Those who venture to Whitechapel and Brick Lane in search of food normally have a certain thing in mind; perhaps a chicken shish from Efes, a platter of Tayyab’s famous lamb chops, or a bagel from legendary late-night bagel-slingers Beigel Bake. This isn’t an area one would usually associate with modern British cooking, but tucked away in Whitechapel Gallery is Townsend – a new restaurant that focuses on seasonal, contemporary British fare.
Seasonal modern British is a term bandied around a lot these days – a giant umbrella that covers many different restaurants – but Townsend head chef Joe Fox is a man who lives and breathes the philosophy of seasonal cooking. As head chef at Petersham Nurseries for six years, he wrote ever-changing menus that constantly shifted to include hyper-seasonal produce. ‘We had a dedicated forestry team at Petersham, so you really learn a huge amount,’ he explains, cup of coffee in hand. ‘Lots of flowers are edible but sometimes they only flower for a few days, so the forestry team would come and tell you that you could eat them.’ After leaving Petersham Nurseries in 2019, Joe joined forces with Nick Gilkinson (formerly of Garden Café and Anglo) to open up Townsend, where his seasonal sensibilities are flourishing.
As a young kid Joe was particularly enamoured by baking. ‘I wanted to be a baker or a fireman as a kid,’ he laughs, and he recalls cooking with his parents, whether it was organic food with his mum or Fray Bentos pies and mushy peas with his dad. ‘I remember standing on something to get to the counter so I could peel the potatoes,’ he notes. He didn’t enjoy school much, so he went straight to catering college when he finished and picked up a couple of kitchen jobs simultaneously. ‘I was working at the Nutfield Priory Hotel with David Evans – that was probably my first experience of a big kitchen,’ he recalls. ‘Old-school French cooking, big white hats, that sort of thing. I was working in another pub up the road at the same time, but I didn’t tell either of them that I was doing the two jobs. One day I nearly cut my finger off at Nutfield, and the guy who owned the pub nearly fainted when I turned up for my shift – he hated the sight of blood. Anyway, he asked why I had a blue plaster on it and the game was up.’