A Legend Lost: Rose Gray, The River Cafe

It is with great sadness that the food world mourns the loss of The River Cafe’s legendary co-founder, Rose Gray.

With no formal training – just some time spent in the Tuscan hills of Italy and an apparent natural talent for cooking – Gray and River Cafe co-founder Ruthie Rogers together transformed Italian cuisine in Britain. Gray’s focus on freshness and simplicity, rooted in the foods served in Italian farmhouses and family kitchens, had a profound influence on the UK food scene that reverberates today. Before local, seasonal, simple was in vogue, there was Gray.

Along with The River Cafe, Gray is legendary for having nurtured in her kitchen some of the nation’s best chefs. Her amazing cookbooks all beautifully designed and authored with partner Rogers, likewise left an imprint, as they were saturated with mouth-watering photographs and passionate recipes for delicious, straightforward, seasonal, Italian food.

And though the food world grieves an extraordinary loss, it is clear that The River Cafe and all of Gray’s iconic work will continue to live on in the kitchens and hearts of many throughout the UK and the world.

Gray passed away at 71 from cancer on Sunday, 28 February 2010.