The Australian-born Gyngell is being remembered as a pioneering chef whose approach to cooking helped to set a new standard for the industry.
Australian chef Georgia Lahiff remembers dining at Skye Gyngell’s London restaurant Spring when she was just 18 years old.
“My mum came over for Christmas and took me out to lunch at Spring. I was nervous and embarrassed, and I didn’t want to say that I was a cook or that I had just finished my apprenticeship,” she said.
But when Lahiff’s mother mentioned it to staff, Gyngell appeared from the kitchen just minutes later. She said, “Get in the kitchen and do a trial with us. We’d love to have you.”
Georgia went on to work at the Michelin-starred restaurant for two years. “She was an incredible person to meet so early in my life, both professionally and personally.”
Gyngell is being remembered as a pioneering chef whose seasonal and sustainable approach to cooking helped to set a new standard for the industry.
She was equally admired for the way she mentored young women, a legacy reflected in the tributes that have flowed since her passing.
Gyngell died over the weekend in London following a diagnosis of Merkel cell carcinoma, a rare and aggressive form of skin cancer. Her family said in a statement: “We are deeply saddened to share news of Skye Gyngell’s passing on 22nd November in London, surrounded by her family and loved ones.
“Skye was a culinary visionary who influenced generations of chefs and growers globally to think about food and its connection to the land. She leaves behind a remarkable legacy and is an inspiration to us all.”
Skye Gyngell rose to international acclaim as head chef at Petersham Nurseries in south-west London, where she became the first female Australian chef to be awarded a Michelin star in 2011. It wasn’t an award that sat comfortably, with Gyngell calling the highly coveted prize a professional “curse”.
Beyond her culinary achievements, Gyngell was known for nurturing talent and mentoring the next generation of chefs – particularly women navigating a male-dominated industry.
Danielle Alvarez, culinary director of Sydney Opera House Events, cooked alongside Gyngell at the Margaret River Gourmet Escape in 2018, and they remained in regular contact.
“She was a mentor to me,” Alvarez said. “She was always someone I could call when I needed help, just to talk about life, food and beautiful things. I will always be grateful to her for that.”
Alvarez described Gyngell’s cooking as poetic: “She had this way of putting food together and plating it that was unlike anything I had seen before.”
She added that Gyngell’s generosity extended to countless young cooks. “She loved working with young chefs. She looked at all the people who worked for her like her children – people to nurture, mentor and look after.”
Australian chef Sophie Storen, now executive chef at Cookes Food in St Kilda, also remembers Gyngell in this way. She started working at Petersham Nurseries straight out of cooking school at just 23 years old.
Gyngell would give Storen a lift to and from work, where they would talk about food and life in the car together, while listening to J. J. Cale.
Storen was one of eight chefs in the all-female kitchen team. “It was a very creative environment to work in,” Storen said. “We’d sit around and talk about buffalo mozzarella for three hours. Or we’d try 14 different apples and talk about their flavour profiles. I’ve never worked anywhere like that since.”
Gyngell was considered in everything she did, Storen said. “She really, really cared about every single plate that went out, and never cut corners. Never.”
Seeing the tributes pour in, Storen realised how many other young chefs Gyngell had embraced in the same way. “What she did for me, she did for so many other people,” she said.
Among those paying respects online were Jamie Oliver, who described Gyngell as “an amazing woman and incredible cook … thank you for all that you did to inspire young cooks,” and Nigella Lawson, who said: “It’s just awful that Skye is no longer in the world. It is a tremendous loss, and I’m heartbroken for [daughters] Holly and Evie and all those who loved her and learned from her.”
Kylie Kwong added: “Absolutely heartbreaking news. Skye was one of the greatest cooks of all time, sending all my love and energy to [the Spring] team and Skye’s family and friends.”
Gyngell was born in Sydney in 1963, the daughter of legendary broadcaster Bruce Gyngell, the first person to appear on Australian television, in 1956, and interior designer Ann Gyngell (nee Barr) whose death was revealed just one day before Skye’s.
At 14, Gyngell reportedly left her exclusive private school after smoking marijuana; at 17, she began experimenting with heroin. None of it slowed her academic progress – her next stop: Sydney University.
“[Skye] was the intellect of the family, incredibly well-read, interested in learning and would try anything,” her brother, former Channel Nine chief executive David Gyngell, told Good Weekend Magazine in 2012. “Her food is honest and real, like her. In an industry full of ego, she has no airs or graces and is uncompromising about quality.”
Gyngell found a part-time job in a Sydney restaurant and, inspired by its female chef, kitchen life soon won over university. She began her training at La Varenne cooking school in Paris at 19, and worked in prestigious kitchens including George V and the two-star Michelin restaurant Dodin-Bouffant in Paris. She then moved to London, spending a year at the exacting Dorchester, under chef Anton Mosimann, then working for rising culinary star Fergus Henderson, who went on to open the trailblazing nose-to-tail restaurant St John.
When Gyngell took on the Petersham Nurseries project in 2004, she was met with the challenge of a dirt floor, outside storerooms and puddles en route to the kitchen. In the early days, she brought her own pots and pans from home, dipping into a trusty toolbox of roasted spices, infused oils and tea smoke. It wasn’t long before word got out, with nursery regulars tucking into plates of rabbit with roasted fennel and bowls of cauliflower soup with pickled pears while jockeying for a seat with Mick Jagger and fashion designer Stella McCartney.
After departing Petersham Nurseries in 2012, Gyngell was appointed culinary director across several restaurants at Heckfield Place, in Hampshire. She opened Spring, at Somerset House, in 2014.
Typically, Gyngell forged new territory. Spring was the first restaurant in London to ban single-use plastics.
From there, Gyngell grew a mini empire of cookbooks and media columns, at one point being appointed the food editor of Vogue.
Talented and irreverent, Gyngell was a natural truth-teller who was unafraid to call a spade a spade in her adopted city. She once described the food at Mayfair’s fashionable The Wolseley as “unapologetically awful” and praised Nigella Lawson’s cooking while querying the sexy posturing onscreen: “She’s an intelligent woman … why does she do it?” Famed chef Marco Pierre White even copped it for promoting stock cubes.
The media lapped it up, with one article pondering whether Gyngell was the “Courtney Love of cooking”, while the London Telegraph described her as the “Wizardess of Oz” for transforming an old greenhouse at Petersham Nurseries into a culinary destination.
Her friend and former contributing international editor at Conde Nast Traveller and contributor for The New York Times Style Magazine, Bon Appetit and the Financial Times, David Prior, called Gyngell the “most internationally significant Australian female chef of her generation.”
“Skye was singular. She had the palate of a chef and the palette of an artist, and those twin, exquisite gifts met in food,” he said. “She carried an ethereal, mercurial lightness that often belied the grit and unwavering purity of vision that saw her rewrite the rule book of dining in London more than once.
“It was that interplay that made her so beguiling, placing her at the heart of a movement she never sought to lead, yet in her own quiet, uncompromising way undeniably did.”
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Erina Starkey – Erina is the Good Food App Editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Previously, Erina held a number of editing roles at delicious.com.au and writing roles at Broadsheet and Concrete Playground.
