'Gizzi Erskine and I are no angels': nutritionist Rosemary Ferguson talks Pure Filth pop-up

Healthy food is getting dirty in the hands of TV chef Gizzi Erskine and nutritionist Rosemary Ferguson 

You can’t cheat healthy eating. And attempts to do so are usually anaemic imitations: courgetti can pretend all it wants but it’s nothing on spaghetti luxuriating in carbonara. Fast and healthy food have little business dressing up as each other.

Unless the restaurateurs involved are Gizzi Erskine and Rosemary Ferguson. This month, the chef and the model- turned-nutritionist will launch Pure Filth, a pop-up at Tate Modern which bills itself as “healthy food for hedonists”.

Dishes that feel sinful are also seen as (slyly) nutritious, and it will run for three consecutive weekends, starting on November 25, offering a breakfast menu from 10am to 1pm, and a “brunch to drunch” option that is available from midday until close.

So while there are straightforwardly healthy plates (fired fruit and yoghurt granola, with seasonal fruit and coconut sugar), and juices and salads on the menu, many of the dishes mimic the messy satisfaction of junk food. In other words, the healthiness is suitably disguised.

There’s a burger menu — on which the hero dish is the Pure Filth burger: a veggie patty (black beans, black lentils, black quinoa and umami paste) served with fried onions, aioli, avocado and cheese, sandwiched between a beetroot bun. It ticks all the zeitgeist boxes — it’s vegetarian, it contains avocado and the beetroot bun is (almost) millennial pink.

“Rather than trying to get people to eat kale, we’re trying to make something people want to eat,” explains Ferguson, “but that it has something going for it healthwise. It can fit into a comfort food space but you’re not going to beat yourself up for having a bowl of fat.”

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Other burgers include The Big Double — two signature patties in a carrot bun, with pickles, onions and American beer cheese — and the Korean burger, a patty in a beetroot bun with kimchi, pear Bulgogi sauce, pickles and American beer cheese. All the burgers can be made vegan on request — chefs will exclude the cheese and the aioli.

Each also contributes a minimum of “three of your 10-a-day” (when did five become 10?). “At every point we could, we’ve added something nutritious,” says Ferguson. So sauces are designed to be good for the gut or to boost your energy.

Once the website is up and running, there will be a detailed breakdown of the nutritional values of each dish. But it also means that if you’re eating healthily you don’t have to feel like the lemon sitting at the end, ordering a salad. “You can go all out,” says Ferguson.

There are also fat potato fries, an apple pie made with maca and coconut sugar, and vegan ice cream milkshakes.

The pair practise what they preach — this is the food they like to eat. “Gizzi and I are no angels,” Ferguson laughs. “The pressure on people to be supersonic is not realistic. ‘Healthy food for hedonists’ is because we’re not perfectly behaved and it’s a good way of balancing it out — this is great for a hangover because it has things that would help bring the body back into balance without being a bacon sandwich and a Coca Cola.”

Find out more at tate.org.uk

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