The Eagle Cookbook was first published in 2001 – as Rough Edges and Strong Flavours – and was reissued in 2009, featuring wonderful new recipes from a number of award-winning ex-Eagle alumni such as Sam and Sam Clark of Moro and Jonathan Jones from The Anchor and Hope and completed by evocative photography that captured 24 hours in the life of this frantically busy and ever-popular gastropub. It remains one of the best collections of Mediterranean-inflected recipes in print. The book is divided into recipe sections for Soups, Salads, Meals on Toast, Eggs for Dinner, Pasta, Rice, Fish, Meat and Side Dishes: all of them full of the kind of wonderfully robust and vibrant flavours that the Eagle put their stamp on twenty years ago… long before any other gastropub got there.
First opened by Mike Belben and David Eyre in 1991 The Eagle soon had the phrase ‘gastropub’ coined after it. Since first opening a steady stream of highly talented chefs have passed through it’s kitchen, many of whom have gone on to radically transform the eating scene in London and beyond. The Eagle can justifiably claim to have transformed the way the British eat out and, along with Fergus Henderson at St John, helped the nation rediscover its culinary heritage.