This book takes me back to a time when me and other chefs were all following the same things, reading the same books, working in the same places, and following each other’s styles. Est Est Est Cookbook: Marriages by Donovan Cooke (formerly Roux Waterside Inn, Harvey’s) and Phillipa Sibley-Cooke (formerly Quaglino’s, Canteen) is up there as one of my favourite modern cookery books. Coming from the same generation as these chaps, and having worked in the same places, I have admired them for some time now. The food is so London from the ‘90s, and it was so refreshing to see their restaurant, Est Est Est in Melbourne, at a time when Australia wasn’t quite ready for the Brit Pack (as they were called).

I was cooking in Oz in the early ‘90s and found some of the British influences had reached down under, but it took a good few more years of British influence and Aussie chefs working in London (for Roux or Marco) before returning to make a big change.

It was a great time, when food was proper and classic, with no Scandic influences. It was clean, relatively simple, and not a tweezer in sight. There’s a clean look to the food in this book, no more so than in the pyramid of chocolate. You can tell a mile away that Cooke had worked for Marco—there are elements of him throughout this boo—in a good way. If you know Marco’s books, you will understand what I mean.

This is clever food, well executed, beautiful to look at and very tasty. You don’t get food like this anymore and I miss it. It was a golden age of cookery which modernised the classic French food we were taught; and the cool chefs at that time, made it cool. I hope someone opens a restaurant near me one and cooks food like this. I will be at the front of the queue.