A cracking Christmas

When chefs Margot and Fergus Henderson throw a feast, you’d better come hungry. By Amy Bryant. Photographs by Helen Cathcart

At home with chefs Margot and Fergus Henderson

‘I’M VERY USED to setting and unsetting the table,’ says Margot Henderson, as she shifts along crockery and cutlery to accommodate more guests. ‘That’s catering!’ Margot has a genius for hospitality, and I have just borne witness to it. The goose is stuffed and roasted to burnished perfection, trimmings hot and ready to roll out, table laid, candles lit and dessert in the oven – all done singlehandedly and without her guests’ champagne glasses ever running dry. Lunch is in safe hands.

Arnold & Henderson, the events, catering and restaurant company Margot runs with friend and business partner Melanie Arnold, has been going for over 20 years, but their latest opening is just 10 weeks old. Rochelle ICA, on The Mall in London, has taken over the bar in the revitalised Institute of Contemporary Arts. It’s a bright, white space that will feel familiar to fans of their original Rochelle Canteen in Shoreditch. Based in a converted school bike shed hidden behind a (famously) secret door, Rochelle Canteen attracts the great and good of the creative world, who sit elbow to elbow at communal tables over dishes that appear seductively effortless: purple sprouting broccoli given a lick of vinaigrette; roast teal with a pile of pickled blackberries; pork belly with hispi cabbage and its cooking liquor.

This understated yet satisfying style is Margot’s forte, and at this time of year she loves to get her hands on root vegetables and pumpkins, a staple ingredient from her childhood in New Zealand. ‘I first came to the UK when I was 20. I wanted to see Big Ben,’ she remembers. ‘I wrote lots of letters home

about all the brick here.’ After cooking her way from a Mexican cantina in Wellington to Pizza Express over here, then a stint in Sydney, she returned to London and worked in legendary restaurants 192, in Notting Hill, and The Eagle in Farringdon. At the latter she met her future husband, Fergus Henderson. ‘She can still spin pizza bases,’ he tells me, as she curses the temperamental oven in their kitchen. That this is the domain of two great chefs is clear to see: the walls are hung with utensils collected over the years, and in the cupboard are stacks of AA Rosette plates, which have been awarded to Fergus’s St John restaurant in Smithfield, east London, since it opened in 1994. ‘Our daughter Owen [21] has ended up with a lot of them at university and has to keep explaining that she’s not showing off!’ Margot explains. The couple’s son, Hector, 23, and younger daughter, Frances, 18, have both inherited the cooking bug; this Christmas Hector will be in Australia, where he is cheffing at Momofuku Seiōbo under David Chang.

Joining the Hendersons at their south London home will be Margot’s brother and sister-in-law from New Zealand, members of Fergus’s family and restaurant-world friends. ‘We should be 16 or 17,’ says Margot. Fergus’s architect father designed the ‘great, solid’ table, which will be loaded with roast Jerusalem artichoke, pumpkin, and that golden goose with a potato stuffing that has soaked up its rich juices. This is where they will remain for most of the afternoon.

‘Fergus and I get the bird in the oven at 9am, leaving plenty of time for presents,’ says Margot. ‘We each open them one by one, though Mum skips ahead,’ Frances adds. ‘The rest of us like to have our moment!’ Boughs of fir and holly are hung through the house, which friends, including Arnold and her family, help to decorate. ‘These are pieces we have collected for ever and ever,’ says Fergus’s sister, Annabelle, who hands out ornamental pugs in knitted stockings, silver spacemen, and a mouse in a motorcar (Fergus’s favourite) from a wicker basket.

After Stilton (Colston Bassett from Neal’s Yard Dairy), Christmas pudding and mince pies, it’s time for a James Bond film or Love Actually, ‘which Fergus always bawls at’, says Margot with a chuckle. ‘Sometimes we barely leave the table for being too full,’ says Annabelle.

Just as the parties thrown by Arnold & Henderson wow guests with graceful glamour and exquisite food (‘We’ve been successful because we still care about what we do,’ says Arnold), so the Christmas feast has a very special effect. ‘The incredible thing about having a plate loaded with a mound of food fit for Desperate Dan,’ says Fergus, ‘is that it disappears so quickly.’ And if Margot has one piece of essential advice for fellow hosts, it’s ‘lots of tinfoil – don’t forget the tinfoil!’ I trust her, too. arnoldandhenderson.com; ica.art

‘A plate loaded with a mound of food fit for Desperate Dan disappears so quickly’