The past 12 months have been ones of ups and downs for Skye Gyngell. In 2024, the Australia-born chef celebrated 10 years of her flagship London restaurant Spring, a huge achievement for one of London’s seminal female-led kitchens. At the same time, however, Gyngell found herself battling a rare and aggressive skin cancer, a process that saw her lose her sense of taste and smell for a period of a few months and, as she wrote in a moving testimonial for the FT earlier this year, has now led her to decide that she will never work in a kitchen again on a full-time basis.
It's impossible to overstate the significance of Gyngell’s achievement. Previously head chef at Petersham Nurseries, she won the café-style restaurant located inside a greenhouse within the Petersham Nurseries garden centre and nurseries a Michelin star, which proved to be a key moment in the guide’s recognition of more casual restaurants and less reliance on French food and techniques.
Then came Spring, the Australian chef’s first solo project that opened in October 2014 within London’s Somerset House. Spring has, in many ways, also proven to be a gamechanger. It was one of the first high-profile restaurants in the capital to have a primarily female brigade in the kitchen, with Gyngell a prominent champion for female representation in the industry, and was also the first single-use plastic free restaurant in London, a nod to Gyngell’s position as a leading advocate for sustainability in the culinary world. It’s this drive that also led to the introduction of the restaurant’s famous ‘scratch menu’, a limited set menu served daily that’s created using surplus ingredients that would otherwise go to waste.
In an interview with Restaurant last year, Gyngell, who also now serves as culinary director at Heckfield Place in Hampshire, described her time of being super ambitious as having come and gone, but still there is plenty she hopes to achieve in the years to come. “I hope [Spring] survives for another 10 years, and that relies on us cooking beautiful food and delivering great service,” she said. “I just hope that can continue, and we can have wonderful talented people work for us and go further. I want it to be a happy place that thrives. I want to do more work with the farm, have a growing programme, and bring younger people back to the land.
“They’re small ambitions. I don’t want to open another restaurant or conquer the world. I just want to continue to feel proud of the work we do. We’re not perfect and we can still go further, but everything we do is done authentically.”
It's impossible to overstate the significance of Gyngell’s achievement. Previously head chef at Petersham Nurseries, she won the café-style restaurant located inside a greenhouse within the Petersham Nurseries garden centre and nurseries a Michelin star, which proved to be a key moment in the guide’s recognition of more casual restaurants and less reliance on French food and techniques.
Then came Spring, the Australian chef’s first solo project that opened in October 2014 within London’s Somerset House. Spring has, in many ways, also proven to be a gamechanger. It was one of the first high-profile restaurants in the capital to have a primarily female brigade in the kitchen, with Gyngell a prominent champion for female representation in the industry, and was also the first single-use plastic free restaurant in London, a nod to Gyngell’s position as a leading advocate for sustainability in the culinary world. It’s this drive that also led to the introduction of the restaurant’s famous ‘scratch menu’, a limited set menu served daily that’s created using surplus ingredients that would otherwise go to waste.
In an interview with Restaurant last year, Gyngell, who also now serves as culinary director at Heckfield Place in Hampshire, described her time of being super ambitious as having come and gone, but still there is plenty she hopes to achieve in the years to come. “I hope [Spring] survives for another 10 years, and that relies on us cooking beautiful food and delivering great service,” she said. “I just hope that can continue, and we can have wonderful talented people work for us and go further. I want it to be a happy place that thrives. I want to do more work with the farm, have a growing programme, and bring younger people back to the land.
“They’re small ambitions. I don’t want to open another restaurant or conquer the world. I just want to continue to feel proud of the work we do. We’re not perfect and we can still go further, but everything we do is done authentically.”
