Cookery Book Review

River Café Cook Book Green

Whilst the rest of the world has been busy falling at the feet of Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers, and handing them out prizes and mega-sales for their two River Café Cookery books, and lauding them with the most ridiculous plaudits (believe it or not but The Times actually said: "Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers have changed the way we eat", Yeah, sure), we have remained deeply unimpressed by the work of this pair. For a start, there is nothing original in their work; it¹s all there already in the books of Ada Boni and Marcella Hazan, though the girls never treat us to a bibliography so we can know what they have been reading. And whilst the design of the books is smart, the prissy people photography is off-putting.

Their third book, the whackingly expensive River Café Cook Book Green (Ebury Press, £30stg) gives us no cause to change our minds. It's glamorous and self-conscious, the sort of book bought by rich people who want to eat like poor people, as a critic once noted of a famous restaurant in Genoa. The food is good, of course, as Italian peasant cooking always is ­ logical, seasonal, creative ­ but the smugness of it all is a million miles away from what Italian cooking is actually all about.

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text © John & Sally McKenna
illustrations © Ken Buggy