olivemagazine
type: channel
link: https://www.olivemagazine.com
date: 2024-12-10T14:49:11.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Best family-friendly restaurants in the UK
items: Join us at Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons
items: Ben Marks: chef interview
items: May Chow: chef interview
items: Jeremy Chan: chef interview
items: Jessica Lorigo: chef interview
items: James Cross: chef interview
items: Yorkshire Burrito's Yorkshire pudding wrap
items: Angie Mar: chef interview
items: Stepping up to the plate: chefs to watch in 2018
items: Our favourite chefs
items: Aaron Turner: chef interview
items: Ivan and Sergey Berezutskiy: chef interview
items: Sam Buckley (Where The Light Gets In, Stockport): chef interview
items: Amanda Cohen: chef interview
items: Micha Schäfer: chef interview
items: Simone Tondo: chef interview
items: Sashana Souza Zanella and Ben Reade: chef interview
items: Anna Tobias: chef interview
items: Alessandro Borghese: chef interview
items: Tim Spedding: chef interview
items: Anjum Anand: chef interview
items: Ben Chapman, Kiln and Smoking Goat, London: chef interview
items: Monica Galetti: chef interview
items: The UK's most influential chefs for 2017

Best family-friendly restaurants in the UK
type: item
date: 2019-07-17T07:56:17.000Z
creator: Mark Taylor
subject: Family
subject: Meet the chef
subject: North East
subject: North East travel
subject: UK
subject: Recipes
subject: Guides
subject: Restaurants
subject: Travel
description: 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)
encoded: 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 parent…

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Join us at Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons
type: item
date: 2019-03-08T13:01:35.000Z
subject: Event
subject: Guides
subject: Meet the chef
description: 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)
encoded: 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 l…

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Ben Marks: chef interview
type: item
date: 2018-06-06T12:01:29.000Z
subject: Meet the chef
subject: Guides
description: 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
encoded: 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…

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May Chow: chef interview
type: item
date: 2018-05-08T13:46:53.000Z
subject: Meet the chef
subject: Guides
description: Meet May Chow, an ambitious chef and entrepreneur who’s breaking the mould and redefining fast food in Hong Kong
encoded: 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…

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Jeremy Chan: chef interview
type: item
date: 2018-04-16T13:38:32.000Z
subject: Meet the chef
subject: Guides
description: 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
encoded: 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 C…

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Jessica Lorigo: chef interview
type: item
date: 2018-03-14T15:40:01.000Z
subject: Meet the chef
subject: Guides
description: 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
encoded: 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 becaus…

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James Cross: chef interview
type: item
date: 2018-02-14T12:09:45.000Z
subject: Meet the chef
subject: Guides
description: 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
encoded: 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 someb…

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Yorkshire Burrito's Yorkshire pudding wrap
type: item
date: 2018-01-29T17:18:16.000Z
creator: Alex Crossley
subject: Guides
subject: Meet the chef
description: 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
encoded: 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…

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Angie Mar: chef interview
type: item
date: 2018-01-21T15:49:43.000Z
subject: Meet the chef
subject: Guides
description: Angie Mar is putting The Beatrice Inn back on the New York food scene with an eccentric, uber-cool approach to cooking
encoded: 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-embr…

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Stepping up to the plate: chefs to watch in 2018
type: item
date: 2017-12-27T14:04:57.000Z
creator: Mark Taylor
subject: Guides
subject: Meet the chef
subject: chef awards
description: 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
encoded: 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 an…

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Our favourite chefs
type: item
date: 2017-12-22T10:22:28.000Z
subject: Guides
subject: Meet the chef
description: 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
encoded: 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 tim…

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Aaron Turner: chef interview
type: item
date: 2017-12-21T16:22:25.000Z
subject: Meet the chef
subject: Guides
description: A bold switch in direction for Australian chef Aaron Turner has placed the international spotlight on his fire-focussed Geelong restaurant kitchen
encoded: 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, Har…

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Ivan and Sergey Berezutskiy: chef interview
type: item
date: 2017-12-14T13:00:39.000Z
subject: Meet the chef
subject: Guides
description: 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
encoded: 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 im…

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Sam Buckley (Where The Light Gets In, Stockport): chef interview
type: item
date: 2017-10-19T15:48:07.000Z
subject: Meet the chef
subject: Guides
subject: chef awards
description: 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
encoded: 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. …

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Amanda Cohen: chef interview
type: item
date: 2017-09-27T10:00:15.000Z
subject: Meet the chef
subject: Guides
description: Introducing Amanda Cohen, whose flavour-first, rock’n’roll approach to vegetarian cooking has won her fans (omnivores and veggies alike) across New York
encoded: 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. …

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Micha Schäfer: chef interview
type: item
date: 2017-09-14T15:08:21.000Z
subject: Meet the chef
subject: Guides
description: Nobelhart und Schmutzig changed the face of the Berlin restaurant scene. Here, the head of the kitchen, Micha Schäfer explains his winning formula
encoded: 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 un…

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Simone Tondo: chef interview
type: item
date: 2017-08-09T14:32:36.000Z
subject: Meet the chef
subject: Guides
description: We meet Simone Tondo, a cavalier young Italian chef making waves with his borderless cuisine in the heart of Paris
encoded: 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. …

Sashana Souza Zanella and Ben Reade: chef interview
type: item
date: 2017-07-10T12:24:38.000Z
subject: Meet the chef
subject: Guides
description: 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
encoded: 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 …

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Anna Tobias: chef interview
type: item
date: 2017-06-14T16:54:43.000Z
subject: Meet the chef
subject: Guides
description: 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
encoded: 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 …

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Alessandro Borghese: chef interview
type: item
date: 2017-05-25T16:14:49.000Z
subject: Guides
subject: Meet the chef
description: 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
encoded: 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.…

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Tim Spedding: chef interview
type: item
date: 2017-05-12T14:03:25.000Z
subject: London
subject: Meet the chef
subject: South West
subject: Restaurants
subject: Guides
description: Introducing British chef and restaurateur, Tim Spedding, whose prestigious career has been bubbling away in London before his move to Cornwall this spring
encoded: 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 g…

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Anjum Anand: chef interview
type: item
date: 2017-04-06T12:37:19.000Z
subject: Guides
subject: Meet the chef
description: 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
encoded: 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…

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Ben Chapman, Kiln and Smoking Goat, London: chef interview
type: item
date: 2017-03-19T12:00:36.000Z
subject: London
subject: Meet the chef
subject: Restaurants
subject: Guides
description: 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
encoded: 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 indust…

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Monica Galetti: chef interview
type: item
date: 2017-03-17T12:59:07.000Z
subject: Meet the chef
subject: Guides
description: 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
encoded: 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

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The UK's most influential chefs for 2017
type: item
date: 2017-03-16T17:25:12.000Z
subject: Guides
subject: Meet the chef
subject: Restaurants
description: 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
encoded: 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…

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