Full marks if you chose d) all three. After picking up millions of followers for his cookery vids, leveraging them into smash-hit restaurant Straker’s, he almost lost it all thanks to the photo. The internet broiled with accusations of sexism and white privilege. Where were the women? Why wasn’t it more diverse? The Standard reported it keenly.
His first interview months later — with me — did not set the benchmark for apologies, and so the internet went mad again. Through the grapevine I heard I was no longer welcome at the restaurant. It’s a rumour that remains untested, but I’ve run the tape back to say, look, Straker and this paper have a past. It’s only fair.
The right ingredients: Thomas Straker’s book has failsafe recipes for everything from chicken broth to lobster
Issy Croker
Now there’s a book: Food You Want to Eat (£19.99, Amazon). I suspect Straker may still be smarting from the upset: “If you don’t like me, go and buy it, you can use it as a dartboard,” he says in one promo. And, at the beginning, there are things that might be hated. Some might take umbrage at the casual reports of his expensive upbringing; his mum buying a pub on a whim, his dad landing him his first internship after lunch at the Dorchester. But Straker would hardly be the first public schoolboy whose parents put their hands in their pockets to help. It’s just how the world works.
Bread and butter of cooking
Besides, if you cook from the book, you’ll likely be grateful that Colonel and Mrs Matthew Straker did bail him out. It’s a belter. True, the title is a touch presumptive — those in the mood for, say, Thai, Ghanaian or even Greek will discover few answers — but for British cooking with influences from Italy and France, I can think of few better resources.
It is divided up straightforwardly, chapter headings running as follows: Butter, Bread, Salad, Soup, Pasta, Fish, Meat, Condiments, Vegetables, Pudding. Bread and butter lead as they’re his brea— they’re his stock-in-trade. The familiar butters are rather useful, and can almost be used as light sauces: seaweed butter over asparagus, for instance, or miso with hispi cabbage. Bruschettas mimic his flatbreads at the Notting Hill gaff.
But this is not the Thomas Straker show. There is much that might suit anyone: an excellent recipe for pan con tomate, another for beef and pork ragu, one for chicken broth, another for steak with peppercorn sauce. He has failsafe tips for making basil pesto, a nice chimichurri. Straker presumes no ownership over these dishes, and none are wrecking “twists”. Instead, it’s just dozens of recipes that are all useful (though fish stock at home is a chore that reeks).
These are recipes that can be easily followed. Cheffy showing off does not intrude
The very simple — Caesar salad, say — sit alongside dishes that might appear trickier: there’s encouraging advice for making gnocchi at home and step-by-step instructions for tackling crab without wrecking the poor thing. There are plenty of pictures for guidance throughout; the book is intended, I think, to be foolproof. And it does high-low well: chicken burgers and whole lobsters are afforded the same attention.
Best British cookbooks of all time
Shades of Simon Hopkinson
These are recipes that can be easily followed, without special equipment or know-how. Cheffy showing off does not intrude on the instructions. In this way, the cookbook it reminds me of most is Simon Hopkinson’s Roast Chicken and Other Stories. The difference is that Hoppy’s book is artfully written, whereas Straker’s is, in places, rather trite and clichéd (“a hug in a bowl”, “you can’t go wrong with…”). But it’s an instruction manual, not a novel. Besides, in essence, Straker’s book offers the same thing: it is a collection that might never let you down, full of food that could fill both weeknights and weekends, be for dates or holidays with friends or parties in the garden. It is the best I have come across in a long while. Mine will end up dog-eared. No hard feelings then, butter boy.
David Ellis is The London Standard’s restaurant critic
Food You Want to Eat by Thomas Straker, out now (Bloomsbury, £25)