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#9 Eddie Shepherd - Botanical cooking and reimagining fine dining
100 Plays3 months ago
We have the pleasure of hearing from Eddie Shepherd today. Eddie has carved his own way, not sticking to the conventional restaurant structure, and has been listed in the green guide as one of the top 10 UK restaurants.
Eddie is well known for pushing the boundaries with his plant based tasting menu, and he explains what plant based means to him. He talks us through his scientific like approach to cooking, how he started his youtube channel, and what is it like being a one man band cooking his intricute tasting menu for his guests in his floor level restaurant at his house.
Pleae enjoy, Eddie Shepherd!
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Transcript
Introduction to Eddie and His Unique Culinary Approach
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome, welcome back to the Check On podcast. And on today's check, we have a chef who does things a little bit differently. Eddie Sheppard. You might know him from YouTube tutorials, Instagram, or the buzz of his unconventional restaurant. Eddie runs an award-winning plant-based tasting menu from the ground floor of his house in Manchester, where he preps, cooks, and serves everything solo.
00:00:26
Speaker
Eddie has a very molecular way of creating his dishes and is driven by flavour and technique. So please enjoy Eddie Shepherd.
00:00:40
Speaker
And we are recording. We have Eddie Shepherd on. How are you? I'm good, thanks. How are you? I'm good, I'm good. I'm sitting here with a little um heated beanbag. I know you can't see it from my left because I'm freezing. Yeah, it's so the change in the weathers. um Yeah, I'm feeling that too. Just watching the ingredients change as well. The things I'm growing in the garden and suddenly just hit that slightly slightly more challenging point. and
00:01:12
Speaker
What are you growing in your garden? Well, mostly here I grow um like some some veg, but predominantly the things that I can actually use for the menu are really like herbs, flowers, um you know, and a few little bits and pieces. It's it's a couple of raised beds, so a decent ish growing space. But even being a small scale as I am, like realistically, it's very, very hard to grow, ah you know, everything you want to use.
00:01:41
Speaker
I definitely, I got a um greenhouse for my birthday last year and I had this illusion that I was going to grow all of these things for our private dining and supper club company. And I quickly realized that it was, you know, I could get enough micro herbs to get us through, yeah um but other than that, like the volume that you need, even for small numbers of people, it's yeah so much more than you expect it to be. Yeah, absolutely. it it's It's, you know, which is, it's a great insight to have in itself because like just that experience makes you treat produce differently, I think, and consider it differently. And then the stuff that you can use, you're so precious about then, because you're like, oh my God, so this is what I was putting all my time and energy into, was two to get this stuff. I remember limiting Vincent, I was like, okay, you're allowed three pieces of this per plate. Yeah, yeah. Where abouts in the country are you? ah So I'm in Manchester, or you know just um just outside of the that
00:02:39
Speaker
the city of Manchester just a few minutes south of there. Yeah, in a little sort of suburb called Wally range. That's a really cute name. I like that. Have you did you grow up there? I grew up in Manchester. Yeah, or well, Stockport, which is just outside Manchester. And then growing up, you would always say to anyone outside of the city, you just say Manchester because no one knew where Stockport was. But now that's having its own little resurgence and little explosion of interesting food things going on. We've got Sam who has where the light gets in, um which is a beautiful and very unique restaurant out in Stockport. And that's really helping to sort of, you know, open things up there. And and it's also great because it doesn't have the it doesn't have the crazy rent and stuff of Manchester. So it's this, you know,
00:03:36
Speaker
very nearby place. And um we're also right on the edge of the Peak District. So we've got beautiful countryside, a beautiful produce around. And then, yeah, it's sort of stop starting to have some interesting things going on. How far away is it from the center of Manchester or from the sort of the main city? ah Myself for support. So I'm only like 10 minutes in a taxi or something. Not not very far at all. So it's it's great as a food business to have ah whole of the city you know big city and and all the suburbs kind of on your doorstep it's very easy for people to to reach but also the people that i have visiting from further afield can you know quite often i've got people coming and staying and manchester's a good city for that you know we've got the airport we've got a big train station people can find places to stay over easily so yeah it's it's definitely helpful you know to be on the on the outskirts of a large city like that
00:04:36
Speaker
Yeah, I find it's definitely becoming a lot more trendy now. I'm i'm Bristol way. And there are a lot of really cool things happening just outside of the city. And I love that I'm not a massive city goer. So I like discovering sort of the little suburbs around. Yeah, I think that's a nice spot. I mean, in the future one day, you know, I don't know, maybe in another 10 years or something, I would like to move a little further out not not totally out into the countryside, but um a bit more that border between the suburbs and the countryside, just a bit more room to grow things, a little bit more space to keep developing what you're what you're doing. But I ah definitely, I think I would always want to be reaching distance into the ah city. Just for convenience. Yeah, yeah. What was it like growing up in Manchester? I've never been to Manchester. Oh, no, I tell a lie of him once, but my partner was running a marathon, so we didn't see anything. It's good. I mean, it's a great
00:05:34
Speaker
city it's um i think it's a really friendly city it's a city that really like prides itself on a lot of the sort of cultural heritage you know the like the music scene the art scene or you know there's a lot of there's always been loads of things going on so and it it feels like a city that is very like welcoming and supporting and nurturing of like small Projects and eccentric things happening across all sorts of you know, I think that's part of how we had the the music scene that in part made Manchester famous and ah You know has been really helpful for me doing something slightly unusual as a food business You know people are just people are open to stuff and people are like very up for supporting small Independence and things so yeah, it's know, it's it's it's kind of it's where my heart is really is Manchester
00:06:35
Speaker
And then, so you have your own, you call it your own space. We don't call it a restaurant. We call it your space. And that's in your house. Is that right?
Home-Based Dining Experience
00:06:44
Speaker
Yeah. Um, yeah. So sort of to describe it, um, basically 10 years ago, uh, we bought the building where we live and, but the bottom floor is, is, uh, is sort of converted and to a dedicated like restaurant and dining space. So it's an open kitchen.
00:07:03
Speaker
And then I have room for three or four tables, depending how I lay it out. um in the In the dining space, it's all just one open floor. So then I cook for typically eight people a night. like I can can push it to 10 at a real push, but I like ah really feel it if I do 10. And then where we live is like the the ah two floors above that. So it's a sort of unusual setup.
00:07:32
Speaker
um but also But one that's worked really well for me, it really suits how I like to cook. I really like being on this small scale. um Eight people's kind of perfect for the for the tasting menu that I'm doing. you know That's ah about the numbers that I feel I can i can like cook for at the quality level I want to. And what came first? Did you buy the house and then decide that the space was perfect for that? Or were you looking for a space with that?
00:08:01
Speaker
No, I was looking for a space. I'd kind of hit the point in my career where I was ready to do something of my own. And I had been kind of bobbing about between like, um i I had started working as like a consultant and development chef. And I was sort of keen to do something, do my own restaurant or something like it, but I just didn't quite know exactly what I wanted to do or how I was going to do it.
00:08:30
Speaker
And so initially, the idea was that this was a space where there was ah basically a space where there was potential, you know, I could keep I could work from the kitchen, I could do the consulting stuff that I needed to do, but could also do some dinners. And, and at first, what I thought was, great, we'll, we'll do this. And then over time, I'll figure out what I want to do. And I can also be like,
00:08:56
Speaker
you know I could be doing these dinners but maybe in the lead up to launching a restaurant later and then and quite quickly just sort of thought ah ge I really loved how direct it was how the fact that once I'd figured out how to how to do the food the way I wanted it and be able to like bring it out and serve it to the guests then I once I was over that hump And that is difficult, you know, to to to figure that stuff out. But then I was like, I don't think I would want to lose this aspect of it. You know, that's it's quite kind of unique. And it also meant you didn't have some of the headaches that you would have with a more traditional restaurant set up. So I guess essentially once I found I was doing my food, I was like, well, what else do I need out of this? What I really want to do is do my food for people in a way that I'm like happy with.
00:09:53
Speaker
And so with a more traditional restaurant, i could I could serve more people, that would be the big thing. And there might be one or two things that I can do i could do in the kitchen that I can't currently, it just in terms of, if it's just you plating up eight dishes, there are certain things that are, I can't you know i can't place individual, I can't take five minutes on each plate, they're placing petals and stuff.
00:10:19
Speaker
But you find your ways ah around that stuff. You know, you your your style also kind of evolves to the way that you're cooking. So now ah I just feel like I feel like this suits me so much and my food's kind of evolved in tandem with but the way that I'm serving it. Is it just you that does all the cooking and all the serving? ah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just me on my own, which is, you know, challenging. But um Yeah, challenging, but very rewarding as well. and And like I say, it does make you ah approach things in a different way. and And it opens up certain things, though, as well, I think. So there there are some things that are a challenge to do on your own, but then there's also some things that you can only really do or are easier to do. If you only have to cook for eight people a night, then there are things like um like I make my own bean to bar chocolate in
00:11:15
Speaker
house and and things like that which are that would be difficult to be making you know all your own chocolate from scratch for a restaurant if you had a lot more covers even if you had more staff you just kind of hit a crunch point of scaling that up um so there's a number of things like that where i can i can take a i can make more things from scratch i think which is is one of the things that i really enjoy about about cooking and that would be That would be difficult to scale. Yeah. It's funny, the different trade-offs that we give ourselves, I guess, like, yes, we talk about scale. Um, you know, you could do more covers in a restaurant, but definitely what I've found from going into the private dining and supper club scene is you have, you have full control over everything that you're doing and you can do those things that are, you know, a little bit more laborious.
00:12:09
Speaker
because you don't have anybody else to manage, anything else to run. So yes, it might take you a bit longer, but it's at a scale where you can do nearly everything manually, which is really exciting, I think. And I think people more than ever now, at least I've seen, they're really, really into that. They're really into what you're doing and how you're doing it by yourself and where everything's coming from and having that sort of direct guest connection. You can explain to them, okay, this I grew in my garden, this chocolate I made by myself and People are really good at the moment. I don't know if you're finding that. Yeah, I i totally agree. I think it's it's that is one of the things that I didn't go into this necessarily expecting or or didn't didn't think about to the same extent, but the, ah you know, in the same way, if you go to a restaurant that you followed for a while or a chef that you're excited by and then actually seeing them, they're cooking in the restaurant. Like that does add something to that experience. If they're not there, I'm sure the food
00:13:07
Speaker
in lots of places can still be great. But there's something about being like, oh, cool that's the person making the food that they're known for. And it it' sort of rounds out the whole experience. And it's like an extension of that, I think, when you're working on this smaller scale. you know People come and they meet and are getting to chat to and be served by the person that's cooking all the food. But but also you've done everything. Every detail is being done by one.
00:13:37
Speaker
person so it couldn't be more of a like direct kind of authentic experience of that person's food it's you know completely undiluted and and like you say not having other other aspects of a business to to worry about in some of the same ways means you can really kind of be pouring basically all of your energy into the the food and everything else kind of exists in support of that. And I also find that I think guests are, so for instance, because I'm serving the food, you know, I can't do some of the service you would get in a, you know, beautiful Michelin style restaurant. Like I'm, you know, I tried to be like attentive and spend time with each table and stuff, but it is inherently different. You know, I can't keep topping up people's like pouring their water into the vast for them as I go around.
00:14:32
Speaker
But people can, especially with the open kitchen, can see you there cooking and understand what's going on. And I think they are very like my experience has has been that people are very open and to that and understand that this is what it's about. It's like the food coming, coming first and then trying to make this really nice, you know, relaxed, but attentive atmosphere around that.
00:15:00
Speaker
Do you think that there's a definite shift in the industry where people are looking at ways to do their own thing, but not in a conventional restaurant setting? Yeah, I i think
Non-Traditional Restaurant Setups
00:15:11
Speaker
so. i'm I mean, ah like a great example that springs to mind is um my friend Mark had a restaurant, a Michelin-style restaurant called Fresh, um which was in the Wirral. And then a year and a half ago, I guess now, something like that, he close that restaurant in order to set himself up doing something very, very similar to what I'm doing. So he bought a house, bought a building.
00:15:40
Speaker
converted that to do the dinners out of there himself and um I mean when he was running that the restaurant fresh was a big was a big inspiration for me anyway because it was him cooking for typically eight diners a night ah just on his own in the kitchen and then he did have like a sommelier or front of house but you know going and eating there years and years and years ago and seeing him do this Michelin star level of food in this way just made me think oh wow so that's doable I didn't even know that was it it never occurred to me that it was doable to to work on that scale to that level um
00:16:22
Speaker
And then it's kind of been, so that was a huge inspiration for starting what I'm doing. um And then seeing Mark sort of transition from, you know, what was a very so small, but still a ah restaurant to something more like what I'm doing as well is, you know, we've spoken a lot and I think it's similar, similar reasons he has to want to work like that, that I do. And I think, you know, lots of people are facing the same challenges in the industry.
00:16:51
Speaker
you know, financial staffing, all the, you know, all the things everyone's putting up against. um And so kind of looking for ways to be creative about how you work and how you get your food out there, right, you know, is, I think it's, you know, it's cool, there's lots that everyone can learn it, you know, in every different sort of style from what people are doing.
00:17:15
Speaker
What are your man hours like then? If it's just you doing it and you've got a pretty extensive menu that you know some things take six months to make, like some yomisos and stuff, what are your man hours like? You must be working a lot. Yeah, theyre yeah admittedly they're bad.
00:17:31
Speaker
like that same ah That is tricky. like the The workload is is pretty immense and it's very difficult to trim that down and it's difficult to step away from it too. And it's also like you tend to find, you find a way to simplify one thing or make something more efficient. And then I'm awful for being like, oh great, that gives me an extra five minutes during service. So I can make this other thing
00:18:07
Speaker
I can, you know, put more time into something else and like, instead of thinking, oh, I'll just make my life a little easier. um Yeah, that that is very tricky. I mean, I close for ah a week each month so that I have just like, that's just a prep week, um which is necessary in order to get all the prep done and and things, but also psychologically, I think that's one of the things that makes a big difference. So you're still working very long hours, but certainly say that week, for instance, you've got no service to think about, you're in your own space at your own pace, you can adjust,
00:18:44
Speaker
you know, when you are doing that work and, um you know, you could you could get up and start super early one day if that's what you want to do, or you could do like a really, really long, super hardcore day to try and like buy yourself some time off, you know, later in the week. So that that flexibility like can be nice too. Do you find it hard to separate? Like, because if you're living upstairs from where you're serving and where you're working,
00:19:14
Speaker
do you find it hard to separate? Yeah. um Yeah, that is difficult because you could always just do something, you know, you could always just or just start something, you know, so even like if you're just making yourself in a coffee in the morning, je you know, in some ways, this is great that like you you're literally just starting your day and you can be like, right, well, I'll put a pan of water on to get it up to the boil. I'll, you know, switch over non to preheat it for such and such a thing so you can have this like immediate like start into things. On the other hand if you're not quite disciplined also it's very easy to just kind of keep working through till very late and then I quite often
00:20:02
Speaker
like I will at least a couple of times a week I will set myself I will book myself into like the gym for late in the evening so that I have like a hard deadline so that I can't let jobs like spill over and take more time up you're like no I have to get out at 9pm I have to get out like that's you know um so I try and do some things like that as well to kind of keep myself a little a little structure you know funny you say that i do the exact same thing oh yeah we'll have ah a work day or an admin day or a menu planning day and i'll be like that's good i've got the gym booked at 7 30 so yes seven o'clock we need to be finished yeah yeah yeah but you do you need that right because otherwise it's not like i don't think it's like procrastination or something that would be the the ah big difficulty but just if you
00:20:51
Speaker
like you need some deadlines to work to I think essentially and if you don't have that like right well we're closing up and leaving the building at a certain time then implementing them in some other ways is yeah really really useful that to-do list just never finishes yeah it's very tempting um when did you when did you start in the industry Yeah, so I started um when I was at university, which is so it's a little over 20 years ago. I think it's maybe 22 years ago now, which is, you know, longer than I would like to think. But I was I was studying for a philosophy degree and then basically working in restaurants to kind of pay my way through that and earn some money on the side.
00:21:39
Speaker
um and kind of did what a lot of people over here do I think where you um like start off washing pots and then someone calls in sick and suddenly you're kind of dragged into like doing a little bit more on the line and then suddenly yeah that's where you kind of find yourself is but also I mean I was absolutely thrilled to, I was immediately pretty hooked on the buzz of the kitchen. even Even from the very start working as a KP, I like ah liked the the pace and the environment and the contrast to doing something quite academic, you know, then to go and do something very physical, very visceral, all this energy and like steam and hecticness in this place and then, you know, getting kind of pulled through to the kitchen a little bit more. And then suddenly, especially right at the start, like, everything you're learning is feels big, even when it's incredibly simple, it's just how to, you know, how to hold your knife, how to cut, you know, basic things. Yeah, was just incredibly, sort of exciting to me, I think, at at the time. And then that
00:22:57
Speaker
Well, I don't think that sense of excitement goes either. It just changes over the years. There's always something new to be learning about. There's always something to delve into.
00:23:08
Speaker
um Yeah, there's been 20 odd years of that now. It's funny some of the things that I mean, I still get excited by. it Like if I'm if I'm portioning up some dough that I need to roll and I put it on the scale and it's exactly the amount that I want. It's such a legend.
00:23:27
Speaker
yeah absolutely or like you know when you know when you've tempered chocolate and then seeing it is exactly as it should be or yeah i i mean bread like every time bread comes out of the oven and it like these are things that i do all the time and really it would be alarming if they ever went wrong they're such regular parts of the the work but it's there's still something You know, there is still something magical about those those those moments. Yeah, I think it's it's such an interesting industry because it is it's very tactile and it's very different. Like you're you're cooking something for hours and creating it with your hands and putting it together on a plate.
00:24:11
Speaker
for it then to disappear in a matter of minutes. you know yeah it's ah It's a very strange industry, but it's such ah such a rewarding sense when you when you do it. I don't even know how to explain it. I wish sometimes when like younger chefs that are coming into the industry try and ask, why are you still here? What do you love about it? I just, I love making things with my hands, like something physical. I have i have a physical representation of what just took me six hours to make. It's um it different.
00:24:39
Speaker
Yeah I agree, that that craft element of it it, I mean the thing with like even things that you make all the time as well is that you It's not even necessarily that you're thinking, okay, I'm improving a little bit every time I do this, but just the practice of doing the craft that you've spent time learning, you know, is is it extremely rewarding, I think. And with that sort of um the the temporary nature of of a lot of what we produce, I both think that's, I'm both very drawn to that sometimes. That's kind of wonderful that it is so like temporary and people have to come and experience something in the moment.
00:25:16
Speaker
And then on the flip side of that, that's one of the things that drew me into working, being particularly interested in working with things like distillation and the bean to bar chocolate making and things like this because these are elements where you can create something.
00:25:34
Speaker
shelf stable to ah an extent you know comparative to other things if you distill a flavor like the spruce needles in the spring then you've got this in incredibly like fresh vibrant representation of that flavor that can then be used you know throughout the rest of the year or you you pick a very unique cacao to make chocolate from or or you make that chocolate in perhaps an unusual way and then you you can have that to work with so there's
00:26:06
Speaker
There's kind of, there's nice things on both sides. There's nice thing, nice elements to just the totally ephemeral, like, you know, things that are only, only can exist in that moment. And then also to finding some ways to like, extend those and use them in other ways. Watching some of your YouTube channels, you have um almost a little bit of a scientific feel to some of your cooking. Has it always been like that? Or is that something that you've developed along the way?
00:26:36
Speaker
ah yeah um so i kind of uh so after i've done about 10 years in restaurants i started working a bit as a consultant and um part of that was for a company that sold a lot of like as water baths were becoming more common and the prices of those were coming down, they were selling equipment like that and vacuum packers and the smoking guns, a lot of the poly science stuff. And um so my job was in part to kind of come up with recipes for those to to translate some of the sciencey stuff for other chefs and and to give kind of use cases for things. And I didn't have any background in science, so I had to like, there was a lot of me hastily trying to figure stuff out.
00:27:21
Speaker
but having, i was I was quite, I enjoyed that process, um you know figuring something out or learning about something and then trying to put it into a usable form and and that's kind of informed a little bit of how I cook now is I had to like teach myself certain things, I had to um come to like,
00:27:47
Speaker
Yeah, figure figure out a way but of working. And then now what I find is that um working on my own, that things like the vacuum distillation that I use, those are some of the ways that I can make that work practical and capture flavors in a way that means I can use them beyond just that what particular week that I'm working. it's It's part of how I can scale things, but still keep the quality and the sort of,
00:28:15
Speaker
the particular way I work with flavors. I think that's fine. I think someone's just dropping off a delivery. Okay. We'll keep that in. That's funny.
00:28:28
Speaker
um Your, your restaurant on your website, it says um that it's plant-based. Yes.
Menu Philosophy: Plant-Based to Botanical Gastronomy
00:28:36
Speaker
Yeah. What is plant-based? So mine is, um so it's all ah vegetarian, but it's mainly vegan. So I'd say the menu is probably 90, 95% vegan. I think there's one course on the menu currently that isn't. ah So I used the term plant-based as a kind of capsule for that. um It feels like the sort of um the yeah the best way of describing something that's so
00:29:07
Speaker
And I kind of, you know, so there's there's no meat or fish used at all. And and it it would be quite easy to be honest to make the menu in entirely vegan. and And for any vegan guests, I do that. But I haven't pushed to do that last little bit. And I prefer the term plant-based because I don't know how useful it would be to kind of tighten the and ah concept and the description down that last little extra that last little extra bit it's quite quite nice not to be totally pinned down as a vegan food experience that also might be maybe like um like not necessarily off-putting to people but it can change potentially the view that people have in them head about it before coming and then i feel like plant base is a ah nicer broader
00:30:05
Speaker
term to use it feels quite positive and the fact that the term I would really like to potentially use I'm kind of thinking about a little bit at the minute is there's a um this a two Michelin star ah restaurant in Holland which is vegan by like any so this sort of normal sense you'd understand it but they use the term botanical gastronomy to describe what they're doing um and I think one or two of the other restaurants over there doing similar things have also taken that up and i I really like the idea of that as a descriptor because
00:30:39
Speaker
It's kind of new. It can mean what you want it to mean. But it also sounds it sounds so much more flavor driven and ingredient driven than rather than talking about things that you're not using it. It's so much more like oh we're doing this really cool exciting menu based based on botanicals on plants and flowers and you know all these these yeah this this kind of array of ingredients so i'm i'm i'm toying at the moment with whether or not that would be a kind of an appropriate thing to um to borrow teas to describe my food yeah that would be that would be interesting i wonder
00:31:20
Speaker
how people would perceive that. Cause me, I don't fully know the difference between plant-based and vegan. To me, like when I first heard the term plant-based, I thought it was a bit of rebranding for vegan because vegan kind of got a little bit of stick and, you know, it just wasn't as cool maybe as what it seemed to be before. But that's yeah sort of my only impression of the difference between the two. But is there a bit of leeway by calling yourself plant-based rather than vegan?
00:31:48
Speaker
i think so i mean i think probably I think, I wonder if there's really a strict definition. I mean, the way that I always felt about it was that you could, that vegan or vegetarian are quite other sort of most direct descriptions of like, this is exactly what what it does and doesn't have within it. you know So vegetarian meaning yes you could use dairy or eggs and vegan being very strictly like no animal produce.
00:32:20
Speaker
um plant-based I felt like is maybe the the the thing that encompasses kind of both of those to a degree that it's plant focused, you're not using any ah you know meat or fish, but for instance I was for a long time keeping ah my own bees and using their honey on the menu and I think certainly if you said you were vegan like well I used to find this about a 50-50 split in vegan guests where when it was honey coming from your own bees, about half of the vegan guests would be happy to have that and about half would be like, no, no, I'm like strict. It's kind of more um ah like they subscribed to a particular set of of rules. So I feel like plant-based gives you a bit more
00:33:17
Speaker
scope a bit more room within that and maybe the outer limits of that kind of circle are saying well there's definitely no meat or fish used and it is broadly maybe aligning with what you'd consider to be vegan but perhaps but a little less strictly defined. Yeah maybe vegan's a bit more of a way of life and plant-based is sort of more referring to the gastronomy side of it Yeah, I mean, I find it useful for for for my guests to get like um as as clear descriptors as possible for from them. So if someone tells me they are
00:33:53
Speaker
vegan then I know they're not gonna have that course that has some dairy in it. and So that's very useful, but also I would want to know if like someone if someone had an allergy to something in particular too, I would want that information as directly as as possible. But the vast majority of my guests aren't vegetarian or vegan, so. That was my next question. Yeah, that's that's kind of it's much more people coming for a food experience. and I think that it's more inviting and a bit more it's a bit more saying like I come into this like world of stuff to use terms like plant-based or botanical gastronomy rather than saying it's a vegan restaurant and it's going to sort of exclude these particular things.
00:34:45
Speaker
I really like the term botanical gastronomy or botanical restaurant though. It does, it's it's like what you said, it feels very much more flavor driven rather than um a way of life, I guess.
00:34:58
Speaker
Yeah, yeah i I agree and it also, I kind of like the fact that it asks some questions. people doubt There's not um a weight of stuff attached to that yet, so I might email this restaurant. I went to eat with them a while ago and they were they were fantastic. Neil was incredible.
00:35:17
Speaker
And so I might drop them an email and be like, by the way, are you like, would you hate it if other people started using this term as well? I I suspect that they would quite like to be at the kind of forefront at the cutting edge of a you know, what does feel like the beginnings of like ah a movement of its own within food. um And it it'd be kind of nice to differentiate that from I mean, like there was a big um there was a big phase of lots and lots of like vegan fast food restaurants launching and stuff which I get the feeling that's kind of tapered off a little bit now but it's another reason not to necessarily want to describe yourself heavily using that term. I think if you're doing something that's very focused on using like natural ingredients you're very focused on using
00:36:08
Speaker
you know and not just plants, you know flowers, um algae, seaweeds, all of these other ingredients in in interesting ways, then a different term feels know feels like it could be positive.
00:36:23
Speaker
I think so. Let me know when you do it. I'm excited to see. Well, there we go. i'm I'm kind of brainstorming it on the on the podcast. So maybe maybe people will look at my Instagram handle but when this comes out and it will suddenly say all this stuff. That's all right. We're allowed to do that. um and You mentioned vegan fast food restaurants. It's one thing that I never really I mean, I'm I'm not a vegan. I'm an omnivore. I eat anything and everything. I do really enjoy plant-based meals though, um but I never really understood things like vegan bacon and vegan sausages. Is yeah is that something that you've ever eaten or subscribed to? Not really. It's not really where I would like, I mean, there are times if you're like traveling or you're, you know, or sometimes like if you're out with friends and you're going somewhere, it's not, you know, it's not
00:37:19
Speaker
you not going out because it's about food or something then maybe what you're gonna get is like oh this pub has a veggie burger on or they have like vegetarian sausages or vegan sausages or something but like no it's not what i would be going out to look for and um i don't know i mean like i don't want to be like snobby about food either but I generally would prefer to avoid like highly processed stuff most of the time at least like just in terms of like trying to stay healthy and like running a business on your own
00:38:01
Speaker
like you have to keep a little bit of an eye on stuff like keeping yourself fit and healthy because like if I'm if I can't do service if I'm injured or sick or something like this then uh there is no service there's no money coming in so um so I'm not like I'm not super strict about this stuff i it's not like I eat like super healthy all the time like ah one of my favorite things is like nice pizza but then I would have I would try and get nice pizza. you know like not like I think a lot of the stuff that's very processed, soy-based things, doesn't really appeal to me that much.
00:38:44
Speaker
I think it's the same. I always kind of laugh when people um talk about veganism and they talk about in a bad light and saying, you know, everyone's just eating corn nuggets and stuff like that. I'm like, when was the last time you went to McDonald's? Like yeah yeah eating ultra processed foods? Yeah, yeah, totally. Well, that's it. And, you know, and also there's, you know, that there's a place for that stuff to exist for sure. And probably I mean one of the easier things to to switch, if people aren't, if people maybe aren't cooking for themselves a lot anyway and stuff, and it fits into like a convenience element of lifestyle, one of the things that is
00:39:25
Speaker
relatively easy to switch, I suppose, is like low quality, minced up, like fast food stuff for a plant based alternative where you are less likely to feel a difference between those two products because they're both so highly processed.
00:39:43
Speaker
um And it probably is also like the very worst end of like the meat industry. And so that probably is the end that needs like the most reform, these very like cheaply produced things. um So there's definitely like, I understand that the ah place for it. um But it's, I think there was a there was a little there was a moment in time where it felt like that was all that was kind of emerging um for like particularly for vegan food there was just like loads of this stuff loads of these businesses and I think potentially in part because a lot of that food is like bought in stuff deep fried you know so you don't necessarily need a culinary background and a big understanding of like
00:40:31
Speaker
flavor and working with ingredients to start up some of those businesses. So I think there was like a real flurry of them. And then just be nice to see that balanced with more, which I think increasingly is with with more like sort of chef led ingredient led, you know, flavor driven things, more more cooking from fresh ingredients.
00:40:53
Speaker
How long have you been vegetarian? Are you vegetarian or plant based? um um Vegetarian, I would say. But um again, I'm sorry. um let's see Yeah, so I would say vegetarian is like the easiest description.
00:41:10
Speaker
but typically how I eat is mainly ah vegan. Like I don't eat a lot of dairy or eggs. So most of the time I'm probably eating in a way that's vegan, but I wouldn't pin myself down to that. um And that's been since I was at university. So since basically just before I started working in kitchens. um So it was sort of serendipity that I was ah you know, and and initially these these early jobs in kitchens, the restaurants didn't really care that I was vegetarian. They certainly didn't care that I was vegetarian working as a KP and then when they just need you to help out.
00:41:52
Speaker
And then very quickly, sure everyone working in restaurants will have had this experience that like, ultimately the the most important thing becomes like, can the person do their job?
Influences and Self-Taught Skills
00:42:03
Speaker
So once I've been working in restaurants for a couple of years, those first couple of years I was working in restaurants that were serving meat and fish. um And you would sometimes encounter a little bit of,
00:42:16
Speaker
um confusion or resistance or like piss taking about like the fact that you are vegetarian but that fairly quickly goes out the window if you can just do the job and you're reliable you know that's ultimately that's really what people want in a kitchen so if you're if you're good at what you're doing and and you can be trusted to do a good job of it that's you know I think that was probably the biggest piece of advice I was ever given was to don't worry about any of the noise just let the skill speak like as long as you're doing your job and you're doing what you need to be doing the the rest of the kitchen politics they don't matter yeah totally totally and ultimately people will have like you know again kitchens I think have changed an awful lot over the last 20 years but people would still
00:43:06
Speaker
Um, people would have your back and want to make sure that you were like, want to keep you in the job if you were doing a good job of that thing. So that, that I found would typically be the case in a new restaurant, like within, you know, within a couple of weeks, like any, uh, any kind of confusion or hassle about the idea that you were bed sharing would kind of would, would go. Yeah.
00:43:37
Speaker
In your opinion, how do you think restaurants have changed or or the industry, I guess, as a whole in the last 20 years? Well, I i mean, I wonder if I have the best perspective on it because the last 10 years, you know, I've been kind of outside on the fringes of that doing my own thing. And I've probably always been a little bit on the fringes to some degree because I was always sort of working on or coming at it from a slightly different perspective than than most people. but the impression I get, and I hope it's accurate, is that the conditions are getting better for people, less screaming and shouting, and I think it probably depends on where you are, what hours and stuff are are like, but I just, I also get the impression that like, that stuff is being thought about, at least even in a in a way that it wasn't, in a way that was much more before like, you know, well, shut up and get on with it, you know, is now like,
00:44:37
Speaker
now at least some changes are happening and places are certainly aware and thinking about that stuff. um So I hope it's a more positive environment to come into for people, unless something that you just have to like kind of try and get through until you get to a point that you can kind of have a bit more flexibility, do a bit more if you're anything. But i i'm I'm not sure. What's what's your experience?
00:45:06
Speaker
No, I think, I think definitely they've changed. I mean, I haven't had any really negative experiences since my last job in Australia, which was six and a half, nearly seven years ago. And that was just one particular head chef that was really, was a bit of a tyrant, amazing chef, but he was difficult tough. yeah But no, i I definitely have not. And a lot of people, I think, expect me to have some kind of story because I didn't work with a lot of other women in the kitchen. Quite often I was the only girl. yeah um So I know a lot of people sometimes want me to have that kind of story saying, you know, I had to work so much harder and it was, you know, I was picked on and all of that. but
00:45:46
Speaker
It really wasn't. So I think for my generation, at least in the kitchen, it's not what people sort of heard about from 20, 30 years ago. It's very different, my experiences at least. Sure. I guess I think maybe when I started out, I caught some of the tail end of the awful stuff, like, but not, you know, not not super directly all the time. Like, you know, seen like seeing pans being thrown and stuff like that and bins kicked across kitchens and you know people like screamed at in a way that again i really would hope is not doesn't exist anymore or certainly isn't tolerated anymore and things but i think that would have been from chefs that had come up through that previous sort of generation of stuff and my hope is that now really the people that are
00:46:39
Speaker
Launching that you know have launched their own restaurants and things in the last ten years the the places that people are really excited to go and eat or to go and work at and things it seems like there's a much more modern attitude. it Broadly speaking again I'm i'm sure sure there are places is where that's not the case and and I think there's also one thing that I do think is really positive is that we're bit by bit of finding ways to celebrate places doing well at that stuff and so you know It doesn't quite go hand in hand, but I think the increase in things like sustainability awards and recognition for that side of things, obviously that's a bit more focused on like ways of working and ingredients and things, but I think staffing and how you look after people should certainly be a part of that and is sometimes thought of as a part of that. And one of the things that restaurants should feel positive about like promoting themselves off the back of, like
00:47:36
Speaker
look how great our ingredients are, look how well we treat all of our staff, look how, you know, what a nice environment we've created. Because that's certainly something that would appeal to me is knowing you can go somewhere and have like incredible food, but also that the people are happy there. Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned before you said that you were kind of always operating from the outer fringes of the industry. What did you mean by that?
00:48:05
Speaker
um guess I guess just maybe I've had a slightly different experience to what most people would have potentially just because I because i started out like as a as someone like plant based.
00:48:23
Speaker
working in these restaurants and after a few years I then went on to kind of focus on working in plant-based restaurants but at the time there also wasn't like a huge amount of choice between those much more now and now there's there's very like ambitious places you could go and work and you know, Kirk's just opened plates in London, ah this restaurant in Holland that I mentioned, you know, 11 Madison Park, you know, now like as a three star plant based restaurant. um But none of that existed at that time. So that's part of what led me into like development and consulting was, I kind of got to a point where I was like, there's not if I want to keep pushing forward what I'm doing, there's not really
00:49:08
Speaker
a lot of places that I can go and kind of kick it up to the next level just by going and working in the next level of restaurant up so I started kind of doing my own thing more on the side and then yeah that's that's kind of led me to where I am now but it also meant I was a bit more comfortable potentially being on that like I quite early in my career was like well if I want to do my own think I'm going to kind of have to make that happen off my own back as well, you know, and that's been something that's kind of followed through and become part of how I work, I suppose, with the setup I have now for the tasting menus, but also like like when I did my cookbook, I self-published the cookbook, you know, if I do anything with like video or photo stuff, then I've taught myself a few years ago to like how to do the food photography and
00:50:03
Speaker
ah video side of things so all of those those things I guess are a bit unusual and a little bit sort of out of the normal but then you also end up kind of collecting this little weird skill set that you can use.
00:50:19
Speaker
very necessary when you have your own thing, I guess. Yeah. Well, it must be like, what you know, if you're when you're doing, you know, lots of people doing like pop ups, supper clubs, these kinds of things that like street food, you know, all of these events that are outside of like a traditional bricks and mortar place.
00:50:35
Speaker
you know you don't you don't have a budget for someone to do PR right for you and like or a food photographer or promotion or um you know any of those things. So you you have to either kind of learn to do them yourself or kind of figure out your way of operating you know in that that world. But that that i think is that I think is valuable and that's something I would maybe encourage younger chefs to get a little bit of experience doing or learn some of the skills that can you know can help you doing that stuff.
00:51:09
Speaker
Yeah, upskilling can only ever be a good thing. You know, like even if you, even if you don't use it every day, it's, um, you know, we've very quickly learned how to at least be half good at marketing. Um, you know, like there's a full time job and we're trying to integrate it into our everyday life. It's, um, yeah, I think upskilling is an amazing thing. Um, when did you, when did you start your YouTube channel? Uh, so that was probably, that was about three years ago, I think.
00:51:37
Speaker
um and um kind of partly came off the back of like coming out of the like ah really long lockdown, or i mean certainly like up in Manchester we were basically in lockdowns as long as you could possibly be.
00:51:53
Speaker
So it was a real long stint of like six months closed. And I kind of, coming out the other side of that was like, because everything had just gone during that period of time. And I thought both, okay, I would, I would kind of like to have something else you know there was still this sense of like well who knows maybe we're going to be back in this position in six months or a year so i wanted some another kind of project to be working on and also only cooking for for eight people a night there's only so far word of mouth will share what you're doing
00:52:29
Speaker
And I thought, you know, some of the stuff I was working on, I was putting ah an awful lot of time into and ah doing some things that I thought would be interesting to people. And even and interesting to the guests that are coming, but you can't go through everything you've done in every dish. You know, it becomes so tedious for people if you're like, oh, and I've done this, this, and this to this one little element. So um making these food videos was kind of a bit of a way of sharing a bit more of what I was up to a bit more.
00:53:00
Speaker
widely. Is it something that you enjoy doing? I have mixed feelings about it, actually. and I like having this way of sharing stuff. like I think that's really cool to be able to work on an idea and have it go on the menu, but also then be able to share it with like loads more people than I will ever get to cook it for.
00:53:25
Speaker
um And I also like the fact that sometimes it's creatively been quite good because it gives you, there are sometimes there are things that I will work on and then at the very end.
00:53:37
Speaker
Like even even if they're good, I'm like, it doesn't quite fit with the rest of the flow of the menu. It's not going to quite work for my menu. But I can put this up on the YouTube channel. I can show some of the techniques that I've used. I can show the process, some of the ideas. So that can be quite good. It has this other endpoint that means things can be valuable even if they don't end up making the cut for the menu. And and often you learn stuff from that that you then do use in something that makes makes the menu.
00:54:07
Speaker
The flip side of that though is that I just, I hate sitting and editing the videos, like just sitting at the computer is like, it's not what I got into cooking today. um Yeah, I find that process like quite miserable.
00:54:24
Speaker
up until about the last five percent of the process when it's very nearly done and then you're suddenly like quite quite suddenly out of nowhere you're like oh this feels like a finished thing nearly and then that's quite enjoyable to kind of put finishing touches to it but yeah the editing is it's not my favorite thing I don't think anybody enjoys the editing ever. Even for this podcast, it's I've got minimal editing and it's horrible. It's it the fact you can't really do something else at the same time. You know can't like have music on or something whilst you're doing it. you know or like It requires all of your attention in quite a
00:55:08
Speaker
Draining away. I think you know not in that satisfying. I'm making something with my hands way just like Sat trying to keep your attention on the screen. Yeah, it's not not my thing really Is that sort of how because you've got quite a quite a strong social media presence Did that come from YouTube or was that from before?
00:55:28
Speaker
Uh, I'm not sure really. Um, I definitely think it's quite nice. Like some of the messages I get and stuff from that that kind of come in via the YouTube stuff. That's definitely reaching people further away from here. So there's, uh, like it's watched a lot in, I think America's where like the, I haven't looked at the stats thing in quite a while, but certainly at one point at least America was mostly where it was being seen, which is, um,
00:55:58
Speaker
You know, obviously I wouldn't be mainly cooking for those people week to week. ah But I dinner i enjoy like the food photography side of things as well and and stuff. So if I've got new dishes, I quite often like i like trying to take a few minutes to get like a nice photo of them. and and post that up there and it's, you know, it's it's an important part of, again, if you don't have any PR side of things, like just reaching people, I think it's, you know, it's nice to try and share the nicest images and nicest sense of your food that you you can through those channels. You must realise that, um like, that yes, there are some really cool and important plant based restaurants coming up now.
00:56:46
Speaker
But in terms of the fact that you're sharing some very detailed and very specific recipes and tutorials on how to do things, and must feel you must feel a sense of pride knowing that you're probably lifting up the new generation of plant-based chefs. ah I hope so. I mean, that would be lovely if that's... um Yeah, I mean, I think it would be nice nice to put put stuff out there that's going to be useful to people. and me and Kirk have had this conversation a couple of times about the fact that like trying to do you know i think i think our food styles are quite different but we're in this similar position of like trying to do you know high-end tasting menu plant-based food and there isn't really a template for it and there isn't a bank of techniques necessarily to draw on so quite often you're you're trying to figure out how to do something and you're kind of starting from
00:57:42
Speaker
from scratch or from techniques that you've figured out yourself for other things. um And I think both of us felt like hopeful that your that it's nice to be able to, in part, be laying some groundwork that other people will be able to use then to go further with it and to to take what you're doing and um use that stuff them themselves. But also just to see that it's doable. like ah I there was a, so when I was like coming up as a young chef, weren't there weren't really many people doing the type of food that I wanted to do, they weren't doing it as like a plant-based thing, you know? So the chefs I was looking up to weren't plant-based chefs really. And so I guess it'd be kind of nice now that I hope someone coming into the industry, maybe doing their first couple of years in restaurants,
00:58:39
Speaker
and not sure whether, you know, perhaps they'd like to do plant-based food and they're not sure whether or not they can. Well, now they can look to people like Kirk and this restaurant in Holland and EMP and ah places like that and be like, well, it's, you know, it clearly, you you don't have to sacrifice quality in order to to do this. You can do it to like the highest level. It's just, you know, it's not necessarily going to be easy, but it can be done.
00:59:09
Speaker
I think what I like the most about your YouTube videos is I guess you have a plant-based restaurant and you you eat a plant-based diet and it's kind of what you are known for as part of your ethos. But some of your recipes, I look at them and I think of you know ways that we could use that to incorporate into our menu. It doesn't necessarily just have to be plant-based. There's some really cool and unusual techniques. and And like you said, there's probably a million different um, YouTube videos on how to make a bechamel or how to yeah cook a piece of steak. But I think what you're doing is very, very unique and it must take a lot of thought and a lot of trial and error and practice to kind of get to that point. Where do you, where do you start? How do you draw inspiration and where do you get your ideas for some of these wacky cool videos that you're making? Um, Hmm.
01:00:00
Speaker
ah I mean i so I have a little list of things that are like there's there's things that I'm doing on the menu that I think oh well that would be good to do and explain or rather at some point or to sort of show this process so ah light um like with the the bean to bar chocolate because I mentioned it earlier you know I thought that would be interesting for people to see and there are videos on that process but they maybe tend to be coming from a producer's point of view or specifically a chocolatier and so when I did that I did like a little series where I sort of first of all showed people the full process making like a traditional dark chocolate and then how once you know that process and the theory you can then adapt that and make like an oat milk
01:00:51
Speaker
milk chocolate but that's dairy free and then once you understand that you can kind of take that a step further and you can start making things like white chocolates in inverted commas but like where not just in order to make them dairy free but in order to start working with interesting flavors like you can swap out things like milk powder which is you know it's just not a great quality ingredient and not very flavorful anyway right so if you can use something like um like i was doing a black sesame white chocolate so using black sesame instead of the milk powder but what you end up with is this this chocolate with a lovely like
01:01:30
Speaker
toasted black sesame flavor. and i think once you you know So if you sort of start with a more traditional technique and a process and understanding it, and then you can you can start to add in the kind of creative things that you might want to do with it and take that further and further. um So I try and you know pick out things like that that I think might be interesting to share with people or things that are maybe harder to find information.
01:01:59
Speaker
on um and like the the koji vegetable charcuterie that i make like if someone wanted to do that for the first time that's you'd have to scour around and piece together bits of information from all over the place and stuff and hopefully it's helpful if you can just see like a five or ten minute video of here's the process here's the setup here's how i've done it you know how i figured out my version of doing it and um uh And it it also means you get to share what you're doing in a way that, like I say, some of those things I couldn't, I could serve, say, the Koji vegetable charcuterie to the guests. And some of them might want to know the full process, but plenty of them don't want to hear me talk for five minutes about like, here's how I've inoculated this or whatever.
01:02:50
Speaker
um so for the people that want to see that there's a place they can go and see it and and sometimes now i find that i have guests coming to eat and they've seen some of the videos already so they know how some of the dishes are made or afterwards they can go away and see it if they want to um and i think it's probably typically more people that are in the industry in kitchens and stuff that are yeah really interested in that stuff But how do how do you find the information to do it? If there's no real roadmap on how to do these things, I guess you can you know probably find some information about some things. But how do you find the information on how to do these new things? um I guess it's a mix of um like nothing nothing is better than trial and testing and experimentation. And so there are some things on the menu or techniques that I've worked on that are
01:03:46
Speaker
kind of purely that, that you have an idea and you keep testing and refining and changing your methods until you get to what you want to get with or until you abandon the idea and go, this is this not going to work. ah And then some things where you take bits of theory or bits of processes that people are using for other ah things you know I mentioned this one dish on the menu that does use dairy and that's a halloumi dish where I marinate the halloumi in koji and rose and ah it alters the texture of the halloumi, it softens it so it becomes quite like marshmallowy once you cook it in in a batter and then that has this low temperature, I use the rotavat to do a reduction of rhubarb
01:04:36
Speaker
um So it's kind of quite simple. There's really only like two elements to it. But with things like that, you know I knew people were using Koji is ah and the enzymes from Koji as a method of like tenderizing meat or fish and like aging things. But I hadn't seen anyone doing anything vegetarian with it, really. And so that came from then experimenting and thinking, well, could you take a ah another protein and like look at altering its texture and and flavor via that method? and
01:05:07
Speaker
So sometimes things like that, you're taking like ideas and bits of theory from other things and playing about with how you could how you could use them, and then and more traditional stuff too. There's a lot of traditional cooking and techniques that I either use just you know directly and you kind of just layer up the techniques that you're using, or I will think, well, could I adapt this element?
01:05:32
Speaker
so ah Something I'm making a video on at the moment. I don't know quite when it'll come out, probably not for ages. I've got a bit of a backlog on stuff, but like very, very simple, but a little crew starred tartlet sort of shells. So but the recipes you typically see for those will have some egg and some butter in there, but I, you know, it's certainly not for flavor. Like it's, it's binding and, and stuff. So I, a while ago,
01:06:05
Speaker
came up with a vegan plant-based version of of that. um which is relatively simple, but then allows you to make something, you know, they're so useful, those little tart shells, the fact you can fill it with anything and and stuff. And I think something like that potentially would be something that's useful for people, whether they're doing plant-based food or not, because if you, you know, if you're in a restaurant that does something like that as a little snack and 95% of your customers can have it, but maybe there's one person with a dairy allergy or you have one vegan guest,
01:06:41
Speaker
If you can change your recipe very slightly and still make something just as delicious, I did side-by-side tests, you really can't tell the difference once these are cooked, then how how handy to be able to have a version that you can give to e everyone. you know and So think things like that I think are nice to share once you figure out your your method.
01:07:04
Speaker
I think that's something that I've definitely learned probably in the last couple of years is if you can make it in a way, like you said, that's pretty much exactly the same and it covers you for diet trees and for yeah you know like lifestyle choices and stuff like that. It makes your life so much easier and yeah quite often it can be more cost-effective when you're looking at sort of the back end of running your own business. it's ah It's a really big deal to be able to you know not have to do one version of the cristades with butter and eggs and then a couple of them without to just yeah find a recipe that fits everything it's so much less manual labor yeah and and make service easier you know you're not having to track a separate like dietary make sure that that's like
01:07:50
Speaker
prepared separately, kept separate for when it's going out to guests and things like that. you know If you just know, cool, will all of these can be used in the same way? Maybe there's a different filling or whatever, but you don't have to have. and Yeah, and I think think probably that's something people increasingly think about, you know how they're going to cater for different types of guests. So if you can, again, if you can have more techniques like that,
01:08:20
Speaker
out there and you know i think that's kind of good good for everyone you know and i'm quite i'm happy sharing like pretty much everything that i figure out here like i feel like why would you not want to like share it more wildly widely. if you know If you want to come and have the the distinct experience of like the full menu, like they still have to come here to to have that. So if you can share there the things that you're figuring out along the way and some of what you're doing, great. More people get to see what you're doing and people get to use some of the useful stuff you figure out.
01:09:01
Speaker
Thank you for doing all the legwork for us. You mentioned um doing a bit of trial and error and some things you just have to abandon. What was the last sort of project that you had to abandon? What's the last thing I had to abandon? It's good if you have to think about it. No, I mean, a lot of stuff gets abandoned, unfortunately, because it just doesn't quite work. um The last thing I mean I'm sure I will come back to it in a different form but I was looking at swapping one of the savory courses and I was going to do um little ah ravioli um so I got to the stage of kind of doing
01:09:45
Speaker
all the different elements for that and how the dish was going to come together and it's like it's nice but it's just not as good as the thing i wanted to take off the menu so i can keep coming back to that and reworking it but at the moment i think better to just shelve it and come you know work on something else and there's one or two like really useful things that i got out of that there's uh There's an oil that I was using just as a flavoring element for it. It's like the smallest possible element of the dish, but I did that in a way I haven't done before. And that worked like fantastically. So that I can take and be like, cool. lab Well, I'll definitely use that at some point. Unfortunately, that's like 2% of the work that had gone into the thing. um But again, you know like some of those things
01:10:36
Speaker
I sometimes might potentially think, well, okay, either I can't maybe do that in service because I'm on my own or it doesn't fit, but maybe some version of that in the future might be a good thing to do. a like a video on or part of it might be something to to to share in another way.
Commitment to Quality and Creativity
01:10:53
Speaker
And you you know you return to ideas. There's often things that I work on as a first draft for the menu and don't work. And then six months later or a year later, you remember you're working on something else and you suddenly go, oh, but the filling I made for this or the source I made for this other thing, that would be perfect here. So I quite often have
01:11:16
Speaker
projects on the go and I have to just sort of remind myself it's fine if they they don't work at first. like And I think you also have to be happy to like, there's a danger of like the so sunken costs, like um this this feeling that I've put a load of time into this, I've bought ingredients for this, so it has to go on the menu.
01:11:35
Speaker
And I try to be really, really strict with myself about being like, it it doesn't, you can just consider, try try not to maybe think of the time as wasted, but you it's not, you're not better off for putting something that's not as good as it should be on the menu. I would rather harshly edit what I'm doing and cut 90% of stuff and end up with 10% being as good as it can possibly be.
01:12:02
Speaker
Yeah, I think that takes a little bit of, um, I guess, um, mental discipline because ah definitely I know myself, if I'm trying something different, trying a different flavor combination and I've spent a bit of time on it and I'm just not loving it. I'm like, I've made it and I have a final product. The final product is good, but it's just not what I wanted it to be. So you have to be strict with yourself and be like, okay, well that's our dessert for the next three days. Cause I don't want to serve it. Yeah, totally.
01:12:30
Speaker
yeah I agree and and you know and it's harder in the moment to necessarily think of but you I mean you learn by knowing what doesn't work too right like so then when you're trying something else and your mind might go to being like well could I do it this way and you remember something that you tried and didn't work out when you did it that way so you kind of it's all valuable like and it's part of the it's part of the process if you're doing something that isn't like especially when it's not so classical. And it's, you know, you yeah have to sort of expect a degree of failure within that, which again, you know, I don't think is you can you can use experience and theory and technique and all that kind of stuff to cut out as much of that as possible. But ultimately, to know something works, you have to you have to try it and be willing for it to fail to write.
01:13:23
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. I mean, it it stings a little bit because there is a direct cost that comes to that, but also you can't look at it as a hundred percent of failure because like you said, now you have that information that, okay, that way of doing it doesn't work.
01:13:36
Speaker
yeah yeah and even you know sometimes things like i was saying before about the the nice thing with having the youtube channel for me is that sometimes things do work but ultimately i'm like but i already have another dish that maybe uses that ingredient prominently and i'm not willing to cut that dish from the venue or so i can't really have two and courses that use beetroot as like say ah a central flavor so I have to stick with the the one that is best or fits the menu best and then this other thing could be like delicious but um
01:14:13
Speaker
you know maybe a a chef in another position might you know a lot of people would have their flagship restaurant and then perhaps they have something more casual and more bistro-y and other you know so ideas can get used there and for me I guess in part that's what the youtube channel can be is it's my other spot to use ideas or present things that um if they even if they don't quite fit for how I'd want them on the menu You sound very protective over the dishes that are in your menu, you've said a couple of times now like I made this but I'm not willing to part with this other dish for it because it's not the same. Yeah I mean that's that's the thing for me I suppose as well it's like these other their elements aren't nice to do but ah fundamentally as a chef you know it's it's the menu and the guests coming here is like
01:15:02
Speaker
always 100% like the most important thing. So that's the thing where I am at my most like chefy and kind of unwilling to compromise and will you know like drag myself through whatever I need to drag myself through to like make that experience as it as it should be and then the other stuff is kind of nice to have on the periphery of that
01:15:27
Speaker
Uh, I want to ask a question. I'm trying to think of a way to phrase it. That doesn't make it sound like it's a bad question. Cause it's not i'm just interested. Do you feel like, um, as opposed to traditional cooking, where it might just be like a piece of meat and some garnish where you don't have to manipulate the product that much. Do you feel like with plant-based cooking, you need to manipulate the products quite a lot more, not, not in a bad way, but just to kind of extract different textures and flavors and everything from them.
01:15:57
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, so there's kind of two ways of looking at it, I think. um So one thing is, is that I think typically that very broad strokes, what I would say with plant based cooking is that tends to be more work and preparation that goes on ahead and then like less cooking and timing things to order you know so you're kind of you are potentially like working on things and like putting different elements and layers of flavor and texture together but yeah again generally more ahead and then it's finishing things and and like completing them to play as a very general rule um
01:16:41
Speaker
The other thing I find though, so that that can mean like more steps that you take something through. So if you were doing something like that vegetable charcuterie that we talked about, that's a lot of steps. But then also, some of that is about what we see as a raw ingredient. and but Because if you bought charcuterie in to a restaurant, you might see that as your raw ingredient.
01:17:06
Speaker
ah But of course it's not. It's had all these things done to it already. It's just I can't commercially buy beetroot charcuterie as a start point, so I have to make it. Or um you know a miso, like so you can buy certain types of miso, but maybe you want something that's made with a particular there's a miso that I make with algae. I like i have to make that myself. um So sometimes there is those steps that you're having to take things through to develop the flavor.
01:17:36
Speaker
and or texture but then the flip side of that is like a lot of what I do is about like really stripping stuff back and even if it's using like technique and technology one of the things I use the Rotavap for a lot is to try and get the simplest most stripped back and intensified version of the flavor of something so the rhubarb molasses that I spoke about for an element of a dish that is really just rhubarb juice, like sweetens a little, and then using the Rotavap to concentrate that at low temperature. So you get a very intense, very concentrated rhubarb flavor that hasn't been treated with heat. So you still get that freshness and vibrancy from it. And that's quite often how I will be looking at at least some elements of ah dishes is like how,
01:18:25
Speaker
how sort of how well can I express this ingredient to people? Or how can I show them there's this aspect of something they don't necessarily always think of as being luxurious, but you can be like, no, it's it's really it really can be luxurious. And I don't wanna mess with its flavor. I just wanna present it as purely or as intensely or you know in in his ah and as beautiful form as I i can.
01:18:52
Speaker
I think one thing that I really like the idea of plant-based cooking is that all vegetables pretty much are equal. Like it's not, it's not like in the world of protein where you have wagyu and turba and caviar. Like, yes, there, obviously we know some things cost more than others, but there doesn't seem to be that kind of hierarchy in vegetables like there is in protein. Yeah. I think that's true. I mean, you know, obviously different.
01:19:20
Speaker
you know different quality of produce you'll get and stuff like but um in terms of in terms of how i think about say luxury for instance the thing that typically i think now on my menu in terms of luxury because i'm not using something like caviar is something like say that algae miso and the dish that are produced with that well that the the algae is excruciatingly expensive and then the process is so long to get it to the point that it's done just fermented into a miso and then even the sauce then that I make with it is made with that miso and a cold distilled tea of flowers that's that's mixed with it so the the labour that goes into producing this small amount of a finished sauce is like that for me is what makes that sort of
01:20:14
Speaker
luxurious and special and unique like you couldn't you couldn't get it anywhere else that's it's kind of its uniqueness and then you know obviously equally important that it's delicious um but that's that's kind of how i tend now to think about uh luxury within that kind of plant-based world is is like the, you know, sometimes just the the amount of time that it can take to make one of those things that generally speaking I think otherwise people would just see as an unreasonable amount of time.
01:20:47
Speaker
But do you find that hard to translate that to your guests? Like if you've got someone who enjoys food, but you know, hasn't like, we know as chefs that things are more expensive, but in terms of having a plant-based restaurant, if they see algae on the menu, do they know that that algae was probably more expensive than a piece of protein? Do you do you see what I'm trying to say?
01:21:06
Speaker
Yeah I don't think they typically know those things um or know some of those specifics but people ask a lot of questions and one of the nice things with bringing the food out to the guests as well is that I can have a bit of a chat to them about those things you know within within reason you've always got something you need to be getting back to the kitchen for but um it's nice being there and people being able to ask questions and with that dish I will show them the the blue alchemy so as I'm after I've brought out the dish they'll they'll get to sort of see that as its own product um
01:21:43
Speaker
And some of the descriptions, ah and you can't do it with everything, but there's there's a mushroom charcuterie dish where I talk them through the that steps, and I kind of do that early on in the meal, in part, to help them understand that these are the kinds of levels of work that are going into some of the elements of the ah food. So for that,
01:22:06
Speaker
that particular thing is is so like a one bite mouthful and the the mushroom charcuta is made by very slice very thinly slicing mushrooms, ah dehydrating them and then rehydrating them in a stock and then I add an enzyme that binds the mushrooms and they get pressed into a block and then you take this block of mushrooms and that gets cooked and then cut into smaller pieces, those pieces get smoked over oak, and then they get marinated with aromatics and in oil again at the the end.
01:22:42
Speaker
And so, you know, it's for this little one bite thing, but it, and I couldn't go through all of this stuff with every course, but I think it's useful saying that kind of thing to the guests so that they then go, oh, okay, right. So I can understand how the flavor has been built up in this particular thing. And they can essentially infer from that across the rest of the meal. They know the kinds of things you're doing, the sort of level of work that you're putting into ingredients to kind of get them to the ah point they're experiencing them at.
01:23:10
Speaker
That must be a really exciting part of what you're doing is, you know, obviously sharing, um, some of the techniques and some of the labor and everything that goes behind it, but also introducing them to new products like, like the blue algae miso, you know, yeah I've never tried blue algae. And I don't think that must be a really exciting part of what you're doing.
01:23:31
Speaker
it's yeah do you know It's cool that on the one hand the challenge of some of the ways you're working is trying to you're sometimes in relatively uncharted territory and so there's not always a guide to take you through that, which does sometimes mean you can just go up little cul-de-sacs and you have failures and stuff.
01:23:51
Speaker
The flip side of that is that you're also, because you're in a comparatively unexplored area, there's just there's so much room for new stuff and creative stuff that um there's there's all this space to find and share things that are going to be new to people and unique. And that's you know that's really exciting. It feels like there's this big, big creative space to to play about in.
01:24:23
Speaker
Do you have any mentors or did you have any mentors coming up in the industry? ah not Not really. I would say the closest thing that I had really was the chef Mark that I mentioned earlier, who wasn't really a mentor, probably wouldn't thank me for calling him a mentor because it also makes him sound you know a lot older for than me, which he isn't. But I think But Mark was, you know, was this big inspiration for me opening and and running MySpace the way that I do and was there as someone that I could like ask questions of and bounce ideas of. And one of the first people that I think was so
01:25:05
Speaker
ah
01:25:07
Speaker
you know was was very like he like he was doing a vegetarian version of his tasting menu a quite a long time before it was it was a more common thing. and So I think he was perhaps not mentors is maybe the right word but he was like a bit of a he was like a kind of guiding force through certain things. Someone that I would often look to and be like, well, if Mark's figured out a way to do this, then I either I can, or maybe I can ask him how he's done this particular, how he works on this scale and stuff. So yeah, I think. How many days a week are you are you operating?
01:25:45
Speaker
So ah normally, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, at dinner service. And then I do some Sunday services, but not every week. And then I'll be closed for a week, a month. So the Sundays, it's quite nice to have. because Sometimes it's and a lunchtime, you know it's the same menu, but it's a bit easier sometimes for people travel-wise. But it's also,
01:26:14
Speaker
It's also nice not to be doing that every week, sometimes have a Sunday off. And then every now and again, i depending how, if I have something else I need to fit in that month, I need to like rejig things, then sometimes what I'll do is do a ah longer week and I'll do a Monday night service as well. If it means I can kind of drop a day elsewhere in the week to fit in some kind of social commitment or something like that. but but can i always i really i like you you know I sometimes will add the Mondays in to because it's so much easier for people that work in hospitality to get to and that's particularly nice as well to get to cook for people in the industry.
01:26:55
Speaker
And how far in advance do you booked up? This is for my own reasons. So it's full. ah So we're speaking in October and it's currently full up to the end of February. So March is the next batch of reservations that I'll release. So it's typically, it's like, it's around five months ahead that I sort of release the reservations and they tend to fill up pretty much as soon as they they go up.
01:27:21
Speaker
What a luxury, that's the dream, isn't it? That is, yeah, do you know what? i like i try I do try to be conscious of and remind myself that that is like a really privileged position to to be in. It's a really nice position to be in to know that your reservations are all full and they're full, you know, good chunk of time ah ahead. and So yeah, i try I try not to take that for for granted because that is, yeah, yeah, that's a lovely thing.
01:27:47
Speaker
But obviously it speaks to what you're doing and how you're doing it as well. You know, I wouldn't by any stretch say that it's lucky. I would say that it's obviously a reward for, well, not a reward even. I don't have the right word for it, but it's it's a showing sign of what you're doing and what you're doing in the industry and that people are really, really interested in it.
01:28:07
Speaker
Well, I hope so. I mean, I definitely, you know, like a an awful lot of hard work and energy and and passion goes into to to doing it all. um And then, you know, also it is so small that it's only, you know, often it's, you know, a table of four and two tables of two, and that's that night filled for me. So it's not a huge number of seats to to sell.
01:28:30
Speaker
um And proud of what I've achieved with it and stuff, but I also think it's indicative of like how how different things are now to 10 years ago. because and you know, again, this two Michelin star vegan restaurant I went to in Holland, likewise booked up, you know, six months in advance and almost impossible to get into. And Kirk's restaurant plates, when they released their reservations, they were like instantly booked up as far as ahead as you you could be. And again, I think maybe like 10 years ago, the idea that there would have been that level of demand and enthusiasm for that for plant based food.
01:29:14
Speaker
And again, um i would I would put money on the fact that for all of us as well, probably most of our guests aren't plant-based as a majority at least. um So that people's perception of what that food can be has shifted so much, which I think is incredibly positive. It no longer feels like you're having to like,
01:29:36
Speaker
jump over this hurdle of being like, I promise it's actually quite good. You know, I know, you know, it's like people get that it's that it can be it can be brilliant. So that I think is a really nice, like a corner that I feel has been turned as like a whole with that whole sort of movement within food.
01:29:56
Speaker
yeah I don't feel like you or Kirk or anyone is having to try and convince people and say, you know, I promise it's good. I think yeah that it's just a, it's a thing now when people are seeking it out and people want to know and have a different flavor profile and tried things that they might probably have never tried before. Um, I think it's a really unique time in the industry for that. Um, and I think we're all very lucky for people like you and people like Kirk. I'll keep mentioning him because hopefully he'll come on the podcast.
01:30:23
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I was going to say you should you should get him on because a like I mean, obviously he's a fantastic chef, but also his story is so unique. You know, it's such an unusual journey and and how well he did on a great British menu last year as well, I think is is another of these things that like it just helps to shift the window of how people view this whole area of food. You know, it's sort of it.
01:30:51
Speaker
it's All of those things are are quite significant, I think, and for younger people coming into the industry to just go, oh, okay, this is this actually all looks quite different now, you know. Yeah, i think I think for me, i I would love to come to a restaurant like yours because it's most definitely going to be a tasting menu like I've never ever had before. So I think in in the in the vein of looking for something different, um I think it's probably the best thing that any young chef could do if they wanted to go and try something very, very different but done at the highest level possible. I think that's definitely where they should be looking to go to expand
01:31:32
Speaker
their palette and their ideas and their creativity. Sure. Yeah. And there's value in in in, like, there's value in everything within food as well, right? Like, I have a huge amount of respect for, like, very traditional classical French
Culinary Inspiration and Techniques
01:31:46
Speaker
cooking. You know, I think that's incredibly beautiful. um You know,
01:31:51
Speaker
Japanese food had a huge influence on me and the sort of the deceptive sort of apparent simplicity within that that hides all of this complexity behind it and I think you know as a young chef understanding both like very classical technique and then also uh some you know new more emerging things or things that we're just starting to understand maybe as as cooks and as an industry it's kind of nice to have a bit of both I think as so a rounded way of ah of starting off. Vincent my partner is French so we have to say that we like French cooking otherwise he won't help me edit the podcast so. Ah man it's so good though good French for you you know and like it's you know the
01:32:35
Speaker
it Yeah, I mean, I'm i'm a huge huge fan of that and having started off in restaurants as well where I was using like, you know, much more traditional technique and French, you know, sort of modern French cooking, I suppose, like, I yeah have have a huge amount of respect and time for that.
01:32:55
Speaker
I have a question. It's ah it's a finishing tradition. um Nobody likes it, but I'm going to ask it anyway.
Work Ethic and Hospitality Industry Connections
01:33:02
Speaker
If there was one thing that you wish the general public knew about the industry or or were more aware of about our industry, what would that be?
01:33:13
Speaker
huh um all right No, that's it's interesting. i was just Okay well what I was gonna say was I think it would be really good, you know people have never worked in hospitality, like I think for those people it would be really good to understand like how hard working it is, like I genuinely I think you learn a work ethic you know extremely fast and and well if you're gonna work in the industry, and I think for people going out to eat them, understanding the care, the effort that goes into stuff. So that was the thing that jumped into my mind, but I also don't wanna just focus on, not that that's a negative, but that's a hard thing about our industry. It's an awful lot of hard work. I think maybe the other thing that the public wouldn't know, but it's a really beautiful, positive thing is the level of,
01:34:08
Speaker
connection it can give you with people and how instantly you know if you go to a restaurant and they know you're in the industry it's like you cut through a layer of stuff immediately and you know people are straight away like you know talking talking to you on a slightly different level because they know you're going to be interested in how certain things have been done things like that or You know, I've found even when I went like I've been very lucky to do some cooking in other countries and continents and like I did a pop up in Mexico and I did some ah ah ah dinner out in Sesh, like really rural Seshuan China a couple of years ago. And in all of these places you go in and you have this instant sense of a way of connecting with people because people are really excited to show you what's cool about their food and cooking and and stuff.
01:35:00
Speaker
and it can be a real shortcut to kind of understanding a place and people on a particular level and connecting with people so like quickly so I think in the right circumstances it's like this incredible pass to like immediately bonding with people and immediately having this like big thing in common with them and and that is maybe something that people that have never worked in the industry wouldn't have had that that same experience of.
01:35:33
Speaker
That's so true. It's kind of like a, like a really big family when it's at its best, you know, yeah yeah yeah it's so exciting when you meet someone new and they're, you find out they're a chef and they're, you know, maybe from a different country or a different culture. And they're so excited to share with you, you know, what their mum cooked them for dinner, you know, what their childhood dinners were like. And it is this, like you said, this really quick pass to connectivity when it's, when it's right.
01:35:59
Speaker
Yeah absolutely and you know and again I think part of that does come from everyone knowing you know that everyone else will have to work really hard to get to wherever they are doing their thing and stuff so it's it's this lovely supportiveness and like I said at its best it's this it can be also this way of getting things done like you know you really you want something done. And you ask someone that you trust or rely on in the hospitality business, stuff will be done. Yeah, you know, there's there's so many cool sides to to the business. And I think that's what keeps us, you know, big part of what keeps us all like, engaged with something when it, when it can be hard as well.
01:36:40
Speaker
That's really good. Nobody said that yet. I really like that. Oh, cool. I really like that.
Conclusion and Reflections on Culinary Insights
01:36:44
Speaker
Well, thank you so much for coming on and spending the last hour and a half with us. That's been really, really insightful and I've really, really loved it. I hope I haven't bored you too much. No, no, it's been it's been absolutely lovely to to have a chat. Like I'm, you know, I'm i'm terrible for the fact that I could just basically keep, keep wanging on for for ages about all of this stuff. That's what we want for a podcast. It's perfect. All right. I'm going to let you get on with your day, but thank you so much for that.
01:37:10
Speaker
oh my pleasure lovely to meet you you as well cheers by che right