This post has been a long time coming, but I feel I've needed to let a certain amount of time pass in order for me to digest what my experience has meant to me, and how it has changed me and the way I cook. Over a year ago, I convinced my parents to join me for lunch in a Leeds restaurant, at a place I thought might be a big deal. I'd heard that Michelin had been sniffing around the place, and that the food was either the most astonishing case of all mouth and no trousers, or that the chef patron was a potential culinary genius. All we had to do was make the short train ride, pay a reasonable sum of money, and find out.
As it happened, in the interim between making our booking and turning up for lunch, The Man Behind The Curtain gained it's Michelin star, whilst simultaneously Michael O'Hare became something of a televisual star chef on the back of his appearance on the BBC's Great British Menu. Suffice it to say that by this point expectations were riding fairly high. I'd convinced my folks on the back of Marina O'Louglin's Guardian piece, but now the viewing public and the rubber man were in on the act as well, so, despite not knowing what to expect, we knew that we expected something special, whatever that night be.
What followed was one of the most memorable lunches of my life. By way of an introduction we were served a devastatingly dry and crisp cava, which I think was the Augusto Torelli Mata Kripta, but more astonishing was the langoustine tartare, mussel consommé and parsley oil. We tasted it,then looked at each other with a wordless glance that said 'yes'. You already know what the food is like, you've seen the pictures.
I'm incredibly grateful that I hadn't seen the pictures, that I don't know what was coming. If you come up with such stunning a dish as presa and secretos of Iberian pork, boquerone anchovies, smoked egg yolk and so on, it rightly becomes famous. I'm just glad it was a surprise, because what a surprise!
Like a magic trick, the dishes became more impossible and more delicious every time I remembered them, with each re-telling everything became more exquisite and surprising. Each time I though about what I'd eaten, I became more obsessed, more determined to find out how the trick had been done. I had to know what happened backstage. As the immaculately wonderful Penn and Teller tell us, you never do the same trick twice, you don't let the audience see your preparation, and you NEVER do the cups and balls with clear plastic glasses. I wanted to see the kitchen's balls with clear glasses.
Like a magic trick, the dishes became more impossible and more delicious every time I remembered them, with each re-telling everything became more exquisite and surprising. Each time I though about what I'd eaten, I became more obsessed, more determined to find out how the trick had been done. I had to know what happened backstage. As the immaculately wonderful Penn and Teller tell us, you never do the same trick twice, you don't let the audience see your preparation, and you NEVER do the cups and balls with clear plastic glasses. I wanted to see the kitchen's balls with clear glasses.
I emailed the restaurant, and, after finally getting the email adress right, tried again, and was surprised to receive a prompt response. I assumed there'd be plenty of chefs would be willing to apply to skivvy in the kitchen for free just to see how it all came together. Once agin, I'd got in just in time. Could I commit to doing a week? Yes I could, and with the help of some friends with a spare room in Kirkstall, I promptly booked a week off work, and booked myself and my BMX on a train to Leeds, simultaneously rigid with excitement and crapping my pants that I'd just blagged my way into the country's most talked about restaurant kitchen.
I'm not sure I was ever really myself for all the time that I was there. I'd be shredding potatoes on a mandolin, or skinning a side of cod, or scooping the fleshy innards from sea urchins with a golden teaspoon, then I'd catch myself, look up and think 'shit, this is actually happening' . The first night after staff lunch, the lights were dimmed and I was putting hake cheeks and marinated cod into a water bath for service, for actual customers. Paying customers in a Michelin starred restaurant that had a couple of months previously blown my mind.
It was, if anything, the sheer ordinariness of it all that was the most jarring and uncanny, but of course, that is when the penny started to drop. Cooking at this level is only attainable by the meticulous coordination of processes executed with rigorous and exacting control. What was eaten that night had been rehearsed ad infinitum by previous services, and that nights service was a rehearsal for those that would follow. It's something that I find particularly irksome about the term 'experimental cuisine', as though experiment is something that happens when all the shackles are off, and you throw out the rule book and just see what happens. If experimental science worked like that planes would fall out of the sky and medicines wouldn't work. In order to innovate competently, you need a deep understanding of what happens when you do things the usual way, and you must understand how and why such things behave.
This ties into the lasting effect of my time there, and it was something I didn't expect. Working in that environment caused me to break down certain barriers and experiment and mix things I did know, and had researched and looked into. I consider myself very tied to classical and old school French cooking, the stuff you teach yourself by reading Escoffier, Jane Grigson, Julia Child, Claudia Roden and Jonathan Meades at university (ok, maybe that's just me). At the same time, I'd become obsessed by the cooking I saw all around me growing up in Sheffield, successive waves of immigration from Italy and India, and most importantly, China.
There's a line of reasoning that goes that the most authentic cultural expression of a people's cuisine exists where they are outsiders. You only get steak and kidney pudding in Buenos Aires be use that's where the ex-pats need it. In Sheffield, down home Chinese places turn out Chengdu classics, because it's in vogue for Chinese restaurants at the moment, but also because it's what the massive student population want, food is a form of remembering. What has this got to so with my time as a stagiere in Leeds you ask? Let me explain:
I had no idea that I would come away from The Man Behind The Curtain feeling that the regional Chinese cookery of my home town and my classical French background would be forever inseparable, but there you go. It gave me the confidence to think that all the influences that go into what I cook could coalesce, and hopefully make something personal to me, and more importantly, make me a much better cook, by using what I understand, with rigour, but also creative freedom. The best holiday I ever took.
I'm not sure I was ever really myself for all the time that I was there. I'd be shredding potatoes on a mandolin, or skinning a side of cod, or scooping the fleshy innards from sea urchins with a golden teaspoon, then I'd catch myself, look up and think 'shit, this is actually happening' . The first night after staff lunch, the lights were dimmed and I was putting hake cheeks and marinated cod into a water bath for service, for actual customers. Paying customers in a Michelin starred restaurant that had a couple of months previously blown my mind.
It was, if anything, the sheer ordinariness of it all that was the most jarring and uncanny, but of course, that is when the penny started to drop. Cooking at this level is only attainable by the meticulous coordination of processes executed with rigorous and exacting control. What was eaten that night had been rehearsed ad infinitum by previous services, and that nights service was a rehearsal for those that would follow. It's something that I find particularly irksome about the term 'experimental cuisine', as though experiment is something that happens when all the shackles are off, and you throw out the rule book and just see what happens. If experimental science worked like that planes would fall out of the sky and medicines wouldn't work. In order to innovate competently, you need a deep understanding of what happens when you do things the usual way, and you must understand how and why such things behave.
This ties into the lasting effect of my time there, and it was something I didn't expect. Working in that environment caused me to break down certain barriers and experiment and mix things I did know, and had researched and looked into. I consider myself very tied to classical and old school French cooking, the stuff you teach yourself by reading Escoffier, Jane Grigson, Julia Child, Claudia Roden and Jonathan Meades at university (ok, maybe that's just me). At the same time, I'd become obsessed by the cooking I saw all around me growing up in Sheffield, successive waves of immigration from Italy and India, and most importantly, China.
There's a line of reasoning that goes that the most authentic cultural expression of a people's cuisine exists where they are outsiders. You only get steak and kidney pudding in Buenos Aires be use that's where the ex-pats need it. In Sheffield, down home Chinese places turn out Chengdu classics, because it's in vogue for Chinese restaurants at the moment, but also because it's what the massive student population want, food is a form of remembering. What has this got to so with my time as a stagiere in Leeds you ask? Let me explain:
I had no idea that I would come away from The Man Behind The Curtain feeling that the regional Chinese cookery of my home town and my classical French background would be forever inseparable, but there you go. It gave me the confidence to think that all the influences that go into what I cook could coalesce, and hopefully make something personal to me, and more importantly, make me a much better cook, by using what I understand, with rigour, but also creative freedom. The best holiday I ever took.
