What aspect of being a chef is most gratifying
for you?
Happy guests. Most definitely the most gratifying aspect.
If you could cook for and dine with anyone,
who would that be?
I would be quite keen to cook for and dine
with Black Francis of the Pixies. Ive always been
fascinated by his creativity
What is your favourite national or
regional cuisine?
Japanese
When you are at home and want to cook, what
do you prepare?
All kinds of things, pizza, BBQ, Moroccan, all
sorts.
Do you think being a great chef is a natural
talent, or is it something anyone can learn?
I guess if you have a passion for something
and work hard at it then, no matter what, you’ll
achieve some level of greatness.
How has your cooking evolved over the years?
It has been through stages, from trying too
hard to be refined, and then in an about turn,
all the pretence gets scrapped and its back to
food that’s for eating and not gratifying only to
chefs and their egos.
How do you define your cuisine?
Post-Japanese. But in all; honesty, I try to look
at my dishes as being tasty, approachable (not
much by way of oddball ingredients) and they
should be eaten in a very social way; sharing
and having a good time.
What is the most memorable food city
in the world?
New York or London, both have amazing food
experiences, which, in my opinion can't be
replicated in anywhere else. Of course Tokyo is
another outstanding food experience.
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Where do you get your creative
inspiration from?
Nowhere in particular, it can come from out
of nowhere sometimes. It may be related to
a food experience, a journey or somebody's
random comments on the tube
What’s been the highlight of your career
so far?
Kurobuta; two years ago this was merely a
dream. Now we have two busy restaurants in
London, a summer pop-up with the Mandarin
Oriental in Bodrum and I will be working on a
late night version of Kurobuta, set to launch
this summer as well.
You have had the fortune of travelling across
the globe. Can you share two of your favourite
experiences as far as your culinary expeditions
are concerned?
Cooking fresh salmon on the edge of a loche
in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. We built a fire
with peat, made a little smoker in the rocks
and even came up with a really cool sashimi
dish, amazing fun and amazing fresh salmon.
Once, a great mate, Mike and I set up a kind
of pan-Asian restaurant in France. We had all
the ambition in the world, but we were young
and had never actually managed a restaurant
before. One day we ran out of gas in the
middle of service, we used to have the cooker
hooked up to a gas bottle, this was ahead of a
mains gas supply in that town. Mike raced out
with a borrowed car to try and get more gas, I
had to try and get as much food out 'sans-gas'
as possible. We somehow kept things rolling
and got the supply hooked back up. Mike had
been speeding through stop signs and red
lights with this extra large canister of gas in the
back seat of the car; the things we do to get
the show back on the road!
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