The office party at Le Bar is reaching its closing stages. Those who are going to cop-off for the night are already hooking up, talking to each other, moving in a little too closely, laughing just that bit too loud. The MD, whose pink tie is hanging as loosely as he is, appears to have got the blonde in the red sequin dress hemmed into a corner in a pincer movement worthy of an SAS execution squad. The remainder of the party, the great unclaimed, are left to wander around, dribbling, flopping, staggering, teetering, working a liquid face, that moment when their make-up and cheek muscles give up the ghost and gently collapse south.
Adam has turned the music down a little so it is no longer obligatory to scream loudly into someone’s ear and it is now possible to have a conversation. He finds us two adjacent booths at the back of the room and I sit down with Andrew and Oscar while the others shuffle in next door. Adam piles in the drinks. There are a couple of bottles of red, five or six vodkas and he tries to flog us the gag-inducing coffee tequila. Andrew, of course, is the first to try. I honestly think there’s nothing that hasn’t passed that man’s parched lips in the past twenty years. No liqueur is too monstrous-looking, no cocktail too lurid, no stickie too sweet. He went through a terrible absinthe stage about eight years ago, which I seem to remember we all had a go on, but he was the only one to drink a whole bottle and decide he was going to walk to Clapham, taking the direct route, through people’s gardens and over their walls. He was in quite a state, apparently, when he walked in the door. Looking at him, knocking back his second coffee tequila shot, I can’t help but think, having heard all the stories about him, that perhaps I should never have hired him in the first place.
But sitting there, chugging back a filthy drink, Andrew, I am pretty sure, would argue he’s not a big boozer searching for oblivion in something that is 45 per cent proof. He’d say he was just ‘decompressing’. There is a huge mythology surrounding chefs and the need to ‘decompress’ after a service. It’s the adrenalin, they say, it’s like running a marathon with your eye on the clock, in the heat, with all that talent, all that pressure of expectation, all those turbot to plate. We can’t just go home, have a shower and go to bed! So you hear endless stories of chefs’ ‘decompressing’ routines. Some of them are very Knight Rider and involve flogging a motorbike around town for an hour. Others are a little less dramatic and involve watching the telly for the next three hours. Or indeed, the very popular jogging home via a decompress-fuck with a handy waitress at a nearby restaurant. Some go to the Groucho Club, and others go home and drink a pint of red wine and smoke ten fags in total silence in the dark. Although my favourite is the jolly fellow who just went home to sleep, no drama, no histrionics, no need to decompress; no wonder he is no longer behind the pass. In fact, he now owns a few rather successful restaurants of his very own; cooking was apparently not for him.
‘So how actually was France?’ Andrew asks Oscar, as he slithers down on his elbow. ‘All that fine dining shit is dead, you know.’
‘Not in France,’ says Oscar, reaching for a vodka and tonic. Clearly the baby is going to have to wait. ‘In France they’ll go out to dinner and spend something like 800–900 euros on dinner for two in a two- or three-star restaurant.’
‘They’ll pay that?’ I ask.
‘Yeah,’ he nods. ‘They’ve got loyal customers who come out once a month and shell out that sort of cash. But they don’t do that here.’
‘No, it’s not our thing. No one is going to pay that for a bit of supper, no matter how many fucking stars it’s got,’ agrees Andrew, nodding away.
‘It’s all about Spain,’ says Oscar. ‘The Spanish are on the rise. The elBulli may be closed but I had the eight-course tasting menu at El Celler de Can Roca in Girona last summer and it was amazing, right down to the olives on the bonsai trees. There’s some wit in Spanish cooking and so much skill. It was voted the best restaurant in the world and you can see why.’
‘That’s not my thing.’ Andrew looks like he’s swallowed a wasp.
Oscar takes another swig of his vodka. ‘But London is rocking. Honestly, I can’t tell you the difference since I have been away. The atmosphere is different and there are so many restaurants.’
‘It’s all gone Polpo as far as I am concerned,’ says Andrew. ‘Small plates, all convenient, no booking. Some hard drinking, some delicious food, some good chat. In. Out. Fuck off. Polpo, da Polpo. They are all fucking packed.’
‘Yeah, packed with facial hair.’ I roll my eyes. ‘I went to the Social Eating House the other day, Jason Atherton’s new place, and I literally couldn’t move for tweeds and three pieces. There’s hip, there’s hipster and there’s food hipster.’
‘You should have waited a few weeks,’ says Oscar. ‘When that crowd have moved on to the next pop-up.’
‘If you want hipster,’ grins Andrew, ‘have you tried The Clove Club in Shoreditch Town Hall?’
‘Instagram cooking,’ says Oscar. ‘Literally, food porn for bloggers. They don’t eat it; they just rub themselves up next to it, photograph it and pop it on the Net. Doesn’t taste of anything.’
‘I thought it was quite good,’ Andrew chips in.
‘Really? I’m quite bored with photo-food, I have to say,’ replies Oscar.
‘What, already bored?’ I chip in. ‘But this little wave has only just started.’
‘I suppose it’s better than smears,’ laughs Oscar.
I look at Andrew; fortunately he is chuckling in agreement, unaware that most customers would put him in the smear category. There is nothing he likes more than creating some sort of vegetable purée skid mark on a plate before placing some meat/fish/fowl on top.
‘I had a mate who worked for Simon Hopkinson at Bibendum – you know, who did The Good Cook TV show and book? He’s an awesome chef.’
‘Yeah,’ agrees Andrew. ‘He’s pretty good—’
‘And he said he taught him all the stuff that was correct and what was not bloody correct. Like foam? Isn’t that the stuff you get rid of when you skim something? Why would you use that? Smears? Why would you drag a sauce across a plate and off the side when the plate is supposed to be clean? Sprinkling? There are times when a nice sea salt works well, but you should season with the right amount of salt in the first place.’
‘No, you’re right,’ nods Andrew, laughing and knocking back the tequila. ‘Don’t forget the powders and the granitas.’
‘Although I did have the most amazing oysters with grapefruit granita and caramelized seaweed in a pub in Kent.’
‘The Sportsman?’ asks Andrew.
Oscar nods. ‘It’s a grotty pub near the sea but the chef Steve Harris makes his own butter, harvests his own sea salt and grows his own veg. The lamb we had came from a field next door but one from the pub and he does a twelve-course tasting menu for £65.’
‘Sixty-five quid? How can you make money on that?’ I ask.
‘Small portions,’ they both reply.
This sudden outbreak of harmony is a little disconcerting. If only I had got them drunk this morning, we might have all had a much easier time of it.
‘Everyone OK?’ asks Adam, slipping on to the end of the banquette. There is nothing he likes more than the suggestion of a lock-in, and he’ll do his damnedest to keep it all going. ‘Can I get anyone any cocktails? Drinks? Vodka?’ He glances at me to see if it’s OK. Quite frankly, I’m tired, I have one failing restaurant and one that is currently full of shit; I don’t care how much drink he serves, just so long as my glass is not allowed to run dry.
‘I’ll have a martini,’ I say.
‘Really?’ He looks at me a little surprised. He knows I mean business.
‘You see – talent copies and genius steals,’ says Oscar, draining his glass. ‘Oscar Wilde said that.’ He waves his finger at Andrew. ‘It’s OK if someone takes your idea and moves it on. But if they take your idea and do nothing with it, they just copy it, then not only is it extremely irritating, but it is unlikely to work, because you need energy to make things work and if it is not your idea you are much less likely to put the effort in.’ Andrew looks a little lost at this point. He’s a great chef but he’s not that brilliant when it comes to ideas. ‘OK, take Polpo.’ We both nod. ‘The mini clipboard for the wine list? The exposed brick? From the Fatty Crab in the US, and the bar? You’d never guess it was from Williamsberg. But you know he’s taken it and he’s moved it on. You are allowed to do that. What you are not allowed to do is copy.’
They both nod sagely.
‘Do you know what I hate?’ I pipe up.
‘What?’ ask Oscar.
‘A twelve-course tasting menu. There is nothing more depressing than being the last sod in the restaurant with your Addison Lee car waiting outside while you have to work your way through the last of the three desserts. It is it not my idea of fun. It’s crap.’
‘So you’re a Polpo bloke then,’ grins Andrew, about to welcome me on to his team.
‘No,’ I shake my head. ‘I’m too old to queue. I like a good table, some nice lighting and good, charming staff.’
‘Corbin and King,’ says Oscar. ‘Or a bit of Nick Jones.’
‘I always see those two as the Paul Newman and Robert Redford of the London scene. Zuma’s Arjun Waney is Omar Sharif. Nick Jones is Steve McQueen.’ Andrew pauses.
‘And you are?’ I ask.
‘Javier Bardem,’ comes back his very obviously well-considered reply.
‘And I’m Brad Pitt,’ smiles Oscar.
‘And I’m Angelina Jolie.’ I smile. ‘The thing is, the age of the super-chef is actually dead. It’s all about the owners now.’ They look at me as if I’m joking. I’m not. ‘Does anyone really know, or indeed care, who is cooking in any of Chris and Jeremy’s places? Who’s the chef at Cecconi’s? Who’s cooking tonight at Zuma? No one really knows. There are still a few big names rattling around but mostly the chefs have gone back into the kitchen.’
The whole thing has come full circle. Cuisine in this country really took off with the arrival of the French chefs who’d fled France after the Revolution. Having removed the heads of the mouths they fed, they moved into the vast baronial halls of this green and pleasant land and got cooking. At that time they were below-stairs staff who rarely, if ever, saw the light of day. But as the finances of the posh were slowly depleted due to death duties and the First World War, so the chefs to the gentry had to find alternative means of employment and started to work in restaurants. Mrs Patmore in Downton Abbey will surely be working in some London restaurant come series seven, eight or fourteen set in 1955. Then, slowly but surely, what had been downstairs’ staff started to stare out through the glass porthole window. Occasionally, they were invited through, to be applauded for their fine work. It was at that moment they saw the pretty girls and the rich men and decided they wanted a piece of the action.
The Roux brothers were among the first to cross the Rubicon and they opened the door for everyone else to follow. But now the door is closing. I don’t think people are that interested in who’s cooking, just so long as it’s good, the restaurant is fun and the service is quick, slick and not intrusive. Surely there are only so many times you can watch a man dressed in whites scream at another over the soup?
‘You’re just bigging yourself up,’ says Andrew.
‘OK, then,’ I agree. ‘But tell me who are the hot chefs at the moment?’
‘Ollie Dabbous,’ says Oscar. ‘His coddled egg was one of the best things I have eaten in my life.’
‘He is great, but you can’t get into his place for months, which is a disaster. The longest waiting list you should have is six weeks. Otherwise you just have the Happy Birthday crowd in, or people who are prepared to wait six months for a bit of grub. It’s the quickest way to lose the buzz. It’ll fly like anything for a year, maybe more, and then die slowly.’
‘He is great, though, and Heston. Dinner is my favourite place to eat in London,’ says Oscar.
‘I’ll give you that, it’s bloody delicious.’
‘I like St John Bread and Wine,’ says Andrew. ‘Fergus Henderson.’
‘Yup,’ I nod.
‘The Ledbury? Brett Graham? Two stars. Voted thirteenth best restaurant in the world?’ Oscar looks at me.
‘I’ve been there once,’ I reply. ‘The food was great, but it wasn’t fun. Did I have a laugh? No. I wanted to relax, chat to my friends, be entertained. I’d rather have a conversation with my guests than have to spend every tenth minute acknowledging the waiter, while he waits for our conversation to expire and explains to us the intricacies of a dish that we have already ordered.’
‘I’m with you,’ sniffs Andrew, pouring himself another shot. ‘The places I like are anything Mark Hix does, the Pitt Cue, Meat Liquor, Meat Market, and I love the specials board at Koya – you meet half of London’s chefs there and I love that other Jap, Sushi Tetsu – it’s only got seven seats.’
‘Christ!’ I say, holding my head. ‘Where’s the money in that?’
‘The scene is split three ways at the moment,’ Oscar pipes up. ‘The first is clean, cooking big flavours, no sauces. Simple, proper stuff like Polpo, Polpetto, etc. Then you’ve got the crazy stuff, Heston, Noma, Dabbous, James Knappett’s Kitchen Table, the blow-your-head-off stuff that you’d have never thought of, and then there’s your classic cooking.’
‘But you can have too much crazy humour with your food. I went to elBulli a while ago and I have to say I got more than a little pissed off,’ says Andrew.
‘Really?’ replies Oscar. ‘I loved that place.’
‘There were elements that were funny and clever and there was craft and good use of ingredients and all that, but the chef had gone mad with the yuzu sauce, so I asked the waiter if the chef had been to Japan recently and he said “Yes”. I felt like saying, “You’re supposed to be a Catalan cook, back off with yuzu. I’m glad you had a nice time in Japan but we don’t want to see your holiday snaps as well.”’
‘I’m over Asian confusion,’ says Oscar. ‘It’s all full of salt, sugar and bloody MSG, you can taste the stuff as soon as you dig in.’
‘Anyway, I’m out of here,’ announces Andrew.
‘Are you sure you won’t have another drink?’ I look up at the other table, at the others who are all knocking back the wine and cocktails and about to get on a par with the remainder of the office party crowd.
‘Not here, here,’ says Andrew, refilling his glass. ‘I’m going private.’ I look puzzled. ‘I’ve got a position in a private house, big posh family just outside Henley on Thames. Stacks of money – well, a nice £90,000 anyway – great hours, holidays and, best of all, no bloody pressure.’
‘When did you decide that?’
‘A while back.’
‘You’re going back below stairs?’ I ask. ‘Like Downton?’
‘It’s not bloody Downton, and anyway, I can always come back into the game in a couple of years. And who knows? I might save up some cash and get my own place.’
Good luck to him, I think, as I have another stiff swig of my martini. I’d like to see how Andrew fares when he has his own place, so he is not in the shit, but cleaning it up.