May 2009 Archives

This week's Restaurant of the Week is one of my favourite London restaurants: Arbutus in Soho.

Anthony Demetre and Will Smith launched their first solo venture Arbutus on Frith Street in Soho in May 2006 and the restaurant became an instant hit with the critics.

With Smith in charge of front of house and Demetre behind the stove, Arbutus gained universal praise for its competitive pricing policy, excellent food and its casual, non-tablecloth approach to fine dining. It scooped up a string of awards for best new restaurant and received a coveted Michelin star in 2007.

The backbone of the success of Arbutus (and indeed sister restaurant Wild Honey) has been Demetre's ability to keep costs down in the kitchen by using cheaper ingredients yet still turn out above average cuisine.

Arbutus offers a three-course lunch menu at £15.50 as well as a pre-theatre menu priced £17.50, with a two course à la carte meal costing an average of £35 including wine.

Not bad for a Michelin-starred restaurant.

Just St James Restaurant in central London has been battling with its landlord who is insisting on a huge rent and service charge increase despite the restaurant's struggle to survive the recession.

Just St James faces an annual increase of £75,000 in rental payments plus a new service charge of £50,000 (up from an average of £3,000 in the past).

Proprietor Peter Gladwin says the £125,000 of new overheads a year "is a slap in the face" for all the effort the team has put it to make the restaurant a success.

"The landlord has rejected our request to cut back or delay these increases and does not appear to have the slightest concern about whether our business survives or goes under," he says.

"They imagine there is another restaurant tenant around the corner waiting for this site but whoever operates this expensive building still needs to make a profit."

Are you experiencing similar issues with your landlord? Please get in touch.

It's National Vegetarian Week and while personally I'm not a big fan of cutting animal products out of my diet, I thought I'd do my bit for the greater good of the planet. So my Restaurant of the Week is Saf, the vegan eatery in trendy Shoreditch, east London.

Saf stands for "Simply Authentic Food" but the word also means "pure" and "innocent" in Turkish. The 60-cover restaurant offers a completely vegan menu that is 100% plant-based, with no dairy, eggs, or animal products. What's more is that much of the food is raw or cooked to less than 48C.

All of the food is not only organic but also completely unrefined and unprocessed, with absolutely everything prepared on site by Boston-born executive chef Chad Sorno (who is known as the "raw chef") and his team.

Mark Sargeant, known by many as Gordon Ramsay's right-hand-man, has left his position of chef de cuisine at Claridge's.

Sargeant, who is competing on the BBC's Great British Menu against former Gordon Ramsay stable mate Tristan Welch this week, apparently left the Michelin-starred restaurant some time ago.

He has been replaced by chef de cuisine Steve Allen, who has been head chef at the restaurant since 2007.

Ramsay and his team of PRs have been keeping the move under tight wraps, which is unsurprising as "Sarge" is very much represented as the head chef of Claridge's on the Great British Menu.

The official line from Ramsay is that Sargeant left Claridge's to allow him "more time to concentrate on the demands made by Gordon's publishing and television commitments".

He remains involved in the group's London pubs, the Narrow in Limehouse, the Warrington in Maida Vale, and the Devonshire in Chiswick, which he has overseen since the start. Sargeant also co-wrote many of Ramsay's cookery books including the most recent one, Gordon Ramsay's Great British Pub Food.

But with the pubs having been rumoured to be on the market for months, could this be the beginning of the end of yet another beautiful relationship?

London On Tap, the campaign promoting the capital's tap water, today officially launched the carafe it hopes to roll out across London's bars, hotels and restaurants.

The campaign, which was launched by Thames Water and the Mayor of London last year, aims to promote the use of tap water and to highlight the impact of bottled water on climate change and the environment.

The winning entry, Tap Top (pictured) by London-based designer Neil Barron, was chosen from a shortlist of 10 designs which were judged by a panel including chef-restaurateur Aldo Zilli and architect Zaha Hadid.

It is a tapered glass carafe featuring four pouring spouts, which is now on sale to hospitality operators priced £10 (excluding VAT and delivery), with £1 going towards charity WaterAid.

I fully support the use of tap water in restaurants and think diners should be able to order it freely without feeling intimidated. But at the same time, I can't help but wonder whether this carafe will take off in the capital's many high end restaurants.

Research from consumer watchdog Which? last year suggested that 20% of diners feel embarrassed when asking for tap water in restaurants and I would imagine that in a formal environment this sense of embarrassment would only be intensified.

And if you're treating yourself to a special meal at a fabulously fancy restaurant, do you really want to resort to drinking water out of the tap?

With all eyes on London's Chelsea for the annual flower show this week, local restaurants are going all-out to get customers' stomachs there, too. The bid to get visitors to eat in the spirit of the festival sees flowers sprouting on menus across the capital.

The show, which starts tomorrow (19 May) was first launched in 1852 and moved to its current site at London's Royal Hospital Gardens in 1912.

It attracts close to 160,000 visitors per year, so it's no surprise that nearby chefs are using it as a great excuse to get a little green-fingered.

If you fancy doing a bit of floral cooking yourself, have a look at this useful website providing a full list of edible flowers. 

Alternatively here are a few horticultural-inspired treats you might enjoy before, after or in between admiring the flowers.

This week's Restaurant of the Week is the Michelin-starred White Room at Von Essen's Seaham Hall in County Durham.

Overseen by head chef Kenny Atkinson, the Geordie chef you may recognise from the current series of the BBC Two's Great British Menu, the White Room is an intimate 40-cover restaurant housed in the stunning five-star Seaham Hall country manor hotel.

Atkinson joined last August, six months after famously winning a Michelin star at Tean in the Isles of Scilly, a move vindicated in January this year, when he retained the White Room's Michelin star.

His classically-based cuisine, which regularly marries numerous cuts of meat in a menu of technically astute, multifaceted dishes, has transplanted well to County Durham, with local pork, beef and lamb joining other north-east produce such as Yorkshire quails on his menu.

Those who have watched Atkinson compete on the Great British Menu will be familiar with the amount of work that goes into each dish. Take, for example, his main course of Northumberland Blackface lamb, asparagus, young leeks and pease pudding, which currently features on his à la carte menu.

Other dishes include terrine of Isle of Skye scallops with cauliflower textures, pineapple and coriander (pictured); as well as Goosnargh duck breast, cannelloni of confit leg, fillet mousse and gizzard sauce accompanied by carrots, beetroot and lime.

Desserts are equally multifaceted and include warm vanilla rice pudding with raspberries, praline and caramel; next to blackberry jelly with lemon foam, blackberry sorbet and apple beignets.

The menu is complemented by an extensive wine list that spans both Old and New World varieties and offers something for every budget.

Kenny Atkinson waved goodbye to the islands to move closer to his spiritual home of Newcastle. He well and truly has returned home.

£60 for three courses à la carte excluding wine. Seaham Hall, Lord Byron's Walk, Seaham SR7 7AG, County Durham; Tel: 01915 161 400

So Chris Staines of Foliage fame is off to Heckfield Place - or is he?

The chef responsibile for the fine-dining restaurant at the fabulously five-star Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park is reportedly moving to the conference and wedding venue near Reading, however, Staines himself is yet to confirm this move.

Meanwhile, on chef networking forum Staff Canteen, a discussion thread states that Staines "has been on a retainer from the place he's going to since last year". It goes on to say that Heston Blumenthal's rumoured link to the Mandarin Oriental "has nothing to do with him [Staines] leaving".

News of Staines's departure from the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park first broke when claims that Heston Blumenthal was in talks with the hotel started to spread. International designer Adam Tihany, who is based in New York and created the interior for Foliage, has also been linked to the deal.

Here's a story that will warm your heart.

Cereal-loving Italian chef Aldo Zilli was "shocked to the core" (see what they did there?!?) by last month's tragic earthquake in his native region of Abruzzo in Italy and decided to do something for its many victims.

He is launching a menu celebrating the cuisine of the Abruzzu region at his flagship restaurant Signor Zilli in London's Soho, with a portion of the proceeds going straight to the Abruzzo Earthquake Fund.

Dishes will include crostini Abruzzesi, timballo teramano (a pancake with baby pork meatballs, tomato and parmesan gratin); capellini scamora pescarese (angel hair pasta with smoked Abruzzo mozarella and roasted peppers); and white chocolate ice cream marinated with Limoncello and served with watermelon. 

What's more is that Aldo is offering diners the chance to pay what they think the food is worth, a scheme that recently proved extremely successful at Little Bay in Farringdon.

"Aldo is deeply committed to the earthquake fund and is already planning several trips out there to help," his spokeswoman said.

Who said I only ever cover bad things?

Picture of Aldo Zilli supplied by Rex Features.

French über-chef Alain Ducasse yesterday opened a new cookery school in Paris aimed at mere mortals wanting to improve their culinary skills.

The Ecole de Cuisine Alain Ducasse, which is located in the French capital's posh 16th arrondissement, is designed to let amateur cooks recreate his multi-Michelin-starred cuisine at home. Well, maybe not quite.

According to Emanuelle Perrier, director of PR, one of the most important aspects of the school is that "you can honestly be completely useless in the kitchen".

The Ecole caters for all different types of wannabe chefs and offers two different levels: experienced and inexperienced. There are ten different courses on offer with topics ranging from "traditional" to "escapist" and "gourmet cuisine", with classes lasting half a day or a full day depending on the subject.

And that's not where it ends: the Ecole de Cuisine Alain Ducasse also offers wine-appreciation and pastry-making courses and there are even English-speaking chefs for the non-French-speaking students.

Hoorah!

After months of having his name dragged through the mud by the tabloids, Gordon Ramsay has finally sought help and has appointed celebrity spin doctor Phil Hall to put an end to his run of disastrous headlines.

Hall is the former News of the World and Hello! editor who specialises in "crisis and reputation management" and has a list of previous clients including Heather Mills and Fred "the Shred" Goodwin.

"Has it got that bad?" I hear you ask. Yes, apparently it has.

Ramsay last winter fired his previous publicist Gary Farrow after five years in the wake of his alleged affair with "professional mistress" Sarah Symonds. The split seemed to have opened the floodgates for the bad publicity and since then hardly a week has gone by without Ramsay being slagged off by the press.

On Hall's appointment Farrrow said: "Good luck. He's going to need it, because according to my cab driver, Gordon Ramsay, celebrity chefs are having a really tough time at the moment."

Each week, I'm going to feature a special restaurant as my Restaurant of the Week and kicking off this week is Michelin-starred Japanese eatery Umu in London's Mayfair.

Owned by the Marlon Abela Restaurant Corporation (MARC) which also owns the Michelin-starred Greenhouse and private members' club Morton's in London, Umu means "born of nature" in Japanese.

Tucked away in a quiet, non-descript Mayfair mews, Umu, which launched in 2004 and gained a Michelin star within five months of opening, bills itself as the capital's first Kyoto restaurant. It specialises in kaiseki cuisine, which originates from Japan's ancient capital Kyoto and is one of the most expensive ways to dine in the world.

Executive chef Ichiro Kubota honed his culinary skills in some of the city's top rated restaurants, notably the famous Tsuruya, and his menu features a selection of Kyoto cuisine including tsukuri (sashimi and sushi) and, of course, kaiseki - a tasting menu of delicate miniature dishes.

Chris Staines, head chef at the Michelin-starred Foliage restaurant at London's Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, has resigned.

The news comes just a week after Caterer revealed that Heston Blumenthal, the three-Michelin-starred chef patron of the Fat Duck in Bray, is in discussions to launch a restaurant at the five-star Knightsbridge hotel. Renowned New York-based interior designer Adam Tihany, who created the interior for Foliage, has also been associated with the project.

Chris Staines declined to comment on the reasons for his resignations but one can imagine that perhaps he was disgruntled with the hotel's handling of the news regarding Blumenthal.

His resignation gives credence to Blumenthal taking over the space of Foliage.  

Watch out for further details on Caterersearch.

Heston Blumenthal to launch a restaurant in London