March 2025

Margot wears Toogood - The Cook Dress Crumpled Cotton Chalk

Margot Henderson is an icon of generous, unprissy British food and hospitality. From running The French House with hubby Fergus in the 90s, opening Shoreditch stalwart Rochelle Canteen (twenty-one years going strong) and more recently creating the food for a resurrected 17^th Century pub in Batcombe… she describes her approach as “sensible.” Sensible yes, but also sensual, sensational and simply superb. Margot’s way is probably best summed-up in the title of her recipe book: You’re All Invited. Now there’s a maxim for life lived to the maximum. 

Toogood meets Margot between Shoreditch and Somerset, flush in the afterglow of “Pie Week.” As it says on the tin: a week of pastry-cased pleasure that saw a roving roster of guest chefs serving up their best at The Three Horseshoes in Batcombe. Beef shin and bone marrow (Robin Gill), spiced pastilla (Sam and Sam Clark), veal, cotechino and morel (Oli Brown.) And then there’s the concrete cast of a tinned Fray Bentos pie that sits on Henderson’s mantelpiece. It’s one of many works by the artist Sarah Lucas you’ll see dotted around Margot’s home, bumping lumps with Spike Milligan paperbacks, pebbles and postcards. The Henderson house is full of books, sculpture, paintings, ephemera that tell a story of radical British food and radical British art. A tornado that Margot and her husband Fergus have been at the centre of for thirty-odd years. Pastry, pubes and public houses…

Forget Desert Island Discs. What about your desert island pie?

Probably guineafowl and trotter. With suet pastry. And you know, I love fish pie. All white, a little boiled egg. But no prawns and no bloody salmon. It should be white with smoked haddock and fresh haddock or cod, poached in milk. Pies are very soothing, and British people love them. We had pies on the whole time when I was cooking at the ICA, and they were very successful. I also did rice balls, which went down very well there. I used to make them in my flat in Finsbury Park - cooking 50 kilos of brown rice a week in pressure cookers. Wake up, mould them, deep fry them and drive all over London delivering them to health shops.

Any other favourites from your “Cooking-in-a-Bedistter” years?

I love a one pot wonder. Poached chicken. Make risotto with the stock… If we are talking cheap cooking I also have to say if you go to Sainsbury's freezer, they have bags of New Zealand lamb cutlets for about six pounds.

Your newest venture is The Three Horseshoes in Batcombe.

It's a pub that a friend of ours, Max Wigram bought. He asked me to come in and sort of put it all together. He’s done a really lovely job with the design. Beautiful rooms, amazing beds, gorgeous sheets. It’s a very simple pub. I like to think it’s quite Vermeer, you know - little wooden table and a candle.

How do you approach a project like that, in terms of the food?

Well… I just have a sort of idea what I feel pub food should be. I also feel I want to please Elizabeth David…. I like to imagine, what would Elizabeth David think as she was beetling around in a little car. She would always talk of going to Europe, but now she can do it in Britain… driving around with a friend, stopping off at all these brilliant country pubs to eat lovely, seasonal, beautiful British food in all its glory.

Is your approach to cooking more reflective or intuitive?

I'm more instinctive. I don't come from a food culture because New Zealand didn't really have one. I'm a bit of a magpie and a thief. I love stealing and making it my own. I do love fancy restaurants and lots of waiters all around me… but I've always wanted to have restaurants that my friends could afford. Unfortunately, that’s becoming harder and harder. But you know, I like relaxed places that are busy, with a bit of chaos about them. Lots of drinking and, you know, the feeling that it might go off.

What was your first experience of that sort of energy within hospitality or entertaining?

I’ve loved restaurants since I was a kid, when my mother would take us out to eat. And I’ve always enjoyed a party and dancing. We love discos, but restaurants have that lovely feeling that you're with your friends, you're intimate, you're having a moment. We always say “lunch and all its possibilities”. I've always felt that excitement in restaurants.

What was the last thing you ate that surprised you?

Actually, the pie Thomas Straker did last week. Beef and smoked cheddar. I was like, Oh, I'm not sure about this pie, it's going to be too rich. And he's such a show off. Well, I loved it! It all came together beautifully and it wasn't too much. When he's in the room, it's all quite fun.

What was the last thing you got sick of eating?

Too many pies! I get sick of the bread at the Co-Op, because it’s our local shop and I can get lazy at home you know, just having cheese on toast. I'm branching out. This week I stuffed cabbage leaves which was really refreshing and lovely. I'm never sick of an oatcake. They have decent oatcakes at the Co-Op. Even a lacklustre oatcake can still be a thing of beauty.

You’ve had Rochelle Canteen for twenty plus years. Toogood’s old neighbour. How have you seen that part of the East End change over the decades?

Well, it's changed a lot. I remember in the beginning, we did an event for Frieze in the big building that’s now studios, and we had naughty kids throwing rocks through the window. Mrs Prada was there, and she was running for the door! Then the middle class moved in. Redchuch Street is still brilliant. The area has changed but there is a sense of the community that was there before. The mosque is still happening and very busy. They're about to build this huge building right next to Soho House, which is going to be just catastrophic. The City creeping in. At Rochelle we are behind a wall and a bit hidden away from the front lines.

When do you think you defined your point of view in the kitchen?

My first head chef job was First Floor. I knew I wanted this simple way of cooking. I feel the way people cook is very much about their personalities, and I love all different personalities, so there's lots of different food to enjoy. But I was heading in that direction of simplicity and then I met Fergus, and we started cooking together. It really started to gel… love and food, all together. I remember I started boning out the quails, and he said, No, we're not going to bone out the quails. And I hadn't even thought of that! It was a real revelation. It all just felt so sensible and straightforward and something that I loved straight away. We were a young couple, very social, cooking at home all the time, and having lots of people around. So it had to be food we could cook quite easily, with children, and to feed lots of people. Duck legs and carrots… it wasn’t about a perfect plate it was about feasting and pleasure together.

For guaranteed pleasure, Toogood urges you to go feast at the legendary Rochelle Canteen or make a reservation for a Somerset escape at The Three Horseshoes.

Rochelle Canteen. 16 Playground Gardens, London. E2 7FA

The Three Horseshoes. Batcombe, Somerset. BA4 6HE

Words and Pictures by John William