HERE’S my favorite story about St. John, the London restaurant run by Fergus Henderson. The menu item read, “a bowl of English peas.” It was May, and I know how good these can be, so I ordered them and watched as a kitchen assistant (it’s hard to call the person doing this a cook) reached into a wood crate and grabbed a massive handful of peas, in their pods. These he put into a large bowl, which was brought to my table. Talk about minimalism. Still, they made a fine appetizer.

Though Mr. Henderson is best known as the leader of the modern cult of offal, it seems to me that his true forte was revitalizing English cooking by bringing back simplicity and a certain noncontinentalness. This is a country with phenomenal culinary resources, temporarily misplaced by postwar deprivation; the recovery began only in the 1980s, when Londoners demanded upscale French, Italian and even Indian restaurants. English food came last, but it finally arrived.

These days, it seems Mr. Henderson and some of his followers barely acknowledge any cuisine other than British, and this is not only to his credit but to his customers’ benefit. One of my favorite no-brainer dishes of his is roast beef-marrow bones, which he serves with toast and a dead easy parsley and shallot salad that makes its way onto a number of different plates at the restaurant.

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The difficulty lies in finding a butcher who will sell you the leg bones you need. They should be sawed into pieces about three inches long. (Some of the marrow may remain inaccessible if they are longer.) Once you have them, roast them, make the little salad and a bit of toast, and enjoy. Scoop out the marrow — it is fatty, rich, filling and incomparably delicious — with a knife or a narrow spoon, spread it on the toast and top with a vinaigrette and coarse salt.

These could be seen as appetizers — one or two bones a person — but I like to eat three or four as a once-in-a-while main course because I don’t get to London often enough.