chefmatt

Is this your mum Marc? I am allergic to trumpets, could i get trombone cream instead with the pork crisps?!

the lobster spaghetti does look pretty unappetising, but then we are all talking about the place so the whole thing seems to have done the trick.

what is going on with the cheese, strawberries!! ridiculous. all looks pretty crap to me, apart from the ham, and why is it served on old wine boxes, have they run out of plates? is D'yquem really the right wine to match a hot chocolate pudding, surely a cup of tea would be better. the espresso is shocking but i guess the photographer chose a photo late on in his shoot, if only you could find photographers who know justa tiny bit about food. a menu for complete chinless wonders, anyone here who likes the sound of it needs to grow up a little, a bit like me dreaming i would own a ferrari and a powerboat at the age of ten!! rant over, back to work now

i have been pushed towards contract but for a couple of personal reasons i feel i really need a break from cooking, thats why i like the idea of consulting or buying. but, yes, some of the contract stuff looks really attractive and would certainly help on the hours front. where are you cooking now simon?

that'll be the one!

thanks again everybody, you have all given me a few things to think about. i think if i was ever going to start my own business it would be a pub or restaurant but at the moment i want to avoid stress and would rather be in someone's employ. ahhh thanks Adey, most of my posts are when i get annoyed by something and EG is a vent for my frustrations so i end up ranting! I finish next friday and after the three days i have just had it is certainly not before time. Some of my chefs seem to have lost the ability to cook and make sensible decisions over the last few days! I have tried to avoid telling people where i work as the anonymity grants me a certain freedom of speech not allowed when i have my boss to think about. It seems like there is no harm coming out now i am leaving. I am head chef of a restaurant in Wandsworth Common, South London

thanks guys, the private chef sounds very appealing, how do you go about finding what is around? also, being married i am not as flexible as i used to be. i like the idea of buying, especially for one of the higher quality companies, thanks ravelda. i am already on the case with NPD but i am not sure it is for me, i need to find a little more about it, i fear it may be too restrictive.

I quite like the idea of teaching but only if people really want to learn! I think like many chefs i don't suffer fools gladly. I think going into a different arm of the catering industry i may have to work on my patience and my people skills!

This is probably the wrong thread to open this up on but the restaurant life thread sounds mainly U.S. based. I have been head chef of a michelin starred restaurant for the last four years and after thinking long and hard have made several lifestyle choices, the up shot of which is that i am leaving at the end of Jan and am in need of some employment. I was hoping for some suggestions as to where to apply my food knowledge without having to be chained to the stove for 17 hours a day. Rewarding as it is it can really get to you after 8 years in the same place. I am willing to take a considerable paycut as i realise i am inexperienced in other areas of the industry. Recruitment companies are just desperate to push me into either another head chef position or contract catering which i would consider but is far from ideal, they obviously want to make the biggest commission out of me. I am sure i will eventually end up back in the kitchen but for the mean time i need something slightly less physically demanding. I have considered consultancy, food development and poossibly magazines. Anyone got any advice? Matt

i am a chef and i am with zoticus on this. i don't wish to insult Ramsay because i have massive admiration for him, but as a business man not a chef. I would certainly rather spend my money at an establishment where it hasn't been reduced to formula. just talking yesterday about food in the restaurants under the ramsay umbrella that it is hard to criticise but for me has no wow factor. I bet it did when he was cooking. When his head chefs are cooking they always have to think to themselves "would gordon approve of this?" this leads to them not to cook from the heart.

for food to have soul the chef has to start out as a great cook.

I think there are certainly examples where having the proprietor behind the stoves is a hinderance rather than a help and can actually hold the restaurant back. The person that the proprietor hands over to needs to be on the same wavelength as far as the philosophy of the restaurant goes. I have heard some less than complimentory things said about le gavroche recently and Michel Roux is there a lot. River Cafe i have had very bad food sent to me right under the watchful eye of rose gray. on the other hand i have only had exceptional food at the anchor and hope when jonathan is cooking, but then his food requires a tremendous amount of judgement and very little formula. I think basil dog is right it really depends on the restaurant and i really hope you have found the right person for the job as for as your restaurant is concerned because it will really make the difference between a stress free life and a constant headache! To answer the question, as one of those people behind the stoves with the proprietor's name above the door i have to say that it really doesn't make any difference to me when choosing a restaurant. What makes me feel more comfortable is that the nominated head chef is preparing my food.

How fair is it to review a restaurant the first week it opens. What does it prove? Very few restaurants, regardless of chef's reputation, location, country, or style are perfect so soon after opening. Give Ducasse time to fix whatever problems, real or imagined, exist at the dorcester and i am sure it will approach his other fine dining restaurants in Europe. Also, complaining about the price is foolish., Are you expecting, an inexpensive restaurant run by one of this generations greatest chefs, in one of the most famous hotels in London. ← Very fair if you are charging top whack. if you are paying full price for a product it is irrelevent whether they have been there one day or 20 years. This is why so many restaurants are offering the first few weeks at half price - everybody's happy, even the critics have to concede that they weren't charged a total bill. maybe what we should be asking is if it is sensible for people who know as much about the workings of a restaurant as we all do to be dining there in the first week.

disappointing, sorry, before i get nailed for a spelling mistake!!

i just think there are more subtle ways of marketing your restaurant like giving people great food and service and letting the business grow instead of trying to get tonnes of people through the door, not being able to cope with the numbers and dissapointing them. when you are subject to the best marketing you shouldn't be aware of it.

Francis Kiohi, when on earth did he work at Chez Bruce? The whole thing makes me want to take a wide berth because it has marketing written all over it. If you say its popularity is growing then what do you need a press release for? "An inviting décor awaits" surely that is true of any hospitality establishment that wishes to remain in business. in my opinion words like stylish and indulgent should only be used by critics, and not the best ones at that. you are setting high expectations and in doing that you are unlikely to exceed people's expectations.

couldn't get a table at champignon so david recommended 5 north st in winchcombe. it has one star, slightly reminiscent of the merchant house. 20 odd covers, husband and wife team. The good food guide says there is no choice in the evening, so having a fussy wife had to call and check. Turns out they have been slightly misrepresented in the guide. They have three menus at different price points that are totally interchangable. this seems silly to me, why don't they just do the same as the merchant house and have three choices but then charge alc? they also have a few specials and the table next to us were regs and asked if they had any pheasant in the house, it tuyrned out that he did and it was prepared for them, nice touch. the food nothing really to write home about, although nicely prepared and very tasty. Rarebit and rhubarb chutney very tasty canape. amuse, cauliflower and rosemary soup with pumkin cream, tasty enough but could only taste rosemay. i hate pointless amuses. scallops with porkbelly and a puree i can't remember, it was two flavours and i think one was jerusalem chokes but it didn't taste like it. this was tasty and well cooked but the belly could have been crisper and the flavours wern't distinct. main: sirloin of beef with horseradish mash and pot roast/glazed root vegetables. sirloin very good, mash muted horseradish flavour but nice. veg crap, came as a beef stew on the side, not glazed at all, and not the best cut for braising, a little stringy, oxtail or cheek would have been so much better, veg just like after you have cooked a sauce and wish to discard it, over cooked completely. too much meat on the dish. shame because the stuff on the plate was lovely, just some green veg would have set the dish off perfectly imho. didn't have desser6t, trying not to eat sugar and there were very long waits between courses. i think they are trying to give a special prolonged dining experience. admirably they don't charge service or leave the slip open. i asked how you are meant to leave a tip if you have no cash. luckily we had some cash as service was very good from his wife.

we do eight or nine choices a course with one supplement per course. sometimes we won't have the supplement on the most expensive dish, for example we may have scallops on the starter which we will supplement but we would have a less popular but more costly starter (brains or sweetbreads). So people are happy to pay the supplement for scallops because we give a good portion and this easily supplements other ingredients. We would do it on the main with venison and brill, the supplement being on the venison. i do agree about supplements, the Fat Duck three course is a case in point, i am sure i looked on the website once and there were more main courses with supplements than without, that is just ridiculous. Maybe they just want to steer everyone towards tasting. Monsieur Max used to have more supplements than not, silly ones aswell like £2.50 and £3. why don't we bash cover charges while we are at it, esentially supplement on bread. Rowley Leigh is doing it, it has put me off going.

sorry, thanks for the recommendations but was hoping for somewhere a little more casual, a pub perhaps. I know the goose is a pub but only just!

i am sure this has been covered to a certain extent elsewhere, but i am a selfish chef and want a thread all to myself! Staying in both places and would like dinner and lunch imbetween if possible. will probably do champignon savage one night. other recommendations welcome. matt

i think that one of the great advantages of this website is that you can benefit from the experience of others. Thias would be one of the most expensive meals in london and across the board the evidence suggests that it isn't quite up to the mark. if i had a table booked i certainly would have cancelled but then i wasn't that interested after my far from perfect meal in monaco.

i have a hattori hanzo sword to fillet fish and a stanley knife for turning veg!! seriously guys break out the victorinox, they always work for me and then i am less gutted when people nick them off me.

RASPBERRIES!!!!!! Is no one bothered?

raspberry dessert does look cool though.

My meal in monaco this summer was completely uninspiring apart from a superb starter of stockfish tripe and confit cod. I had a veal main course that came out glazed to the nines in an overly reduced sticky jus (is that what you want in 35 degrees heat?) It came with a summer vegetable lasagne, an open lasagne with undercooked veg and sweaty pasta. my wife's starter, one of his signatures, a truffle broth with vegetables cooked in it was tasteless. her lobster was severely undercooked. Desserts were ok apart from a very strange peach dessert in a vinaigrette with what must have bean about three tastless raw peaches segmented up and a tastless foam sort of dolloped on the plate. what was worse was when i went to meet Cerutti they couldn't find him, he wasn't even in the kitchen and when he did finally make an appearance he looked utterly bored to be meeting me. The food looks sloppy, the last thing i want is test tubes and toothpaste tubes. what i want is for the food to look clean and appetising. The chicken is going on to the rim of the plate. what are those undressed leaves doing on the pigeon? Raspberries????? November??????