A tribute to Russell Norman

A short post about the restaurateur and author who died recently.

I got the news yesterday evening that Russell Norman had died. To my surprise I started crying on the train back from London. A man who looked like he was getting off at Chatham came and sat next to me and said ‘you look like you need a beer’, handed me a chilled San Miguel and introduced himself as Mickey. He then got off at Chatham.

There will be those who knew Russell far better than me and those who will be able to place his importance in the gastronomic history of this country. I can’t do either of those things but our friendship meant a lot to me, so here’s my tribute.

I first met Russell when I worked at Bloomsbury publishing in the PR department. I was working on his Polpo cookbook which was published in 2012. It could have been a clever cash-in on the success of Polpo restaurants which had taken London by storm since the first one opened on Beak Street in 2009. Instead it was a beautifully-written hymn to the joys of Venetian food. The book looked spectacular as well and without me having to do much, Russell did most of the work, it received a massive amount of coverage and sold extremely well. 

Russell Norman in Marrakesh this year.

Russell had an amazing effect on people. There was the charisma and good looks, no doubt, but he also had the perfect host’s ability to connect with people, and with Russell, it was always genuine. He wasn’t trying to sell you something. I think with every customer there was a personal connection.

Our paths crossed again a couple of years later when we both lived in Blackheath. We used to run into him and his wife Jules and their girls Martha and Mabel at Blackheath farmers market often. In 2016 for the launch of my first book, Empire of Booze, he let me use the upstairs room of the Ape & Bird pub, which he then owned, for free. He laid on pizzas and played host. The generosity for someone who he really didn’t know terribly well was extraordinary. I learned later that that was entirely normal for Russell. That night in a fit of high spirits, I pinched a Duralex glass which I still use to drink cheap wine out of. 

We saw each other sporadically after that. At the 2019 Fortnum & Mason awards he took us down to the after party and made sure we were allowed in. You got VIP treatment with Russell. Then at same awards in 2021, during Covid, we knocked back champagne, thrilled to be out and in the company of old friends. He had just opened a Florentine restaurant, Brutto, which quickly became the hottest place in town. When I visited he gave me Negronis on the house and came over to chat as if he had all the time in the world though the place was rammed. 

This year I sent him a copy of my book about English wine to see if he might give me a quote. To my surprise, he kept on messaging me to say how much he was enjoying it. Bearing in mind that he was running a new restaurant at the time under very difficult circumstances. He also suffered from depression, something he was open about, and I knew that his marriage was failing or had failed at that point. Yet he took the time to read my work and provided me with the most magnificent quote for it. Having approval from Russell was like getting the nod from my cool big brother. But more than this, I don’t think it’s any exaggeration to say that that quote from a restaurateur and writer as prominent and well-respected as Russell, transformed people’s perceptions of the book both in the media and the book trade. I am enormously grateful to him for that. But that was Russell, always incredibly generous with his time and expertise. 

He came along to my book launch but we didn’t get a chance to talk much and he seemed a bit frazzled to be honest. Too much work and not enough sleep, probably. He invited me to the launch of his Brutto cookbook - which came with a quote from Stanley Tucci and went straight to no 1 on Amazon - but I couldn’t make it.

The weekend before last, my wife and I were in Faversham market on Saturday afternoon and we heard someone call out, it was Russell. He was having a drink in the Italian wine bar in town with his girlfriend Genevieve. We joined them. He seemed happy and relaxed, so different from how I had seen him previously. The next day we met up again at a pub in Pluckley, the Kent village where he now lived, that had a monthly classic car event. He took his Triumph Vitesse. I arrived in my classic meets banger Mercedes 190. We drank beer and cider and Russell showed me the pub’s spectacularly reasonably priced wine list. We made plans to stay there one night and drink as much as we could. He talked, semi-seriously, about buying the place which was on the market. After years of knowing him, it felt like the start of a beautiful friendship. A week later he was gone.