Is beauty universal, or subjective?

Before answering a question that has troubled even Greek philosophers, consider Anna Tobias’ Instagram page: There’s quiche, rosti, sausage and sauerkraut. There’s pork stew with a side of mash, chunky soup, beans, sponge roll, rice pud. And pie. Lots of pie.

Anna is not pushing any dish out for the ‘Gram, as much as she is not cooking anything wildly different to what you might make at home. She is also, at times, not the most verbose chef to interview (which tells you a lot about what chefs can be like in general,) but lights up when you mention soup, or pudding, or responsible farming practices.

As Anna’s pointed out before, there’s a lot of ego in the way professional cooks like to cook. That they find the need to do something different. Ironically, in her not doing something “different,” Anna is, in fact, doing something, well, different. And this is why, since she left Rochelle Canteen in early 2017, London held its breath for her to open a restaurant.

Anna has cooked alongside Jeremy Lee (who now heads up Quo Vadis) at Blueprint Café, Ruth Rodgers at The River Café, and for Margot Henderson and Melanie Arnold at the aforementioned Rochelle Canteen. She then went solo at east London wine shop and bar P Franco as part of a six-month residency starting in September 2018.

Having realised she wanted to open her own place “three or four years ago,” when a site behind The British Museum in Bloomsbury came on the market, with the help of the folks behind Bermondsey institution 40 Maltby Street, she was able to open Café Deco—in the middle of a global pandemic, no less—in late 2020.

You might say this was not an ideal time to launch a new restaurant. But actually, when things look a bit different, a little more frightening than our ‘normal’ day-to-day, Anna’s cooking is precisely the kind of nourishment a lot of us are looking for. Even if, in makeshift deli mode, it might not be a hundred per cent what she wants to provide once full service resumes, as lockdown finally eases.

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Hugh Thomas: I want to say how much I admire your approach, Anna. It’s kind of rule-breaking in a polite way if that makes sense? Reassuring, especially to people who take cooking inspiration from restaurants that, to be delicious, food doesn’t have to be beautiful.

Anna Tobias: Aw, thank you. I just cook what I really like. That’s the bottom line. I really like simple, unfussy food. Flavour over aesthetics. I find a lot of plain-looking food beautiful in itself.

HT: Even a pork pie can have its own charms.

AT: Totally.

HT: Where did your affinity for beige food come from?

AT: Everywhere I’ve worked has that kind of food at its core really. Jeremy [Lee] cooks quite classic, simple food. Perhaps more elevated and glamorous, but at its root, they’re classic delicious dishes.

The River Café, whilst it’s this expensive glamorous place, the food is… not complex, or jazzy. But Rochelle Canteen is where I found my voice the most. It was my first head chef job, and an opportunity to write menus within the boundaries of what was appropriate for Margot [Henderson]’s restaurant. I think the Canteen out of all the places I’ve worked is the most homely, for lack of a better word.

HT: Have your old mentors been cheering you on with the new place?

AT: They’ve generally been amazing. Jeremy actually popped in yesterday to say hello. I’ve been really lucky with Margot and Melanie [Arnold] and Jeremy in that we’ve become friends and would pick up the phone if I needed advice.

HT: The best thing I’ve eaten of Jeremy’s is his sticky toffee pud.

AT: Jeremy has got the sweetest tooth of anyone I know. He just loves pudding. I’m very grateful to have worked there first because I often find one of my biggest criticisms of restaurants is when you feel like the person running the kitchen doesn’t like pudding, and the pudding menus can be very—though obviously delicious—predictable. Like there’ll be some sort of chocolate ganache or chocolate mousse or a panna cotta with poached fruit.

HT: It seems like a lot of the stuff you cook is what you also like to cook at home?

AT: It’s exactly that. And you know that’s where the old criticism of, “oh I could make that at home,” is to confirm that you might not make your own puff pastry at home. I’ve just got to hope I can do it better and am buying better quality ingredients. That’s really where the difference is. It’s something that’s really important to me, because if you’re cooking simple food then the difference is the quality of ingredients.

““At the moment our defining thing is sandwiches. Which wasn’t really the plan.””

HT: Who do you go to for those?

AT: I use mostly Sarah Greens in Essex and Flourish Produce. I do also use Natoora, and La Sovrana in Sicily, as they grow incredible citrus fruits. I’m working with Andrew Gilhespy at Fresh Flour, who’re using grains grown really close to them in Devon, and they mill to order. So if I need flour, I tell them how much they need and they’ll mill it for me. It’s one of the biggest problems in farming, when you think about how grain has become a monoculture, a contentious product with hybrid breeding after the war.

HT: There are some good conversations around that coming out of the South West. And Wales. I guess most of the flour you use is for pastry and such?

AT: We are making all our bread for our sandwiches. We wouldn't as a restaurant, as we don’t have the time or space for it.

HT: You said in another piece we don’t talk enough about soup. Which is entirely correct. Why is that?

AT: I feel like soup, along with things like quiche and sandwiches and scotch eggs have become a convenience food. People might go and pick up their [New] Covent Garden soup—I’ve not got anything against tinned soups, ‘cause some of them are quite good—but yeah, they’re not necessarily worthwhile.

HT: One thing I’ve begun to appreciate more is soup in the summer, like with your chilled cucumber soup recipe.

AT: Yeah, that’s my mum’s recipe. I grew up on soups, and we’d always have soup several times a week. It’s just something that’s been a part of my home life. My aunt used to wrap chicken thighs in bacon, pour in a tin of sweetcorn, and a tin of mushroom soup, and bake it in the oven. It’s still one of my favourite things.

HT: What dish best sums up Café Deco would you say?

AT: Well, we’ve only been a restaurant for ten days, so it’s really hard to say at the moment. We opened in November and had a bit of rotten luck with the timing. At the moment our defining thing is sandwiches. Which wasn’t really the plan.

HT: Are you alright with that, at least for the time being?

AT: No, it’s annoying. I hate it.

It’s really a weird moment because I've wanted to open my own place for years and years and now I’ve ended up opening a sandwich shop, which is something I’ve never had any experience in doing before, so it’s been a total rollercoaster. We will still do it—we’ve always planned to do sandwiches—but it’s more that it’s mostly all we can do at the moment.

We are cooking some meals, which is nice, but the whole point of having a restaurant is the hospitality side of it. The weirdest thing of opening at this time is you’d have a level of feedback to tell how you’re doing, or if people are having a nice meal, and when people just take it away you feel blind to knowing if they’ve had a good sandwich or an average one.

HT: What was it like cooking at P Franco? Was it a challenge in such a tiny space with just induction hobs to cook on?

The biggest thing was not having an oven. A lot of my food quite likes an oven. And pudding—you’re limited there. But it was always quite a challenge. Most people in the old days didn’t have ovens. A lot of the stews at P Franco we did on the top [stove], which was probably how people used to do them. Steaming was another outlet, so we did steamed puddings and things. It took a while to get used to.

HT: Did that residency change your perspective on wine at all?

AT: I don’t really know how it happened, the interest I have with, quote-unquote, natural wine. I was already eating at places like Brawn and 40 Maltby Street, so I was becoming exposed to it. But yes, P Franco probably broadened that. The most important part of it for me is the farming and the viticulture more than anything else. Obviously like with food, you have to enjoy the flavour, but the decisions I’m trying to make with my wine like with my food is organic produce, that it’s been farmed in a way that I think is good. And that’s the most important bit with wine really—not just grown on a total monoculture, on pesticides or herbicides.

Café Deco will open as a restaurant proper for outdoor dining on 13th April, and for indoor dining on 18th May.