Skye Gyngell, who died last week aged 62, was a visionary chef who, despite her many successes and the enormous regard in which she was held by her peers, did not let herself get carried away by hype. She famously declared that winning a Michelin star in 2011 for Petersham Nurseries Cafe, a low-key restaurant in a Richmond garden centre, was a “curse” (she quit the following year). When a guest rang up to ask about the dress code, she told them: “Wear shorts if you want, and bring your dog.”
Her focus, instead, was on good food, plain and simple, and for Gyngell the ingredients always came first. “Nature does the hard work and we just have to not fuck it up,” was her mantra. At Spring, which she opened at Somerset House in London in 2014, she developed relationships with some of the very best producers in Britain and nurtured a slew of talented chefs. According to Jane Scotter of Fern Verrow farm in Herefordshire, who supplied her with biodynamic vegetables, “she had a great eye for picking out very simple things and making them completely shine”.
Gyngell was born in Sydney in 1963, the daughter of a TV executive and an interior designer, and studied law before getting turned on to cooking. She trained in France and peeled veg at a two-star restaurant in Paris before moving to London, where she did stints at the Dorchester and the French House. She spent time catering for private events (clients included Nigella Lawson, and Madonna and Guy Ritchie) and worked as food editor for Vogue. Later she published four cookbooks, including the wonderful A Year in My Kitchen, but the idea of a TV career never appealed to her. “I don’t have the need for fame or celebrity,” she told one interviewer. “I don’t want to stand for hours with a bloody camera pointed at me doing the same thing over and over again.”
Skye shared her skills and knowledge with young chefs and was fiercely loyal to people who threw themselves into really learning
Jane Scotter, Fern Verrow Farm
Instead, she focused on her restaurants – besides Spring, she had Marle and Hearth, both at Heckfield Place in Hampshire. Deeply concerned about the environment, she purged the kitchen at Spring of single-use plastics and introduced a pre-theatre “Scratch” menu, using misshapen fruit and veg and leftovers that would usually be thrown in the bin. And she invested in her staff. “She was hugely supportive,” says Scotter. “She shared her skills and knowledge with young chefs and was fiercely loyal to people who worked hard and threw themselves into really learning.”
She was a “serious” boss, according to Max Rocha, who spent three years at Spring at the start of his career. He recalls Gyngell getting him to replate a salad nine times until it was right. “Then eventually you’d get it, and she'd be like, ‘perfect’, and you’d feel so amazing,” he recalls. “All I wanted to do was prove myself to Skye.” Later, when Rocha was opening his own restaurant Café Cecilia in east London, Gyngell was “incredibly generous” with her support. “I definitely wouldn’t be a chef or have my restaurant without Skye,” he says. “I owe her everything.”
When I interviewed Gyngell in 2019, I was struck by her elegance and focused intensity, leavened by self-deprecating humour. She talked at length about her quest to eliminate plastics from the kitchen, right down to the clingfilm that many chefs put over pots to boil water. “Sometimes I think everyone [on staff] says, ‘Oh God, it’s another initiative of Skye’s,’” she laughed, rolling her eyes at herself. But she didn’t trumpet her efforts to the customers. “You don’t come here to listen to my ranting and raving: you come here to have a nice time.”
Gyngell is survived by her daughters Holly and Evie and greatly missed by many across the London food world and beyond. “It was one of the best things I’ve ever had in my life,” said Jane Scotter of their working relationship, which blossomed into a friendship. “She was just such great company and very stylish, beautiful and cool. There wasn’t anything not to like.”
Skye Gyngell, chef, was born on 6 September 1963 and died on 22 November 2025 at the age of 62