Skye Gyngell was singular. She had the palate of a chef and the palette of an artist

"It was also the name chef Skye Gyngell, who has died at age 62, chose for her London restaurant. She said it was her favourite season, but the truth is she embraced all four and lived them wholly. Gyngell was singular: she had the palate of a chef and the palette of an artist. Those twin gifts met in food that was painterly in its composition, delicate in its details and tuned to nature's shifting notes."

"I mustered the courage to tell her how much I loved her monkfish curry: a bright and brilliant dish that seemed to float above continents. It tasted Australian in its top notes yet was grounded in ingredients gathered locally. She used the eclectic toolbox she had collected along her path from Sydney to Paris to London to create something unmistakable, what I came to think of simply as Skye food."

"Several years later we met properly, while I was working for one of her greatest inspirations, Alice Waters, the California pioneer of the farm-to-table movement and a radical force for women in kitchens. The parallels between Gyngell and Waters were unmistakable, as they were with legendary food figures such as Maggie Beer and Ballymaloe's Darina Allen. All were feminists, bold in their conviction that food rooted in nature could be transformative."

Skye Gyngell, who died at age 62, named her London restaurant Spring and embraced all four seasons in her cooking. She combined a chef's refined palate with an artist's sense of composition, producing dishes that were painterly, delicate and attuned to nature's shifting notes. Her cuisine used local ingredients while drawing on influences from Sydney, Paris and London, exemplified by a celebrated monkfish curry that married Australian top notes with local produce. She led quietly within a nature-rooted, farm-to-table movement alongside figures like Alice Waters, Maggie Beer and Darina Allen, championing feminist conviction and transformative food.

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