Story: An Anglo-Italian Affair

The scene: a restaurant in Hamburg. John Quilter has made his way to the Hanseatic city in order to create fine Italian recipes using fresh Tuscan ingredients with food artist Christoph Himmel. Sipping a flat white, the forty-nine-year-old explains what draws him to Italian cuisine: “It’s uncomplicated and it focuses on the essentials. The quality of the ingredients is what makes it so good.” That is why, he continues, it’s important to do less with them – not more. “The older I get, the more I want to step back and allow the food and its producers to shine.” Particularly in Tuscany, he says, there is a special relationship between the two.

And John Quilter would know: his Italian wife’s family hails from Luca. But he’s also speaking as an experienced restaurateur. He took charge of his first restaurant at twenty-three, and he run businesses for top chefs such as Raymond Blanc and Sir Terrance Conran in the years that followed. He won the Pub of the Year award in 2005 and opened his multi-award-winning brasserie, Marmalade, shortly thereafter. “Many cuisines, such as for example French cuisine, have something military about them,” he opines. “But Italian cuisine is different; the food is prepared with a smile.” Not only that, but it brings people together. Quilter believes that failing to enjoy the food in the company of others is missing the point.

Sustainability is important to him, as is consideration for people who produce real, honest food by hand. In 2012, John Quilter co-founded the Cru Kafe. The organisation sells coffee produced to organic quality standards by an indigenous tribe in Columbia and packaged in pods that are compatible with Nespresso coffee machines. “We wanted to create a fairly traded organic brand. Coffee is enjoyed in a huge number of cultures around the world, but it is produced by people who live in severe poverty. “It’s up to us to help those people achieve a better quality of life.” To John Quilter, respecting and appreciating people who work hard without receiving much recognition for it is key: “Putting food on the table represents love and sharing. As consumers, we need to make the right choices when it comes to fair and sustainable production conditions.”

Awareness and well-being are Quilter’s guiding principles. He can’t justify enjoying meat produced from animals that were raised in an industrial environment and spent their entire lives suffering. “All healing ceremonies are focused on living a deliberate life. I no longer can or want to stray from that path,” he says. He has sought and found kindred spirits all around the globe. His reports on food in different cultures have led him discover far-flung countries and broadened his horizons: “Wherever you go, getting to see what’s going on in the back of the kitchen gives you unique insights,” he says. “You get to see real people in their element and learn so much so quickly. I’ve learned so much about products and different ways of doing things.”

Being open to new experiences is his trademark. Has that influenced the way he cooks? What does creativity mean to him? “Freedom,” he answers – but he sees an element of resistance in it, too: “For me, simply following a recipe isn’t cooking.” He believes that the cornerstone of creative expression is finding joy in experimentation. If you just follow recipes, he says, you don’t develop as a chef. To him, recipes are a kind of authority – and, Quilter confesses, “I don’t do very well with authority. You can’t create something new without resistance. You have to follow your own rules.”

And set your internal compass to guide you. When asked who his role model is, Quilter doesn’t have to think for long: it’s Fergus Henderson, a former architect who switched careers to become a chef. “You have to understand what a culinary wasteland Britain was in the eighties,” explains Quilter. He goes on: “If you wanted to go out for dinner, you had the choice between a Chinese restaurant or a typical English pub. There was no English food culture, no British restaurants.” Until Henderson arrived on the scene and broke all the rules, that is. He reimagined and reinterpreted traditional English food. “Fergus Henderson began his career as a chef with the values I’ve been talking about: provenance, tradition, top-quality ingredients,” says Quilter. “That’s been a big influence on me.”