LONDON — Skye Gyngell, the Michelin-starred champion of slow food who established Petersham Nurseries Café and Spring, and was born in Australia, has died aged 62 in London. The death of Skye Gyngell, confirmed by her family and restaurants, was the result of a yearlong battle with Merkel cell carcinoma, a rare and aggressive form of skin cancer that had diminished her sense of taste and smell, on Nov. 22, 2025.
Tributes after the death of Skye Gyngell
Tributes from the food world poured in immediately following the news of Skye Gyngell’s death. In a statement, her family called her a “culinary visionary” who had encouraged generations of chefs and growers to connect food to the land. The fellow chef Jamie Oliver described her as “an amazing woman, an incredible cook, and a kind heart,” while Nigella Lawson said it had been “just awful that Skye is no longer in the world” and spoke of how heartbroken she was for her daughters, Holly and Evie. Born in Sydney in 1963, Gyngell was the first Australian woman to earn a Michelin star, which she received in 2011 for Petersham Nurseries Café in Richmond, south-west London.
Slow-food trailblazer, who transformed how London eats
For many diners, Gyngell was the poster girl for the slow-food movement: cooking that is local, seasonal, and in conversation with growers, which makes news of Skye Gyngell’s death all the more personal. At Petersham Nurseries Café, she transformed a ramshackle greenhouse, on the edge of Richmond in south-west London, into one of Britain’s most talked-about dining rooms; she even won that star seven years ago, although subsequently described it as a “curse” because it didn’t sit well with the site’s relaxed (garden-shed) setting.
Petersham to Spring and Heckfield Place
She continued to open Spring at Somerset House in 2014, and, as culinary director of Heckfield Place in Hampshire, she helped design biodynamic gardens that fed restaurants, including Marle, which received a green Michelin star in 2022 for its sustainability and low-waste cooking. That ethos spread well beyond her own kitchens, through her books, columns, and teaching.
Her thoughts stemmed from much earlier than her illness.
Well before Skye Gyngell’s death, her philosophy had already been amply recorded. A 2018 Guardian essay about the recipe that changed her life detailed the debt she felt to Alice Waters and her faith in “good, clean soil,” while a 2016 interview on The Splendid Table had her discoursing at some length on the “feast or famine” aspect of cooking entirely out of a vegetable garden. A 2022 Good Food Guide archive piece on Petersham Nurseries described her early work there as helping to open the door for many of today’s garden-based British restaurants.
A legacy grounded in earth and time
Outside of restaurants, Gyngell was a food editor at Vogue, wrote cookbooks, and inspired younger chefs to follow her lead in valuing beauty, simplicity, and the dignity of growers. For fans and peers, the Skye Gyngell death is like losing a chef who proved that fine dining could be like eating in a garden — intimate, imperfect, and entirely shaped by the seasons.
