She quickly moved up the ranks before moving on to work with legendary New Zealand fusion chef, Peter Gordon, at Green Street and The Sugar Club. In 2001 Anna opened the award-winning Marylebone restaurant, The Providores, with Peter Gordon and two other partners. In 2008 she opened her own iconic restaurant, the Modern Pantry, where she cooks everyday food with surprising international twists. Anna was awarded an MBE for services to the restaurant industry in 2012. She has recently given birth to her first child, Sonja Olive.
Your food style has been described as ‘fusion’, ‘global’ and ‘making a twisted kind of sense’; how would you describe it?
I’m happy with the label ‘fusion’ because it’s a genre of food which is entitled to be respected. I’m happy having that name because it is what it is; you can call it all the other things you want to avoid calling it that but at the end of the day, it’s fusion food. It’s about using ingredients from across the globe and fusing them together.
In this day and
It’s not the most ‘on trend’ food style when you think about the whole local, seasonal thing; does that bother you?
Our food may be global but we are very strong on local, seasonal ingredients. All our fresh produce, aside from the occasional ingredient, is local. It’s sustainably farmed; we spend a lot of time focusing on where we get our fish from and most of our vegetables are seasonal.
Most of the fusion elements come from the dry n say: “How can you reconcile the style of food you do with being a sustainable restaurant?”
How did working for Peter Gordon influence your food style?
With Peter, it was literally: let your imagination run wild. Fergus Henderson’s food was very simple and cut back with very few ingredients and it was all about letting the ingredients do the talking, whereas with Peter it was: here’s a cupboard full of spices and here’s a whole load of other ingredients you’ve never seen before and what are we goingto do with it? It was incredible but it was also really scary because I had become really good at cooking with a small number of dishes but I didn’t know how to incorporate all these different flavours; Peter was the master at that. And he was really good at making me not feel nervous and to trust my instincts about flavours.
Which is pretty important cooking that style of food, right?
Yes and I think that era of cooking has almost gone now. I mean you get people come to work for you and they don’t even really understand seasoning. When I learnt to cook, we never used recipes but nowadays you need recipes because not everyone in the kitchen would necessarily know what to do without them. Peter Gordon was obviously an inspiration but do you think it’s also something about being a New Zealander living in the UK that gives you that global perspective? Peter Gordon summed it up when he said that New Zealanders do magpie
What was it like when you first decided to go it alone and open The Modern Pantry and did your business management studies help?
Because I’d been part of the opening of The Providores, I knew a lot about what was going to go on and in a lot of
You’ve recently had your first child; how has that affected you as a chef and restaurateur?
I’m very lucky that I have a really strong core crew here at The Modern Pantry who have been very happy for me to take some time out. Because I’ve worked alongside most of them since we opened, I was able to leave the restaurant and turn off my I-own-a-restaurant brain and focus on what I was doing, and I feel pretty privileged to have been able to do that. Of
What’s the next step for you?
We want to open another Modern Pantry which will hopefully include a bar because that’s something we don’t have here. I don’t really want to say much else without jinxing myself but it will be lots of fun and should be opening towards the end of next year. View Anna's recipe for Sugar-cured Prawn Omelette with Smoked Chilli Sambal View Anna's recipe for Salad of slow-cooked octopus (with confit artichoke hearts)
If you like the look of the Modern Pantry and what Anna does, check out our head chef jobs for similar positions.