The food of Love

09 August 2002 by
The food of Love

Roux Scholar Steve Love has chosen his native Warwickshire in which to set up as a chef-proprietor, and is giving local diners the benefit of his considerable culinary pedigree, as Joanna Wood discovered.

For Steve Love, the crunch came last November, two days into the life of his eponymous restaurant in Royal Leamington Spa. Having opened on a budget, with no marketing fanfare, he found himself with no one to cook for. It was a severe shock after a great opening day when the dining room was more or less full, and self-doubt about the wisdom of launching himself as a chef-proprietor on an unsuspecting public began to set in.

The moment proved fleeting. By the fourth day, business at the 32-seat Love's restaurant began to pick up again. Warwickshire diners were curious to see what their local boy - a Roux Scholar, no less - was made of. They have not been disappointed, for Love's culinary pedigree (see below) ensures that his menus showcase his considerable technical skills as a chef.

Love has always opted for at least one dish that incorporates several different techniques in its making, often taking two or three days over various elements. Frequently, such a dish will use slow-cooking techniques. "I get a kick out of using cheaper cuts of meat," admits Love, who bemoans the trend towards pan-frying prevalent in a lot of kitchens. "If I go out to eat, I'll always pick out things that are braised which have a lot of time and effort put into them. I'd rather have a blade of beef than a fillet."

Archetypal Love offerings in this vein on his set-price dinner menu (£22 for two courses, £27.50 for three) have included - in the early days - braised shoulder of lamb served with white bean purée, mashed potatoes, braised carrots and Brussels sprouts which scored a hit with the Guardian's Matthew Hart. "It was a quintessential winter dish - deep-flavoured, hefty and very sustaining," wrote Hart in the paper on 12 January this year.

More recently, Love has put out braised belly of veal with langoustines, white beans and gem lettuce, and trio of pork comprising braised daube of pork, a crépinette of braised pork collar with pancetta and black pudding bound with a little veal jus-based sauce, andpan-fried fillet pork.

As you'd expect with a chef of Love's classical background, his food rules are simple - watch the seasons, get good textures and flavours on the plate and don't gild the lily. "I just concentrate on what I'm doing without mucking around too much," he stresses. However, not "mucking around" with his food doesn't mean that Love isn't adventurous. You only have to look at his desserts to see some interesting experiments going on - witness a duo of chocolate with sweetcorn ice-cream and a yellow pepper syrup, created with the help of pastry specialist and friend Shaun Naen, executive chef of the Swan at Bibury, Gloucestershire.

There's nothing exceptional about the duo, of course (a white chocolate mousse and warm chocolate tart using Barry Callebaut chocolate), but sweet pepper syrup and popcorn ice-cream? "The ice-cream idea came about after Shaun ate popcorn and chocolate in the cinema." Naturally!

Concentrating on his cooking is obviously vital to the success of his business, but when the restaurant opened Love found himself in the uneviable position of being without a restaurant manager and had to divide his time between the kitchen and dining room. For someone who hates even giving cookery demonstrations - "I can't speak to people, I just clam up" - the situation was a nightmare. "I was pulling my hair out, trying to work out which wines went with which dishes. I got back in the kitchen as soon as I could!"

The problem was solved when a temporary manager stepped into the breach, to be replaced last month, finally, by Darren Blackburn, who has taken up the reins front of house. Staffing issues have caused waves back of house, too. Initially, Love had a 19-year-old sous chef, Matthew Teale, working with him in the kitchen. Love rated Teale highly - "one of the best chefs of that age I've seen in a long time", he enthused two months ago - but unfortunately the youngster has just quit the business to go off travelling to Australia. "I tried to persuade him to stick with it, but he saw his friends earning a lot more money and having a great time doing other things, so what can you do?" says a concerned Love, who has now recruited 27-year-old Amir Diba as his second chef.

The route from head chef to chef-restaurateur has been a sharp learning curve. Luckily, Chris Hudson, Love's former executive chef at Ettington Park (see below), force-fed him on gross profits - "it's simple, if it's quiet you cut back on things a bit, you don't cook food that's not going to sell, and you cut out wastage" - and family and friends have been bridging any gaps in the kitchen or front of house.

Mum, Mary Love, for instance, has been drafted in as a kitchen assistant, partner Claire Thorpe works part-time front of house and her father, Graham Thorpe, who has the local franchise for book-keeping specialist Stocktake (UK), does all the wages, VAT and GPs for kitchen and wine.

Recruiting family and friends to help out means Love's limited resources have not been overstretched. He bought the 12-year lease - with fixtures and fittings - on the restaurant's basement site for £45,000 with a bank loan and allowed only a lick of paint, change of curtains and crockery and an investment of about £4,000-£5,000 in the kitchen before opening.

Caution has been his watchword - sensibly, he opened with just two set-price lunch and dinner menus and has only now invested £3,500 in some modern square-backed chairs and introduced a menu rapide (£15 for three courses) and menu gourmand (£37.50 for seven courses). It has helped him to just break even, despite the double-whammy in June of the Golden Jubilee and World Cup, which meant trading was slow.

Of course, the real crunch time will come in the next year. Yet if he continues his softly-softly approach his future should be assured. He deserves to succeed.

A culinary Love affair

Midlands-born Steve Love, 33, took his first culinary steps at South Warwickshire College and Birmingham College of Food, Tourism and Creative Studies, where he gained the three stages of the City & Guilds 706 qualification.

As part of the training, he worked on day release at the Welcombe hotel in Stratford-upon-Avon, climbing the ladder from commis to chef de partie by the time he left in 1993.

Over the next year, Love added to his CV by doing stints at Charingworth Manor in Gloucestershire, and Alveston Manor in Stratford-upon-Avon, before ending up as the sous chef at another Stratford hotel, Ettington Park in 1994. While there he entered and won the 1997 Roux Scholarship, spending as part of his prize a three-month stage at Alain Ducasse's eponymous three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris.

The stage wasn't a bed of roses. Speaking only school and kitchen French was a problem (two of the kinder things he got called by the brigade were M Je Ne Comprends Pas, and Rosbif) and being favoured by Ducasse when they first met - "he talked to me for 10 minutes and just shook the hands of the others" - caused resentment. But Love came away with not only an understanding of the workings of a superlative three-Michelin-star restaurant, but also a few extra skills and one or two specific dishes - mostly from the pastry department.

Coconut ice-cream, for instance, which he has matched with pineapple dishes, and lifting something as simple as an exotic fruit salad with a topping of Malibu granit‚.

Being a Roux Scholar proved to be a turning point in Love's career. For one thing, Michel Roux was always at hand for a reference. "When you've got Michel Roux behind you, it makes people sit up and take notice," says Love. Indeed, Roux says of Love: "Steve is 100% dedicated to his profession. He always keeps calm and is in complete control in the kitchen and produces some of the best food I have seen through the 20 years of my leadership at the Waterside Inn."

Certainly, Love is convinced that winning the title helped him to gain his first head chef position at Warwickshire's Mallory Court in May 2000 under the hotel's chef-owner, the late Alan Holland.

Before that, Love had passed through the kitchens at Nunsmere Hall, Cheshire, Nailcote Hall, West Midlands, and, most crucially, he says, those of Cliveden's one-Michelin-starred Waldo's restaurant under Gary Jones (see below).

Throughout his career, Love has always competed in salon culinaires - both individually and as a member of teams. In 2000 he was third in National Chef of the Year, and having reached the semi-final stage this year, hopes to go two better should he win through to the finals in September.

Love notes

Most-thumbed books?Flavours of France - Ducasse, Desserts - Michel Roux, Sauces - Michel Roux, A Cook's Tour of France - Muriel Johnson

How about that surname? Yeah, I got ribbed at school all the time - and I still do. Whenever I phone up the guys at Simpson's [in Kenilworth] I can hear Glynn Purnell shouting out in the background, "it's machine, machine" - you know, from the disco record Love Machine [by the Miracles].

Which chefs do you rate in the UK? I can only judge from where I've eaten, so… Gary Jones at Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, Great Milton; Alain Roux and Russell Holborn at the Waterside Inn, Bray; Claude Bosi, Hibiscus, Ludlow.

Who are the chef mentors in your career to date? Gary Jones, definitely. He puts the emphasis on developing chefs. I learnt so much from watching him when I was at Waldo's [Cliveden]. People skills for one thing - I only ever saw him lose it twice and, yes, he still kept that pencil behind his ear.

Tell us something we didn't know about you I auditioned for the Royal Shakespeare Company when I was 10. I had to run around trying to be a tree and I remember thinking ‘what the hell's this all about?' I didn't get the job.

Trio of pork comprising pan-fried fillet, braised daube and collar crépinette (serves four)

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