February 2011 Archives

The new Michelin Guide France has awarded a wealth of new stars in this year's guide seeing 46 new one-star restaurants and five new two-stars. The number of three-star restaurants in France reduced to 25 after Michel Trama in Puymirol lost it's third star.

What do you normally have for breakfast?
Branflakes

What was your best subject at school?
Truancy

What was your first job in catering?
I was the coat-hanging boy at the local pizza restaurant

What do you do to relax?
I don't, I have five kids

Which is your favourite restaurant?
The Starr in Dunmow, Essex

Which ingredient do you hate the most?
Anchovies on pizzas

What is your favourite food/cuisine?
Sunday roast, if I am not making it

Are there any foods/ingredients that you refuse to cook with?
Margarine, because the first place I worked at used it to glaze the vegetables

If not yourself, who would you rather have been?
Ronald MacDonald as he has five stars and is very consistent

Which person in catering have you most admired?
Michel Bras

Which person gave you the greatest inspiration?
Marco Pierre White

If you had not gone into catering, where do you think you'd be now?
After my work experience in the kitchen I knew where I wanted to be

Cast away on a desert island, what luxury would you take?
Debbie, my partner

When and where was your last holiday?
In August in Holland with the kids

What irritates you most about the industry?
Tweezers

What's your favourite book?
White Heat by Marco Pierre White

What is your favourite prepared product?
Aunt Bessie's Yorkshire puddings

Who would be in your fantasy brigade?
Glynn Purnell, Purnell's, on fish; Sat Bains, Restaurant Sat Bains, on larder; Tom Kerridge, Hand and Flowers, on sauce; Marc Veyrat, La Ferme de Mon Père, on garnish; Albert Adrià, El Bulli, on pastry

If you had more time, what would you do?
I would fish more and spend more time with the kids

Daniel Clifford, chef-patron, Midsummer House, Cambridge

AA Gill finds the Royal Academy restaurant, operated by Peyton and Byrne, is far from a work of art and the menu is making promises the kitchen isn't up to keeping.

The Sunday Times food critic says while the restaurant looks good and the menu starts off well, things go horribly wrong with the main courses. He says: "My main course of lemon sole with beetroot salad and a citrus dressing was not a nice thing. The fish was little fillets rolled into earplugs and poached until they turned into wads of nose-blown tissue paper, covered in a tasteless white cream. The citrus beetroot hadn't been introduced to the fish and apparently disliked it as much as I did."

Meanwhile The Guardian's John Lanchester says Stevie Parle's food at the Dock Kitchen is good but inconsistent. "Whoever cooked that can cook. Overall, though, I was disappointed by the Dock Kitchen, which I suspect was having an off day," he complains.

The Independent's Lisa Markwell finds Dinner by Heston Blumenthal lives up to the hype, while The Observer's Jay Rayner says that although it may stand in the shadow of Dinner, Chabrot holds its own with classic French cooking.

Finally The Daily Telegraph's Matthew Norman gives two cheers for the burgermeisters of buzz after visiting Les Deux Salons, while writing for The Times Giles Coren reviews the Grazing Goat where he finds nice food but rather steep prices.

What was your best subject at school?
Art

What was your first job?
At the age of 10 I was opening oysters and working as a kitchen porter at a Michelin-starred restaurant in La Rochelle

Which is your favourite restaurant?
Maison Troisgros, Roanne, France

What is your favourite hotel?
The Chedi Muscat hotel in Oman

What do you do to relax?
Gardening

What is your favourite drink?
Red Martini on ice

What is your favourite food/cuisine?
Asian, especially Thai

What flavour combinations do you detest?
Rice pudding

Which person in catering have you most admired?
Alan Yau

Cast away on a desert island, what luxury would you take?
iPod

If not yourself, who would you rather have been?
Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry

If you had not gone into catering, what would you be now?
An architect

Describe your ultimate nightmare?
Being stranded at sea on my own

Tell us a secret...
I would love to serve horse meat at my restaurant

What's your favourite film?
Le Père Noël est une ordure (Santa Claus is a bastard)

What's your favourite book?
Perfume: The story of a murderer by Patrick Süskind

What is your favourite prepared product?
Savora mustard

Who would be in your "fantasy" brigade?
Me on the pass, Bjorn van der Horst on meat, Antonin Bonnet from the Greenhouse on sauce, Brett Graham from the Ledbury on fish, Yotam Ottolenghi on vegetables, Claire Clark on pastry

If you had more time, what would you do?
Take care of the people I love

Pascal Aussignac, chef-patron, Club Gascon, London

Santi Santamaria, the three-Michelin-starred, legendary Spanish chef, passed away today. He was at his restaurant in Singapore.

A manager at Santamaria's Can Fabes restaurant in Sant Celoni told AFP that the 53-year-old chef had died suddenly while in his restaurant, Santi, run by his daughter.

The manager was not aware of the cause of death, but Spanish media reports claim Santamaria suffered a heart attack.

Santamaria's food philosophy was founded on tradition and authenticity, seasonality and provenance. In an interview with Caterer in 2009, when Roux Scholar Daniel Cox was conducting his three-month stage at Can Fabes, Santamaria said: "Visual aesthetics are no use unless a dish delivers taste. All ingredients must be excellent, from the stock onwards."

Santamaria hit the news in recent years when he publicly described Spain's more avant-garde chefs, such as Ferran Adria, as "a gang of frauds whose work is to distract snobs". 

His comments sparked a battle of words with Adrià, a battle that worsened when Santamaria claimed he and Adrià had had an "ethical and conceptual divorce over what we put on the plate" and accused Adrià of using gelling agents and synthetic additives that represented a health threat to his customers.

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal continues to impress the food critics, with both The Sunday Times' AA Gill and The Independent's Tracey Macleod giving it top marks.

Housed in the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Knightsbridge, Dinner offers a contemporary menu of dishes inspired by historic British food.

Gill says here Blumenthal offers "an exemplary menu of perfect balance and brilliance". "The preparation and the concept manage to be a very British contrariness, both comforting and surprising, inventive but familiar. This food is unthreatening but commands attention and there isn't a mouthful that doesn't insist on the next mouthful," he says.

Meanwhile MacLeod says Dinner is the missing link between the labour-intensive complexity of contemporary haute cuisine, and the produce-led simplicity of modern British pioneers like Fergus Henderson and Mark Hix.

Writing in The Guardian, John Lanchester says Non Solo Vino, Chesterfield, is a pioneering wine shop that doubles up as a restaurant - and a really good Italian restaurant at that.

In time for Valentine's Day and with romance in mind, Zoe Williams heads to date central and finds herself utterly seduced by the food at Hakkasan Mayfair.

Finally after drinking too much to remember eating at Hawksmoor Seven Dials, The Times' Giles Coren goes back and discovers he loves the food.

What was your first job in catering?
Kitchen porter in a local hotel then promoted to the giddy heights of a YTS chef on £28 a week

What do you normally have for breakfast?
Strong coffee and Dorset Cereals toasted spelt muesli

What do you do to relax?
I go running every day

What is your favourite restaurant?
The Hand & Flowers, Marlow, with Alinea in Chicago close behind

What's your favourite hotel?
I will always have a soft spot for Raymond Blanc's Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, for so many reasons

Are there any foods/ingredients that you refuse to cook with?
Out of season food of any description annoys me as it's just lazy and does not taste of anything

What is your favourite cuisine?
Anything Asian - Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese

Which ingredient do you hate the most?
Processed food of any type 

What flavour combinations do you detest?
Lavender with anything. It's like kissing your granny; it's not right

Which person in catering have you most admired?
I still admire Gordon [Ramsay]; we have not seen anybody quite like him. I know it's not fashionable at the moment to give him any credit, but let's not forget he has helped take our profession to another level in so many ways

Which person gave you the greatest inspiration?
All my head chefs who mentored me on the way up the ladder: Graham Newbold, Simon Haigh, John Burton Race and Raymond Blanc

If not yourself, who would you rather have been?
Lance Armstrong

Tell us a secret...
I have been to see Take That and really enjoyed it!

What irritates you most about the industry?
Low wages for so many people and even hearing the words 'Ready Steady Cook'

Who would be in your fantasy brigade?
Canapes: Heston Blumenthal, cold starters: Marco Pierre White, hot starters: Martin Burge, fish: Tom Kerridge, sauce: Raymond Blanc, pastry: Benoit Blin, running the pass: Will Holland, pot wash: Jamie Oliver

Alan Murchison, chief executive officer, 10 in 8 Fine Dining Group

Original Naked Chef Jamie Oliver is being given a run for his money by a female chef from China.

While Oliver rose to fame fully clothed, Chinese model Flora Cheung now plans to strip as she cooks on Hong Kong TV.

During the show, which will be launched on an adult pay channel later this month, Cheung plans to strip down to nothing but a transparent apron as she prepares a different dish.

The 26-year-old is to go shopping for ingredients fully clothed, then strip as she steps into the kitchen.

"Most men don't like to cook, but I want to get them interested," Cheung told the South China Morning Post, adding that her apron "covers pretty much everything but hides nothing".

The show is the brainchild of Jessie Au, who brought naked news reading to Hong Kong television screens in 2004.

Meanwhile back in London, Judy Joo has just been appointed as executive chef of the forthcoming Playboy Club London.

Shane Osborn, head chef at London's two-Michelin-starred Pied à Terre, has become the first British-based chef to cook for the European Council in Brussels.

The council is a regular meeting comprising the heads of state or government of the 27 EU member states, along with its president and the president of the Commission.

The event takes place six times a year with a two- or three-Michelin-starred chef from one of the member states selected to cook by personal invitation from the European Council executive head chef Pierre Balthazar.

"It was an honour to be asked to do this but also pretty daunting to cook for all these heads of state," Osborn said. "It was quite challenging to go into someone else's kitchen. They have incredibly tight security measures there - we were screened three to four times entering each building - and weren't allowed to bring anything in."

Osborn cooked a three-course lunch last Friday (4 February) for a total of 152 guests, with the help of his sous chef Phil Merchant and pastry chef Ching Tso (pictured with Osborna and Balthazar). The brief was to use all fresh ingredients from within the EU and Osborn's menu comprised a starter of poached organic salmon, roasted cauliflower puree, dill pickled chayote and toasted quinoa; followed by a main course of slow braised shin of veal, turnip and maple syrup fondue, roasted carrots, sage and shallot jus. His dessert was milk chocolate mousse, passion fruit curd, whipped crème fraîche and pecan powder.

"Sadly with all the problems going on in Egypt, the meeting went more than two hours over schedule so we didn't get to chat to the heads of state afterwards."

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal is the inevitable topic among the food critics in this week and it seems the new restaurant does live up to the hype.

According to Giles Coren, writing in The Times, Blumenthal's pure genius makes Dinner the best new restaurant in the world. "It is the first new dining room to open in Knightsbridge for 100 years that is not incredibly boring, ugly and joyless. And that is saying something. And the menu is thrilling. And believe me, I am not easily thrilled by menus," he says.

The Guardian's food editor, Matthew Fort, says Dinner reclaims and reinvents our own cooking heritage, reinvigorating the tired and ordinary orthodoxies of traditional British cooking: "Over two sittings, I tasted virtually all the 25 dishes on the menu. It says a great deal that even under these intense circumstances so many startling dishes, and some outstanding ones, emerged from behind the terse menu labels."

Meanwhile, the London Evening Standard's veteran critic Fay Maschler finds a few faults at Dinner but loves the meat fruit and desserts. "Were a vegetarian to stray misguidedly into Dinner, he or she might well be disappointed by the £20 dish of Braised Celery (c. 1730) with Parmesan, pickled walnuts, apples and onion, which we shared," she complains.

Finally Matthew Norman writing in the Daily Telegraph says if there's been a more flawless and exhilarating restaurant opening in the past decade than Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, he missed it. "The best thing of all about Dinner is a quality never before associated with a Michelin deity. It is colossal fun," he enthuses.

In other reviews, The Guardian's John Lanchester says Japanese restaurant Koya is very good at making noodles, while The Independent on Sunday's Lisa Markwell says Alan Yau's Busaba chain still offers the same comfort 10 years after its launch.

The Observer's Jay Rayner has a patchy experience at the Devonshire Brasserie, Bolton Abbey, North Yorkshire and the Sunday Telegraph's Zoe Williams says the food at Kopapa is dramatic but it just all depends whether you're pro or anti that kind of thing.

What was your best subject at school?
Maths - the school head was my teacher and I was scared of her

What was your first job?
Washing up at Redcoats farmhouse hotel and restaurant in Hitchin, Herts. I used to turn up in my chef whites just in case the chefs needed a hand in the kitchen

What do you normally have for breakfast?
Fresh mint tea - it's my only vice

What is your favourite restaurant?
A little buffet restaurant in Sweden, where I love the cured herrings and flatbreads

What is your favourite hotel?
Hotel Madrisa in Gargellen, in the Austrian mountains. It's fantastic for skiing and has its own organic farm

What is your favourite food/cuisine?
British - I'm British through and through, in taste and preference and manner

Which ingredient do you hate the most?
Tomato ketchup

Are there any foods/ingredients that you refuse to cook with?
Okra - it's slimy and flavourless

Cast away on a desert island, what luxury would you take?
A bunch of mint, a kettle and a cup

Which person in catering have you most admired?
Michel Roux

What daily newspaper/website do you read?
BBC news in the morning, and Metro on a Wednesday for its restaurant review

Describe your ultimate nightmare
An epidemic that wipes out the world's mint

When and where was your last holiday?
The Maldives over two years ago

Tell us a secret...
My twins were conceived in the Maldives, hence no more holidays

If not yourself, who would you rather have been?
James Bond - who wouldn't?

When did you last eat a hamburger?
Two weeks ago - they are a guilty pleasure of mine

What is your favourite prepared product?
Marmite

What do you always carry with you?
A bunch of fresh mint

What's your favourite film?
The Italian Job - the original

What's your favourite book?
I'm infatuated and I always have my nose in a book involved in the industry - such as Fast Food Nation and Not on the Label

Tristan Welch, head chef, Launceston Place, London

 

French gastronomy is in crisis and to save it 15 of the country's most illustrious chefs have joined forces to launch a campaign to secure its culinary future.

With Tokyo recently overtaking Paris as the world's gastronomic capital with the most Michelin-starred restaurants, critical voices have got louder than ever arguing French cuisine has for too long rested on its laurels.

Although declared part of the world's heritage by the United Nations, French cuisine stands accused of not moving with the times and failing to adapt to a changing culinary world order in which a new generation of chefs continually pushes the boundaries.

The final straw came last week, when for the first time ever, France failed to make it onto the podium at the prestigious Bocuse d'Or competition in Lyon, which was dominated by Scandinavian countries.

With all that in mind, the crème de la crème of French Michelin-starred chefs gathered yesterday at the restaurant 58 Tour Eiffel in Paris to unveil the country's first chef lobbying group: the Collège Culinaire de France.

With honorary members Paul Bocuse, Michel Guérard and Pierre Troisgros, and founding members including Joël Robuchon, Guy Savoy, Alain Ducasse, Anne-Sophie Pic, Marc Haeberlin and Yannick Alléno, it's obvious they mean business.

Their objectives are straightforward: Create an organisation that defends the interests of French gastronomy. Through advocating the industry as an "economic power", and opening the doors of the country's top restaurants to train up a new generation of French master chefs, it aims to secure France's future as the world-leader of gastronomy.

The group also plans to establish a museum of gastronomy in Paris and will publish an annual list of thousands of the finest French products and producers to help boost exports and awareness worldwide.