The Miracle (Fergus Henderson Interview) (Interview‪)‬

Before sitting down for our interview, Fergus Henderson asked if I'd like "a miracle." Without knowing what form said "miracle" would take, I accepted, and was handed a glass of Fernet Branca. The viscous black Italian liqueur, with its complex bitter notes and elusive recipe, eased me into an afternoon with one of the world's most venerated chefs. Henderson's restaurant, St. John, is a converted Georgian townhouse whose present incarnation opened in 1994. The restaurant is a short walk from the 800 year old Smithfield Meat Market, one of London's last vestiges of a past that did not recoil at the unfurling of the butchered animal in all its heart, kidney and intestinal glory. It is a fitting location for St. John, arguably the offal epicenter of the universe, where people of every background come to worship at the foot of its painfully modest king.