It’s been almost a decade since, on something of a whim, the British chef Jess Shadbolt, 42 — along with her friends Clare de Boer, 36, and Annie Shi, 35 — opened King, an intimate Mediterranean-leaning restaurant in Manhattan’s West Village. Having started her career at the River Café in London (which she calls “the mother ship”), Shadbolt now considers the decision to strike out on her own both naïve and brave. The choice, however, has proved to be a good one, and the restaurant’s enduring success will soon be underscored by “The King Cookbook,” due out Nov. 4. “The beauty of King is that it comes from home cooking,” said Shadbolt, who traces her culinary philosophy to her Cordon Bleu-trained mother, who often said, “Good food is simple food.”
That mantra guided the proceedings on a scorching hot day this past July, when Shadbolt had friends and family over for a lunch on Aldeburgh Beach, along the Suffolk coast in the east of England, in honor of Dean Fryer, 61, one of the last remaining day boat fishermen along this stretch of the North Sea. The meal was both a celebration of Shadbolt and Fryer’s decades-long friendship — she’s been a loyal customer since her teens and recently acquired a metal-roofed beachside cabin next door to the wooden hut from which he sells his catch — and a chance to toast her new fish-focused restaurant, which will open next door to King early next year. Before people started eating, she announced it would be named Dean’s, in homage to the seafarer.
Though she now lives in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood, Shadbolt maintains a deep connection to the charmingly old-fashioned Aldeburgh, where the seafront is lined with pastel-hued Victorian villas. Her parents both grew up there and, while Shadbolt was raised in Essex, she often visited for weekends and family holidays. For the lunch, she served Fryer’s catch of the day (sea bass, crab and lobster), prepping at her cabin — whose whitewashed interiors are adorned with a ship’s rudder, an abandoned anchor and vintage furniture — and cooking much of the meal on a grill she set up by the water. Wine and fizzy cocktails were also served, and the maritime feast lasted long into the afternoon.
The attendees: Shadbolt and Fryer were joined by Diane Wingfield, 61, a manager at Pump Street Chocolate in nearby Orford; Mike Warner, 60, a writer and fisheries consultant; Will Orrock, 37, and his wife, the interior designer Cassidy Hughes, 41, who own the Greyhound Inn, a country pub in the Suffolk village of Pettistree; Gem Boner, 43, a co-founder of Restaries, a collection of rentable lodgings, including a 16th-century estate house and cottages, at Paradise Farm, near the market town of Halesworth; Jonny Crickmore, 45, of Fen Farm Dairy in Bungay, which specializes in French-style cheese; and Shadbolt’s parents, Lysie and Simon Shadbolt, both 73.
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