Michelin-starred chef Skye Gyngell dies at 62 after rare skin cancer battle

When Skye Gyngell passed away on November 22, 2025, at age 62 in London, the culinary world didn’t just lose a chef—it lost a quiet revolutionary. Her death, from Merkel cell carcinoma, came just over a year after her diagnosis, a cruel twist for a woman whose life was built on the most delicate of senses: taste, smell, and the rhythm of the seasons. Gyngell, born in Sydney on September 6, 1963, had trained in France before moving to Britain, where she became one of the most influential voices in modern British cooking—not with fanfare, but with humility, precision, and an almost spiritual reverence for ingredients.

A Chef Who Redefined Seasonality

In 2004, Gyngell took over the kitchen at Petersham Nurseries Café, tucked away in the leafy grounds of Petersham House in Richmond, London. She didn’t just cook there—she cultivated. Her menu changed daily, dictated by what was ripe in the garden just steps from the kitchen. No fancy techniques, no overcomplicated sauces. Just tomatoes picked at dawn, herbs still damp with dew, fish landed the night before. It was the antithesis of the starched-tablecloth Michelin restaurants then dominating London’s West End. And yet, in 2011, the Michelin Guide awarded her a star. She was stunned. "It felt like a curse," she told The Independent in 2012. "We were cooking out of a garage. How could that be Michelin?" The star, she later admitted, became a burden. Customers arrived expecting grandeur, not simplicity. The kitchen couldn’t scale. The pressure warped the joy. So she left.

Spring: The Redemption

By 2013, she opened Spring in a converted Georgian townhouse near Victoria. This time, she had more space, more control. And though she never sought another star, Spring became a pilgrimage site for chefs and food lovers alike. The tasting menu was a diary of the year—spring asparagus, summer strawberries, autumn mushrooms, winter citrus. No two meals were alike. She once said, "Food shouldn’t be a performance. It should be a conversation." And Spring? It talked.

Beyond the Kitchen

Gyngell’s influence stretched far beyond her restaurants. As food editor for Vogue, she brought a chef’s eye to the glossy pages—writing about the politics of sugar, the ethics of sourcing, the quiet dignity of a perfectly cooked egg. She contributed regularly to The Independent, where her columns were as much about memory and place as they were about recipes. Her four cookbooks—Here Comes the Sun, A Year at Petersham, My Kitchen in the Woods, and Seasons—became tactile heirlooms in home kitchens across the UK and Australia.

She also collaborated with Cloudy Bay wines on a pop-up dinner in 2011, pairing her seasonal dishes with New Zealand whites in a way that felt effortless, even poetic. Her work helped bridge the gap between fine dining and everyday eating, making seasonal cooking feel accessible, not elitist.

When the Senses Failed

The diagnosis of Merkel cell carcinoma in 2024 was devastating—not just because it was aggressive, but because it attacked the very tools of her trade. Surgery left her temporarily unable to taste or smell. For a chef, that’s a kind of silence. She didn’t disappear. She watched. She listened. She wrote. Friends say she spent her final months documenting recipes for her children, now young adults, and revisiting old notebooks filled with notes from her days in France. "She didn’t want to be remembered for the star," one close colleague told The Telegraph. "She wanted to be remembered for the way she made people feel at the table."

Legacy in the Words of Others

When news of her death broke, tributes poured in from the culinary elite. Jamie Oliver called her "a gentle giant of British food," while Nigella Lawson wrote, "Skye taught us that the most profound flavors come not from ambition, but from attention."

She is survived by her two children, and by a generation of chefs who learned from her example: that excellence isn’t about accolades, but about presence. That a meal can be an act of love. That the best food doesn’t shout—it whispers.

What Comes Next

Spring remains open under new leadership, but the soul of the place still carries Gyngell’s fingerprints. Her cookbooks continue to sell. Her name is whispered in kitchen schools from Melbourne to Manchester. And every time a chef chooses a single perfect tomato over a dozen garnishes, she’s still in the room.