“British people are like Americans with their eggs – they know the price of beer,” laughs Jon Rotheram, as we sit upstairs at The Marksman. The year is 2025, the £8 pint is no longer an urban legend in certain pockets of the capital, and the first half of 2025 saw an average of two licensed venues close permanently each day. Restaurants and pubs are fighting a long, slow war against inflation, rising rents, and other costs – and many are losing. Which makes The Marksman, still thriving on Hackney Road ten years after it opened, something of a unicorn.
When I ask Rotheram if he ever thought he’d last a decade, he bursts out laughing. “No! I mean, I did put all of my life savings into The Marksman, so I suppose I was committing for the long haul. But when I opened this, I was much younger, taking every year as it comes. They say if you can make it past two years that’s a good thing… but I didn’t think I’d make it to ten, or still want to be here either.”
The Marksman was the brainchild of Rotheram and Tom Harris, who met working at St John in Smithfield – “the mothership,” as Rotheram calls it. “Everyone was a bit worried about two head chefs coming together to make a restaurant,” he says, amused. “A clash of egos – but we were friends for such a long time, it worked.” The St John DNA is obvious: British fare made with good produce, without frills or frippery, with regular appearances of offal and in-house-made pastry, bread, and charcuterie.
Rotheram’s love of produce predates Fergus Henderson. As a teenager in rural Essex, he worked as a kitchen porter in Fleurs de Lys, a country pub where he first saw good food in a pub setting. “The chef I worked with was Spanish, and it was the first time I’d tasted amazing produce.” It was tough, physical work, but he fell in love with the intensity.
After St John came Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen – the social enterprise that trained disadvantaged young people to become chefs. “Jamie was a friend from school,” Rotheram says. “When he hired me as head chef, I was worried I wasn’t going to be able to do it.” What followed was a crash course in pedagogy. “Dealing with students was a completely new minefield. It was tough because of the backgrounds they were coming from. They were really patient with me, actually. They taught me so much about teaching young cooks. Most chefs never learn that skill.”
When it came time to open his own place, Rotheram knew he wanted a restaurant with a bar, a little like St John. “There weren’t many sites that could accommodate that,” he recalls. “Then a friend told us about this place coming up. We had a chat and thought actually, maybe we could do this. The style of food we were cooking fits very well in a pub anyway.”
In the decade since, London’s pub-restaurant scene has evolved substantially. The old hierarchy – “proper” restaurants at the top, pubs somewhere below – has dissolved. “When we first opened, people were like, ‘Why are you going back into a pub? You come from a Michelin background, why would you do that?” he recalls. “Actually, there’s nothing wrong with pubs. Now, I fucking love that there’s no snobbery and young chefs feel comfortable going to work in them.”
Rotheram’s latest project, Lasdun at the National Theatre, trades The Marksman’s worn wood and gentle patina for something more glittering. “I always get upset that our arts institutions use chain restaurants; it’s frustrating seeing the same brands,” he says. “I love that the National Theatre was brave enough to take someone independent like ourselves.”
And so, ten years on from 2015, The Marksman is still churning out beef buns and custard tarts to a loyal line of Londoners. The Marksman’s longevity sits less on trend-hopping than on a steady commitment to the kind of food Rotheram actually wants to eat. In London, where novelty ages fast, that consistency may be the thing that keeps a place standing.
