I made friends with another chef, Michael Truelove, and together we would think up ways to annoy the porter. I would phone the kitchen pretending to be Mr. Abel, the hotel’s owner, and Michael would answer the phone. He’d then tell the lackey, “Mr. Abel’s on the phone. He wants to speak to you.” When the porter came on the line, I would do my impression of the owner and say to him, “There are some boxes in my office for the chef. Can you come and get them, please?” Big and scruffy, the porter would waddle into Mr. Abel’s office saying, “I’ve come for the boxes,” and an irritated Mr. Abel would ask, “What on earth do you mean? What are you talking about, man?” Then the penny would drop and he’d return to the kitchen raging. “You’re in for a beating,” he’d say.
Michael and I were the kitchen’s practical jokers. One night he helped me climb into the chest freezer, and when Mary, a waitress, came into the kitchen and asked Michael where to put the unused table butter, he said, “In the freezer, love.” She opened the door, saw a chilled body inside, threw the butter into the air and bolted out of the kitchen. A few minutes later the hotel manager, Barry Sterling, came into the kitchen. “There’s a body in your freezer,” he told Stephan. Chef went through the freezer, chucking out the frozen vegetables while shaking his head and saying, “There’s no body in here.”
In the afternoons I used to go and see Bill and Ken, the hotel’s porters. I’d have a cup of tea with them and help polish the guests’ shoes. One day I walked into their room and, in order to sit on my favorite chair, had to remove a book that was on the seat. I glanced at it as I picked it up. It was the Egon Ronay 1976 Guide to Restaurants and Hotels. I sat down and flicked through the pages and realized for the first time in my life that there were restaurants out there that were awarded stars.
I stopped on a page that mentioned a restaurant called the Box Tree. The guide said it was the best restaurant in Britain. I was fascinated by the photograph of the Box Tree, which looked like one of those three-hundred-year-old inns and had nice cars parked outside. Later I asked around in the kitchen to see if anyone had heard of it. They had, but said it was impossible to get a job there; Box Tree staff were apparently blissfully content and rarely left, so there was hardly any chance of vacancies arising.
At some point in 1979 I picked up the phone and called the Box Tree to see if there were any jobs going. Luck was on my side. Someone had just handed in their notice and I was invited for an interview with Malcolm Reid and Colin Long, highly regarded as a success story in the industry and who were also known for their campness. Their sexuality provided an opportunity for ridicule in the macho world of cooking, and when I told people I had been invited for an interview, they joked that I would be going for “a Long Reid in bed.”
I went shopping for an interview outfit and bought myself a smart jacket, a shirt and tie. The only shoes I could find to match the clothes were half a size too small but I got them anyway. I took the bus to Ilkley, arrived early and sat on a park bench at the top of Church Street. My feet were killing me, so I took off my new shoes to let the blood flow. When I tried to put the shoes back on, though, my feet had swollen. I managed to squeeze myself into them but only with extreme discomfort. I minced across the road to the Box Tree, walking like a man in women’s stilettos. I’m sure I got the job the minute they saw my mincing walk.
Messrs. Reid and Long kept me there for two and a half hours and showed me the food. The pain in my feet subsided as I gazed at a magnificent duck terrine. I was looking at perfection. When they offered me the job, I accepted immediately and hobbled back to the George to hand in my notice. I was about to discover my passion for cooking. My world was turning from black and white into color.
IT WOULD HAVE been the most natural thing in the world to call my father and tell him of my good luck, but by then, he wasn’t a part of my life. It was my silly fault, really. I had lost touch. During my first couple of months at the George I had lived at home. And after moving into the hotel, I had made weekly trips back to 22 Lingfield Mount to join him for Sunday lunch.
Then one day, shortly after I had moved into the George, he got married. Dad had met a woman called Hazel—he might have known her years, for all I know—and very quietly they tied the knot at a register office. I have to be honest, I couldn’t deal with it. Of course he was right to remarry—after all, my mother had died ten years earlier—and Hazel wasn’t a bad woman; she stayed with him until the end. And Christ, who am I to judge?
But back then, as a teenager, I was too immature to appreciate that the show must go on, the world keeps moving, and life continues. I don’t recall talking to Dad about the marriage, but one Sunday I didn’t go home for lunch with the old man and his new wife. The following Sunday I missed lunch again. Then perhaps after missing five or six lunches, that was it. A week turned into two weeks, which turned into eight weeks, which turned into years. Thirteen years would pass before I picked up the phone, called him and reestablished a relationship with the man who had raised me. I never dealt with it because I didn’t have the courage. I bottled it every time.
The bond was broken. He would write to me but I wouldn’t write back, and eventually, he didn’t know where I was, which kitchen I was working in, or where I was living. For years I had lived by his rules— he controlled me—but now I had discovered freedom.
SIX
Black and White into Color
STEPPING INTO THE Box Tree was like stepping into a massive jewelry box. All the emotions that come with romance were fired up within me. I was seventeen years old and for the first time I felt acknowledged, an important part of a great team.
It was more than that, though. Messed-up teenager that I was, the staff and owners virtually adopted me. They became my new family, and for the next eighteen months of my life I was given responsibility, and with that came confidence—kitchen confidence. This is where I discovered my obsession with food and this is where I formed my food philosophies.
The Box Tree was the creation of the two men who had interviewed me, Malcolm Reid and Colin Long. We called them “the Boys,” though they were both in their forties. Malcolm—with his handsome, sharp, distinguished features and always well-groomed in a smart suit—was the serious one, seemingly pushing the business forward. Colin—blond, blue-eyed and usually wrapped up in a big woolly jumper—was the joker. Colin would see me whisking a hollandaise sauce and say something camp like, “Oh, that’s lovely wrist action you’ve got there. Fancy coming into the larder with me and earning yourself five woodbines?”
At some point in the fifties, the Boys had bought Box Tree House— originally an eighteenth-century farmhouse that had box trees in its front garden—and opened it as an antiques shop and tearoom. Tourists heading to and from the Yorkshire Dales would stop off for scones and jam. Trade was good, so Malcolm and Colin expanded the business by serving lunches. That worked, too, so they opened up for dinner. They were doing so well they decided to rethink the whole setup. In 1962 they did away with cream teas and with lunch and simply opened for dinner—and what a dinner it was.
The Boys were exceptionally clever. In fact, they were the greatest restaurateurs I have ever met. Every now and again they would head off to Paris on a Saturday night and return on the following Tuesday morning, having dined out every day from midday to midnight in the French capital. Their mission in France was to eat the finest food, cooked by the greatest chefs, and then replicate it for their customers back in little old Ilkley. Malcolm and Colin would return to the Box Tree, sit down with their head chef, Michael Lawson, and recount the dishes they had eaten.
With meticulous detail, they would go through each dish, describing the presentation, the flavors, the tastes: a particular coconut ice cream; a fricassée of lobster with finely diced vegetables and a Noilly Prat sauce. Michael would listen intently, nodding along as he absorbed the information. He’d re-create the dish in his mind. “And that evening we went to Bon Auberge, where Malcolm had this, and on Friday we had dinner at
La Sel, where Colin had that . . .”
Then it was Michael’s job to copy each mouthwatering dish for the Box Tree menu. Sometimes he’d be able to reproduce it within a day or two. Other times it might take him a couple of weeks and many attempts to perfect the recipe. Malcolm and Colin would come into the kitchen to taste and see if he was close to success. Finally it would be, “That’s it, Michael. You’ve got it.” And onto the menu it went, alongside Michael’s own clever dishes.
No one in Yorkshire had ever seen food like this. They didn’t know such food existed. The most sophisticated food they ate at home would be a roast lunch or maybe toad in the hole, that hearty dish of pork sausages cooked in Yorkshire pudding and covered in onion gravy. If they went out for dinner, they might get lobster thermidor, beef Wellington, duck à l’orange, and peach Melba. Chefs didn’t feel they could stray or experiment. What’s more, there weren’t the beautifully illustrated cookery books we have today, or the food magazines and cookery programs on telly. The world back then was a much smaller place.
Aside from serving classical French cuisine, the Box Tree also had the feel of a good restaurant that you might stumble across in a village in France. It was warm and cozy and kitted out with beautiful antiques and great paintings. The windows were stained glass and there was stained glass throughout the restaurant, so that everyone became a shimmering silhouette, a shape behind colored glass. Along with an extensive list of French wines, the restaurant had those classic qualities then associated with the French: style, finesse and attention to detail. The menu was written in French with English thrown in, or, if you like, English with French thrown in. So there was Roast Partridge, Pommes Garnished. When I later went on to own restaurants, I’d write my menus in the same English-French way.
By 1976 the Box Tree had won its first Michelin star. In 1977, a couple of years before I arrived, it was awarded its second. The only two-star restaurants in England at the time were the Connaught in London, Albert Roux’s Le Gavroche in London, his brother Michel Roux’s Waterside Inn in Bray—all with powerhouse kitchens—and little old Box Tree in the middle of nowhere with just eight kitchen staff.
I began on hors d’oeuvres, though my other duties included watering the flowers at the front of the restaurant, polishing the brass and washing the Boys’ black Cadillac. Every morning when I arrived for work, my first job was to make the traditional Box Tree kick-starter for the kitchen staff: I’d put four pints of milk into a stainless steel pan, scald it and then whisk in a few tablespoons of Nescafé and a few tablespoons of sugar. In the microwave I’d heat up all the bread buns from the night before, which we’d eat with the coffee. Michael Lawson would ladle the coffee into a mug and then add another kick by throwing in a dash of calvados. He wouldn’t touch another drop of alcohol all day until the end of service, at about midnight, when he’d allow himself a large whiskey on the rocks.
One of my chores was to take the vegetables round to an old Polish man who lived nearby and was paid a few quid to shell the peas and peel the sprouts. Another of my jobs was to clean the copper pans and dishes using a solution of egg white, flour, salt and malt vinegar; a cut lemon was used like a scouring pad to apply the paste, and once it had dried, it was washed off and the pan was buffed up to make it gleaming. Everyone at the Box Tree had to be multitasked. You didn’t just go in and do your job; you did whatever you had to do.
Ken Lamb, for instance, was the baker during the day. He’d make the bread, puff pastry and the petits fours. Come evening, Ken would put on his dickie bow tie and—presto!—he was now the head waiter.
From the outset I was enchanted by the extraordinary system that operated within the restaurant. It had only fifty covers (or seats), but there were two sittings, one at seven thirty P.M. and one at nine thirty P.M., so we did a hundred covers but only needed a staff large enough to serve fifty. One coffee waitress could look after all of them.
Then there was the price of the meal. A three-course dinner might have been twenty quid, making it possibly England’s most expensive restaurant in the late seventies. It was packed, too. Crammed with rich Yorkshire mill owners, the guys who had made money out of textiles in the fifties and sixties. In the evenings I would hear the cars pulling up outside, the car doors slamming. And not just any old cars— Bentleys lined the streets outside. As I beavered away, I would always try to keep an eye on the swing doors that led from the kitchen to the restaurant. When they swung open, I’d get a glimpse of the happy customers, impeccably dressed and looking rich, glamorous and sophisticated. The sounds of the kitchen would be momentarily muffled by laughter from the dining room, the sound of people really enjoying themselves. From the brightly lit kitchen I could see the candlelight in the restaurant.
Michael had his sous chef, Steve, and there were two Frenchmen, Michel on Meat and Pascale on Hors D’Oeuvres. There were bollockings, sure, but not with the ferocity of those I’d received at the George. In fact, one of my memories is of Steve getting a monstering after he burned me with an egg slice, something the size of a toast grill. He had put the implement onto the gas, and then when it was very hot, he put it onto my arm. I screamed in agony and Steve looked astonished—I don’t think he realized how hot it would be and I am sure it was never his intention to burn me. He was just mucking around but he got a severe bollocking.
Aside from that though, the Box Tree generally had a friendly environment and Michael Lawson was a gifted mentor. I watched as he prepared, for instance, his game pie. He got a big breast of new-season grouse, a piece of fillet steak, put them into a pie dish, topped it with short-crust pastry and cooked it so the meat was pink. This was not the stuff of Répertoire.
* * *
Gastronomy begins with technique. If you haven’t got technique, you will never master gastronomy. You should buy the best ingredients and cook them perfectly, but to do this you have to question what you are doing and why you are doing it. If you don’t understand what makes a good, say, roast partridge—the hanging, the plucking, the trussing—before you’ve even started, then don’t bother roasting it. You’ve got to hang the bird correctly, pluck it correctly (without piercing the skin) and truss it beautifully (bring in the legs and plump out the breast so that it cooks evenly), retaining the heart and the livers for sauce. Seal it on all sides and then cook it on the back. What’s the timing of it? About ten minutes in my oven, but your oven is different from mine. A male partridge is bigger than a female partridge. A partridge shot in December is bigger than one shot in September.
* * *
Along the way there were also philosophies to be picked up. Words of wisdom that would stay with me forever. I remember Malcolm striking up a conversation by saying, “You know what I think?”
“No, Mr. Reid,” I replied. “What do you think?”
“It doesn’t matter what you spend as long as you get the desired effect.”
That’s inspiring. It’s the sort of thing that made me realize the Box Tree bunch were passionate. Money—what the hell? If we’re going to do this, let’s do it properly. And he wasn’t just referring to the dishes when he talked about the desired effect. Malcolm and Colin would spend, spend, spend in their quest to create the desired effect in the dining room. Malcolm might nip out to buy a newspaper and return with a £500 painting. As a lad from Lingfield Mount, I had never seen such extravagance, but this sort of spending taught me that creating a good restaurant requires thinking just as much about what goes on the wall as about what goes on the plate.
They never took inventory and they never did percentages, which would really alarm today’s chefs, who have a knife in one hand and a calculator in the other. Malcolm and Colin would just say, “Three courses with English turbot. That’ll be twenty quid.” Costs were never taken into consideration.
I worked on Hors D’Oeuvres and then was put onto Veg for about three months. Then Michael got me to help doing meat and fish main courses, so that Michael and his number two, Steve, were the front line and I w
as the backup. I already had the speed, thanks to my spell at the George.
It was while I was at the Box Tree that I discovered a truly inspirational book, Ma Gastronomie, written by the great French chef Fernand Point. It was not so much the recipes but the stories about the man and his philosophy that “perfection is lots of little things done well.” His words did more than simply stick in my mind; they became my philosophy.
Perfection was an important rule of the Box Tree kitchen. At the George food had been mass-produced, a bit rushed, but here I learned that you had to take your time to get everything just right. I realized that I had to stay focused on precisely what I was doing at that moment. Whatever we did, we had to do beautifully. When we made coq au vin, the chicken was marinated the day before cooking; red burgundy, the traditional wine for this dish, was replaced with claret, which is more full-bodied and therefore adds more depth to the final taste; button mushrooms, again a traditional garnish for coq au vin, were swapped for the flavorsome girolles. If an armagnac was used for the lobster sauce, or white wine used for a fish sauce, it was the best armagnac or the best white wine.
If I was cooking green beans, I’d do them in small amounts in separate pans.
* * *
If you’re cooking green vegetables, you might think it’s acceptable to throw the whole lot into a pan of boiling water. But you’re going to create a problem. The water immediately stops boiling, and now that the water is not so hot, the green pigment, chlorophyll, is killed off and the vegetable loses its brightness. Whereas cooking a small quantity of vegetables will keep the water at a boiling point and the vegetables will end up on the plate looking vibrant—and green.
The Devil in the Kitchen Page 5