Best family-friendly restaurants in the UK
From Spanish tapas bars to Korean street-food restaurants and gastropubs with huge gardens, these are the UK’s best child-friendly venues (that just happen to be great for grown-ups, too)
Looking for places to eat with kids? Here's our pick of the best family restaurants in the country... Child-friendly restaurants in London… Tredwells, WC2 (Covent Garden) As well as a Junior menu, Marcus Wareing’s restaurant offers a Culinary Kids tasting menu to encourage further exploration of food. The mini seven-course journey comes with recipe cards, so budding chefs can cook their favourite courses at home. Tredwells has also joined forces with the RSC to form an exclusive partnership with Matilda the Musical at nearby Cambridge Theatre. The bespoke, child-friendly menu (“eggstra-ordinarily awesome” omelettes with “perky peas and bravo broccoli” and “magnificent” meatballs) inspired by the Roald Dahl classic is available throughout summer until 31 August. tredwells.com The Duke of Richmond, E8 (Dalston) There was a time when children weren’t even allowed in pubs, but The Duke of Richmond takes it to the other extreme by being so baby- and child-friendly. As well as a kids’ menu (they can eat for free every Friday afternoon), high chairs and baby-change facilities for both mums and dads, it runs a Tuesday and Thursday lunch club for parents between midday and 4pm. The two-course lunch costs £15 (including a glass of wine or beer) and staff put down mats and toys for babies. Co-owner Meryl Fernandes says: “We encourage parents to bring their friends, National Childbirth Trust crews or just themselves. Being a new mum or dad can be lonely, so we really want to provide a weekly outlet for parents – somewhere to hang out and make new friends.” thedukeofrichmond.com Jinjuu, W1 (Soho) This contemporary Korean street-food restaurant on Kingly Street offers a three-course children’s menu, including beef and pork steamed dumplings, mini bibimbap bowls, and sae-woo pops (fried prawn cakes with aïoli). jinjuu.com Child-friendly restaurants across the UK… Felin Fach Griffin, Brecon, Powys The Felin Fach Griffin restaurant-with-rooms encourages children to join their parents for dinner but younger visitors who need to eat early can have high tea at 5.30pm. Served at a table near the games box, it includes fresh fish fillet with chips, and spaghetti with meatballs. All children’s meals come with a complimentary glass of local apple juice from the Aber Valley. As well as a large kitchen garden to explore, kids visiting Felin Fach Griffin are well catered for all year round, with Easter egg hunts, pumpkin carving and local competitions, including who can grow the tallest sunflower. felinfachgriffin.co.uk Mollie’s Diner, Buckland, Oxfordshire Owned by Soho House, this retro 1950s-style diner in the heart of the Cotswolds has an impressive menu for smaller folk: cod goujons, mac ’n’ cheese, and avocado and sweetcorn salad, all at £6, including crinkle-cut fries and a drink. The activity sheets are excellent, too, with a food-related word-search, dot-to-dot, and a huge colouring sheet depicting burgers, milkshakes and classic Cadillacs. Click here to read our full review of Mollie's Diner molliesmotel.com Rockfish, Exeter Mitch Tonks has five grown-up children, but he still remembers how hard it was to find good-quality, child-friendly restaurants when they were growing up. “We wanted somewhere with really good food and wines, where younger members of the family were welcomed without it feeling like a soft-play area,” says Mitch, who runs a collection of Rockfish family seafood restaurants around the south coast. “At Rockfish, we want to get everyone eating great seafood, whatever their age. So we have high chairs, of course, but also a great children’s menu.” As well as grilled local fish and retro ice-cream sundaes, Rockfish has designed Ocean Protector Packs so kids can learn about seafood and the environment while they eat. It includes a beach-clean bag, a wooden dolphin jigsaw, word-searches and a card game (it’s like a fishy version of Old Maid, and the person left holding the plastic bottle card is the loser). Diners also get a stamp every time their child eats at Rockfish, and after five tokens they get an exclusive t-shirt. Mitch even encourages kids (and their parents) to draw on the paper tablecloths: the best doodles end up on the walls and website. therockfish.co.uk Southside Scran, Edinburgh Tom Kitchin’s restaurant welcomes kids until 10pm, and serves an excellent menu for them (including mussels and fries). But it also offers half-size portions of adult dishes for those under-12s adventurous enough to try the likes of North Sea plaice wrapped in pancetta, for example. Check out more places to eat and drink in Edinburgh here southsidescran.com The Elephant, Torquay Stuffier Michelin-starred establishments might baulk at the thought of children in their restaurant but as a father of three, chef/owner Simon Hulstone positively encourages it. The Elephant is one of the few Michelin-starred restaurants with a separate kids’ menu for under-12s, at a reasonable £6.95 for main course, dessert and drink. The choices include fish of the day with vegetables and potatoes, omelettes made with eggs from a local farm, and homemade ice cream. Simon says: “I’m constantly trying to get my children to eat new foods, as well as healthier alternatives. So we’ve devised a menu to incorporate fresh, seasonal and local produce, but still with an eye on pleasing our young diners.” elephantrestaurant.co.uk The Old Manse of Blair, Pitlochry, Perthshire The Old Manse of Blair owners, Anne and Archie MacDonald, actively welcome families to their Cairngorms National Park hotel and its new restaurant, The Orangery. Head chef Jonathan Greer uses local Highlands ingredients (including venison from the local estates, Perthshire lamb and Arbroath smokies) in his new Inbetweeners menu for teenagers. Anne says: “It was created following extensive research by our 11-year-old twins, who canvassed their school friends in several surveys.” The menu includes chicken fajita pizza with free-range chicken breast; sausages from the local butcher; and estate-reared Aberdeen Angus 4oz burgers with Orkney cheddar and triple-cooked chips from the family’s own potatoes. Anne says: “We want to produce a foodie experience that is as fresh and delicious as possible, with the aim of engaging young diners with their food.” theoldmanseofblair.com Zindiya, Birmingham Zindiya is a contemporary Indian street-food restaurant run by Ajay and Shivani Kenth. Their concept was to create an immersive experience of India in a casual and fun environment. The children’s menu has been developed by the couple’s six-year-old daughter, Diya, who the restaurant is named after. The Little Zindiyans children’s menu includes Indian school lunchbox favourite, aloo paratha (flatbread filled with potatoes and served with yogurt), a fresh salad and chicken tikka wrap, and Indian-inspired fish ’n’ chips. Dessert could be Indian rice pudding, or Zindiya’s take on gol gappe (crispy chocolate balls filled with strawberries and served with vanilla ice cream), which is a common street snack in India. The beautifully designed menu, also made by Diya (who is anti-phone/tablet at the dining table), features a word-search, colouring and facts about India. zindiya.co.uk B-Block Pizza, Keynsham, Bristol In the former Cadbury’s chocolate factory between Bristol and Bath, this family-orientated pizza restaurant hosts free screenings of child-friendly films at its on-site cinema. The showings start mid-afternoon, followed by a pizza and drink deal (£15 for adults and £7.50 for children). b-blockpizza.co.uk Bar 44, Cardiff This buzzing tapas bar in central Cardiff encourages youngsters to eat well. The Ninos menu means kids can choose four, five or six plates for £4/£5/£6 per plate, with options such as patatas bravas, cured anchovies, crispy whole squid and jamón croquetas. There’s also a selection of kids’ mocktails to choose from. bar44.co.uk/cardiff Brassica, Beaminster, Dorset Louise Chidgey and Cass Titcombe’s son, Jesse, was two years old when they opened Brassica in 2014, and he has since spent a lot of time in the restaurant. It’s perhaps why Brassica is so child-friendly, down to a toy box situated under a banquette, so accessible to small children. Brassica doesn’t have a huge children’s set menu, preferring to offer any dish on the menu at half size and half price, but it does list a simple pasta dish and a piece of grilled hake with fries, as well as ice cream with salted caramel to finish. Louise says: “A lot of families opt for charcuterie and bread to start things off, as they’re popular with all ages. As are our trifles and sundaes, which can be smaller for children.” The couple stopped selling all commercially made fizzy drinks a year ago, and instead make three seasonal fruit purées which are mixed with sparkling mineral water. brassicarestaurant.co.uk Market House, Altrincham, Greater Manchester Family is big at the award-winning Altrincham Market, not least because it’s run by Nick Johnson and Jenny Thompson, who have four children of their own. Particularly popular with kids are the freshly made sourdough pizzas at Honest Crust; delicious pancakes and galettes from Fold; and the moreish handmade cakes and buns from Wolfhouse. Market House Coffee always has a great selection of soft drinks and handmade cake pops in fun designs, too. Award-winning pie maker Great North Pie Co even makes pies with smiley faces. The market itself is great for teaching little ones where their food comes from, as children can walk around the stalls and meet local producers. There are also lots of hot-food stalls, providing the opportunity to try new things, and dishes are often cooked in situ so kids can see how they’re made. The market features a different “easy peasy” recipe every week, encouraging kids (and adults) to buy the ingredients at the market, make it at home, and send in a photo of the results. With four seating areas to choose from, there’s also plenty of room for buggies and a cosy play area for kids with a selection of books and toys. altrinchammarket.co.uk <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/2/2019/07/Doughnuts-at-Market-House-Altrincham-Greater-Manchester-d7caf82.jpg" width="4032" height="3024" alt="A piece of grey paper lined with doughnuts. One is caramel, another has white icing with raspberries, another has crushed pecan nuts and another has dark chocolate glaze" title="Doughnuts at Market House Altrincham, Greater Manchester" /> Pip’s Lopen, Somerset Occupying an 1850s railway carriage and an old double-decker bus with a marquee attached, Pip’s has communal tables where families chat over dishes created from organic food grown on the nearby farm. Outside, there are picnic benches for the summer months with a children’s mud kitchen, sandbox and plenty of grass to run around on. The children’s menu costs £6 (including a drink) and might feature a mini picnic of cheddar toastie, pork pie and “farm” slaw; or flowerpot hummus and veggie “bugs”, such as celery stick “snails”. facebook.com/PipsRailwayCarriage The Pigs, Edgefield, Norfolk Children visiting The Pigs get to pick from an extensive menu that includes smoked chicken and bacon salad, and fish fingers served with “what you want with it” (mash, chips, boiled carrots, buttered new potatoes, garden peas, sweetcorn, cucumber or baked beans). The pub-with-rooms has also created a mini version of the pub outside, including a treehouse and zip wire. If it’s raining, children can make use of the indoor play area with its Lego, Brio train track, kitchen, pool table and table football. thepigs.org.uk White Row Farm, Frome, Somerset What makes White Row unique is that it doesn’t sell its produce to other businesses. So everything in the café, including the meat, is sourced directly from the farm. Since the early 1990s, the farm has reared its own pigs and all of the eggs used come from the 350 chickens in the fields surrounding the café. White Row also has an award-winning fishmongers and fish ’n’ chip shop serving MSC-approved fish. Child-size fish ’n’ chips portions are part of the For the Kids menu, which also includes a mini ploughman’s. Little ones can run it all off in an outdoor play park, and also meet piglets, rabbits, hens and alpacas. whiterowfarm.co.uk Words by Mark Taylor Photographs by Steve Ryan, Paul Massey, Soho House, Marc Millar Photography Tony Naylor's top kid-friendly restaurants in the UK The Lord Nelson, Burton Joyce, Nottinghamshire As well as serving cracking grub (say, fish pie or rare-breed pork belly from Whipling Vale Farm with seasonal greens and apple sauce), chef John Molnar’s Moleface pubs are embedded in their communities. All four run weekly coffee ‘n’ cake mornings for new and expectant mums and the Lord Nelson, in leafy Burton Joyce, is a real boon for parents. Its sunny, south-facing garden includes a huge sandpit and an Astro-turfed five-a-side pitch for kids and, in summer, it has its own outdoor pizza kitchen and a vintage bicycle ice-cream stall. On rainy days, children are given Etch-A-Sketches to keep them happy as they await their freshly-cooked Mini Moles dishes (mains, £6). Mains from £12.50; molefacepubcompany.co.uk WIFI | High chairs | Children's menu | At-table activities | Food from 5:30pm | Dogs welcome (bar only) Calcot Manor, Tetbury, Gloucestershire Set in 220 acres, historic Calcot is an imposing pile but the atmosphere is far from stuffy. There are two play-zones with entertainment for kids of all ages and outdoor activities from football to horse-riding, which those visiting to dine can tap-into like residents (rooms from £199). Most families eat in the Gumstool Inn, enjoying dishes such as local sausage ‘n’ mash with red onion jam and crispy shallots. However, the Sunday lunch family feast served in the airy Conservatory restaurant (from £23pp) looks a winner, particularly for a special celebration. It might, for example, feature platters of langoustines and Iberico croquettes followed by roast organic beef from the Calcot estate. A separate children’s menu is served in both dining spaces (mains from £6). Gumstool mains from £12; calcotmanor.co.uk WIFI | High chairs | Children's menu | At-table activities Science Cream, Cardiff Like Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck, Science Cream uses liquid nitrogen to instantly freeze its gelato. That process produces an incredibly dense, smooth scoop that, thanks to Science Cream’s use of all-natural ingredients, also has a remarkable clarity of flavour. Kids will love the science lab look of the place, all exhaust pipes and swirling nitrogen, while adults will adore the salted caramel with homemade honeycomb. Children can also play board games that Science Cream borrows from Cardiff shop, Rules Of Play, and visiting canines are treated to free doggucinnos (frothy milk). 12-6pm, daily. From £3.95; sciencecream.co.uk WIFI | High chairs | Dogs welcome Fat Loaf, Sale, Manchester In a perfect world, every suburb would have a Fat Loaf, a casual modern restaurant which serves affordable food of surprising quality, where kids (look at the drawings that decorate the open-kitchen) are very much welcome. You regularly see the tables pushed together for big family parties here, at which the adults coo over dishes as diverse as sausage roll with pickled onion and quince chutney or an epic cheese and onion pie with buttered greens and mustard sauce. The children’s menu (mains £5) is crowned with DIY sundaes that allow the nippers to add sprinkles and jellies to local Dunham Massey Farm ice cream. Mains from £11.50; thefatloaf.co.uk WIFI | HIgh chairs | Children's menu | At-table activities | Food from 5:30pm | Dogs weclome Brandling Villa, Newcastle Live gigs! Film nights! Video game tournaments! This South Gosforth pub is a hip place with a lot going on. Not least for dogs. Pampered pets can enjoy, not just water and Pedigree treats from the bar, but their own dog meals including a pig’s ear taco (£4.95). Kids big and small will love the Brandling’s NY-style deli ‘sammidges’ and its terrific burgers made using patties from Northumberland Sausage Company. Board games such as Trivial Pursuit™ and Guess Who? provide further entertainment. If beaten by a 10-year-old, console yourself with one of the pub’s 10 crafty cask ales (pint from £3.30) Mains from £7.95; brandlingvilla.co.uk Cloud WIFI | High chairs | Children's menu | At-table activites | Food all day | Dogs welcome La Favorita, Edinburgh All kids love pizza but not every pizza restaurant will satisfy picky, foodie parents. La Favorita on Leith Walk is a slick, buzzy, family-friendly pizzeria (waiting staff are all smiles with the little ’uns, and come armed with crayons, pencils and menus to colour-in), that uses 48-hour, air-proved dough, quality Italian ingredients and a wood-fired oven to produce a cracking slice. Expect thin and pliable, nicely charred bases, whether you go for classic margherita – the tomato sauce vibrant, the mozzarella creamy – or Napoletana finished with fiery Calabrian ’nduja sausage. Sensibly, it is not used on the children’s menu (mains, £5). Pizza from £8.95; vittoriagroup.co.uk WIFI | High chairs | Children's menu | At-table activities | Food all day The Green Café, Ludlow, Shropshire In theory, chef Clive Davis’ seriously foodie daytime café (with rustic seasonal dishes such as tagliatelle, baby chard, lemon and parmesan cream; or a warm salt beef brisket bap with piccalilli), sounds like a hard-sell to kids. But Clive will happily serve his gnocchi with a simple tomato sauce for toddlers, bakes ace cakes (children love his brownies), and he keeps a collection of retro board games and old Beano comics on-site. And did we mention the location? The Green Café sits on a grassy common by a weir. Kids can run around and paddle in the River Teme. Lunch 12-2.30pm. Mains around £9; @greencafeludlow High chairs | At-table activities | Dogs welcome Porthminster Café, St Ives, Cornwall Not only is Australian chef-owner Michael Smith’s pan-Asian fish cookery on-point (Nathan Outlaw is a fan), but the café’s terrace allows parents to kick-back and relax while their kids play nearby on this beautiful Blue Flag beach (terrace open all-year, enclosed/heated on colder days). The children’s menu (mains around £5) generally features six dishes, which are often simplified, healthier versions of the adult mains, such as grilled or battered fish with chips, salad or potatoes. Discerning parents must try the crispy squid with citrus miso or Michael’s signature monkfish curry with jasmine rice and sweet chilli tamarind. Mains from £16; porthminstercafe.co.uk WIFI | High chairs | Children's menu | At-table activities The Allanton Inn, Allanton, Berwickshire As parents themselves, the Allanton’s owners William and Katrina Reynolds know that, in order for mum and dad to enjoy their meal, the kids need entertaining. Chef Craig Rushton confidently deploys seasonal Borders produce, in everything from inventive scotch eggs to dishes such as hand-dived scallops and charred leeks in a bacon-onion broth, but one of the chief attractions at this spruce country inn is how well kitted-out it is for kids. There are building games and craft kits in the dining room, outdoor toys in the enclosed beer garden and, at Easter, Katrina organises egg hunts for the children after they have tucked into homemade fish goujons or local sausages and mash (mains, £4.95). Mains from £12; allantoninn.co.uk WIFI | High chairs | Children's menu | At-table activities Words: Tony Naylor Photographs: Owen Mathias, Andrew Irwin, Chris Humphreys, Bacononthebeech.com, Kiss Photography
Join us at Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons
Exclusive offer for olive readers – join us for lunch, gin tasting and a cooking masterclass at Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons this May (2019)
Raymond Blanc’s celebrated Oxfordshire manor house hotel and two-Michelin-starred restaurant, Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, is a must-visit destination for food lovers. Why not treat a loved one (perfect for Mother’s Day) or yourself to an unforgettable three-course lunch, where you will be joined by members of the olive magazine team. Arriving at the stunning 15th-century manor, surrounded by gorgeous kitchen gardens, you will be welcomed with a morning tea or coffee. Once you have settled in, you will be given a spring demonstration by the expert team of chefs in The Raymond Blanc Cookery School, the first Michelin-starred kitchen in the UK with its own cookery school; plus there will be a gin-tasting session with an expert bartender, who will guide you through the various types of gins and mixers. Prior to lunch there will be a Champagne Laurent-Perrier reception with canapés to whet your appetite, after which you will sit down in Belmond Le Manoir’s elegant La Belle Époque dining room to enjoy a three-course seasonal spring lunch, complete with wine, finishing with tea or coffee and petits fours. Your day will end with the opportunity to explore the wonderful surrounding gardens and see the produce being grown in the expertly tended grounds and orchards. And don’t forget to collect your olive goody bag (worth £20) before you go! Details Date: Monday 20 May 2019 Venue: Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, Great Milton, Oxfordshire, OX44 7PD Time: 10am – 3.15pm Price: £199 per person (£10 discount for olive magazine subscribers*) Early booking is recommended. You will be seated with fellow guests and the olive team. Itinerary 10am Arrive for coffee or tea with biscuits 10.25am Welcome by Belmond Le Manoir staff and members of the olive team 10.30am Guests split into two groups for gintasting and spring cooking demo in The Raymond Blanc Cookery School 11.30am Guests swap activities 12.15pm Champagne Laurent-Perrier reception with canapés 12.45pm Three-course lunch served with selected wines, coffee or tea and petits fours 3pm Collect your olive good bag (woth £20) and take the opportunity to explore the kitchen gardens at your leisure. To book, call 01844 277200 quoting ‘olive reader lunch’ or email: events.mqs@belmond.com More about Belmond Le Manoir Belmond Le Manoir is one of the few restaurants in the world to have retained two Michelin stars for over 30 years. Raymond’s menus constantly evolve with the seasons. His two-acre kitchen garden produces 90 types of vegetables and more than 70 varieties of herbs, which are then used in Belmond Le Manoir’s kitchen. Interview with Raymond Blanc Read our interview with Raymond Blanc here to find out his favourite foods and guilty pleasures... Terms and conditions: Payment is taken at the time of booking and ticket purchases are non-refundable. Guests must be at least 18 years old. *To claim your £10 subscriber discount, quote your subscriber number when booking.
A colourful CV, esteemed industry backers and mentors, owning and running a successful neighbourhood restaurant – and all before the age of 30. Meet chef and boy wonder, Ben Marks
Check out our expert interview with chef Ben Marks of European restaurant Perilla in Stoke Newington, London. Interview conducted by Hilary Armstrong. Ben Marks, chef and co-owner of Perilla in Stoke Newington (check out our foodie guide to Stoke Newington), London, (read our restaurant review of Perilla here) isn’t one to bang on about “the whole age thing”. Age is just a number after all, albeit a pretty low one in his case. At just 26, Ben has already clocked up 10 years of industry experience, had a stint at Noma, and run his own restaurant for the past year and a half. Clearly an early developer, he took off at 15 for a year in Stockholm (check out the best places to eat and drink in Stockholm here) to work at Operakällaren when his peers were still in school. Is there much even left to achieve? “It doesn’t really feel like that,” insists Ben over cups of strong black coffee at Perilla. “It wasn’t like I planned to open a restaurant at the age of 24. It’s just how it happened. We’re here and that’s great but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve done it. It’s a never-ending process. The only ambition I’ve got now is making this work perfectly. I’ll be happy when it is a really functional, successful restaurant. That will make me very, very happy.” “We” is Ben and Matt Emmerson, his business partner and former schoolmate, now managing director at Perilla. The duo made their start together with pop-ups, first a sell-out four-month run at Platform 1 in East Dulwich, then two guest spots at Palm 2 in Clapton. “It was always in the back of our minds to open a place but there was definitely no rush. It was just ‘see how it goes’, to have a bit of fun, do something different, test it.” All very free and easy, until Matt (a former manager with the Polpo Group) stumbled upon the quirky wedge-shaped corner site on Newington Green, at the time occupied by a kids’ party venue. It was perfect. They’d have settled for a pop-up but, serendipitously, the owner was eager to sell. To fund the project, Ben and Matt turned to two of Ben’s former bosses, Martyn Nail at Claridge’s (where he’d done his work placement during his Royal Academy of Culinary Arts apprenticeship) and Phil Howard, then of The Square (now of Elystan Street). They, along with former Claridge’s general manager Thomas Kochs, comprise Perilla’s investment dream team. “It’s fantastic having their ears,” says Ben. “It couldn’t be any better. Any questions that we have, they’ve done it, they’ve been there before. I find it very helpful to get anyone’s opinion on anything, but especially theirs.” You may think Ben lucked out with this trio of heavyweights. Eat his food, however, and it’s quickly apparent that there’s more to Perilla’s success. Perilla serves both à la carte and a six-course set menu (at £44, it’s a steal by London standards). Ben’s food is immediately arresting, from the opening salvo of ‘yesterday’s bread soaked in moules marinière’ (think of that delicious piece of bread lurking at the bottom of your mussel pot) in a crown of mussel shells, followed by cod’s head tacos served with an almost macabre cod’s skull garnish. “We start with a few different things to look at and interact with, then it calms down after that,” laughs Ben. The seaweed sourdough’s pretty special too: “It’s our sous chef’s recipe and is one of the things that people enjoy the most, which frustrates me massively,” jokes Ben. A more recent addition is a pressed terrine of radicchio leaves cooked over the barbecue and tossed in vinaigrette, with blood orange and sheep’s curd. “Phil Howard’s mum’s vinaigrette recipe. The most delicious vinaigrette you’ve ever eaten in your life.” Visually, Ben’s cooking is a tour de force but there’s a “massive emphasis” on everything being “delicious first and foremost”. “Interest, quirkiness, that comes second.” After a slew of good-to-glowing reviews, the next step is fine-tuning Perilla. Already, they’ve rejigged the dining room, extended the kitchen and added more seats at the bar. “It was just so difficult working in that kitchen. On a busy service it was absolute carnage in there,” recalls Ben. “Since we re-opened, working conditions have been 10 times better. It really is important. It’s people’s well-being.” Happily for Ben, he has “one of the best teams I’ve ever worked with in any kitchen”. He’s still learning – “by making mistakes” and by encouraging everybody to chip in with their own ideas. “There have been a few things where I look back and think maybe it would have been better if I’d experienced that in someone else’s restaurant before I experienced it in mine.” They’ve also tweaked the menu to suit Perilla’s regular clientele. For, in spite of the big-name backers and Ben’s ambitious cooking, Perilla’s a neighbourhood restaurant. Ben and Matt both come from the area and are proud to see their corner of north-east London on the up. Newcomers Primeur and Trangallan are nearby, and a little further afield, there are hand-pulled noodles at Xi’an Impression and kebabs on Green Lanes (Ben rates Diyarbakir Kitchen and Gökyüzü).“I like not being in central London. I’m a bus ride from my house. Newington Green’s unique, a weird oasis in the middle of lots of busy areas. I feel comfortable.” But isn’t he even a little worried he’s out of the game? “Not really, no,” he says with a grin. “I’d much rather be here.” perilladining.co.uk Ben Marks in short Favourite drink: Cold Peroni Favourite dish: A kebab. I like all kebabs but the favourite’s lamb kofte with lots of chilli sauce and garlic sauce Most memorable meal: The Ledbury last year. It was just incredible hospitality and the food was absolutely delicious. It’s very smart, quite formal, not what I’d usually go to, but the best restaurant in Britain by a million miles Chef or food personalities he most admires: Martyn Nail and Phil Howard. Genuinely. I’m not just saying that Guilty pleasure: So many! Though I don’t feel that guilty about any of them. It’s hard to trump a kebab. Maybe chicken wings. I love a chicken wing with chilli sauce Words by Hilary Armstrong
Meet May Chow, an ambitious chef and entrepreneur who’s breaking the mould and redefining fast food in Hong Kong
Check out our expert interview with chef May Chow. Interview conducted by Hilary Armstrong. May Chow has spent her first 33 years building a bank of memories – culinary and otherwise – that feed into the chef she is today. From her childhood with her Shanghainese family in Canada to high school in Hong Kong, from sorority life in Boston to her first cooking gigs in LA, from starting a business to winning the title of Asia’s best female chef in 2017 at Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants awards. “I’ve tried to have a lot of life experiences,” she tells me. “I always knew that if I was able to live something that other people weren’t living that I would feel special. Since I started as a chef, I’ve craved those moments. I remember at Bo Innovation [Alvin Leung’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Hong Kong] making a durian and Thai lime leaf macaron and saying to my chef, ‘Can you imagine we might be the only two people in the world creating this thing right now?’” This drive propelled May forward as she formulated the concept for Little Bao, the 20-seat bun shop she opened in Hong Kong’s Central district in 2013. She wanted to do something “fun and easy to understand” but also unique – a “happy meal” for grown-ups, as she has described it. Steamed buns weren’t original in themselves (Momofuku’s David Chang got there first) but what May did differently – she’s quick to credit her ex-boss Matt Abergel of Yardbird for the bright idea – was to serve her fusion bao in burger form. “I want to showcase original versions of authentic Chinese flavours,” she says. “People love how we take things a Chinese person has had thousands of times and create a twist that’s different, not forced, and always delicious.” May’s own favourite is the chicken bao with black vinegar glaze, pickles and spicy mayo. “The Roca brothers came to Hong Kong and ate at Little Bao,” she recalls with obvious pride. “To me, it’s such a simple burger shop but everything they put in their mouths they were like ‘Oh! I’ve never experienced this flavour before, I didn’t know this was how they did it in China’. What I’m doing is part of the story of how we dine, how we enjoy food.” Since she launched Little Bao, May has expanded her mini empire with gastropub Second Draft (2016) then Happy Paradise (2017), a neo-Cantonese outfit with a late-night vibe (May calls it her “alter ego”). She’s also collaborated with the likes of Nike and House of Vans, designing concepts that incorporate art, music and fashion. “Whether I cook each piece of meat myself, it’s not what I find most enjoyable about being a chef. I’m very happy I’ve had mentors who’ve taught me I have to be competitive at a global level.” May has a millennial’s ease with social media, readily sharing everything from her new trainers to her life with girlfriend Sam. “I don’t really have a sense of ‘oh my God, that’s my personal life’,” she explains. “I just want people to know what I like and what I don’t like, and what I stand for and what I don’t stand for. “I knew early on that I didn’t want to live a life of untruth or half-truth so when I did my first interviews, even when people didn’t bring [my sexuality] up, I would talk about it so there was no backing out. I knew if I started lying early on I would have to answer to it later.” Accepting the best female chef award was not an easy decision. At first, she didn’t want it. “It was almost like I didn’t want to grow up. I was having so much fun. I thought if I take this award I will get scrutinised and will have to speak for other people. It came with a lot of responsibility.” But accepting it has, she says, accelerated her career. She now moves with the global culinary elite while building on her work at home with the LGBT community and the Women’s Foundation in Hong Kong. “The award is such a great platform. If people ask Asia’s best female chef to speak at a function, I might as well speak about meaningful things. I’d feel really selfish if I just used it to talk about how great I am.” There are still obstacles facing women who want to work in kitchens. “In a Chinese culture, being a chef is associated with gambling, drinking, smoking – the last thing you’d want for your daughter, right? Your daughter, you want her to marry well, get a good husband, keep her hands really dainty. We grew up with those ideas.” May surmounted these obstacles herself but recognises, in hindsight, how circumscribed her early career was. “When I went for my first interview, actually every job interview, they always told me there was no opening right now in the kitchen but if I started in the pastry section I could get into that restaurant. I didn’t think too much about it, I was like, ‘oh sure, I can start in pastry first. When you have an opening let me know and I can transfer over’. I was never transferred over.” Since going it alone, her sense of self has flourished. “The moment you have the power to control your own destiny, you are able to speak louder.” little-bao.com Photographs by Rosie Chiu
Taking fusion cooking to a whole new level, Jeremy Chan is setting the bar for global culinary exploration with his ever-evolving West African-inspired restaurant in the heart of London
Check out our expert interview with chef Jeremy Chan of West African restaurant Ikoyi in St James’s, London. Interview conducted by Hilary Armstrong. You’re an ambitious young chef. You’ve got a central London restaurant that’s quietly scooping up award after award, rave after rave. The restaurant’s packed. So what do you do? You ditch all your regulars’ favourites and start the menu from scratch. Er, really? Yes really, according to Jeremy Chan, the 31-year-old chef of Ikoyi in St James’s (read our restaurant review here), who started off 2018 doing just that. After only six months of trading, the contemporary West African restaurant changed tack. “We’re not just aiming to cook good food,” he asserts. “We’re aiming to cook the best food in the world. “It’s quite a challenge to strip away a whole menu and come up with a completely new one but if we don’t do that we’re going to be doing the same hits over and over. People will like them but we won’t be here in the long run. We want people to come back and be blown away because they had a completely different experience.” So out went Ikoyi’s early hits, with the exception of buttermilk plantain and smoked scotch bonnet, a turbo-powered explosion of flavour. “I can’t find a better way to serve plantain,” says Jeremy. Seafood is now front and centre. For example, smoked crab jollof rice; octopus, ndolé (spinach and watercress in a nut broth) and calçot; and, a favourite of Jeremy’s, stone bass with a red pepper sauce. Here, the peppers’ juices are fried, strained, then blended with a dash of burnt kelp paste for deeply savoury notes of maple and coffee. Another dish is dambu nama and whipped bone marrow tart, which showcases Ikoyi’s take on north Nigerian dried, spiced beef. “I think the idea of dambu nama may have come from China, I’m not sure how or why, but I know the Chinese have been making dried, cured, pulverised beef for a long, long time and there’s quite a high presence of Chinese in Africa. I grew up eating Chinese beef floss as a kid, which is really similar. I thought it was cool that these two parts of the world have the same snack.” Such global threads are intriguing but they don’t tell us how on Earth a Hong Kong-born, Chinese-Canadian chef, schooled at Wellington College and Princeton, came to run a West African restaurant in London named after a posh bit of Lagos. This goes back to a serendipitous meeting at a party with Nigerian-Sierra Leonean Iré Hassan-Odukale, his partner in Ikoyi, when the pair were teenagers. The two friends, later flatmates, worked in finance before Jeremy quit to pursue cooking, first at Hibiscus, then Noma, later Dinner by Heston Blumenthal. But while he loved the rigour of the kitchen, he wasn’t happy. In fact, he felt “desperate”. “I’d left Dinner and didn’t have any desire to go back into a kitchen. Ever. If you’re working for someone else in a kitchen you have to be like an automaton. I thought I’m just not cut out for it.” Iré came to the rescue, roping Jeremy into consulting on an idea for a fast-casual Nigerian restaurant that never actually came to fruition. “We realised we wanted to open a restaurant together but this one wasn’t going to be it. We wanted to go all out.” Jeremy headed to the British Library where he dug deep into West African cuisine and its colonial and trading history. “We found it really romantic, the idea of West African food being a kind of global cuisine that doesn’t really have an origin.” Jollof rice, he explains, is etymologically Senegalese, but every country in the region claims it for its own. “That just made us realise we can do whatever we want. What’s stopping us doing our own rice dish, our own take on this whole cuisine? We’re just trying to understand and celebrate these incredible ingredients.” Jeremy hit the scientific textbooks and became intrigued by the possibility of exploiting the properties of different regional ingredients: “I realised that many West African ingredients have high umami-inducing effects – so basically they cause you to salivate. If you use products with x amount of glutamate, you’re going to get y as a response in the mouth of the diner. It’s cooking with logic. We think about how much a dish is going to make the diner salivate. How much is it going to make them want more?” What Jeremy’s not tied up in knots about is authenticity. His focus is ingredients and their interpretation; that these chime as much with hip young diners of West African origin as they do with the St James’s hedgies and global foodies who’ve all fallen for tiny Ikoyi’s radiant charm is all to the good. “My dream at the moment is that we’re always full, that people are coming and opening their minds to new ingredients. That will just spur us on even more.” ikoyilondon.com West African ingredients Agbalumo The African star apple – it looks like a small persimmon, with the texture of apricot and the tang of tamarind but with a lingering sour taste and aroma. Fermented locust beans The West African equivalent of miso or fermented black bean, used as a base for rich stews. Grains of Selim A eucalyptus-scented long peppercorn. Exceptional in broths and with cured fish. Ogbono Bush mango seed – a pungent seed with the smell of burnt cheese, used in small quantities for a complex, savoury, acidic flavour. Scotch bonnet Sweet, fruity chilli with an intense heat that can be pickled, dried, fermented, grilled or stewed. Red sorrel A common plant in West Africa that brings a balancing acidity to rich dishes. Jeremy Chan in short Favourite drink: Negroni. Favourite dish: Hainanese chicken rice. Most memorable meal: Eating clams and pork stew in Macau as a child. It was a very memorable experience to taste colonial Portuguese flavours in East Asia. Chef or food personality he most admires: Victor Arguinzoniz of Asador Etxebarri. Guilty pleasure: McDonald’s Sausage and Egg McMuffin for breakfast. Words by Hilary Armstrong Photographs by Ilario Cichella
Despite 2018 being hailed as the year of the woman, female chefs have been nailing it in San Sebastián for some time, says one of the region’s standout culinary stars, Jessica Lorigo
Read our expert interview with chef Jessica Lorigo of Mugaritz restaurant in San Sebastián, Spain. Interview conducted by Hilary Armstrong. If you're looking for more of the best places to eat, drink and stay in San Sebastián, check out our round up of where to eat, drink and stay in San Sebastián here... When young American chef Jessica Lorigo, two years out of culinary school, signed up for an internship at Mugaritz – the avant-garde restaurant that resides in the top 10 of the World’s 50 Best – she barely even knew where Spain was, let alone the Basque Country. By the time she got to Mugaritz in March 2013 and met its maverick founder, Andoni Luis Aduriz, she’d done her homework, bought the cookbook, devoured hours of YouTube videos and was well and truly starstruck. “I did my research after getting accepted. I did it a little backwards,” she laughs, tickled by her own naivety. “I’m the kind of person who, when a door opens, just jumps right through.” At first it was a struggle. “I knew no Spanish. I was confused as to why I had left everything I had known. Why would you put yourself through that? But to really grow, you need to get out of your comfort zone.” Her leap into the unknown has paid off. The nine-month stay stretched to five years; the 28-year-old from Buffalo has got used to hanging with a culinary superhero (“He’s just a normal guy”) and is relishing her role as head chef at his latest concept, Topa Sukaldería in San Sebastián. If Mugaritz, up in the hills outside San Sebastián, is high art, Topa is street art. Rowdy and colourful, all graffiti-covered walls, loud music and raw, recycled materials, the Basque-Latin American mash up is tailor-made for bubbly, punky Jessica with her pierced nose and bold tattoos. She loved her time at Mugaritz but when Andoni and his IXO Grupo partner Bixente Arrieta asked her to join the Topa project (opened February 2017), she couldn’t say no. “Mugaritz was amazing,” enthuses Jessica. “It’s so hard to describe because to me it’s not really a restaurant. It’s an experimental space. You learn how to really open your eyes and look at product. “When they first asked me to do Topa I don’t think even they knew what it was yet. It was just an idea that Andoni had of a space, a concept.” The fact that Jessica had never set foot in Latin America – she still hasn’t been – didn’t matter. “I have just been living through Andoni’s travels,” she laughs. “There’s really nothing quite like what we’re doing in San Sebastián,” says Jessica. Nor anywhere else in the world for that matter. Topa Sukaldería, meaning ‘culinary meeting point’, tells the story of Basque immigration to Latin America. It’s the bricks-and-mortar realisation of an idea, the germ of which lay in Adoni’s observation that his ageing father would still cook with unmistakable touches of his hometown even after 60 years in San Sebastián. How might such culinary yearning play out across whole cultures over time? There are more than 10 million people of Basque descent in Latin America, and more than 15,000 Basque surnames – Guevara being among the most famous – in circulation. What happens when two cultures, two cuisines, meet? Topa offers answers, in the form of its iconic tacotalos al pastor vasco, marinated in Basque pepper and cider vinegar instead of citrus, and topped with roasted apple in place of pineapple. The corn tacos (‘talos’ in Basque) are blended with millet – its usage locally predates corn – to enhance the flavour. Meanwhile, kalimotxo, that love-it-or-hate-it local tipple of red wine and cola, enriches braised veal empanadas. Another borrowing comes from Mexican chef Enrique Olvera’s kitchen: a 1,100-day-old mole that is ‘fed’ daily with Basque spices for an infusion of subtle local flavour. And to drink? Pisco cocktails and micheladas come up against euskojitos (Basque mojitos) and the local txakoli wine. The idea of authenticity is thrown wide open. It’s an uneasy time to be a female American chef abroad. I catch up with Jessica in the week of Eater’s grim exposé of celebrity chef Mario Batali. She’s following the developments from afar and is stunned by what she’s heard. “It’s definitely not something I’ve heard about happening here. It’s quite shocking for me. I’ve never experienced anything like that,” she says. “Kitchen culture is definitely changing. That’s something that I stand for. The way I manage the kitchen is always with a lot of positive reinforcement. Kitchens don’t need to be this negative space.” So how unusual is it to find a woman leading a kitchen in San Sebastián? Not very, asserts Jessica, citing three-star local hero Elena Arzak, as well as her own friends, Elena Ortiz, head chef at Topa’s sister restaurant Ni Neu, and (on the front-of-house side) Bella Bowring, co-owner of Geralds Bar. “Some of the best food that I’ve eaten here has been cooked by grandmothers in the kitchen making one-pot stews with garbanzo beans [chickpeas] or lentils. There’s a tradition for females to be in the kitchen. There are definitely women here crushing the game.” As for the fact that Jessica is American, it barely registers these days as her Spanish routinely passes as native. “That’s cool,” she admits. “I’m always flattered when people ask me if I’m from Barcelona. If they think I’m Spanish then I must be doing something right.” topasukalderia.com
Despite widespread acclaim for the ‘cold-climate’ menu at his Lake District restaurant, James Cross remains grounded and focussed on getting the simple things right
Check out our expert interview with chef James Cross of The Lake Road Kitchen in Ambleside, Cumbria. Interview conducted by Hilary Armstrong. If you're looking for more of the best places to eat, drink and stay in The Lake District, check out our round up of where to eat, drink and stay in The Lake District here. James Cross made his bid for telly stardom early on in his career. It was on MasterChef in 2005, he was 25, an eager, young law graduate from Birmingham and he risked a soufflé (check out our step-by-step guide to making soufflés here) in the quarter finals. The soufflé flopped, the title fell to Thomasina Miers, and “that was the end of that”. Except it wasn’t. For what MasterChef did for James, now the chef and owner of Lake Road Kitchen in Ambleside, Cumbria (read our review here), was to prod him into recognising that he was far more interested in the industry than he had previously acknowledged. “It lit a spark,” he says. Ever the high flyer, the new recruit was straight in at Michelin-starred Simpson’s in Birmingham for four formative years. “You walk into a kitchen like that, you don’t learn any bad habits.” Then a celebratory meal with his parents at Heinz Beck’s three-Michelin-starred La Pergola in Rome upended everything again. “You think you can cook, you think you understand what deliciousness is,” he recalls, “then you eat a meal like that and you realise that you haven’t got a clue.” Check out out top five Italian foodie trips here, including La Pergola in Rome... Not speaking a word of Italian, he went to work at La Pergola for a year as a commis (the only Brit in a brigade composed almost entirely of Italians) before New York and a stage at Thomas Keller’s Per Se beckoned. Another giant leap forward.“It felt like starting from scratch again,” he says. “It’s not often in your career that you can go into a world-class kitchen and be a nobody. This is something that I think is lacking in the industry at the moment. Everybody wants to be a somebody before they’ve had a chance to be a nobody. Just enjoying being part of something special without the intense pressure is very beneficial.” How to top this? With two brilliant years at Noma in Copenhagen, then the World’s No 1 restaurant, after which it was time to bring this experience of “the pointy end of the pyramid” to bear on James’s own place. In 2014, he relocated to the Lake District to open Lake Road Kitchen. His aim was to establish “a humble restaurant where the food was delicious and people would come to eat”. Mission accomplished. Lake Road Kitchen’s first years have gone swimmingly. The ace reviews and top awards haven’t stopped coming: a rare 10/10 from Marina O’Loughlin in her Guardian days, five stars from The Sunday Times, the ‘Best New Restaurant in the UK’ from The Good Food Guide, and – a point of personal pride for James – Sustainable Restaurant of the Year in the National Restaurant Awards 2017. But lest anyone think that a chef’s life is all glamour, think again. James and his partner, the restaurant’s general manager Sally Wilson, run the place on a skeleton staff, no gardener, no linen company. Expansion plans, TV appearances and lucrative brand tie-ins are not happening any time soon. “Sally and I come home from work, we do three loads of laundry and drying before we go to sleep at night,” he tells me. On their days off, they’re in the garden or “going through data”. “That sounds a bit boring I suppose,” he admits. It does a bit, but the all-work, no-play approach is a sound strategy. James sees himself as much a businessman as a chef, and all the number-crunching and hard graft is to support his passion for the long term. Tales of talented chefs falling at the first hurdle are legion. James has no intention of being one of them. In common with Noma, Lake Road Kitchen forgoes olive oil, lemons and chocolate for food that is “representative of the climatic locality”. One might encounter cloudberries (in sorbet form with soft whipped cream and hazelnuts toasted gently over charcoal), Icelandic sea urchins (with aged ham consommé), Norwegian king crab (lightly steamed with shredded Hispi cabbage in a cultured butter emulsion with dulse and dill oil) alongside great local produce. “If a product grows in this weather zone, we’ll use it. England is very similar to Scandinavia (check out our best Scandi food tips), especially in the north. I felt it was the only part of the country where I could do this style of cooking legitimately. I could never cook like this in London.” James also serves “the oldest beef in Europe”, as a supplement to the five- and eight-course tasting menus (£65/£85). Aged for up to 430 days, the beef (a collaboration with Lake District farmers) is characterised by a high degree of marbling – the equivalent of A4 wagyu, reckons James – and an incredibly complex flavour profile. Around 90 per cent of the green produce comes from the restaurant garden (aka James and Sally’s Winster Valley back garden), where every square inch is devoted to raised beds, polytunnels and planters. Menus are planned a year ahead, seed catalogues in hand. This affords a level of freedom he wouldn’t otherwise have – some nights there can be as many as a dozen different menus running across eight tables. One regular has had 110 dishes over the course of 12 months. “We say to all our guests that, unless they want a repeat dish, they will have a completely different menu next time they come back, even if they come back tomorrow. “We work very, very hard. That’s the bottom line.” lakeroadkitchen.co.uk JAMES CROSS IN SHORT Favourite dish Tonkatsu (here's our recipe). Favourite drink Gevrey-Chambertin. Most memorable meal La Pergola in 2009. Chef or food person you most admire Andrew Zimmern of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. Guilty pleasure A day off. Photographs: Mike Poloway, Jim Tanfield
Yorkshire Burrito's Yorkshire pudding wrap
We interview Henry Preen, founder of Yorkshire Burrito, about his Yorkshire pudding wraps and to get his tips about how to make the Yorkshire pudding burrito
Have you heard of the Yorkshire Burrito? Yorkshire man Henry Preen has brought the Great British roast dinner to the streets of London with his Yorkshire pudding wraps. Choose between roast chicken with lemon and black pepper in white wine gravy, rare breed beef brisket in red wine gravy, or slices of roasted pork belly with crackling and apple sauce, before its wrapped into a giant Yorkshire pudding with rosemary-roasted potatoes, greens, sage and onion stuffing and plenty of gravy. There’s also an indulgent veggie option of roasted cauliflower cheese served with all the trimmings. We interview Henry about his Yorkshire pudding wraps and the best Yorkshire burrito recipe… How did the Yorkshire Burrito come about? The Yorkshire Burrito idea was a combination of a few things. Firstly, I wanted to develop the nostalgic tradition from when you used to go down the pub and have a roast dinner in a giant Yorkshire pudding filled with gravy, that’s a great thing for a Yorkshire man. Secondly, I wanted to create a unique British street food. We do street food extremely well in the UK, especially in London (here are our favourite street food stalls), with many thriving street food markets focusing on international street food (burgers, kebabs and bao buns to name a few), but there aren’t enough British street food stalls. In my opinion one of the things we do best as a country is the Sunday roast. It’s what other countries know us for, the French even call us ‘les roast-beef’, so it made sense to bring the roast dinner to the streets of London and the UK. How do you make a Yorkshire Burrito Yorkshire pudding wrap? The Yorkshire burritos all come with stuffing, crisp rosemary roast potatoes, and a bit of spinach because it's healthy, break up the brown a little bit. For the meat we've got slow-roast beef brisket cooked in loads of red wine and a mix of carrot, onions and celery, and then there's the chicken one which is roasted off with loads of lemon, honey, lots and lots of black pepper, a bit of white wine in there as well, and then soon we'll have pork with crackling and apple sauce. Do you have a vegetarian Yorkshire pudding wrap at Yorkshire Burrito? We have a cauliflower cheese wrap, with all the trimmings. Cauliflower cheese is one of those things that can be quite easy to get wrong if you boil the cauliflower too much, so I roast it off on the grill with loads of garlic, salt and pepper, get a nice bit of colour to it and leave it quite crunchy with a good bit of bite. The cheese sauce has a bit of white wine vinegar and mustard powder and lots of cheese – the most mature cheddar available to man. Here's our cauliflower cheese recipe to make at home... What are the origins of the Yorkshire pudding? I heard it used to be a thing when families who didn't have a lot of money would cook a rack of meat above a batter base and the juices would drip down to create an indulgent extra component to the roast dinner to help fill people up while still retaining the meaty flavour. (If you want to make your own Yorkshire puddings, here is our expert guide to create the perfect Yorkshire puddings for your roast dinner.) Which is your favourite roast dinner, roast chicken or roast beef? Roast beef, mainly because of the rich gravy you get from it, or top of the pops would be pork, pork with crackling is my number one which will be appearing on the Yorkshire Burrito menu shortly. Try our roast beef recipe here... How do you make the best crackling for roast pork? Make sure your crackling is dry, leaving it out for a little bit and pouring boiling water over the top to shrink the skin, then pat dry, oil and salt on it and then in a nice high oven at first before turning it down. We've got the best crackling recipe here... How do you make your roast potatoes? The best roast potatoes for me have lots of garlic and rosemary. I parboil until the potatoes almost fall apart. I tend to use lard as it gets really hot and gives a good crust to the potatoes, or beef dripping or goose fat – just stay away from olive oil as it doesn't get hot enough. We have plenty of roast potato recipes here, from goose fat to olive oil to beef dripping... How do you make the gravy that you dip your Yorkshire burritos into? Our Yorkshire pudding wraps come with little gravy dipping pots. It’s a mega gravy, so you get all your cooking juices from the chicken and the beef so there’s a lot of red wine, a lot of white wine, and garlic going on in there. The key to proper gravy is reducing the liquid down a lot, so don't season up your gravy too much before, it’s best to do gradually while the juices intensify. Make sure you get all the sticky bits off the bottom of your pan as that's where all the flavour is. Finally, here's our ultimate gravy recipe... Look out for Yorkshire Burrito at Street Food Union Market in Soho. Listen to our interview with Henry about Yorkshire Burrito on our podcast here... View oEmbed on the source website
Angie Mar is putting The Beatrice Inn back on the New York food scene with an eccentric, uber-cool approach to cooking
Check out our expert interview with New Yorker chef Angie Mar of The Beatrice Inn restaurant in New York. Interview conducted by Hilary Armstrong. If you're looking for more of the best places to eat and drink in New York, check out our round up of New Yorks best restaurants and bars... The regularly updated selfies on the Instagram account of Angie Mar are, more often than not, met with a blaze of fire emojis from her 16k-plus followers. How else to respond to this cool New York chef whose personal style signifiers include white goat fur by Rochas, combat boots by Chanel, arm candy by Vuitton and – the killer touch – a hulking great dry-aged prime rib by New York’s best butcher, Pat LaFrieda? Badass should do it. I catch up with Angie over vegetable juice (her daily dalliance with herbivorism) and steak tartare – it never lasts long – in London on a flying visit to cook at Hawksmoor’s annual charity dinner in aid of Action Against Hunger. Angie adores London – her Taiwanese mother grew up here – and plans to open in the city one day but for now her focus is The Beatrice Inn, the West Village chophouse she took over from Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter in 2016 after two years in its kitchen. For New Yorkers, ‘The Bea’ holds a host of associations. It began life in the 1920s as a speakeasy where F Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald would hang; for the next 50 years it was a wildly popular Italian red-sauce joint; then, from 2006 to 2009, it was the centre of the universe, an after-hours den frequented by everyone from Chloë Sevigny to Lindsay Lohan, Kate Moss and the late Heath Ledger. “It was insane,” smiles Angie. “I definitely wasn’t cool enough to get in.” Now, in the glittering light of the club’s original disco ball, The Beatrice Inn enters a new chapter. “I want to make it one of New York’s classic restaurants,” she tells me. “You go to New York, you go to Keens, you go to Per Se, you go to Carbone, you go to Beatrice. “I’m all about New York, this all-embracing, all-encompassing ‘come as you are’ city,” continues the Seattle-born chef. “I want The Beatrice to be a representation of that. You can walk in on any night and you’ll see a table in black tie, another in backwards baseball caps.” Angie, now 35, came to professional cooking just eight years ago, having quit commercial real estate in Los Angeles to pursue her passion in New York. She’s acutely aware of what a privilege it is to be doing what she loves: her Chinese-American family had little choice but to work in kitchens. It went well for them – her aunt Ruby Chow was a Seattle restaurant legend (who famously employed Bruce Lee as a dishwasher) – but it wasn’t their dream for Angie. “As a kid I’d be told ‘go to college, make something of yourself, don’t do this’, so it’s kind of ironic going back to it. It’s in my DNA.” As a result, perhaps, she’s brilliantly unapologetic about her choices. “If I’m going to cook, I’m going to cook food that takes you out at your knees. You’re going to leave that meal and think ‘what just happened?’. I’m never going to put a cut of salmon on the menu because someone told me I should. My goal is to make the restaurant very singular. The menu’s a reflection of what I personally love to eat.” There are groaning crustacean platters, slabs of beef (often aged and butchered by Angie), whole animals, historical dishes (“I’ve never met a medieval dish I haven’t loved”) and a version of the braised pork shoulder she’s been making since she was 15. As for vegetables, “we have parsley”, she laughs. I’ve never seen a menu quite like hers. Here’s a sample: whole applewood smoked rabbit, rhubarb, snail butter, elderflower, laurel; milk-braised pork shoulder, jasmine rice soubise, hen-of-the-woods mushrooms, sage; ‘Sea Pie’, an 18th-century pie of smoked boar, lamb shank, pork cheek and duck leg; 160-day whiskey-aged tomahawk, lobster butter, smoked vanilla, truffles, thyme. This last dish, served to the whole table, involves tipping a bottle of single malt over the beef each week, hence its $700-1,000 price tag (there’s a waiting list). “I want people to have this really beautiful elegant meal but at the same time there’s something so primal about it,” explains Angie, who earned her stripes at Andrew Tarlow’s Brooklyn restaurants and at April Bloomfield’s Spotted Pig. “When we’re putting dishes together, there are masculine and feminine influences in each dish. You have these big beefy pieces of meat, maybe smoked over French oak or cherrywood, then other influences that bring some sort of femininity to it, whether it’s elderflower, jasmine, marjoram, plums. It’s the contrast of ideas on one plate that I think is really beautiful.” Her approach has gone down a storm. “We don’t have a Michelin star yet,” she says, but she has taken The Bea from zero stars in the New York Times (in 2013) to two and a peach of a write-up in 2016. However, all the glowing reviews, awards, photoshoots and celebrity fans won’t be how Angie measures her success. For this, she looks to her young chefs. “When they’re done working for me, they need to be ready to go and do something else and something better. Five or 10 years from now, when we look at everyone who’s in my restaurant now, my hope is they will surpass me. That will be the true testament of how successful I’ve been.” thebeatriceinn.com ANGIE MAR IN SHORT Favourite drink Champagne cocktail Favourite dish: To eat, tortellini bolognese at Carbone. To cook, oxtail stew. Most memorable meal My first James Beard dinner in 2015. We got all these illegal meats shipped in to the US from all over so we had all these amazing cuts. The most memorable part of the dinner, that people still talk about, was the bone marrow bourbon crème brûlée. No one had ever seen it or tasted it before. Chef or food personality she most admires Nigel Slater – the way he talks about food and the way he writes about it, just a romantic air that I turn back to time and time again. Guilty pleasure Chicken McNuggets. Photographs by Annebet Duvall, Beatrice Inn
Stepping up to the plate: chefs to watch in 2018
Want to know which chefs will be making headlines in 2018? Read our exert guide to the the UK's most influential chefs who will shaping the UK's buzzing restaurant scene this year
Read our guide to the UK's best chefs to look out for in 2018... Damien Wager Essex-born Damien Wager has spent much of the past decade working in the kitchens of Cornish restaurants and hotels, but it is since joining the 2 AA Rosette Beechfield House Hotel in Wiltshire as executive pastry chef that his stunning desserts, such as his take on a Black Forest gateau, featuring a cherry mousse with kirsch liquid centre, chocolate sable, compressed cherries and chocolate ganache, have gained wider attention. Still only 27, Damien says his long-term ambition is to launch his own patisserie business back in his adopted home of Cornwall. beechfieldhouse.co.uk Joe Simmonds Roasted turbot on the bone with poached potatoes, smoked mussel fritters, samphire, charred cucumber, crispy capers, warm cucumber and herb emulsion is one reason why Bath Priory-trained chef Joe Simmonds is drawing a crowd at The Beach at Bude. Another is that he was recently awarded two AA Rosettes – the first time the boutique hotel has won anything – putting Bude officially on the map. thebeachatbude.co.uk Tomos Parry Since he left Kitty Fisher’s in Mayfair, former YBF Young Chef of the Year Tomos Parry has spent his time doing residencies, most of them based around cooking over fire. The big news is that he is opening his own east London restaurant in 2018. He says: “It will be counter dining with grills in the middle, very much inspired by Japanese yakitori restaurants. As a Welshman, I am passionate about using Welsh produce and I’m working with farmers and fishermen to improve the supply chain to London.” @tomos_pp Tom Brown After stints at Raymond Blanc’s Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons and Tom Kerridge’s Hand & Flowers, Tom Brown spent five years working for Nathan Outlaw, first in Cornwall and then as head chef of Outlaw’s at The Capital in London. And now he has flown the nest to open his own restaurant, Cornerstone in Hackney Wick, which is due to open in spring 2018. Serving the “clean and simple” dishes he has become known for, it’s sure to be one of London’s hottest new openings. Check out his Instagram feed if you need any more persuading. @cheftombrown Leandro Carreira Located just off Bermondsey Street in Southwark, Londrino is one of the launches of the year. The Portuguese chef behind it, Leandro Carreira, cut his culinary teeth at Mugaritz in Spain, then moved to London to work with Nuno Mendes. Leandro says the menu will make use of Portuguese ingredients as seen through the eyes of a chef who calls London home. “There is a nod to Portugal, but I don’t want the creative process to end there.” londrino.co.uk Jerry Adam Jerry Adam took over the kitchen of Penally Abbey Hotel near Tenby during the summer of 2017 after working at Michelin-starred Welsh foodie destinations Llangoed Hall and Ynyshir. Using produce from the stunning Pembrokeshire coast, Jerry ferments, pickles and preserves a lot of his ingredients. “I’ve done a lot of research about food and I try to make sure every dish I send out is made up of 50% raw ingredients,” he says. “I haven’t put a name to my style of food as such but I use a lot of natural ingredients like soy, tofu and miso. I try to forage as much as I can, such as seaweed, sea vegetables, and berries, herbs and vegetables from the gardens here at Penally.” penally-abbey.com Roy Brett As you might expect from a chef who worked closely with Rick Stein back in the day, Roy Brett knows his seafood, as his acclaimed Edinburgh restaurant Ondine has proved. In spring 2018, Roy will be teaming up with a local fishmongers to open a smart new fish and chip restaurant at Newhaven fish market near Leith, complete with an extensive shellfish menu and oyster bar. ondinerestaurant.co.uk Dan Cox After cooking at the highest level for Simon Rogan at L’Enclume in Cumbria and Fera at Claridge’s, Dan Cox decamped to a 120-acre organic farm in Cornwall, where he now plans to launch a restaurant within the courtyard buildings. Crocadon Farm at St Mellion will supply the produce and livestock for the restaurant, which is due to open in 2018 and will also have its own microbrewery and pottery for local ceramicists. Dan says: “We want the food and the farm to grow together as one, becoming something unique and harmonious – an interaction and food experience that can only be possible when the restaurant is at the heart of the farm.” crocadon.co.uk Nick Grieves Durham-born Nick Grieves worked in the construction business before teaching himself to cook. After working at The River Café in London he returned to the north-east to open The Patricia in Jesmond in December 2016. Nick says: “I believe restaurants should be about fun, so we don’t get too technical – we cook good ingredients and let the seasons tell us what goes together.” the-patricia.com Ellen Parr After years of running successful pop-ups, co-founder of The Art of Dining Ellen Parr could be set to do something a little more stationary. “I’m yearning for a permanent space as I feel it will give me so much more time to develop even more exciting dishes,” reveals Ellen. She started her career at Moro, but doesn’t rule out a return to Bristol, where she grew up. “Bristol is a great city for food and really exciting at the moment, but I’m also trying to take Moro to New York to do a pop-up there.” theartofdining.co.uk Sara Lewis Sara Lewis made her name at the Grain Store in King’s Cross, where legendary chef Bruno Loubet identified her as a rising star. She is now head chef at The Pilgrm, where she will oversee the food at the Paddington hotel’s Lounge restaurant. Sara says she is inspired by Loubet’s attitude to sustainability and his willingness to embrace wild, inventive ideas in the kitchen. thepilgrm.com Michael Carr Restaurant 92 in Harrogate is fast becoming one of the go-to restaurants in Yorkshire thanks to the innovative seasonal dishes of 25-year-old head chef and co-owner Michael Carr. Whether it’s roasted spiced quail, watermelon, foie gras, balsamic and dukkah, or beef wellington, pomme purée and garlic kale, Michael’s return to his Yorkshire roots after a spell in London (working for Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s and Alyn Williams at The Westbury, no less) has been embraced by Harrogate foodies. restaurant92.co.uk Jake and Cassie White After collectively working in London for Marcus Wareing, Tom Aikens and Hélène Darroze, husband and wife team Jake and Cassie White are shaking up Cumbria’s dining scene at Pentonbridge Inn, a restaurant-with-rooms in the tiny hamlet of Penton, near Carlisle. Local produce drives the menu, including fruit, vegetables and herbs from the walled garden and greenhouses at nearby Netherby Hall, which Jake and Cassie have been cultivating, alongside the head gardener. pentonbridgeinn.co.uk Luke French Housed inside four upcycled shipping containers, Sheffield restaurant Jöro specialises in what head chef and co-owner Luke French calls “new Nordic” cuisine inspired by the Scandi approach to locality, care of ingredients and a simplicity of cooking, but with a nod to Japanese cooking techniques. “In a nutshell, we call it a ‘Scandi-Jap mash-up’,” says Luke, whose signature dishes include asparagus, pickled spruce and blackcurrant leaves, and brown butter ice cream, aerated white chocolate and miso. And it’s not just lucky Sheffield locals who appreciate Luke’s food – Jöro entered the Good Food Guide after only a few months of business late last year, its inspectors praising the “no-holds-barred seasonal cooking”. jororestaurant.co.uk Bonny Porter At the age of 23, Bonny Porter was the youngest ever finalist on MasterChef: The Professionals back in 2012, and since then she has gone on to launch Soho’s meatball restaurant Balls & Company. The Australian chef has plans aplenty for 2018, with a new restaurant planned for the first half of the year and the return of her International Women’s Day celebration, which last year saw London’s best female chefs come together to mark their female culinary inspirations. She says: “I’m looking forward to bringing something different to the capital with my second restaurant – it will still be Balls & Company, but there will be a bigger focus on our bar concept.” ballsandcompany.london
Check out our interviews with our favourite chefs, including our top female chefs and British chefs, highlighting their training, careers and which other chefs they admire most
Want to find the best chefs to watch? Here are our top chefs in the world, with chef interviews from our favourite cooks – from great British chefs in the UK to world chefs who are turning heads on the international scene. We've found top female chefs with Michelin stars, young chefs who are already causing a stir at the start of their careers and British chefs bringing flavours of the world to the UK. Here's our list of the most influential UK chefs to watch our for, too. If you want to find out where top chefs love to eat in the UK, click here. Chef: Rosio Sanchez Restaurant: Hija de Sanchez, Copenhagen Career: wd~50, Noma Chef Rosio most admires: René Redzepi The Copenhagen taqueria Hija (pronounced ‘ee-kah’) de Sanchez is the creation of Rosio Sanchez, the 31-year-old Noma alumnus from the south side of Chicago and one of the most exciting young chefs in Europe. It’s hard to think of a better version of Mexican street food anywhere on the continent. Its brilliance is the result of Sanchez’s pedigree as a chef and the importance she and her team place on importing Mexican ingredients – including the chillies and the corn, from Oaxaca, which they cook and stone-grind on-site to make fresh tortillas every day. Click here to read our full interview interview with Rosio Sanchez. Chef: Dani Soto-Innes Restaurant: Cosme, New York Career: Brennan’s of Houston, Triniti, Underbelly, Pujol Chef Dani most admires: Massimo Bottura For many people, 2016 will be a year to forget. But for a young chef in New York City it was a one to savour. Daniela (Dani) Soto-Innes, 25-year-old chef de cuisine of modern Mexican restaurant Cosme, in the Flatiron district, was given the prestigious James Beard Award for Rising Star Chef of the Year just eighteen months after opening with her longtime mentor and collaborator Enrique Olvera. The restaurant, which fuses Mexican dry ingredients – corn, beans and chillies – and great local products, also entered the world’s top 100 for the first time. Click here to read our full interview with Dani Soto-Innes Chef: Ben Chapman Restaurant: Smoking Goat and Kiln, London Chef Ben most admires: Tom Adams Ben Chapman’s career trajectory is of the kind not normally associated with a chef who opens a restaurant that has a fair claim to being the best of the year – but it’s 2017, and things don’t tend to happen like they used to. For more than 40 years, a good barometer of restaurant class has been the number of stars issued by London Evening Standard restaurant critic Fay Maschler, who famously reserves the maximum score only for something truly special. She gave Kiln – a Thai restaurant in Soho that uses only charcoal as a means of cooking – full marks. Ben, previously an art gallerist, DJ and designer, only started cooking three years ago. Click here to read our full interview with Ben Chapman Chef: Sam Buckley Restaurant: Where the Light Gets in, Stockport Career: Gary Rhodes, Juniper, L’Enclume Chef Sam most admires: Fergus Henderson, Massimo Bottura and Tanja Grandits For Sam Buckley, professional cooking has always been an on-off thing. The 34-year-old Stockport chef may have worked in some stellar kitchens – Gary Rhodes in Manchester, Paul Kitching’s Juniper, Simon Rogan’s L’Enclume – but he’s interspersed the stints with other stuff: college, backpacking, a journalism degree, going on tour (he plays bass), writing, more travelling. Right now, however, following a perfect 10 from Guardian reviewer Marina O’Loughlin in May for his now year-old restaurant Where the Light Gets In, his cooking career is undeniably, irrefutably, unequivocally on. Click here to read our full interview with Sam Buckley Chef: Amanda Cohen Restaurant: Dirt Candy Chef Amanda most admires: All my cooks who have to work for me day in, day out. They have a lot of fortitude. Amanda Cohen’s five-year-old self, as seen on the pages of her genre-bending graphic-novel-slash-cookbook, screws up her face and says: “I hate vegetables.” Poor little Amanda. She’d be shocked to see how things turned out, for fast-forward to 2017 and she’s grown up to become New York’s reigning queen of vegetarian cuisine. She came to the attention of New York diners – vegan, vegetarian and omnivore alike – soon after opening her pioneering ‘vegetable-forward’ restaurant Dirt Candy in its original, pocket-sized form in New York’s East Village in 2008. Amanda puts the early raves down to her signature dish: a rich, decadent, foie gras-esque portobello mousse that is the antithesis of the hair shirt and Birkenstocks School of veggie cooking. But to ascribe her fame entirely to her cooking would be to underestimate the myriad other ways in which Amanda is, frankly, rad: she was the first vegetarian chef on Iron Chef America; hers was the first NYC restaurant to eliminate tipping and to share profits with employees; and she’s a prolific writer and speaker unafraid to tell it how she sees it. Click here to read our full interview with Amanda Cohen Chef: Micha Schäfer Restaurant: Nobelhart und Schmutzig Career: Villa Merton Chef Micha most admires: Paul Bocuse The less said about currywurst the better. Suffice to say that Micha Schäfer, the 30-year-old chef of white-hot Berlin restaurant Nobelhart und Schmutzig, finds little to recommend the ketchup-slathered street-food staple of his adopted city. “Don’t come to Berlin for currywurst,” he says. “Go to Berghain.” The world’s most notorious techno club is certainly one reason to visit the German capital, but for those olive readers whose tastes don’t extend to hypnotic techno and eye-popping hedonism, and who’d rather discover the city through its gastronomy, a seat at Nobelhart und Schmutzig’s kitchen counter is the best place to start. Nobelhart und Schmutzig – the fabulous name fabricated from a cluster of adjectives in a newspaper headline: ‘noble’, ‘hard’ and ‘dirty’ – is the brainchild of Billy Wagner, Germany’s original hipster-sommelier, a.k.a. “the popstar of wine experts” (Die Zeit). At the time of the restaurant’s conception, Berlin, so dynamic in every other way, still lagged inexplicably behind other European capitals, having neither a destination-dining scene nor a regional cuisine to call its own. Billy set about changing this, bringing in Micha, a rising star schooled in the pioneering kitchen of Matthias Schmidt, then at Villa Merton in Frankfurt. Billy and Micha opened Nobelhart und Schmutzig in February 2015. Nine months later, it had a Michelin star. A year after that, it was declared Restaurant of the Year in influential German food title, Der Feinschmecker. Now, along with like-minded restaurants Horváth and Einsunternull, it’s in the vanguard of Berlin’s pulsating restaurant scene. Click here to read our full interview with Micha Schäfer Chef: Simone Tondo Restaurant: Tondo Career: Roseval Chef Simone most admires: Pierre Gagnaire and Massimo Bottura When Sardinian chef Simone Tondo left home at only 14 to pursue his culinary calling in Alghero; when his father spent a small fortune on the El Bulli cookbook for his 15th birthday; when he uprooted himself at 21 for yet another new city – none of this was with a view to a career spent slinging pizzas and rolling pasta. Click here to read our full interview with Simone Tondo Chef: Anna Tobias Career: Blueprint Café, River Café, Rochelle Canteen Chef Dani most admires: Elizabeth David A few years ago London underwent a culinary renaissance that had something in common with the Parisian ‘bistronomie’ movement: food remained high quality but was served in more informal, relaxed environments. James Lowe, Lyle’s head chef, claimed, though, that there were only three British chefs who could be truly compared to those in France adhering to the principles of ‘bistronomie’. He was one. Tom Adams – then of Pitt Cue Co. and now Coombeshead Farm –another. And Anna Tobias. Above all, it had to do, he said, with the respect shown to ingredients. Anna’s career offers a clear picture of why she belongs in this select group, since, for nearly 10 years, she’s been under the stewardship of four icons of the ingredient-led tradition: Jeremy Lee at the Blueprint Café; Ruth Rogers of The River Café; and most recently she’s been head chef under Margot Henderson and Melanie Arnold at Rochelle Canteen. With long periods of time spent at each, her culinary education has had a purism to it. Click here to read our full interview with Anna Tobias Chef: Aaron Turner Restaurant: Igni, Melbourne Career: Noma, El Cellar de Can Roca Chef Aaron most admires: James Lowe, Lyle's Three days before his new restaurant Igni was due to open in January 2016, Australian chef Aaron Turner had a crisis of confidence. He was, to put it mildly, in a state of existential anguish. His previous restaurant, Loam, had closed in 2013 following a devastating split from his wife, who was also his business partner. He’d sold the business, sold the house, and spent the past two years licking his wounds in Nashville, Tennessee. Cooking had become tainted. “I tried to pick up where I left off,” Aaron recalls. “I went out to where I used to forage in the Loam days. It just felt hollow. It just wasn’t making sense on the plate. I thought, ‘we’re going to sink here because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing any more’.” And so, at the 11th hour, he ditched the dishes he’d made his name with – the complex, pretty, multi-layered creations inspired by the land around the old place – and let the wood fire smouldering away in the heart of his new kitchen take the lead. The fact that he’d never cooked over direct flame before (save the odd barbie) didn’t faze him. “I sort of walked away from cooking after Loam. I didn’t really want to return to it, so I built this kitchen with stuff that I’d never used as this kind of subliminal sabotage. Turns out it sort of woke me up and sparked off a whole new adventure.” Chef: Tim Spedding Restaurant: Project in Cornwall Career: The Clove Club, The Ledbury, The Headland Hotel in Newquay, Michael Caines’ Gidleigh Park Chef Tim most admires: Brett Graham In February this year, Tim Spedding and his girlfriend, Louise Rødkjær Jørgensen, spent four days in Cornwall. It’s something they’ve made a habit of over the last 12 months. Sometimes it’s for pleasure; on this occasion it was for business. During the visit they viewed 16 different properties – the first stage of their planned relocation to the Southwest this spring. The pair have an acute appreciation of hospitality – their chef and front-of-house partnership is just one pillar of the memorable experience they provide. Click here to read our fill interview with Tim Spedding
A bold switch in direction for Australian chef Aaron Turner has placed the international spotlight on his fire-focussed Geelong restaurant kitchen
Check out our expert interview with Australian chef Aaron Turner of fire-focussed restaurant Igni in Geelong, Melbourne. Interview conducted by Hilary Armstrong. Three days before his new restaurant Igni was due to open in January 2016, Australian chef Aaron Turner had a crisis of confidence. He was, to put it mildly, in a state of existential anguish. His previous restaurant, Loam, had closed in 2013 following a devastating split from his wife, who was also his business partner. He’d sold the business, sold the house, and spent the past two years licking his wounds in Nashville, Tennessee. Cooking had become tainted. “I tried to pick up where I left off,” Aaron recalls. “I went out to where I used to forage in the Loam days. It just felt hollow. It just wasn’t making sense on the plate. I thought, ‘we’re going to sink here because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing any more’.” And so, at the 11th hour, he ditched the dishes he’d made his name with – the complex, pretty, multi-layered creations inspired by the land around the old place – and let the wood fire smouldering away in the heart of his new kitchen take the lead. The fact that he’d never cooked over direct flame before (save the odd barbie) didn’t faze him. “I sort of walked away from cooking after Loam. I didn’t really want to return to it, so I built this kitchen with stuff that I’d never used as this kind of subliminal sabotage. Turns out it sort of woke me up and sparked off a whole new adventure.” The first reviews, uniformly glowing, rolled in within weeks of opening, and the gongs haven’t stopped coming since: Chef of the Year and Regional Restaurant of the Year in The Age Good Food Guide, Best Fine Dining and Chef of the Year in Time Out, Best Regional Restaurant at the Gourmet Traveller restaurant awards two years in a row. Not bad going for a 30-cover indie down an alleyway in Geelong, a blue-collar city an hour south-west of Melbourne. In his debut book Igni: A Restaurant’s First Year (£30, Hardie Grant), Aaron lays himself bare in a way few would dare to. Here’s the side of the industry the peppy TV shows don’t show you: long hours, insomnia, drinking and chronic, crippling self-doubt. It’s brutal reading, interspersed with Igni recipes (an essential resource for live-fire enthusiasts) and haunting black and white photography. “I’m sick of picking up a book and it’s a happy food journey,” he says. “For some it is, but for others it isn’t. When you’re in it and you know people in it, you know the massive personal sacrifice that it takes to do what we do. I don’t know anybody that hasn’t had to sacrifice something, whether it’s a relationship or having kids or buying a house.” Aaron’s career started casually enough, flipping a few burgers as a graphic-design student, then earning some cash while backpacking. “In the absence of a better idea” he did an apprenticeship, later supplementing his learning with stints at Noma and El Celler de Can Roca among others. He considers himself largely self-taught and still learning. During Igni’s first year, he undertook his own ‘bush-tucker challenge’, taking himself off camping with just a fire to cook on. “What we do at Igni is quite delicate and refined,” he explains. “When you’re camping, people almost expect it a little bit burnt and charred. You can get a bit more loose and reckless. It taught me to just relax with the fire a little bit. I came back with this different relationship with it. I’m a bit more bullish now.” “The food is even more simple than it ever was, and in turn a lot more focussed. You can achieve these crazy flavours just from the fire and the smoke [he burns the wood of the native red gum tree]. You just guide it along its way.” He’s also nailed Nashville-style fried chicken, as seen at his casual Geelong joint The Hot Chicken Project. “After Loam, I was outta here. I sold everything, got a visa, and said I’m never cooking again, I’m going to America to find something else to do. Then I discovered Nashville hot chicken. I ate it and was like, hoooooooooly shit, I gotta figure how to do this.” At Igni, he works closely with a select band of farmers and growers, “people that do things really well”, cooking with the seasons and fermenting and pickling any excess to see him through the year. “I’ve got this philosophy that more than three things on a plate is excessive. We might rely on just three things but we do those three things the best that we can do them.” There’s no formal menu: “It’s all about the conversations with the front-of-house guys and the guest. We’ll talk about their likes and dislikes, their loves,” and compose a five- or eight-course menu from around two-dozen seasonal dishes. “No two tables have the same sequence of dishes.” After a difficult few years, Aaron and partners Drew Hamilton and Jo Smith (both ex-Loam front of house) are focussing on pushing forward creatively at Igni and nurturing a healthy, harmonious working environment for everybody. “We can pay our bills, we can pay our suppliers – that’s super-important. We can do everything we set out to do.” As Aaron himself writes: “We light the fire and see where it takes us.” restaurantigni.com Aaron Turner In Short Favourite dish Nashville hot chicken. Favourite drink I’m a big fan of minimal- intervention wines and I’ve got a soft spot for really crappy domestic beer. Most memorable meal Dan Barber’s Blue Hill at Stone Barns, New York. Chef or food personality he most admires American food writer Shane Mitchell and James Lowe at Lyle’s. Guilty pleasure Crisps. I glam them up sometimes – tomato ketchup crisps with anchovy will change your life. In the Igni restaurant larder Wallaby tail “It’s got a pretty unique flavour.” Used in a wallaby tail consommé with cured egg yolk, native pepper and celeriac roasted and smoked over the coals. Finger limes A slim, citrus-like fruit with large juicy vesicles sometimes called lime caviar. Served at Igni with dry-aged, free-range Aylesbury duck, coastal succulents and grilled fennel. Flowering gum A native eucalyptus used in ice cream with Davidson plum (a native tart plum) and pine-needle yogurt. Saltbush The leaves are flash-fried and dusted with powdered white vinegar. An alternative take on salt and vinegar crisps. Marron Freshwater crayfish, like a big yabbie, on the menu with macadamia and roasted nasturtium. “They’re beautiful on the fire.”
Ivan and Sergey Berezutskiy: chef interview
Localism isn’t so much a trend in Russia as a necessity – we meet Ivan and Sergey Berezutskiy, the twins refining the new Russian kitchen
Check out our expert interview with chefs and twins, Ivan and Sergey Berezutskiy of Twins Garden in Moscow, where they're refining the new Russian kitchen. Interview conducted by Hilary Armstrong. Ivan Berezutskiy in short Favourite dish Bread with ajika, a sauce of tomatoes and peppers eaten in the south of Russia. Favourite drink Red wine. Most memorable meal The family [staff] meal at elBulli. When it was my turn to cook, I made blinis. Chef he most admires Ferran Adrià. Guilty pleasure Chocolate marshmallows. Sergey Beretutskiy in short Favourite dish Grandma’s borscht. Favourite drink Wine. Most memorable meal When all the family is at the table, because it doesn’t happen very often. Grandma’s borscht, mama’s cakes, and we’d do the main course. Chef he most admires Heston Blumenthal. Guilty pleasure Candy for breakfast. What chef couldn’t use a doppelgänger? Someone to man the stove while the other goes to the pub; someone to graft in the kitchen while the other schmoozes the critics; and always, always, someone else to take the flak for a failed soufflé. Russian identical twins Ivan (pictured standing) and Sergey Berezutskiy are in just such a position, though they swear they’d never use their peas-in-a-pod likeness for any mischievous ends (at least, not since their teenage years when one of them took out the other’s girlfriend). These days, the 31-year-old brothers from Krasnodar Krai in southern Russia are taking advantage of their identity as twins in a quite different way, by exploring its creative possibilities at their newly launched restaurant Twins Garden in Moscow. The Berezutskiy brothers are at the vanguard of the post-Soviet Russian kitchen. Their brand of culinary patriotism – a challenging proposition in a country of 11 time zones – is not mere bandwagon-jumping. Sergey and Ivan are long-time locavores; their fellow chefs, in thrall to French cheese, foie gras and Spanish hams, have been playing catch-up ever since Russia imposed sanctions on imported EU ingredients in 2014 (the year the original Twins restaurant opened in Moscow). “Five years ago, diners didn’t go to a restaurant for Russian food. They went for Italian, Japanese... anything but Russian,” says Ivan. Now Ivan and Sergey are riding high on their success as Twins – on the World’s 50 Best long-list for the second time – settles into a new neighbourhood with a new name, Twins Garden, and a new 50-acre farm outside Moscow. It could have all turned out very differently. Originally, it was only Sergey who enrolled at culinary school. Ivan, the elder by five minutes, was due to study engineering. Sergey lucked out. “My on-the-job training was going to be in a factory with a bunch of men,” laughs Ivan. “Sergey’s would be in a restaurant by the seaside with loads of girls. Once I found that out, I changed my career on the spot.” The pair didn’t cook together – unless you count baking with their mama – until four years ago. Previously, Ivan had worked mainly in St Petersburg and had been the first ever Russian ‘stagiaire’ (trainee) at Spain’s legendary elBulli, while Sergey, who had been in Moscow, did his formative stage at Alinea in Chicago. Back on Russian soil, they made a deal: they would start a restaurant if Sergey won the Acqua Panna & S Pellegrino Young Chef of the Year award. And win it he did, with dishes of langoustine and artichoke, and mackerel with melon, Ivan cheering him along all the way. The odd difference of opinion about food notwithstanding, the brothers get on well (they even have flats in the same building). “Arguments are useful,” maintains Sergey. “We have very different tastes – Ivan loves beetroot and buckwheat, I hate them – but we have one rule and that is that a dish has to be approved by both of us before it goes on the menu.” Sergey and Ivan have a fascination with culinary lookie-likies. Sameness and difference are leitmotifs, with such pairings as porcini and conch sharing a plate. “They look alike and the texture of the two is very similar when fried. You can hardly tell them apart, but when you start to eat them you can taste the difference. The porcini have this forest aroma while the conch tastes of the sea.” The brothers have made it their personal mission to unearth Russia’s finest ingredients, however far-flung. They travel the country four times a year and have a forager on the team full-time. “Every region has ‘flagship’ ingredients that are well known across Russia,” explains Ivan. “During our travels, we’ve found a lot of ingredients, some of which are already well used in their regions, others of which are not even used by the locals. When we were looking for king crab in the far east of Russia, we discovered that its caviar was going to waste. We started using it and now it’s not only very popular in our restaurant but in other Moscow restaurants too.” They also now have the farm, 110 miles from Moscow in Kaluga, at their disposal. “When we went to Italy to do pop-ups, we’d go to markets and see this huge variety of fruit and vegetables that we just can’t get here. There would be 10 different kinds of bell pepper, of chilli, of tomato.” Thanks to the farm, they now have 120 different varieties of fruit and vegetable, plus chickens, a fish pond, and goats and cows for cheesemaking. For the Berezutskiy brothers, it’s still just the beginning. Their journey into Russia’s forgotten culinary history could take them a lifetime. For the curious gastronome, it could also be the start of something very big. Watch out, the Russians are coming. twinsmoscow.ru Ivan and Sergey’s hero ingredients Cured goose: Traditionally cured for Twins Garden by an old lady in Bashkortostan. Fiddlehead ferns: Served pickled, they’re almost unknown outside Siberia. Horsehair crab: Valued in Korea and Japan but unused in Russia. Now it’s a bestseller, baked in salt with riso venere black rice. Hemp seed: Historically important in Russia for its oil and fibre. Now mainly used as birdseed. We use it in sauces. Chayote: Originally from Latin America, now found in the south of Russia. This gourd is usually marinated so we use it year-round. Feijoa: Another fruit of Latin American origin popular in the south. Usually used in jam, we like it raw with seafood for its sweet-sour taste. Siberian venison (altai wapiti): Wild venison with a very distinctive flavour. Altai cheese: A classic Russian cheese, which we get from a very traditional old producer.
Sam Buckley (Where The Light Gets In, Stockport): chef interview
Stockport might be an unlikely location for one of the country’s most exciting kitchens, but chef Sam Buckley is creating quite the culinary stir
Check out our expert interview with chef Sam Buckley of Where The Light Gets In, Stockport. Interview conducted by Hilary Armstrong. Sam Buckley in short Favourite dish: Salt and pepper spare ribs. Favourite drink: Water, because it’s life-affirming and because of how I feel when I forget to drink it. Most memorable meal: Making breakfast with my girlfriend in India soon after we’d met. Food heroes: Fergus Henderson at St John, for reawakening an interest in English food; Massimo Bottura for using his status to launch social projects; and Tanja Grandits of two Michelin-starred Stucki in Basel because her kitchen’s such a happy place to be. Guilty pleasure: Salt and pepper spare ribs, again. Listen to our podcast interview with Sam Buckley here... View oEmbed on the source website For Sam Buckley, professional cooking has always been an on-off thing. The 34-year-old Stockport chef may have worked in some stellar kitchens – Gary Rhodes in Manchester, Paul Kitching’s Juniper, Simon Rogan’s L’Enclume – but he’s interspersed the stints with other stuff: college, backpacking, a journalism degree, going on tour (he plays bass), writing, more travelling. Right now, however, following a perfect 10 from Guardian reviewer Marina O’Loughlin in May for his now year-old restaurant Where the Light Gets In, his cooking career is undeniably, irrefutably, unequivocally on. “I never ever, ever meant to get back into cooking ever, ever, ever. Now I’ve got my own place, though, I’m screwed,” he says, only half joking. Sam opened Where the Light Gets In (WTLGI) in a Victorian coffee warehouse up a cobbledy Dickensian alley off Stockport’s market square in October 2016. Without backers but with a £25,000 start-up loan, he did things in a way no bean counter could ever countenance: with zero signage, a mad name (it’s about creative inspiration and “perfection in the imperfect”), no printed menu, no printed wine list, a highbrow concept and a kitchen not so much open as indecently exposed. The idea was to offer “freedom from choice” with the no-choice dining experience, created “from the day’s catch, harvest and slaughter”. At £75 and a further £45 for wine pairings, it’s a big ask in Stockport town centre. “We have 26 guests a night come here and put their trust in our hands. It’s so adventurous of them to spend all this money and they really don’t know what’s going to go on. I can imagine how nerve-racking that is.” Sam’s reluctant to define his cooking style. Marina O’Loughlin assays “new Northern”. “That’s quite cool, isn’t it?” says Sam, going on to say that the term will be more meaningful the day he and his northern colleagues – such as fellow L’Enclume alumni James Cross of Lake Road Kitchen, The Forest Side’s Kevin Tickle and Mark Birchall at Moor Hall (check out our expert critic review here) – have anything like the clout with suppliers as their southern counterparts. “If there were a northern scene, it would have to start where we start our menu – with farmers, growers, rearers.” Securing the best produce is an ongoing struggle. To that end, Sam works with local farm incubator initiative The Kindling Trust and is establishing WTLGI’s own farm, inspired in part by his L’Enclume experience. Also on the agenda is a co-operatively run, affordable organic food shop beneath WTLGI. The staunch sourcing policy shares something in common, for sure, with the new Nordic kitchen, as does the return to time-honoured techniques such as fermentation, smoking, curing and pickling. Inspiration comes from all over, from his travels, from eating out and, as often as not, from his own fertile imagination. He recalls a weekend road trip with his architect girlfriend to buy a Middle White pig in Oxfordshire; he remembers being taught to polish barley for koji by an old woman in the Himalayas; and he fabricates a story for his ‘summer porridge’, a bunch of off-cuts from an English country garden including lovage stems cooked down in a seaweed broth and pickled beetroot stalks: “I imagine something someone would have eaten 300 years ago, walking down the side of the road and picking stuff in the hedgerow.” Then there’s a mussel dish with fresh horseradish juice and fermented peach juice, seasoned with hawthorn flower oil. The mussels are eaten with a handmade pick, the broth is slurped not with a spoon but straight from the hand-thrown bowl, so “you’re closer to your food, literally”. He relishes this narrative element and encourages his chefs, who double as servers, to tell the story of each dish in their own way. Following the Guardian review, WTLGI took 1,000 bookings in two days. The pressure on Sam to develop menus while finding his feet as a business owner and manager has been immense. He’s taken to spending Sundays at the restaurant, just him and some loud music. “I have the whole kitchen to myself. That’s helped,” he says. “I feel I’m gaining in confidence.” His priority, however, is sustainability. “This business is massively gluttonous. We want to be as responsible as we can be. We’re going to put a manifesto on the website. We want to make more of a deal of it. Hopefully other restaurants might follow suit, especially if we’re successful.” This manifests itself in any number of ways, from eliminating food waste and refusing packaging from suppliers, to recruitment (WTLGI’s workforce is 60% female) and even making their own organic linen napkins. When Sam talks about a recent Copenhagen trip (read about ours here), he doesn’t rave so much about Noma, Relæ and Kadeau (though he rates them all) as about the city’s push to be carbon neutral by 2025. While Sam has big plans for WTLGI, he doesn’t see himself there long term. So where will he be in five years’ time? Anywhere but here. “Maybe in India frying pakora on the beach,” he muses. “How good does that sound?” wtlgi.co Photographs: Chloé Frejaville, Elle Brotherhood
Introducing Amanda Cohen, whose flavour-first, rock’n’roll approach to vegetarian cooking has won her fans (omnivores and veggies alike) across New York
Check out our expert interview with chef Amanda Cohen. Expect southern-influenced hush puppies with maple butter, kimchi doughnuts and celery cheesecake with celeriac ice cream. Interview conducted by Hilary Armstrong. Amanda Cohen’s five-year-old self, as seen on the pages of her genre-bending graphic-novel-slash-cookbook, screws up her face and says: “I hate vegetables.” Poor little Amanda. She’d be shocked to see how things turned out, for fast-forward to 2017 and she’s grown up to become New York’s reigning queen of vegetarian cuisine. She came to the attention of New York diners – vegan, vegetarian and omnivore alike – soon after opening her pioneering ‘vegetable-forward’ restaurant Dirt Candy in its original, pocket-sized form in New York’s East Village in 2008. Amanda puts the early raves down to her signature dish: a rich, decadent, foie gras-esque portobello mousse that is the antithesis of the hair shirt and Birkenstocks School of veggie cooking. But to ascribe her fame entirely to her cooking would be to underestimate the myriad other ways in which Amanda is, frankly, rad: she was the first vegetarian chef on Iron Chef America; hers was the first NYC restaurant to eliminate tipping and to share profits with employees; and she’s a prolific writer and speaker unafraid to tell it how she sees it. Her restaurant, now in larger Lower East Side premises, is no patchouli-scented temple of tempeh. “Dirt Candy isn’t a lifestyle restaurant,” asserts Amanda. “We’re much more of a destination foodie restaurant than one that caters to the vegetarian and vegan lifestyle. I’ve always said, ‘I don’t care about your health, I don’t care how you feel about the environment, about animals. That’s not my job. My job is to serve you the most delicious vegetables’. Whatever my politics might be, that’s certainly not evident in the restaurant. I’m a chef. This is a chef-driven restaurant.” Amanda’s conversion to vegetarianism came at the age of 15 in Toronto, where she grew up. She buckled to peer pressure, she freely admits. “One day all my friends were like, ‘We’re vegetarians now’, so I was like, ‘Okay, I guess I’m a vegetarian too’.” She hit upon cooking as a career after graduating from NYU when, bitten by the travel bug, she sought a skill that could take her around the world. She went to culinary school, started working in kitchens and, she says with a smile, “ultimately never really travelled again”. With the exception of two years “frying chicken wings” in a Harlem diner, Cohen has spent her career in vegetarian restaurants. The impetus behind Dirt Candy was a posh dinner at a swanky New York restaurant. “The chef had promised me this grand vegetarian tasting and my parents were having the regular tasting. They were getting glorious course after course, and I was actually getting salad after salad. I couldn’t understand it. Do you just not care about the vegetarian? Oh. People actually don’t.” The experience moved her to do better. “I had this moment, though, where I thought, I am never going to become a better chef until I can taste what other chefs care about, because I have no idea.” Her palate was, she says, ‘‘underdeveloped’’ and she started to eat fish. “At this point in time, I will try anything at least once. Over the past couple of months I’ve had ant eggs at Noma in Tulum, lamb’s tongue, really bloody partridge, raw venison…” She shudders. “I have put things in my body that I just didn’t know I could or would.” Dirt Candy now serves around 50% omnivores, 30% vegetarians and 20% vegans, for whom there’s a separate vegan menu. The defining feature of Amanda’s approach is her resistance to the protein-first approach of meat-centric cuisine. Instead, she looks outside the French tradition to what she can cook, not what she can’t cook. Dirt Candy classics include southern-influenced hush puppies with maple butter (she’s no stranger to the deep-fat fryer), kimchi doughnuts and Korean fried broccoli, while recent menus have introduced carrot sliders on carrot buns, ‘green huevos and no ham’, and celery cheesecake with celeriac ice cream. “My goal is to get people to eat more vegetables,” she says. “Part of how we figured out our menu originally was what we could actually get at the corner deli. I’d like to say I went to the farmers’ market a lot there, but it was just me and one or two other cooks. We were all exhausted, the restaurant was too busy.” “We’re pretty much a supermarket restaurant,” she jokes. “Our vegetables are pretty basic – mushrooms, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower... then we just try to be really creative with them. A lot of people don’t realise how much labour goes into vegetables and how much time it takes. I have a huge labour force here.” The approach certainly seems to be working. Dirt Candy’s on a high, the success of its tasting menu bucking New York’s fast-casual trend. “What I’d really like is to play with a larger tasting menu to give my customers an elevated vegetable experience. I’ve grown up a little bit, so I’d like the restaurant to grow up a little bit.” Fans of the cookbook, a kitchen manual and laugh-out-loud read, now in its sixth print run, will have to be patient. A sequel is not yet in the offing. “I’m not sure I’ve had the next great idea yet. I don’t want to do anything that’s not greater than what we did before.” dirtcandynyc.com Amanda Cohen in short Favourite drink: A glass of white wine. Any. Favourite dish: Chinese takeout on the couch, watching a movie. Most memorable meal: I haven’t had it yet. I always want to be looking forward to the next meal. Chef you most admire: All my cooks who have to work for me day in, day out. They have a lot of fortitude. Guilty pleasure: Dill pickle Doritos. There’s a tradition of dill pickle chips in Canada, and Doritos came out with the ultimate ones.
Nobelhart und Schmutzig changed the face of the Berlin restaurant scene. Here, the head of the kitchen, Micha Schäfer explains his winning formula
Check out our expert interview with chef Micha Schäfer. Expect a 10-course menu of ‘brutal lokal’ new German cooking, using a mix of modern and traditional techniques, such as pickling, preserving, curing and drying. Interview conducted by Hilary Armstrong. The less said about currywurst the better. Suffice to say that Micha Schäfer, the 30-year-old chef of white-hot Berlin restaurant Nobelhart und Schmutzig, finds little to recommend the ketchup-slathered street-food staple of his adopted city. “Don’t come to Berlin for currywurst,” he says. “Go to Berghain.” The world’s most notorious techno club is certainly one reason to visit the German capital, but for those olive readers whose tastes don’t extend to hypnotic techno and eye-popping hedonism, and who’d rather discover the city through its gastronomy, a seat at Nobelhart und Schmutzig’s kitchen counter is the best place to start. Nobelhart und Schmutzig – the fabulous name fabricated from a cluster of adjectives in a newspaper headline: ‘noble’, ‘hard’ and ‘dirty’ – is the brainchild of Billy Wagner, Germany’s original hipster-sommelier, a.k.a. “the popstar of wine experts” (Die Zeit). At the time of the restaurant’s conception, Berlin, so dynamic in every other way, still lagged inexplicably behind other European capitals, having neither a destination-dining scene nor a regional cuisine to call its own. Billy set about changing this, bringing in Micha, a rising star schooled in the pioneering kitchen of Matthias Schmidt, then at Villa Merton in Frankfurt. Billy and Micha opened Nobelhart und Schmutzig in February 2015. Nine months later, it had a Michelin star. A year after that, it was declared Restaurant of the Year in influential German food title, Der Feinschmecker. Now, along with like-minded restaurants Horváth and Einsunternull, it’s in the vanguard of Berlin’s pulsating restaurant scene. Nobelhart und Schmutzig is no ordinary temple of haute cuisine. It’s found in an anonymous concrete building on an unlovely stretch of Friedrichstrasse, minutes from Checkpoint Charlie. Without signage, its distinguishing feature is a shop mannequin wearing a T-shirt that pays a sweary tribute to culinary legend Paul Bocuse. It’s a bold statement and a cue to guests to leave their francophile preconceptions at the door. Once through the locked door (‘Bitte klingeln’ – please ring – reads the sign) guests are seated at one of Germany’s few open kitchen counters, behind which a turntable plays an eclectic soundtrack ranging from the Wu-Tang Clan to Berlin DJ Oliver Koletzki. It’s a fittingly unsettling setting for a €95 10-course menu of ‘brutal lokal’ new German cooking, whose central tenet is its full-on hardcore stance on sourcing. The idea, initially at least, was to source solely from Berlin and its environs, to eschew obvious ‘luxuries’ (turbot, lobster etc) and even such ‘exotics’ as chocolate, vanilla and lemon. It’s an approach that has connected Micha and Billy with a network of suppliers in regions that, prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, had felt remote. “Originally we were going to use producers within a certain radius of Berlin,” recalls Micha. “It turns out that how far a product travels is not quite as interesting as the people behind it.” Micha attends to every last detail, even ‘basics’ like milk. The ‘Nobelharts’ get theirs from David Peacock at Erdhof Seewalde in Mecklenburg, which Micha uses in an ultra-simple milk sorbet that shows off the pure taste of the creamy milk with just a touch of fresh wild camomile. Then there’s open-pan Luisenhaller salt from Göttingen, heritage Teltower turnips from Brandenburg, ikejime char from Lake Müritz. Matching wines are similarly true to their terroir: not necessarily German, but all made from grapes indigenous to their region. “It’s a very important part of my style of cooking, developing produce with our suppliers,” says Micha. “We plan the year ahead together. They plan things for us and they grow things for us. The question I’m asking more and more is ‘what is available and what can I do with it?’ rather than ‘I want to cook this right now. How can I get it?’ Every day I discover that the year doesn’t have four seasons but 52. That makes cooking really exciting – and eating even more so. “The ingredients are as German as they get. My style of cooking relates to flavours and memories people have of German cuisine. There’s always some kind of fat in a dish, often vinegar, all these ingredients you use in classic German cuisine, but it’s not classic German food – not at all.” As in the new Nordic kitchen, one finds a mix of modern and traditional techniques, such as pickling, preserving, curing and drying, to see him through the privations of a harsh Berlin winter. Micha’s is a resourceful kitchen that finds beauty in blackcurrant stalks, dandelion buds, eel bones. His dishes are minimalist, shockingly so sometimes; a classic is kohlrabi, harvested young and small, with stale bread, fresh butter and rapeseed. That’s it. The self-imposed limitations have forced him to dig deep. “In March, when it’s deep, deep winter and you’re getting frustrated, you have to look harder. For example, one way we get acidity is to boil yogurt, pass it through a cloth then reduce the whey so it’s really acidic. We season char and young leeks with it. That’s something you’d never find if you weren’t really, really looking.” It’s noble work for a chef, and ‘hart’ and ‘schmutzig’ too. And that, hope Micha and Billy, is the experience of the guests at the restaurant also. The evening may start out high-minded and noble, but, with the right food and the right wine, it doesn’t stay that way for long. ‘Nobel, hart und schmutzig’, just like Berlin. nobelhartundschmutzig.com *Nobelhart und Schmutzig is on a summer break until 31 August. Micha Schäfer in short Favourite drink: Berliner Weisse. Favourite dish: Potato soup with sausages. Most memorable meal: At the two-Michelin-starred Essigbrätlein in Nuremberg. Chef you most admire: Paul Bocuse. Guilty pleasure: Pictures of Paul Bocuse.
We meet Simone Tondo, a cavalier young Italian chef making waves with his borderless cuisine in the heart of Paris
Find out how Sardinian chef Simone Tondo has fine-tuned his Italian cooking in Paris. Interview conducted by Hilary Armstrong When Sardinian chef Simone Tondo left home at only 14 to pursue his culinary calling in Alghero; when his father spent a small fortune on the El Bulli cookbook for his 15th birthday; when he uprooted himself at 21 for yet another new city – none of this was with a view to a career spent slinging pizzas and rolling pasta. “I didn’t study so hard to be just an Italian chef,” asserts Simone, whose restaurant Tondo opened in Paris last summer. “It was never my dream to just cook pasta. I’m an international cook. I cook everything that’s good.” “Everything”, vis-à-vis the Tondo menu, means anything from Sardinian fregola to dashi, za’atar to clafoutis. It’s the very reason Simone’s in Paris. “My head chef [Cristiano Andreini], who used to work with Ducasse, told me you only learn by seeing new things and the place to go for that is Paris. Paris opens your mind. You smell food everywhere.” (Read our foodie guide to Paris here) Simone couldn’t have chosen a better time to arrive in the City of Light. The Paris he discovered in 2009 was not the one that had seen off previous Italian invaders (Gualtiero Marchesi, the godfather of modern Italian, being the highest profile casualty). It was an open city, in thrall to the new ‘bistronomy’, a youthful, sometimes anarchic movement that swapped haute cuisine for off-the-cuff cooking and matey service, in the process shifting Paris’s gastronomic epicentre from the centre to the edgy 11th arrondissement. Simone dived right in: at Rino with Giovanni Passerini, at Petter Nilsson’s pace-setting La Gazzetta, Inaki Aizpitarte of Le Chateaubriand’s Le Dauphin and Sven Chartier’s Saturne. Lyon-based Italian food writer and curator Andrea Petrini, founder of Gelinaz!, in whose culinary ‘happenings’ Simone has partaken, explains the background further: “Simone was one of the first young Italian guys to come to Paris. If you look at Paris – and Copenhagen too – you have lots and lots of Italians; one could say there’s an Italian diaspora. Why? Because there was an economic crisis and because, in Italy, despite what you might think from reading international magazines, it’s not a very open kind of cuisine. You have to stick with tradition. The new places in Paris brought a new perspective, new possibilities.” Paris was ready for a change, too. For Simone’s first restaurant (with British chef Michael Greenwold), Roseval, a buzzing 20-cover boîtein the up-and-coming 20th arrondissement,opened in 2012 to rave reviews. A year later, it scooped ‘best restaurant’ in France’s iconoclastic Le Fooding guide from under the noses of the homegrown talent. How did that go down? “It was cool,” recalls Simone. “We were young guys, everyone was super-positive.” Two years later, to everyone’s surprise, Simone shuttered Roseval. He was ready for a new challenge. To wit, Tondo, launched last summer, 10 years after Petter Nilsson’s iconic La Gazzetta at the same address. Tondo marks a step change not only for new dad Simone, who turns 30 next January, but also for ‘bistros-gastros’ in general. It’s a large, beautiful site, with mosaic floor, velvet banquettes, tablecloths (linen having been declared démodé at the height of bistronomy) and room to move. As Tondo’s British restaurant manager Stephanie Crockford (ex-Fera at Claridge’s) wryly notes: “In Paris, it’s hard to find a restaurant where you’re not sitting in the lap of the person next door.” The vibe is “New York-y”, says Simone, with a touch of Chiltern Firehouse. Menus include a €25 lunch, the €60 carte blanche and the newly introduced à la carte, supported by a thrilling list of predominantly natural wines. Simone looks to a future of “restaurants sans origines”. It’s telling that his mentors – Petter Nilsson, Giovanni Passerini, and also Argentine chef Mauro Colagreco at Mirazur in Menton –have all been outsiders actively engaged in exploring the notion of territory on foreign soil. At Tondo, Simone cooks on an Italian foundation with French produce supplemented by Italian ingredients: cheese and anchovies (“the umami stuff”), lardo, hazelnuts, capers, truffles…“Olive oil for sure, but also butter since I discovered the right way to use it. Petter Nilsson used to serve raw fish with brown butter at La Gazzetta. I was shocked! But with some acidity – at Roseval I did tuna with redcurrant, brown butter and a little vinegar – it can be very interesting.” At Tondo, the menu dances across continents, beginning perhaps with focaccia or with brioche run through with pecorino and guanciale. Next might be the current bestseller, vitello tonnato, rosy slices of slow-cooked veal with a tuna, caper and anchovy emulsion sprinkled with – here’s the twist – za’atar and peppery nasturtium flowers. Or, from Albenga, Italy’s best courgettes, barbecued, alongside red mullet with pancetta tesa melting into the skin. You may find pasta, if you’re lucky tagliolini with sea urchin in fennel broth, and almost certainly there will be borrowings from Japan, Simone’s current obsession, such as white asparagus with ‘ricotta au miso’ and sabayon. But whatever direction the menu takes, guests always, always finish with a light-as-air choux bun filled with whipped cream. And what could be more Parisian than that? Simone Tondo in short Favourite dish Sushi. I didn’t have sushi for the first time until I was 15. I love it. In Paris, I go to Sushi Okuda for unagi (eel) sushi. Favourite drink Gin and tonic, made with a good gin. I like Belet. Most memorable meal Relæ in Copenhagen. I had lunch at Noma then went to Relæ for dinner, thinking it would be impossible to surpass the lunch at Noma. It surpassed it easily. I really enjoyed ‘beetroot steak’, a piece of beetroot cooked like a steak. Chef or food person you most admire Pierre Gagnaire, because he’s a nice man. Of course he’s a great cook, too. And Massimo Bottura, another nice man. Guilty pleasure I can’t start the day without a little bit of Nutella. But my son can have good nocciolata – just nuts, no palm oil. Simone’s favourite Italian addresses in Paris • Osteria Ferrara, 7 Rue du Dahomey • Restaurant Passerini, 65 Rue Traversière • Pizzeria Popolare, 111 Rue Réaumur • Sardegna a Tavola, 1 Rue de Cotte • Pizzeria Bijou, 10 Rue Dancourt • Le Cherche Midi, 22 Rue du Cherche-Midi Photographs | Mickaël A. Bandassak Words | Hilary Armstrong tondo-paris.com
Sashana Souza Zanella and Ben Reade: chef interview
Not many restaurants have historians or anthropologists among their team, but the Edinburgh Food Studio isn’t like other restaurants. We speak to Sashana Souza Zanella and Ben Reade behind the curious Scottish food lab
Interview conducted by Hilary Armstrong Edinburgh chef Ben Reade breaks off his thoughtful musings with an outburst of enthusiasm and a choice expletive. He’s out walking as we talk and has just stumbled upon a whopping great Dryad’s Saddle mushroom on a felled tree – “It’s got to be four and a half kilos!” he raves – a wild food find now destined for the kitchen at the Edinburgh Food Studio, the restaurant and research hub he launched with partner Sashana Souza Zanella in November 2015. It’s a good way for a mushroom to go (fermented in brine with koji to a Noma recipe, he later tells me). For Ben and Sashana, 32 and 29 respectively, are two of the proudest champions of Scotland’s abundant natural larder that you could find. The couple, both graduates of the prestigious University of Gastronomic Sciences in Piedmont, came to Edinburgh, Ben’s home city, three years ago, with big plans to launch an ambitious open-source research project on Scottish food history and culture. They’d quit their previous roles (his as head of research and development at Noma’s Nordic Food Lab; hers as a tutor at their alma mater) and were ready to start something together – something creative and genre-bending that could put Scottish food on the map. When attempts to secure funding hit a brick wall (the creative bodies found them too foodie; the foodie ones found them too weird), they introduced a restaurant to the business plan and took to Kickstarter. This was, according to Montreal-born Sashana, “the best thing we could have done because it created a community around the project. People were waiting for us to open our doors.” Said doors, painted a tasteful heritage grey, opened on Dalkeith Road in Edinburgh Southside in November 2015, to reveal a hybrid space – part restaurant, part research facility – with a large island for tastings and demos, a whiteboard, projector and two long, wooden, communal tables. The dining room opens just three days a week, Thursday-Saturday, and serves a £42 seven-course set menu. “We wanted to serve food to everyone at the same time,” explains Sashana. “For us, eating is all about relating to people.” Adds Ben: “One of our aims was to have the creative part, the research part, but also to feed people. For me, it’s almost a sacred thing, feeding people and sharing food. Without that, it all becomes a little meaningless.” The rest of the week, the studio’s alive with a community of interns – historians, designers, anthropologists, you name it – researching anything from cured seal meat in the Outer Hebrides to ‘lost’ dairy desserts and the history of sheep-breeding in Scotland. “We’re collecting one leg from every different Scottish heritage breed of sheep so that we can do a proper degustation and develop a sensory language for mutton,” explains Ben. It may sound high-flown, but Ben, who admits he’s “a right nerd”, insists it’s born of a “pretty down-to-earth” desire to interact with human beings by doing good stuff. Collaboration is the studio’s lifeblood. They’ve hosted poets, foragers, ceramicists, musicians and a line-up of culinary big-hitters, among them Ana Roš (the World’s Best Female Chef 2017) and a team from Stockholm’s two Michelin-starred Oaxen. “Every other week we’ve got someone else cooking with us so we’ve always got weird and wonderful leftovers,” Ben explains. “There’s this idea that you have to conceptualise a dish from start to finish. How could you possibly use somebody else’s preparation?” He pooh-poohs the notion, citing one-off dishes – there’s no such thing as a ‘signature’ dish here – including a foie gras torchon (courtesy of Iron Chef-winning Aussie, Tom Halpin) that introduced the first of the season’s Scottish asparagus, with cep oil, a little Madagascan voatsiperifery pepper (one of Ben’s favourite spices) and some Oaxen-inspired crisp fried nettles. “Each component has a story.” Another dish from that same week’s menu: North Ronaldsay mutton with ground ivy, a wild herb with a mint-like quality, and sea sandwort. A dish in response to the ongoing mutton project, it’s their research realised on a plate. To finish, a petit four of miso fudge, a hand-me-down from the Oaxen visit, made of three-year-old miso by Rose Green, ex-head chef at Belgium’s In De Wulf. “So there you have a kind of like In De Wulf x Oaxen x Edinburgh Food Studio ‘collab’,” smiles Ben. “It’s difficult to define our style. We’re constantly cooking with different people, using new techniques and new seasonal ingredients. I suppose ‘responsive’ would be a fair descriptor.” “What’s fun about what we’re doing is we’re experimenting a lot, throwing things out there, just playing with it,” says Sashana. As to the future, the Edinburgh Food Studio has just three years left on the lease. Ben and Sashana know it won’t last forever in its current fluid form, but they’re excited about what it might morph into and the role it will play in shaping Scotland’s food in the future. “Our driving force from the very beginning has been to show that food is creative,” states Sashana simply. “That’s something we keep proving every day with every project, every event and every intern.” edinburghfoodstudio.com The Edinburgh Food Studio’s hero ingredients North Ronaldsay mutton An ancient breed of sheep from the northernmost island of Orkney. A dry-stone dyke confines these hardy beasts to the seashore where they survive on little more than seaweed. Homemade vinegar Our apple vinegar is nine years old now. We’ve got 16 barrels of it in our basement in balsamic vinegar barrels from Modena. Heather honeycomb In the comb, straight out of the frame. Sconser scallops Sustainable, twice-dived scallops from the Isle of Skye. The scallops are lifted from Loch Sligachan’s deeper waters then re-laid in the plankton-rich shallow waters to grow to size. East Lothian pigeon A beautiful, traditional bird. There are ancient doocots (dovecotes) all across East Lothian outside Edinburgh. Oats From the Blair Atholl Watermill in Perthshire, one of five remaining watermills in Scotland. Pepper dulse A beautiful aromatic seaweed that we use almost as a spice. Peasemeal A traditional yellow pea flour from Golspie Mill in Sutherland. Used with beremeal (a type of barley) for homemade miso. Photographs | Jack Wilson Words | Hilary Armstrong
Introducing British chef Anna Tobias, a champion of simple cooking and high-quality, seasonal ingredients, talks about her experience in the UK’s classiest restaurant kitchens
Interview conducted by Adam Coghlan A few years ago London underwent a culinary renaissance that had something in common with the Parisian ‘bistronomie’ movement: food remained high quality but was served in more informal, relaxed environments. James Lowe, Lyle’s head chef, claimed, though, that there were only three British chefs who could be truly compared to those in France adhering to the principles of ‘bistronomie’. He was one. Tom Adams – then of Pitt Cue Co. and now Coombeshead Farm –another. And Anna Tobias. Above all, it had to do, he said, with the respect shown to ingredients. Anna’s career offers a clear picture of why she belongs in this select group, since, for nearly 10 years, she’s been under the stewardship of four icons of the ingredient-led tradition: Jeremy Lee at the Blueprint Café; Ruth Rogers of The River Café; and most recently she’s been head chef under Margot Henderson and Melanie Arnold at Rochelle Canteen. With long periods of time spent at each, her culinary education has had a purism to it. Last year Anna was invited to collaborate with a chef at a restaurant she prefers not to name. It was July, so her dish would be a soup of courgette, coco beans and tomato, with a touch of marjoram; a dish which is as good only as the quality of its component parts. She was, she says, “horrified to find Dutch courgettes and tomatoes bought from the local shop” waiting for her magic touch. The dish was doomed. Then, as if to assure me that she’s no kitchen diva, she stresses that it’s “not that I like buying expensive ingredients; it’s that I like buying good ingredients.” ‘Simple’ has become a useful term for chefs who want to distance their style from that of predecessors they deem to have tried too hard. But it can mean different things to different people; for a chef like Anna, simple means sourcing the best ingredients and doing very little to them.“The food I love to cook is very ingredient-driven and simple – I try to bring the best out of the ingredients I’m using without fussing with them too much,” she says. Anna was born in Hong Kong and moved to London at 13. She would go on to study modern languages at Oxford – French and German – between 2005 and 2008. It was during that time that her interest in cooking developed. She wrote half a dozen letters to chefs she admired, unsure “if any of them would have me, let alone employ me.” Jeremy Lee replied. He would provide the foundation on which she grew as a chef. He oversaw a kitchen she remembers being “unusual; flamboyant; dramatic”. Lee himself, she says, “was amazing at explaining things, particularly when it came to history.” He placed great importance on reading the classics, especially female food writers. “Elizabeth David (particularly her article ‘Letting Well Alone’ from An Omelette and a Glass of Wine), Jane Grigson and Patience Gray are probably my three favourites. And Simon Hopkinson’s Prawn Cocktail Years is probably one of the books I use most often,” she says. Post-Blueprint Café, Anna almost stopped cooking because of family issues. “I wasn’t sure I could cope,” she says. She considered moving into food PR. The only restaurant that would keep her cooking was The River Café. So she applied thinking that if she got in – great, if not – “I’ll do something else.” She got in. The River Café is a seminal restaurant that thrived before food and restaurants overtook almost every other interest and recreational activity in popularity. And what made The River Café so good? Well, there was the massive staff and a freedom seldom afforded to chefs. But mainly it was about ingredients: the best – imported from Italy or grown right there, on the bank of the River Thames. It was also a great place to be a young chef – to learn and be trained. The River Café very rarely hires for a position; chefs start as commis and work up. They tend to stick around because they’re treated well. “We never did more than two shifts in a row and the staff food was amazing,”Anna says. Not only are there lots of chefs, each with very specific tasks, the waiting staff arrive early to do a lot of the prep. It means the chefs can concentrate on cooking. “The training at The River Café made me very confident in my ability to train other people; there is nothing I feel unconfident about, in terms of butchery or fishmongery,” she stresses. Anna, noticeably quite shy, is also keen to stress how the restaurant taught her “to project – how to talk to different areas and how to make your voice heard. You know, shouting ‘service, please,’” she jokes. Anna left The River Café for the same reasons that made it such a great place to work. “I was conscious not to wait until it became too hard to leave,” she says. But there was also the ceiling you hit: there’s usually only a promotion available if someone leaves. And she acknowledges that she was “quite ambitious”. Given her style of cooking, there was only one place left to go. “I wanted to work for St. John,” she says. She trialled at Bread & Wine, the St. John Hotel and Rochelle Canteen (co-owned by Fergus Henderson’s wife, Margot.) She called it “the holy trinity of simple cooking.” It was 2013 and she would work as sous chef at Rochelle for a year before becoming head chef. She left last summer, having relished the responsibility of sourcing from the best suppliers, and lights up when talking about Fern Verrow – “the best veg in Britain” – who “pick their customers.” As one of the chosen ones, Anna, without even a hint of arrogance, says, “you feel like you’ve made it”. We’ve just finished some on-trend tacos in a new London restaurant when she tells me: “I’m not bothered about trends or being trendy. The three places I’ve worked all have a sense of identity and, for me, that supersedes any whim or trend.” She’s learnt from those who have stood the test of time. Anna is 30 – the same age as The River Café. My suspicion is that she will too. Follow Anna on Instagram @tobiasanna to find out where she’ll be cooking over the summer. Some exciting things are lined up with Towpath Café, Canton Arms and maybe a return to The River Café. Watch this space. ANNA IN SHORT: Favourite drink: negroni Favourite dish: chicken broth and semolina dumplings Most memorable meal: too difficult! Best meals are the ones at home surrounded by the people you love and who love eating Chef or food person you most admire: Elizabeth David – I love how venomous she could be. But she was always right! Guilty pleasure: shop-bought chicken kiev Words | Adam Coghlan Images | Jack Wilson, The Skinny Bib
Read our exclusive interview with chef Alessandro Borghese, 'the Jamie Oliver of Italy' who has partnered with Obica, the world’s first Mozarella Bar restaurant, to create a brand new ‘food to share’ menu
My favourite wine is... Pinot Noir. I’m a Pinot Noir lover. North regions of Italy make some of the best because it’s a very difficult grape to grow. But French are the best at it, certainly! In my fridge there’s always... Mozzarella di Bufala Campana – it's the basis of the Mediterranean diet and I always have it on hand, especially now in my role as Creative Chef at Obicà, the Mozzarella Bar. My favourite 15-minute supper to make at home is... I’ll fry something quick and easy. Garlic, oil and chili spaghetti, while listening to ‘Bang a Gong (Get It On)’ by T.Rex. My guilty pleasure food is... Pepperoncino – hot peppers in a plate of nice pasta, any time, any day. I’m all for salt rather than sweet. If you gave me a tenner I’d spend it on... I don’t know if I can buy a bottle of wine for £10 but the fun part is that I do like to research cost-quality. The world of wines is very big and there are many producers who make bottles that you don’t have to spend a lot of money on. It’s like finding a little treasure – a bottle of wine that doesn't cost too much, but the quality is high. A restaurant trend I see being the next big thing is... Food to share. For Obicà I have created a range of new small plates that enrich the menu with the belief that real luxury is based on simplicity. We’ve developed the ‘food to share’ concept with a Live Aperitivo tour in Obicà restaurants across the world. These experiences provide the perfect mix of informal atmosphere, dining pleasures, excellent quality food and good music! On a Sunday I like to... I wish I could sleep! I enjoy spending quality time with my daughters or I make ‘Paccheri al ragu’ (pasta with meat sauce) as my father cooked. He would start preparing it early in the morning and fill the house with its smell while it simmered. My father used to tell me that the sauce had to ‘think’. My favourite country to visit for foodie inspiration is... Italy. The cuisine comes from all different regions which are very competitive. We all have grandmothers, mothers or aunts who do homemade pasta usually better than a 3-Michelin starred restaurant. My mother-in-law who comes from Calabria says I don’t know how to cook. What are the three most useful ingredients and why? Extra virgin olive oil, anchovies and probably parmesan. I find that there are few ingredients that can change taste to many dishes. I do put a dripping of extra virgin olive oil on every dish I do to finish the dish and there are a lot of varieties of extra virgin olive oil, whether for meat, fish, etc. This olive oil can then be mixed with anchovies like I do in all the Obicà restaurants. It’s excellent to melt down in the pan if you want to sautee vegetables for more taste, even for meat too. Parmesan is like that Italian umami taste.
Introducing British chef and restaurateur, Tim Spedding, whose prestigious career has been bubbling away in London before his move to Cornwall this spring
Interview conducted by Adam Coghlan In February this year, Tim Spedding and his girlfriend, Louise Rødkjær Jørgensen, spent four days in Cornwall. It’s something they’ve made a habit of over the last 12 months. Sometimes it’s for pleasure; on this occasion it was for business. During the visit they viewed 16 different properties – the first stage of their planned relocation to the Southwest this spring. The pair have an acute appreciation of hospitality – their chef and front-of-house partnership is just one pillar of the memorable experience they provide. “Louise has always wanted somewhere cosy and beautifully styled – that’s her dream,” he tells me. His dream is to be a part of that (working title ‘Louisiana’). Other than a sensational residency on two induction hobs at P. Franco in Clapton last year, Tim’s career as a chef has not been all about his being the front-man. Now they’re at liberty to realise their idyll: “We’ve had this vision of a place in the country where we can grow our own veg, have a [real] relationship with suppliers, live near the coast, go surfing,” he says, smiling. The fact that people are calling Cornwall the ‘San Sebastián of England’ is convenient from a marketing perspective. Tim is more than au fait with suppliers Kernow Sashimi, Warren’s Butchers and Keveral Farm, as well as chef Tom Adams at Coombeshead Farm. But his connection to the county dates back to a summer holiday, aged 17, at Porthminster Beach Café in St Ives where he first cooked professionally. After that, when at catering college, he was posted for summer work experience to The Headland Hotel in Newquay. His parents had to drive there to bring him back to Slough; he’d caught the surfing bug, loved it there, and appears always to have had one eye on going back. He went to university in Plymouth, and left as student of the year with a scholarship to what was then Michael Caines’ Gidleigh Park. It’s tempting to assume that the good life in Cornwall is a convenient way of getting out of the restaurant rat race, while, at the same time, avoiding the risks of opening a restaurant in London. But Tim is quick to demur. “It would be much easier and more sensible to open a restaurant in London,” he says. People believe there’s less competition outside the city but it only seems that way because there are fewer restaurants – there are also far fewer diners. “But I’ve never had a desire to have a restaurant in London,” he adds. Tim made his name as sous chef at The Clove Club – the one-time supper club that crowd-funded itself to permanence in Shoreditch Town Hall in 2013. Just before Spedding left last year, it had entered the World’s 50 best restaurants list as the highest new entry at number 26. He says, sheepishly, “It was one of the main things we wanted to achieve and it seemed like a good time to move on when we got into the top 50.” If it was Isaac McHale’s restaurant, then, for a certain amount of time, it could be argued that the kitchen was as much Tim’s as it was Isaac’s. But that was the “very inclusive” way in which Isaac ran the place. Tim remembers thinking, “‘I don’t need to be in this meeting.’ But it’s empowering – and giving ownership [to the team] means they respond and do a better job,” he says. Tim met Isaac at The Ledbury in Notting Hill, where the latter was a development chef. I find it hard to imagine Tim tolerating – for three years, with hardly any holiday (his choice) – the day-to-day of kitchen life at The Ledbury. It’s a restaurant that’s neither old- nor new-school, at once smart and table-clothed but also modern in its approach. There exists a hangover of the alpha brutality of a now distant restaurant era – the one through which Gordon Ramsay swore his way to global superstardom. It seems at odds with Tim’s soft-spoken politeness and placid demeanour. But there is steel behind his decorum. There has to be. He accepts that The Ledbury was tough, but adds, “It was one of the best restaurants in the country, and we changed the menu every day – there was nowhere else I wanted to work in London.” He, like everyone else who stayed there, thrived on the passion and drive of Brett Graham, the head chef; Tim describes him as “among the very best.” It’s hard to fully understand the demands placed on chefs who are tasked with maintaining a restaurant’s two Michelin stars, and meeting the expectations of the kind of diner that attracts, when the menu changes so often. Tim relished it: the most important lesson he has taken from his time at The Ledbury, and one he took with him to The Clove Club, “Was to treat the restaurant as your own – to give 100%,” he says. At the end of 2012, between leaving The Ledbury and starting at The Clove Club, Tim used his accumulated holiday to stage in Copenhagen and Paris. He spent a total of six weeks in Relæ, Radio and Septime. It was important, after having spent so long in the same place, to “learn that there was more than one way to skin a cat,” he says. Relæ, as one of the first eye-catching Noma offspring, interested him “in their ability to do things other restaurants couldn’t” because of the ecosystem of their own locale. What would, for example, in most restaurants, have been waste, would go to sister restaurant Manfred’s across the road. It meant Relæ could be ruthlessly pure in its prep, unbound by the traditional constraints of kitchen thrift. Tim is as much an avid learner as he is a grafter, and I sense he was always working towards something: methodically availing himself of the things he felt he needed to do and understand. The day after we met, he was going to fly to Nepal to participate in a 10-day hike for Action Against Hunger. His affection for being free is real, too. I get the impression many chefs do not love cooking; they may love food, love the alchemy, love the pressure and the buzz. But the demands of turning out exactly the same dish time-after-time in a pro kitchen don’t necessarily make it the best place in which to nurture a love of cooking. I suspect Tim does love cooking and hopes to be reacquainted with why he does when he gets to Cornwall. “I’m looking forward to having the space to do my own thing, and to build for the future,” he says. louisiana-inn.com TIM IN SHORT: Favourite drink: Mauro Vergano Vermouth Bianco Favourite dish: Whatever Louise cooks Most memorable meal: Last summer, a group of us stayed in a house on a hill in Umbria. We stocked up on wine from a local vineyard and cooked feasts each night, BBQ suckling pig, fried potatoes with rosemary and salads of wild herbs. Chef you most admire: Brett Graham Guilty pleasure: Mangal Ocakbasi TIM'S MINI-GUIDE TO CORNWALL Coombeshead Farm, Lewannick Restaurant Nathan Outlaw, Port Isaac Portminster Beach Cafe, St. Ives The Star & Garter, Falmouth Philip Warren Butchers (for the pasty), Launceston Words | Adam Coghlan Photographs | Joe Woodhouse and Sam Hendel
Read our exclusive interview with chef Anjum Anand, author of new cookbook I Love India. Discover her favourite tipple, quick dinner recipes and the three ingredients she couldn't live without
My favourite wine is… A good full-bodied red. I often ask the sommelier to recommend something, and if I spot an Amarone and have someone willing to share it with me, I’m delighted! In my fridge there’s always… Milk (rice, soya and whole); cheese (feta, sliced gouda) and cream cheese; bread (wholemeal and rye); eggs; vegetables; plain and Greek yogurt; saffron strands (best place to store it); and a bottle of champagne that’s ready for some celebratory spontaneity! My favourite 15-minute supper to make at home is… A hot toasted sandwich. My favourite one would be chicken tikka with some fresh mint and coriander chutney, red onions and tomatoes in good quality sour dough bread. But most often I make a similar one but with cheese instead of the chicken, and a tangy coriander chutney with a little bit of light mayo. It's a proper cheese and chutney sandwich. My guilty pleasure food is… Chocolate, in most forms! If you gave me a tenner I’d… Probably save half and spend the rest on a new health food I’ve been wanting to try. One of my local cafes is Good Life Eatery and it has started serving these spirulina balls with dried fruits and nuts, which are really tasty. A restaurant trend I see being the next big thing is… More vegan, vegetarian and healthy food places, particularly establishments which serve a specific cuisine such as vegetarian Indian restaurants, or vegan Korean menus. On a Sunday I like to… Go to the gym or enjoy a long walk in the park, read the weekend papers, hang out with my kids and meet some friends for a relaxed lunch if possible. Nothing too hectic and taxing! My favourite country to visit for foodie inspiration is… India – it constantly inspires me. For me, the food is the tastiest and healthiest around, and there truly is something for everyone. The dishes have so much heritage, there is a never-ending amount to learn about the different regions, food and cultures. What are the three most useful ingredients and why? Eggs – as they are crucial in so many recipes and make the quickest, tastiest meal. Onions – they add so much flavour to a dish and are used extensively in Indian food, all the way from raw red onion on some street food, to crispy and caramelised on a biryani, and everything in between. Lentils – they can be made into a curry, stir fried with spices, stir-fried whole with vegetables, made into savoury spongy cakes, spicy batters and sweet pastes and desserts. They are also so nutritious! You can buy Anjum Anand's I Love India book here
Ben Chapman, Kiln and Smoking Goat, London: chef interview
In our series of discovering the world's most exciting young chefs, we meet Ben Chapman, owner of Kiln and Smoking Goat in Central London
Ben Chapman’s career trajectory is of the kind not normally associated with a chef who opens a restaurant that has a fair claim to being the best of the year – but it’s 2017, and things don’t tend to happen like they used to. For more than 40 years, a good barometer of restaurant class has been the number of stars issued by London Evening Standard restaurant critic Fay Maschler, who famously reserves the maximum score only for something truly special. She gave Kiln – a Thai restaurant in Soho that uses only charcoal as a means of cooking – full marks. Ben, previously an art gallerist, DJ and designer, only started cooking three years ago. With its unusual and brilliant iteration of highly specific rural northern Thai cooking, Kiln is hardly the kind of restaurant we’d imagine would secure such universal approval from industry commentators, nor draw the kind of queues normally seen outside the city’s best, if populist, burger, steak and gourmet fast food restaurants. Kiln is different and reflects the learning that Ben has dedicated himself to since entering the restaurant game. His obsessive and daring quest to cook food “more pungent, sour, spicy and bitter” is in line with his self-declared attraction to “unfiltered things”. A sort of ‘why compromise when you don’t have to?’ It’s a question more chefs have the confidence to ask now, and a feature of the modern restaurant industry that’s unleashed specialised personal passion projects like Ben’s. When Ben moved to London from Birmingham 12 years ago it was to study art history. Though he didn’t finish the degree, he wound-up opening an art gallery as well as doing casual bar work. The gallery aimed to promote upcoming – but comparatively unknown – artists. Indicating his acute eye for talent, Ben recalls the last show he put on with Eddie Peake: “The next show he went on to do was at The White Cube, the biggest commercial art gallery in Europe.” He “never made any money” and subsequently moved into the music industry, hosting obscure club nights – “weird Turkish psych called Leather Boy” was one – before moving into graphic design for venues and festivals. Through this he met Charlie Carroll who would go on to open Flat Iron. Ben designed their first restaurant (his Dad and brother are architects and he gives the impression that he’d occasionally flirted with the discipline). Through his own company, King Mob, he realised his aim of doing “something with more creative control”. Alongside design commissions, he was beginning to learn more about the food he liked and – after having met Som Saa’s Andy Oliver – began cooking Thai recipes at home. Ben describes eating at Dave Pynt’s Burnt Enz in London Fields and at Pok Pok in New York as “formative”. On seeing Dave’s cooking over fire, “that was the first time I thought, I want to do that – I want to be a chef”. Pok Pok, he says, “blew me away”. The difference he could taste in the jamboree of unfamiliar ingredients it used stimulated a creative streak. His inexperience has presented some challenges in the short time he’s been cooking. His pursuit of the recondite overcomes any scepticism from those he employs (who might be, in theory, more ‘qualified’). He sees his progress in the kitchen as connected to two main factors. He is able to articulate a clear vision to his chefs: “the food is extremely specific; the recipes are taken from rural Thailand”. Candidly, he also says that he’s found “no one task in the kitchen that is insurmountably difficult”. Spending time with Ben, you quickly learn that if there’s something he wants to know, he’s going to find out how to do it. People say that Kiln is an authentic northern Thai restaurant. In some respects it is, but authenticity can be a troublesome concept, not least when you consider the real differences of a farmhouse in Isaan to a restaurant site in central London. Ben outlines his own definition of authentic in this context, saying that he wants to adhere to the key principles of Thai cooking. In the Thai countryside, he explains, “dishes are led by ingredients” relevant to their own specific time and place. One experience remains seminal: a trip to a humble country home in Isaan where he ate beef larb. Very few ingredients, flash-cooked or pulled from a plant, were casually assembled with minimal seasoning and Ben wasn’t looking forward to it, but his memory of it was that it was “amazing”. Ingredients, to Ben are key, and chillies, herbs and vegetables for the restaurant are grown domestically in Cornwall, through his close working relationship with The Modern Salad Grower, Sean O’Neill. The two invested in a growing tunnel with Kiln in mind. “Herbs-wise, at the moment we’re getting 30%; when we come into the warmer months it will be back up to 70%,” he says. The hope is to get it to 100%. Elsewhere there is meticulous sourcing via specialist Thai importers – new-season brown rice, fish sauce, fermented shrimp paste – or from Luke Farrell who cultivates cuttings he picked on his travels in south-east Asia at Ryewater Nursery in Dorset. “When I ask him for some Vietnamese mint,” explains Ben, “he’ll say ‘Which genus?’”. Restaurant industry buzz phrases like locally-sourced, authentic, ingredient-led and charcoal-grilled are often either overstated or plainly inaccurate. To Ben, as honest and understated as chefs come, these phrases have to mean something. And his food has to look good and taste good, too. That’s the kind of multi-disciplinary artist and great chef he’s become. kilnsoho.com IN SHORT Favourite dish: Cornish crab lon at Som Saa, London E1. Favourite drink: Spanish natural wine producer called Mendall makes quite concentrated whites, which age well. Also Tuscan producer Macea who makes earthy reds that taste like the ground, the vine and the grape all squeezed together Most memorable meal: Undoubtedly getting schooled on laaps by Uncle Pwan outside Ubon in Thailand Chef or food person you most admire: Tom Adams at Coombeshead Farm. Getting good produce is one thing; working with the farmer to make it better is another Guilty pleasure: Dubiously cheap roti parathas on Whitechapel High Street Ben Chapman’s unfiltered guide to Thailand • Jay Fai a street food restaurant serving high quality Thai/Chinese combinations, – 327 Maha Chai Road, Bangkok • Jeh O Chula late-night drinking food – Banthat Thong Road, Bangkok • Khanom Jeen Nam Yong rice noodle and curry restaurant which serves northern Thai nam yaa and Shan-influenced nam ngiaw – Chaisongkhram Road, Pai • Bangkok Bold cool cooking studio. The chef explains ingredients she uses with you – 503 Phra Sumen Road, Bangkok • A friend’s house The best food I’ve had is in people’s homes in the countryside Words by Adam Coghlan Photographs by Jordan Lee
MasterChef judge and now the pioneer behind Mere restaurant in London (which she owns alongside her husband David), Monica Galetti has had quite the career! Read on for our exclusive interview
My favourite wine is... Ramey, USA, Chardonay. In my fridge there’s always... Cheese, wine and grapes… the essentials! My favourite 15-minute supper to make at home is... Grilled steak. My guilty pleasure food is... Salt and vinegar crisps. If you gave me a tenner I’d spend it on... Anais, my daughter. A restaurant trend I see being the next big thing is... I have no clue. I don’t tend to keep up with trends so I am definitely unable to predict them. I’m the wrong person to ask. On a Sunday I like to... Spend time with Anais, David and the dog. This Sunday (in March 2017, after opening Mere restaurant) we all enjoyed a nice lie in. My favourite country to visit for foodie inspiration is... This is a really tough one. I get inspired by the food everywhere, Morroco, Fance, Spain. There really are too many to name. What are the three most useful ingredients and why? Salt, oil and eggs. They are probably the most versatile ingredients you can get, you can make sweet or savoury with them. I couldn’t imagine not having those three things in my kitchen. Image credits: Cristian Barnett
The UK's most influential chefs for 2017
Want to know which chefs will be making headlines this year? olive magazine can help. Some are new names, some stars, but all our hot tips will be doing fabulous things in 2017
CLARE SMYTH, London She held three Michelin stars for almost a decade for Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, but now Clare is striking out on her own. At the time of writing, details were still sketchy, but keep an eye on Notting Hill this spring. Here's our expert review of CORE by Clare Smyth... SAIPHIN MOORE, Lao Café, London WC2 You may know Saiphin’s mini-chain, Rosa’s Thai, but her new Covent Garden Lao Café is an exploration of Laotian cooking and the city of Luang Prabang where Saiphin’s family originate. This landlocked country’s foraged jungle cuisine makes ingenious use of whatever’s available, from banana blossoms to freshwater fish, and Saiphin’s dishes, such as a fermented sausage and toasted rice salad, pack a full, authentic, bold and spicy punch. “My ants’ egg curry is definitely for the more adventurous,” says Saiphin. “It’s considered a delicacy in Laos, caviar of the East. Also the charcoal-grilled sticky rice is found everywhere in Luang Prabang.” laocafe.co.uk We interviewed Saiphin Moore on our foodie podcast to learn about tricks for shopping for Thai ingredients. Listen here... MARIANNA LEIVADITAKI, Morito Hackney Road, London E2 Moro’s Moorish Spanish cooking takes on an Eastern Mediterranean flavour at its Hackney Road offspring. Head chef, Marianna, learned to cook in her family’s restaurant in Crete, where she cooked both traditional dishes and her own creations, such as grilled squid with a wild rocket sheep’s cheese pesto. That blend of heritage and curiosity is now in play at the bright and buzzy, quietly swish Morito HR. Breakfast bougatsa (cheese-filled filo pastries with sugar and cinnamon) pay homage to a historic Cretan staple, while crispy fried aubergines with whipped feta and date molasses modishly riffs on Crete’s vegetable-led cooking. “I love that the beautiful vinegar I bring from my hometown, Chania, is the one we used in our family restaurant,” says Marianna. moritohackneyroad.co.uk. Try Marianna’s recipes – search for ajo blanco, Cretan salad and filo pastry with strawberries. moritohackneyroad.co.uk Listen to our interview with Marianna on our podcast, including how she used to hang octopuses to dry on her mother's washing line back in Crete. Photograph: Issy Croker MONICA GALETTI, Mere, London W1 Mere (pronounced ‘Mary’) is the MasterChef star’s collaboration with sommelier husband, David. About to open in Fitzrovia, it sounds more relaxed than Monica’s alma mater, Le Gavroche. “With no compromise on quality, the menu will be pretty straightforward. I want to create a welcoming, personal environment that guests can visit regularly.” @MGaletti01 Read our exclusive interview with Monica Galetti here SHAUN HURRELL, Barrio Comida, Newcastle “The name means ‘neighbourhood food’ in incorrect Spanish; a nod to the fact I’m a white guy cooking Mexican food,” explains Shaun. A Californian, Shaun came to the UK in 2006 to hone his skills in various high-end kitchens, but now he’s serving tacos and specials such as pozole stew in a quayside shipping container. “I’m applying the knowledge I’ve accumulated to a humble food that my friends could afford to eat,” he says. At Barrio, Shaun is using an imported machine to make fresh corn tortillas, and wood and charcoal grills to make taco fillings such as carne asada and chicken mole. Have them with tequila cocktails and homemade horchata. barriocomida.com NEIL BENTINCK, Skosh, York Eating out in York can be staid but, at Skosh, think clever small plates, open-kitchen, lively hubbub. York-born chef-owner, Neil Bentinck, is livening up these ancient streets. A former head chef at Harrogate’s Van Zeller (RIP), Neil grew-up eating vadai and pakora with his Indian relatives, while a stint cooking in Australia opened his eyes to zingy East Asian flavours. Consequently the food at Skosh is, while pin-sharp in its execution, a fun, freewheeling global mash-up. Neil flags-up his toasted goat’s cheese marshmallow with raspberries and lychee granita or tandoori partridge with a sharply dressed onion and mint salad, tomato chutney and a purée of herbs and yogurt, as indicative of his eclectic style: “The ingredients are local, however the influence is obviously Indian.” skoshyork.co.uk Read our review of Skosh, Neil's restaurant in York, here... BEN MARKS, Perilla, London N16 Now 24, Ben learned his trade in the high temples of gastronomy. He did his apprenticeship at Claridge’s. It says everything about the current retreat from ‘fine dining’, however, that – in its informal feel, if not its fastidious food (try the fried duck egg with chopped mussels and parsley sauce) – Perilla owes far more to Ben’s time at Noma and co-founder Matt Emmerson’s previous stint at Polpo. “I’ve never felt completely comfortable in a formal dining environment,” says Ben. “We want an atmosphere that’s inviting and to keep prices as low as possible.” A former pop-up funded by such glittering names as Phil Howard, this Newington Green newcomer (set five course menu, £38), looks set to fly. Ben is particularly excited about his salad of Little Gem lettuce marinated in herbs, celery and grape juice. It embodies his ethos: “Taking humble, quality ingredients and thinking of new ways to serve them.” perilladining.co.uk Read our review of Perilla, Ben's restaurant in North East London, here... CLAUDE BOSI, Bibendum, London SW3 After closing Hibiscus, this is a fascinating left turn for the French trailblazer. Housed in an iconic Art Deco building, Bibendum was made famous by the chef/cookery writer, Simon Hopkinson, and Claude is promising to revisit some of Hoppy’s classics, such as fish soup and steak tartare. Opens spring 2017. bibendum.co.uk BEN CHAPMAN, Kiln, London W1 A self-taught chef, Ben describes his first venue – the BBQ joint-cum-dive bar, Smoking Goat – as a “baptism of fire”. Burns healed and lessons learned, his new Soho diner Kiln is wowing gastro-nuts with its take on rural northern Thai food. Seated at the kitchen counter, diners eat facing the action as chefs feed glowing embers into grills and cylindrical tao burners (wood-fired stoves), to produce punchy, fiery dishes of, say, roast pigs’ head with Yunnan pickles. High-quality ingredients are fundamental to these dishes and Kiln’s backbone is a network of Cornish suppliers who rear animals to Ben’s specifications and grow East Asian ingredients for him. “We do a herbal pork curry soup that, without our aromatic Cornish lemongrass, has no point. When we don’t have it, we don’t serve the dish.” kilnsoho.com We interviewed Ben to find out about his favourite dishes, most memorable meals and guilty pleasures. Read the interview here... TOM GRIFFITHS, The Burgundy Rooms, Brighton “I wanted to bring nose-to-tail to Brighton because it’s imperative to the future of cooking,” says Tom, whose Flank pop-ups won him many admirers. A conflation of BBQ, Nordic and East Asian influences, his food is exemplified by plates of Korean wings dusted with dehydrated wild garlic, flash-fried ox tongue with kimchi or braised short rib with bone marrow ketchup and dashi pan juices. In spring, Tom will relaunch at the Burgundy Rooms, a new platform (“elegant, luxurious, informal,” promises co-owner Amanda Menahem), that will host long-term residencies from food’s rising stars. flankbrighton.com DANNI BARRY, Deane’s Eipic, Belfast Michael Deane’s Howard Street restaurant complex is 20 years old this year, and as vibrant as ever. Head chef Danni Barry, who bagged a Michelin star for chic Eipic within 18 months of taking charge, is emerging as one of the UK’s foremost talents. Schooled in classical technique by Deane, and in produce by Simon Rogan, her modest modus operandi (“I aim to maximise flavour”), rather underplays her smooth, sophisticated deployment of top-quality Northern Irish ingredients such as Peter Hannan’s Glenarm Shorthorn beef. Danni’s crumb-dusted braised short rib with a smoked bone marrow emulsion and sweet pickled onions is a high-rolling crowd pleaser, but she pushes boundaries with her celeriac or fennel ice creams. “It’s a great way to use carrot tops or lovage stalks. Who doesn’t like ice cream?” deaneseipic.com Photograph: Elaine Hill Photography SCOTT GOSS, The Twenty Six, Tunbridge Wells “Game birds, oysters, orchard fruits, Kent’s larder is incredible,” says Scott enthusiastically. “I walk through the woods every day and find wild garlic, mushrooms or rosehips.” All of which, as executive chef of the I’ll Be Mother group of restaurants, he gets to play with every day. “The Twenty Six is my test kitchen and there are no rules,” says Scott, who worked with Gary Rhodes and Anton Edelmann before returning to his native Kent. Its curtains drawn against the chill and the log-burner stoked, Twenty Six takes on a secret-society atmosphere in winter. Although dishes such as sole with pistachio and raisins or honey and fennel crème brûlée, contain plenty of colour. Look out for Scott’s beef rib with onions and crème fraîche. “Smoking it in hay takes it to the next level,” he says with a grin. thetwenty-six.co.uk MIKE BURGOYNE, The Whitehouse, Lochaline, Scotland Many dream of leaving the big city for the good life. Few make that leap as successfully as Mike Burgoyne. After years cooking in London, a chance meeting with Whitehouse owners, Sarah Jones and Jane Stuart-Smith, led, in 2011, to Mike relocating to the beautiful remote Morvern peninsula in the Scottish Highlands. “We’re all mad about sourcing, using what’s available locally including foraged produce,” explains Mike, whose growing band of fans have to catch a ferry to this pretty dining room (closed in winter, open from late March). His dishes, such as scallops with sea shore butter or rabbit cooked multiple ways – from pickled heart to roast loin – make technically adept, restrained use of kitchen garden ingredients and the wild Highland larder. The unpredictability of both means constant menu rewriting. “I might only have an ingredient like spoots [razor clams] in for one day each year,” says Mike. “I love that challenge.” thewhitehouserestaurant.co.uk ROBBY JENKS, The Vineyard, Berkshire Any olive reader worried that luxurious country house fine dining is in danger of being swept away by a wave of craft beer and gochujang will love Robby Jenks. Previously mentored by Michael Caines at Gidleigh Park, the 30-year-old spent 2016 refreshing the Vineyard menus to create the kind of ambitious, intricate, Michelin-courting dishes which, at their best, can still offer, as Robby puts it, “an unforgettable experience”. Stand-outs include partridge, caramelised celeriac, pear and parmesan or cod with cauliflower and spiced coconut cream. The latter comes from a wine-matched Judgement of Paris menu which utilises the 30,000 bottles (!) in the Vineyard’s cellars. “I use classical cooking with modern techniques to produce flavour-driven dishes,” says Robby. “I don’t put things on the plate unless they have purpose.” the-vineyard.co.uk SAM BUCKLEY, Where The Light Gets In, Stockport Sam has stints with two of the UK’s most individual chefs on his CV (maverick genius Paul Kitching and Simon Rogan), and his solo venture is similarly distinctive. WTLGI is largely handmade, right down to its spoons, and this novel space – a stripped back warehouse dining room with a radical, totally open kitchen – serves a no-choice £65 dinner menu of ingredients sourced from a bespoke supply chain. “Our forager is so obsessed it makes me bounce with excitement,” says Sam, who describes WTLGI as sustainable restaurant operating, “in reaction to a broken food system”. He refuses to be drawn on his cooking style (“I like to play and ask questions.”), although when WTLGI opened in October he served crispy ox testicles with homemade mushroom vinegar and raw ox heart with grated unripe quince and pine oil. “We served balls and heart because that’s what it took to open a restaurant down a dark alley in Stockport.” wtlgi.co We interviewed Ben to find out about his food heroes, most memorable meals and guilty pleasures. Read the interview here... Sam is pictured far left ELLIOT LIDSTONE, BOX-E, Bristol Elliot sharpened his knife skills at the refined L’Ortolan and made a splash in a Hackney pub, The Empress, but at BOX-E, he and wife Tessa have created a restaurant which in every detail (from their beloved stove, ‘Sandra’, to ingredients from a relative’s allotment), is their personal vision. Elliot’s seasonal, modern British food – hake with curried cauliflower and lime yogurt or braised venison with roast celeriac and horseradish – is technically elevated but approachable and the couple want BOX-E (housed in two converted shipping containers at Wapping Wharf), to be somewhere where they can share their enthusiasm for everything from making bread to quince vodka. BOX-E’s open-kitchen is crucial. “I like that diners can see what’s going on and ask me about the processes,” says Elliot. “Seeing people enjoy food you’ve cooked is special.” boxebristol.com Photograph: André Pattenden