic chef behind Brunswick House Café and Orasay about custard tarts and feeding London’s masses

- Rob Crossan

Where was the first place where you lived in London?

I was born at St Thomas’s Hospital, high above the river, and spent the first 20 years of my life in Stockwell, where I’ve recently moved back to. It’s not a neighbourhood that calls attention to its striking architectural beauty. There is nowhere to get third-wave coffee, artisanal bread or natural wine. But it is lined with Portuguese cafes for strong espresso and custard tarts, halal butchers for excellent merguez sausages and wonderful Mediterranean fish shops for salt cod, sparkling mackerel and bushels of fresh herbs. It is a wonderful mixture of being ugly, dirty, unselfconscious, friendly and confident.

Tell me about the moment in your life when food started to become a really big deal to you.