Tom Norrington-Davies

Tom Norrington Davies is a cook and writer. In 1996, as a young chef, he joined the team at London's seminal gastro pub, The Eagle. It was ten years before he left. During that time he produced his first and best known cookbook, Just Like Mother Used To Make (Cassell Illustrated ,2004). He is author of two other recipe collections: Cupboard Love (Hodder, 2005) and Game (Absolute Press, 2008) which he wrote with his friend and fellow chef Trish Hilferty. Tom was co-owner of the celebrated Great Queen Street restaurant in Covent Garden. Shortly after it opened in 2007 it won the ITV London Food award for best British restaurant. Tom lives in South London with his partner. He is a longtime practitioner of Astanga Yoga and travels annually to Mysore, India, to study this life affirming discipline with his teacher.

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Features & Stories

Behind The Cookbook: The Eagle Cookbook

The Eagle in London’s Farringdon opened in 1991 and hatched the concept of the gastropub as we now know it. The Eagle Cookbook is a showcase for the gutsy, heartfelt cooking that still comes from its famed open kitchen. We talk to former chefs to find out what it was like to work at the ground-breaking pub, and what they think lies behind The Eagle’s continued success.

Tom's favorite cookbooks

Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book

Jane Grigson

Jane Grigson is my favourite cookery writer of all time, I can just sit and read her prose for hours. Its a toss up between this and English Food. I'm listing this one because I think Ive cooked more recipes from it.

Honey from a Weed

Patience Gray

As much a journal as a cookbook, I like the slightly random way in which the recipes are gathered. Mediterranean food is so often glamorised and dolled up. This is the real thing.

Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery

Madhur Jaffrey

A profound influence on my life. I left home for university clutching this book (thanks mum) and lived on many of the various dal recipes. It was a cheap and nutritious way to eat as a student. Many years and countless trips to the subcontinent later I now own some grander, more comprehensive collections of Indian recipes but this one is still closest to my heart.

Roast Chicken & Other Stories

Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham

One of a handful of almost compuslory "textbooks" for chefs of my generation!

Nose to Tail Eating

Fergus Henderson

So, here is one of the other books many chefs of my era (yikes) were all inspired by. It was groundbreaking in terms of the style and recipes but it also has lots of humour. I wish I could write as concisively as Fergus but I'll always be a bit of a rattler. Incidentally, before the international fame of the restaurant and the Anthony Bourdain foreward etc...There is a wonderful early edition with the original colour pictures by Jason Lowe which I dont think the later version improved on. This was the book which made me want to work with Jason when I started writing myself some years later.

Verdura: Vegetables Italian Style

A bible of the sort of cooking that would go on to be, slightly sneeringly known as cal -ital. The whole thing is swimming in olive oil. Yum! It's one of those fine veggie cookbooks that really never announces itself as such.

How To Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food

Nigella Lawson

Before she hit the tv screens and became much more famous for How to be a Domestic Goddess I remember being seduced by the humour in this book. There's lots of it. There is also the unusual way the recipes are grouped into meals, such as "no effort saturday lunch" or "camp, but only slightly, dinner for 6" . Inimitable.