The Importance of Being Earnest

As the Michelin awards approach and a small subcategory of over-wrought chefs experience new altitudes of anxiety over the results, it felt timely to reflect.  I’ve run a restaurant that is, let’s face it, a bit “Michelin” for over half a decade. I’ve been recognised by the guide for the majority of that and I’ve also failed to ever lead the restaurant to the elusive star, oft in the face of the agonising pain of industry predictions and, of course, the best wishes of our guests.

 I remember the sheer thrill of the first time they spoke to me. We were in our first space (Dudley Street) and a lone lunch diner with a London paper was sat directly in view of the kitchen.  We jested that it had to be an inspector – this fella was dressed the part, from his immaculate business casual to his very demeanour, he really nailed it.  It turned out, rather awkwardly, it was because he was.  We arranged a phone call and then he quizzed me over a long period of time, politely, even kindly, asking in a gentle way, “Who the fuck are you and where did you come from?”

It was, I think, a fair point.  As a new pretender with no lineage of great kitchens behind me, embroiled in a legal spat with a 3-star restaurant from New York over our name, with wood ants on the menu and an increasing body of rude social media run-ins.  I get it. Who the fuck was I?  With retrospect, a misfit with ambition, totally unable to answer the fundamental question of who I wanted to be. I think a problem, perhaps, that has followed me.

Our interactions over the years have been significantly more mysterious – save the occasional tweet or, in recent years, the fastidious detective skills of everybody’s favourite sommelier-cum-sleuth, Sonal Clare.  The power of the guide is in their total opacity – there is no feedback given, there are no criteria.  I even recently discovered Bibendum is just a bloke in a fat suit.  The mystery knows no limits.

Over the years as my body of experience as a diner grew along with my waist, it did nothing to remove the opacity.  My experience of Michelin restaurants is personally hit and miss – and there’s certainly a gulf in the standards from star to star.  Last year was a particularly odd year for the award, and whilst they bravely maintained an award season in the midst of total shutdown, it felt like an even further descent into an impenetrable fortress of good taste.  Notable restaurants deserving of new awards (Ynyshir has deserved two stars for years to me) absent and, indeed, inclusions that, at least according to the folklore of kitchens, had surely had insufficient time to prove the consistency or standards supposedly required.  

This year I am almost positive that we will not get a star and for the first time that’s (mostly) OK, and I think I understand why.  It’s the best food we’ve ever created and I am confident that in produce, technique and, well, fucking deliciousness, it is absolutely of the required standard. We have been remarkably and unthinkably busy since re-opening and our guests trust is an award that post cliff-edge surely carries the greatest prestige. Half of our guests think we have a star anyway. So, what gives?

I reflect on those that I think are safest bets for a new star locally (and beyond) and it seems to me it is the restraint and focus of a singular vision for food that is the best predictor of stardom (married, of course, with the requisite skill to realise that vision).  They know who they are, and the menu is an extension of that.  I am paraphrasing badly, but I recall the adage that two- and three-star restaurants become so on the merit of the guide being able to practically smell the chef in every part of the visit.  Experience says to me that’s not a good idea, having smelt more chefs over the years than I care to recall, but I am sure three-star chefs smell fucking fantastic.  

As a rather wonderful Woolf quote goes; “I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me. I am arch, gay, languid, melancholy by turns. I am rooted, but I flow.”  I am a restless and meandering river. I think my Head Chef, Marius, and I share this same wandering curiosity, a reluctance to be this or that. There is an irony, I guess, that the name we stumbled upon for the restaurant was The Wilderness. Knowing this, I sense that to attain that elusive star there would need to be much reflection on whether we can be tamed, and if so, can it be done so without diminishing what we do?  If there was any chef who has worked with me who can reconcile the seeming contradiction it is Marius.  

And yet, whilst I accept my waning concern for accolades - I tend further towards introspection at the expense of external validation - I do still find myself gazing longingly at the guide for the sake of Marius and our young team, the ones who do the heavy-lifting for those of us who own and run restaurants.  I think I still want it, but for them now.  Not because I believe fundamentally a star will change how I feel about food (complex-obsessive-conflicted) nor how I wish to run my business, but because it holds meaningful weight (and is so deserved) for our team.  When I was younger it was a tangible beacon of ambition and focus that at the time I needed.  As hospitality becomes increasingly hard, ever more complex and so many leave our industry I am supportive of anything that celebrates and encourages a sector that has much challenge ahead.  

In the meanwhile, the very best of luck to all those to whom I know this will mean so very much.  I very much hope to see more stars locally and our entire team will be rooting for you. And to Marius and The Wilderness crew, you’ll always be my guides, no matter what the fella in the fat suit has to say about it.