Great Pub Chefs - Courage under Fire - Jonny Haughton

Jonny Haughton was on the verge of celebrating 10 years at the Havelock Tavern when fire broke out. Despite such a harrowing ordeal, Mark Taylor found an undaunted chef who still managed to launch his first recipe book.

Towards the end of last summer, everything was in place for the 10th birthday celebrations at the Havelock Tavern. Even though the pub had just gone on the market, owners Peter Richnell and Jonny Haughton were preparing to round off a decade in charge of one of London's most influential gastro pubs with a fantastic swansong.

Sadly, the celebrations were never to be. On 31 August a discarded cigarette butt in the bar set fire to a bin overnight and the West Kensington pub went up in flames. By an incredible stroke of luck, Jonny, who lived above the pub with his wife and children, was on holiday in Spain at the time but the fire brought an untimely end to this legendary place.

"We were hoping to have a fantastic send off," sighs Jonny, who has since moved his family to Dorset. "Everyone was on a high and looking forward to a celebration, but that all sadly came to an abrupt end."

However, the Havelock is rising from the ashes as Jonny says that the burntout building in Brook Green is set to be reopened in April. Builders are already on site. He says: "It's all very exciting. We'll put it on the market, but in truth we are not in a hurry to sell."

In the meantime, Jonny is busy promoting his first book, Cooking Without Fuss. A collection of top recipes from the Havelock over the past 10 years, it's a fitting testament to this extraordinary place, a neighbourhood gastro pub that counted Jamie Oliver and Simon Hopkinson among its regulars.

An imposing tiled Victorian pub on the corner of a quiet residential street, the Havelock Tavern was very much the quintessential urban gastro pub.

As well as doing fabulous food (the menu changed twice a day and often during service), it was equally a place to sit and read the paper over a pint of London Pride.

Despite doing an average of 1,100 covers each week, the pub refused to take bookings ("whoever you were") and that was part of its appeal. "We stuck to our guns," says Jonny. "An awful lot of pubs are restaurants in disguise and there's nothing wrong with that. It just wasn't what we wanted to do. We wanted to have a local which was designed for locals and we didn't go out of our way to attract anybody else. We never, ever broke the golden rule of taking bookings and you couldn't reserve a table. It was a very fair and democratic system. I think part of our appeal was that we didn't have a particularly commercial approach. That was our number-one strength. Our overall objective was to enjoy ourselves and let the commercial side look after itself."

A former law graduate who changed careers at the age of 27, Jonny has spent the past 16 years cooking with a philosophy of "if it tastes good, put it on the menu". He adds: "What I'm against is thoughtless combining of ingredients. When we sat down to write the menus each day, we would get into fierce debate about the various merits and values of a particular idea but, at the end of the day, the dish has got to work.

"A lot of chefs these days are so hell-bent on being original and coming up with clever creations that they almost miss the point about cooking, which should be about giving pleasure.

"Whenever I felt fed up with what I was doing, I always reminded myself that cooking professionally is actually quite a noble thing to do. So many people are engaged in making other people's lives miserable, chefs actually have the opportunity to bring pleasure into the world. There are very few jobs that allow you to transform someone's mood simply by presenting them with something tasty to eat."

Cooking Without Fuss, Jonny Haughton's book of recipes from the Havelock Tavern, is published by Pavilion, priced £20