Island Life Magazine Ltd April/May 2010 | Page 131

food

Island Life - April/May 2010

Robert and Fiancée Diana on the Hambrough Balcony

A visit to Alain Ducasse – Monte Carlo, “The Holy grail of restaurants”

Robert (left) and the boys, Winteringham Fields

Of course he wouldn’t want people

a carrot sliver. Molecular-gastronomy,

they go away thinking ‘I must come back’.

turning up to eat in torn shorts, but he

Heston Blumenthal’s science-based food

To not see people again isn’t good.”

is clearly frustrated with the pomposity

has been the more recent food fad, and

associated with good food.

has sent out its own waves of suspicion to

the territory? Throwing a few tomatoes

the dining public.

around, laying into your sous chef with an

“I’ve been to so-called fine dining
restaurants that charge similar prices to

“Someone suggested I got some

Surely acting the prima donna goes with

iron wok? Not for Robert – and for good

the Hambrough, even here on the Island,

nitrogen to cook steaks with! Why would

reason. He was the victim of a chef with

and come home hungry,” he says. “I want

I want or need something dangerous like

an attitude problem and vowed never to

my customers to go home feeling full and
relaxed. I accept that I don’t pile it high
on the plate. But I know when people say
to me that they don’t want an appetiser
because ‘I’m saving myself for dessert,’
that I’m serving good portions. And no
I don’t charge extra for bread with a
meal.”
Clearly Robert is a victim of his own
success. The style with which he is
associated evokes memories of the

‘I’ve been to so-called fine
dining restaurants that
charge similar prices to the
Hambrough, even here on
the Island, and come home
hungry’
that in my kitchen?”
What Robert wants to cook, he stresses,
is what the customer wants to eat.
“My job is not to be a prima donna, but

adopt his methods.
Even before leaving school Robert
was gripped by the idea of cooking. He
was born in Bedfordshire – “a culinary
desert!” he grins. His mum was a school
teaching assistant and his father a
quantity surveyor, and he and his brother
and sister were always given good, home
cooked food.
Of all his school subjects, Robert enjoyed
cookery classes the most. His brother,

infamous dining style of the 1980s,

to cook for the customer. To make sure

seven years older, worked in restaurants,

‘nouvelle cuisine’, when a shaving of

they come in, and whether they stay for a

and despite watching the fiendishly

meat was augmented by three peas and

week or just come in for lunch, to ensure

long hours he worked, Robert followed

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