Jeremy Lee

My famous namesake, the legendary Soho chef and creator of the smoked eel sandwich, shares his (Hebridean) Desert Island Dish.

https://www.quovadissoho.co.uk/

https://www.jeremy-lee.co.uk/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-lee-58810199/?originalSubdomain=uk 

https://www.facebook.com/jeremylee_justbetweenus

https://www.instagram.com/jeremylee_justbetweenus

Transcript

Jeremy Lee 0:14

This feels quite strange. Anyway, let's go for it. I'm Jeremy Lee, and welcome to Just Between Us with my guest this week, Jeremy Lee. How do you do, Jeremy? How do you do, Jeremy? I should say, just by way of a one-line introduction. Chef proprietor at Quovardis, best-selling cookery writer, Soho Institution, Jeremy Lee. Those are just a number of things that divide us. Otherwise, we're like identical twins. Quick question, Jeremy. Yes. Have you ever been mistaken for me?

unknown 0:57

No.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Finally, I'm so sorry to say that this comes as a complete and wonderful surprise. No, the only other Jeremy Lee I was ever aware of was a Chinese chef based in Hong Kong, I think. Who you know often came up on people's searches in the man. No.

Jeremy Lee 1:12

I'm Scottish through and through. The first time I Googled my name, which is not something I'm in the habit of doing, I discovered that I was on the Delaware Sex Offenders Register.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Oh gosh, which means me too, probably. Well, yes. Yes, indeed. You know, where one goes, the other goes. Oh gosh, me too plus.

Jeremy Lee 1:30

Jeremy, I have been mistaken for you on many occasions. And I might mention one or two as we go along. One I was thinking about, actually, coming here this morning. This is probably about 15 years ago. And I was offered 1,500 quid a week to go and teach on a cookery holiday. Oh my goodness. And I was on the database because I had been on a cookery holiday with them. Oh god, this wasn't tasting places. Tasting places outsourced, yes, of course. So I sent back an email saying, thank you very much. But I think you have the wrong Jeremy Lee, lots of exclamation marks. And guess what they did next? They offered me more money. Damn, I should have played that card. You so should have done. Oh. Anyway, we'll probably come up with another few examples, but I want to just romp through your CD to start with. Or the tiny number of people I'm thinking about Belgian fans, who might not be all that familiar with your oeuvre. Grew up outside Dundee. Yep. Near the home of the blessed Arboret Smokey. Just so. You worked in the kitchen at Bebendum with Mr. Hopkinson. Yes. Worked with Alistair Little, ran your own place. Ended up at Terence Conrad's Blueprint for a quite long time, actually. Yeah. Before you were persuaded to take over as grand fromage or whatever you want to call it. Actually, why is it Chef Proprietor rather than Chef Patron?

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Oh, there's a good one. Sam Hart, who was the CEO and founder of the whole thing. He suggested it. Well that sounds very nice. Let's do that one. And I think it is quite simply the anglicising offered. And it was a chum of mine, also said. Because Chef Patron had that French feel to it that I think had long since really left our shores. With the amazing ascendancy of British cooking and British food and British restaurants, the French very, very deep hold France had over British cooking and food was lessening very quickly. So proprietors seemed more sensible. I mean, even though it is just a brick in a corner, I own it. If that even sounds far grander than it actually is. It's a valuable brick.

Jeremy Lee 4:01

It's a sought-after brick. So anyway, that's what you did. You accepted the invitation to join them at Quovardis, which has just celebrated, or is celebrating its 100th anniversary. Like every venerable Soho building, it was once a brothel.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

Of course, like everything was.

Jeremy Lee 4:21

Like everything. Well, I used to go to something the Ostaria something or other, which I think had only just stopped being used. And confused a number of patrons. Anyway, and it was also home to Karl Marx and his family.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Yes.

Jeremy Lee 4:36

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Well, that's where I think the legend is it's where he wrote Das Capital, but it's where he was inspired. I think the truth was they were inspired to write it, because I think they lived in terrible conditions. And awful things happened. And he said, you know, the quote is that he said the entire bourgeoisie is going to pay for this in terrible situation. And then Engels got him moved to Grafton Terrace in Kentish Town. And funny enough, where my sister was living as well. She said, Well, I never got a blue plaque. And I went, Well, you know, what can I say? I mean, not in my hands to offer. And maybe one day.

Jeremy Lee 5:13

You are, I'm rushing on through the CV, you're a judge on great British menu.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Formally, yes. Well, I haven't been on that for a long time. But yes, once upon a time. Do you like judging? Do you know what's really interesting, Jerry? It's such a good question, because when you're judging your peers, I think that is a tremendous honor. On the other hand, God almighty, isn't it hard enough rather than having one of your own come in and go, well, do you know what? This is terrible. Or this is, you know, how do you gauge what's good? And one of the things that became apparent very quickly was that if we all cooked the same thing, it'd be a very dull business. And ironically, I think that's what speeded the decline of French influence, because when you went to France, quite often, wherever you ate, it was the same menu. All the brasseries had the same menu, a lot of bistro had the same menu. And funnily enough, and certainly in Paris, there were a resurgence of restaurants there of late, and certainly seemed to have an enormous British contingent behind the scenes. I know it was quite fascinating.

Jeremy Lee 6:19

So you are known for your seasonal British cooking. Drawing from all over the place, but primarily British. The menu changes every month, not as it once did every day. And the one thing that's always available, so I believe, is you know what I'm going to say, the smoked eel sandwich. Did you bring some with you?

SPEAKER_00 6:47

I certainly didn't. I should have brought I should have raided the fridge. But sadly, I was sitting down talking with a sous-shelf who was in code-red dental chaos. So sadly I was distracted. So I come empty-handed, forgive me. I'm laden with goodies. Well, no, I'm next time.

Jeremy Lee 7:04

I'm just hoping to start the day with a bit of a smoke deal. Yeah, next time. Okay, talking a little bit about your food preferences. Oh, by the way, I should have finished. This is typically me. I go off on a tangent. Let me just do the big other things in the CV. And I have my copy in front of me, which is that you published, wrote, compiled all those things, a hugely successful cookery book with I won't say our name, but I suppose I should say your name on the cover. Called Cooking, Simply and Well for One or Many. Just so. And the thing which distinguishes your book and why so many listeners will go, oh, I know the one, is because it's green. It has a very, very distinctive green cover. Brilliantly, whoever came up with that idea. And it stands out on every bookshelf, including mine. So that and there's another book out in September. Just so called Kitchening. Day-to-day good food come rain, I wish, or shine. Now people have written people, mere mortals, have written probably quite a few cookery books on day-to-day cooking. What's your thinking? I mean, I've no doubt that the world is in need of Jeremy Lee's take on day-to-day cooking. What's your shtick? What will make kitchening different?

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Well, I suppose it's such an interesting question, Jeremy, because what I the thinking behind it was, hey, uh the bar was was set very high with cooking. And so how do you follow that? And interestingly, it wasn't I wasn't allowed to do a pudding's book. And then uh couldn't be a sequel, couldn't be part two. You know, sequels are famously apparently apparently not great successes. Interestingly. I went, oh God, which I didn't know about because publishing world is a mystery to me. You know, it's not something I'm well versed in at all. Hooks, yes, but not the process.

Jeremy Lee 9:18

Could you maybe in the future write a prequel? Yes, you know, when you really didn't have a bloody clue how to cook.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

Well, that's a very good idea. And the thought was that when I first started out and in restaurants, there was this hilarious Presbyterian attitude of, why would I pay for tap water? Oh, I could always get bread and butter at home. Why have I got to buy this, you know, what's all the fuss about? Soup. Oh, my grandmother made soup. And this famous carry at the end where, oh, I could do this at home. And I think the real truth was that folk could possibly might have. But I think there was such a tyranny about the kitchen being A, a no man's land, kind of a woman's, you know, that was mum's domain. And all these strange thoughts hovered around it. And one of the things in recent times, which is becoming more and more apparent, was that A, people are starting to be able to buy amazing produce, which previously they hadn't been able to get hold of. And understanding, you know, what to do. If you're going to spend 50 quid on a bottle of extra virgin olive oil from Tuscany, how do you use that? And, you know, conversely, then why is it worthwhile spending a lot of money on a good vinegar, really good spices, stone grind, polenta? And why is it worthwhile going to find these things? And then when you do spend all that money, you have our recipe for using something once, when what you really need to do is keep the pantry turning over, so you don't have things gathering dust. And the kitchen is actually a wonderful place to be in, to decompress. And I suppose it's partly a hangover from COVID where folk were shacked up at home. And what was immediately abundantly clear with people with time on their hands, the kitchen was a very obvious place to be. And I think the binge watching days, you know, spending hours watching hours and hours of Netflix and God knows how many C's and films and everything else. Well, it's fine, but it's not very productive. Whereas if you're in a kitchen just poodling about making something, you get something something delicious will happen. No matter how simple it is, even if it's just bread, butter, and cheese to make toasted cheese, you'll get something good out of it.

Jeremy Lee 11:31

I know because I read this in cooking. Yeah. That you spent a lot of COVID in your own kitchen cooking stuff. Quite great quantities of it. Where did it go?

SPEAKER_00 11:45

Well, hilariously, it started off because there was a coven of us in Hackney, where I live. So we would all meet on distanced, of course.

Jeremy Lee 11:53

Well, I was gonna say you weren't allowed to meet.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

No, I know. Well, we could meet for a you could go for your, you know, your morning poo, you know, your morning amble, get a coffee, and then you could sit in London for Hackney's wealth of parks in this open space. So you could actually meet quite easily and sit down for a coffee, and it all seemed quite relaxing, quite natural. And then we all started talking about what we cooked at home. And of course, when you're cooking for one, you know, you was just this enormous amount of food. A kitchen generates incredible amounts of food. And so a bartering system started up briefly. But then the big thing came when the charities started kicking in to primarily feed NHS workers, you know, to give them, you know, chuck them a bone. And what hadn't been considered, unlike a war situation, which is kind of how it was looked like it was dealt with at the time, there was a surplus of food. All the trucks were ready to go when the lockdown came in, with all these suppliers for all these restaurants, all perishable or with sell-by dates, and suddenly there was a food mountain on what now to do with it. And so the cooks, because we're not for us to sit in our butts and do little, started cooking like mad. Unload when we were the charities, which was so fascinating, stuff that would have taken traditionally months of planning to do, appeared overnight, and suddenly we were cooking for families in distress, NHS workers. Because you weren't allowed to go there. You couldn't just cook something at home and then drop it off at the doorstep, for that was forbidden. But what you could do was jump on the bandwagon of a big charity, and they would arrange people to come and pick it up and you know, off it went.

Jeremy Lee 13:32

I imagine that made you feel quite good, as opposed to cooking for rich people.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

It was amazing. So we were suddenly, you know, all of a mind, and I have to say, we were allowed to go into our businesses and cycling from Hackney, you know, by the time you got to Clark and Well, that all really began to look very bleak and sinister. And not boarded up. There was a few folk boarded up who will remain nameless. But well, it's really not very labour-ly. We're gonna know what do you think is gonna happen? And there were all these businesses, you know, with wine cellars and moves and all that, you know, and stuff. They were sort of sitting empty, you know, it was very strange. And so we quickly bopped that on the head, just like, look, it needs a watchman in the night to go in with a lamp, have a little look, checking that everything was alright. But really, there was nothing once you got there, there was nothing you could do. So we divvied up what food there was, got that delivered to the staff over a few weeks, and um that quickly flew by. And so turning our hand to getting food to hospitals and hospices and folk in distress seemed a very natural next step.

Jeremy Lee 14:37

You said something a moment ago which intrigued me. You said that there was bartering going on as well. So that's making me think we've got smoked teal sandwich from Jeremy Lee. What's that worth? Because it's worth a great deal more than a smoked deal sandwich from another person of the same name. So were you able to sort of name your price? Could you go, oh, I really like that cashmere jumper?

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Oh, sadly, no. I'm fortunately it wasn't a bazaar in Istanbul. It was so sweet and simple. You know, it's like you can make a batch of pastry or jars of pesto or pasta sauces, or I mean it was all very simple and humdrum. But what became apparent very quickly was that suppliers were sitting on an absolute mountain of goods that were galloping towards being out of date. So folk like Neil's Yard Dairy with this fortune in cheese, you know, because I remember once hilariously, because folk were very generous with their money. So there was funds to pay for the produce. We were never out of pocket, which is incredible. Yep. And so you could buy really good quality. So we could go to Brindiza, for example, and for every bag of beans we bought, they gave us uh something else, you know, for free. So we would get these incredible huge slabs of Marza pan cakes, and almond this and this skid that, that we could pop into these boxes. So it wasn't just uh, you know, a pasta salad or something like that. You could actually make something incredibly delightful. You know, like Wind in the Willow's hamper kind of thing, which is great fun.

Jeremy Lee 16:08

Well, in central London, maybe where I was, it wasn't quite so um munificent. Is that the right word? Since we're talking about dishes, it just occurred to me this is the hoary old question. Or a variation on the theme. What would be your desert island dish? Gosh.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

Actually, it needn't be a desert island, it could be a Scottish island, if you'd like. Well, I was about to say more than likely a Hebrew island. Yeah. For sure. Still not been to Orkneys or Shetland, and I'm that's that's embarrassing. It's really quite shaming. And then it needs to be addressed. And it transfer has I've got a few friends up there as well, and I was like, oh my god, you know, okay, yeah, I go up on tangents as well. But the idea would be a cold rose grouse picnic with Longostin and Raspberries on a Hebrew beach, would be my idea of heaven. Sorry, I'm just total silence.

Jeremy Lee 17:00

No, no, I'm not. I'm smelling it, I'm tasting it, I'm looking at it, I'm feeling a little bit of breeze.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

I'm there. Yeah, no, there's Hebrine. Because that's where you can get out of the water the most beautiful lobsters in Longestine imaginable. And I think boiling a big pan of water on a, you know, on an open fire on a beach, you know, and just eating longestine straight out of the pot, straight out of the sea, I think there's not really much better than that.

Jeremy Lee 17:27

Bring it on. No, this is whilst we're in recipe mode-ish, as I said recently, the blindingly obvious fact that podcasts are recorded at a moment in time. Yes, of course. You and I are speaking during the sweltering summer. Which will end up being compared to the legendary summer of 76, which both you and I will remember.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Yeah, only too well. You know, even up in Scotland, it was like jeepers. So it's hot.

unknown 17:58

Yeah.

Jeremy Lee 17:59

Let's keep it relatively simple. Let's make the ingredients possible to get hold of. What do you go for?

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Gosh, there's a good one. I mean, I love salads, only though an enormous amount of this book here and the one coming are based on vegetables. Because I think that's something that is coming more and more and more to the fore. And it's shocked brilliantly and shocking the nonsense of, you know, cranks in vegetarian and you know, these awful handfuls of mud that were flung and slung at vegetarian cooking. Which in some respects it was deserved, you know, because I think making vegetarian hot dogs and sausages was just a joke. But brilliant cooking with vegetables is amazing, and there's a wealth of that in every culture on the planet and every style of cooking imaginable. The bedrock is always vegetables. And so for me, I think a great salad nisoise is one of the joys of life. Well, and a really good one is a real treat.

Jeremy Lee 18:58

Just remind us, comprising?

SPEAKER_00 19:00

Comprising of. Well, there's two schools for a salad nisoise, I thought. One is that everything in it is raw. So are very thinly sized artichokes and tomatoes and peppers. Which to me is, I think in situ would please. Or there's the northern version of it, the northern European version of it, which is a very far removed from these houses, but with potatoes and beans and tomatoes and olives and capers and more used to. That's the one I think we Anglo-Saxons gravitate towards completely.

Jeremy Lee 19:33

Do you know? I used to put salads together as a job. Okay, I'm I'm overdoing it slightly. It was a school holiday job. Oh, brilliant. And I worked for Michel Roux. Wow, Michelle Rice Senior.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

Yes.

Jeremy Lee 19:49

At a place called Le Poulbo, which is no longer there in Cheapside. And all I had to do was throw the sal throw, obviously. Carefully arrange the salads. And do the coffee. As a result of which it was obviously a formative period of my life. Because I only ever use my right arm. I really have quite surprisingly developed muscles that still on my right arm. None whatsoever on the left. But my very quick story about that, because it was very French. Yeah, you were saying that those influences have been um not quite what they once were. But in those days it was very French.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

Oh, absolutely, but absolute rule.

Jeremy Lee 20:33

And everybody there was French. I mean, I was paid by roll. I'm not even sure whether it covered the tube fair. But every day before service, we would sit down and have lunch on a long table. And I would sit next to a bloke who I think was called Patrick. He was very friendly. And my schoolboy French was reasonable. So for six weeks, in order to converse with him, I spoke French and we got to know each other a little bit and started becoming friendly. Anyway, at the end of that holiday job, I was leaving the restaurant one day with Patrick. And so we were walking towards the door, and I would go and he would go the same back. And then one of us opened the door out onto Cheapside and he turned to the newspaper vendor and said the immortal words standard, policemate. And he turned out to be English. Yeah. Absolutely. Sorry. The theatre that goes on, the fact that everybody was part of it and loved it.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

Oh god, yeah. No, I think there's a there's a great John Mortimer story in one of the Rumpel books. Well there's a murder in a restaurant and Rumpel goes to Chi Henri and knocks on the door in the morning, and you know, there's the sea of unlaid apricot coloured polyester new white trimmed tablecloth, you know, and a little bit of Gypsophila with a plastic rose in a little plastic, white plastic. Or white garden furniture as well. And knocks on the door, and from out from the back comes this guy, you know, wiping his nose with a checkered cloth. It goes over his shoulder and he's wearing a white pizza, looking as scruffy as anything. And he goes, Yeah. And he goes, I'm looking for Henri. And he went, Yeah, what you want? Exactly that. Exactly. I think there was a time. I think as long as you slapped on a French epithet, you are you were quits in.

Jeremy Lee 22:28

Well, had I ended up in the industry, I certainly wouldn't have done that. Which reminds me of another mistaken identity story. Can I tell this very quickly? You certainly can. I have so many things I want to ask you, but one quick thing. My former business partner phoned me up one day I was working from home. And he said, We've had a letter. And I said, Oh yeah. He said you'll never guess, which is a ridiculous thing to say. How would I guess? And he said, They want to give you an MBE.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

Where that letter went.

Jeremy Lee 23:02

No. And I said, That's ridiculous, Tom. Agents don't get MBEs. They don't deserve them. And he said, No, no, no. No, I've looked at that one. I thought, look at the bloody small print. And eventually he said, Oh, okay. Yeah, it does say for services to the food industry. And I said, there you go. But for a joyful few minutes. Oh. Um, of course, that was in that case, I think the cabinet office doing the mistaken identity. I do hope. Well, I'm I know because you now proudly have those letters after your name. Dong, don't, don't. That eventually they found you and richly deserved. Oh, thank you. So whenever I'm mistaken, it always sort of sets me up and then pushes me back down. Happens every bloody day.

SPEAKER_00 23:51

I do remember there was a very funny phone call. Uh it was from the home office. Uh and I was at, is this a joke? And they said, it's funny, everyone sees that. I said, Don't you can't. Literally, you're saying you can't be serious. And they said, no, no, no, we've been trying to track you down, and for some reason they had me in burner street. You know, it's very funny.

Jeremy Lee 24:11

Very, very, very bad at finding people. Which takes us on another unnecessary tangent. I want to talk about the people you cook for. Because a lot of the time it must be lovely, especially at Quo Bardis. You know, lots of regulars, lots of club members. Presumably the occasional star or whatever you want to call them.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

You might well say that. I couldn't possibly comment. Exactly.

Jeremy Lee 24:42

I don't use the C word, but people who are well known. Presumably also occasionally for people you don't like. Has that ever happened? Have you ever heard? You know, oh, this is for so-and-so. Oh god.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

Well, I've never been asked that before. And I think what's interesting is not that I'm aware of. I think what's really interesting given our address, and we're right in the nexus of the whole thing. There's a lot of folk who I think I think when you come to court, they really haven't made a disconcerted decision. There's always the impression government. They don't just happen on it. I think when you're as old as usual, No, no, no, say it, say it. You know, we become something of an ED fix. We've dodged so many bullets, it's extraordinary. And I think when I first started there, and we had the old we had the whole ground floor, and it was enormous I was out cooking with the Queen Mary, it was this huge thing. And that was unwieldy. And so, God, I'm sure all sorts went on. But you know, I mean it was trying to saddle a bucking bronco. And so when it was when Barafina was made homeless by a silly someone trying to, you know, build a shopping mall on one of the street corners of Sofia and your life. Seriously, what now you think? And the dining room got halved, it changed our fortunes completely. You know, and suddenly it just became a very neatly sized, very handsome bistro, and that just changed everything.

Jeremy Lee 26:10

With lots and lots of rooms, though, lots of private rooms, lots of special places. Honestly, listener. Even if you're in Belgium, it is worth the trip, but book in advance. Can we talk a bit about money?

SPEAKER_00 26:28

Have you got some? I'd love some former. Not anymore, Jeremy. Sadly.

Jeremy Lee 26:36

Do you think Because there's this campaign which is raging on and on and on? People like Tom Carriage and others saying restaurants, pubs should have a favorable tax rate, business rates, blah, blah, blah. Do you agree? Can you justify that?

SPEAKER_00 26:53

It's such a complicated situation. I can't I've, you know, I'm on- I can barely get my head around it. But I do know that there is still a residual idea that restaurants are a luxury, that they are obsolete. They're you know, the famous comment from Labour that, you know, oh, we've got enough restaurants. I mean, putting it bluntly, if we hadn't been furloughed during lockdown, the food community would have been devastated. And to such a degree, I'm not sure what the recovery would have been from that, if at all. Because billions was lost. Nationwide. And the food community is far reaching. So you can't just look at the facade of a restaurant and say, oh, that looks nice, that doesn't, or that's where I'm going to go, and that's where I'm going to spend my money. And one of the things that's really interesting, I'd like, I like to think about cobilers, is that people come and spend their own money. Because the days the expense accounts are all gone. And I think when you're spending your own money, oh my God, do you want to know that you're getting the good stuff? And so we're very much on our mettle. And we have to prove it every time they eat, because the old days of you're, oh, you can muck up once, maybe twice, you might not always be there, all that kind of thing. You're very quickly not forgiven if you don't deliver.

Jeremy Lee 28:09

There's something you said, which I wrote down because I thought it was interesting. You said, and I quote, I condu your accent. Yet. You said if you're gonna charge a spectacular amount of money for a leaf on a plate, you better make sure it's brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 28:29

True. And it's true. I do think so. I think your metal is tested daily, and the proof of the pudding of that are regulars returning constantly, which is amazing. And that's our benchmark. That tells us how we're doing.

Jeremy Lee 28:42

Talk to me about how you break down the car or how you arrive at the cost of a dish.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

Well, this is really interesting, because when I first started, all a head chef had to do was write a menu and submit it to be typed up. Um it might have to put the prices on it, but that was usually the manager of the front of the house did it. And you know, if you were asked for a costing or recipe, you just laughed and moved on. That was it. No, gosh, over 40, 50 years, no, nothing has not costed. And every single penny matters. Um, because I think as a lot of people find their cost, it was pointless being a busy fool and not doing the homework. And why wouldn't you? It was proved absolutely that a lot of cooks were promoted on their ability to cook, but hadn't ever been taught how to manage. And the reason we were in kitchens and not at a desk is that we didn't like that structure. We weren't managers. And so a lot of a lot was learned on the hoof and on doing crazy hours, on brilliantly that's slowly but surely going away. And the old guard, well, you know, nature takes its course. And the Me Too thing has been amazing for calming kitchens down, zero tolerance policies, absolutely, and wanting to now keep your staff, because famously pre-COVID, the turnovers were amazing. And folk were just females here, females there, going on. I'm putting that on a CV like a badge they'd done in my time, you know, would have been a four-year stint. And so that's all being eradicated.

Jeremy Lee 30:18

So now, just to get it straight in black and white, now the chef can no longer stab juniors.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

Sadly not. No, there's no can't use the branches of the trees in Soho Square for, you know, appalling atrocities.

Jeremy Lee 30:32

Bet it happened at one stage.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

Oh, God wouldn't surprise me.

Jeremy Lee 30:35

Going back to the cost of dish then. So take, I don't know, take anything relatively straightforward on your menu.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

Well, I would say, you know, something as simple as a smoked teal sandwich. I mean, it is extraordinary that such a dish just stuck a cord at the time and has never been off the menu since. And when I first came across smoked teel, which is cooking at Alistair Little, literally around the corner in Fifth Street, and it was from uh Mr. Beale in the Lincolnshire Fens, and he was one of the last of his generation, because the eel smokers were a great tradition, like all smoked fish of the East because it was an enormous fisheries that had reduced dramatically over time. I mean, I still think of them as eight, ten quid each, and now they cost all intact somewhere between 30 and 40 pounds to anyone's weight, just to buy. And then you have to get it shipped, that has another little cost to it. Then someone's got to unpack it, put it away, label it, date it, what have you, then bring it out to prepare it. Then with doing that, they then have to get the poil and bread from the fridge. Then you have to get the red onion pickle, you know, then all the little, you know, the red onion pickle, the mustard cream, the horseradish cream, get a couple of packets of very good unsalted French butter out of the fridge. But before you batted an eyelid or suddenly at something which, you know, we just do not even try to compare with someone wanting a quick bite of a petamology sandwich. But even they've got traveled in price of late. You know, there's n literally nothing we can't look at now. Even salt and pepper are expensive now, which is shocking. Well, unfortunately, I have ideas reality.

Jeremy Lee 32:10

Aaron Ross Powell Talking of chains, I live, as some listeners will know, in Suffolk, in a pretty little town called Berry St. Edmunds. Lovely. Which gets quite a lot of visitors and has it. It actually has six good restaurants, which is kind of remarkable. But it therefore has a lot of places at which you can buy cake.

SPEAKER_00 32:33

Pump's gate bakery, it's been tomorrow.

Jeremy Lee 32:35

And and so I started kind of looking at how much you get, how good it is. My God, do they want that for it? And I chance, this is kind of away from the tea shop. But I think I was getting a takeaway pizza one night. And I thought, ooh, Pizza Express, I fancy some of the chocolate fudge cake with ice cream. Okay, so we're not comparing like with like, nor would I ever pretend that we were. But actually, that's where this gets interesting. I have no animus against Pizza Express, by the way. But they charge £8.25 for a tiny slice of chocolate fudge cake and a minuscule bit of ice cream. Whereas you, I happen to look up. For your profit hall or shokada, you happen to charge, I think I'm right in saying $11.50. Something like that, yeah. So this is famous restaurant, West End, all the accolades you could ever want. A very, very, very special place to spend a lunchtime or an evening. The shoe pastry and all of that, and the care that's gone into it, and the cream and the chocolate, the preparation and everything else. I can't understand. I'm not quite sure which way round it is. I can't understand how you can produce your profiterole for $11.50, or why Pizza Express have the temerity to charge £8.25 for a bit of chocolate cake.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

End of rant. End of well, I think the real nub of that is they're completely different businesses and different models. And it's a completely different structure. And so we are our sister restaurants, El Pastor and Barrafina, could be called a chain, because there's a group of them, or a group as Terence Conan, like these called his restaurants. But Cole Vallis is, to all intents and purposes, an independent. And it's taken a long time to get there. Because it has to stand on its own feet. So it's not supported by the other businesses other than by dint of being pin. And you do your sums, and quite frankly, if you were to charge 24 quid, that would be all be, you know, with with our villas in France and Spain and Italy and whooping it up. Which I'm sure once upon a time was the norm. Talk took a lot of money out of their businesses, but it's all plowed back into with us. And you do the sums, and that's the true cost. And without making of, you know, with the requisite profit to make sure we continue and can grow a little bit. But the costs, I mean, they are devastating. There's no doubt about it. And quite simply, if the business model doesn't work, you're not doing your job. So you're measured on that. And the chocolate we use is original beans. They are from an amazing collective of small independent growers and farmers, mostly in South America, mostly women, interestingly, as well. So quality is all. And you don't need much. The other huge thing in restaurants now that's so important is appetites are much reduced. Folks really don't want to be defeated by a mountain of food and function.

Jeremy Lee 36:05

Is this health consciousness, if that's the word?

SPEAKER_00 36:08

Yeah, you don't want to get off a table groaning. You want to be happily satisfying to feel good. Is it weight loss jabs? Do you think is that commitment? Or well, to this we don't know. I'm doing I don't think a Zempic or whatever it's called figures large in what we do. Because folk do seem to eat very well, and we sell a lot of puddings. A lot.

Jeremy Lee 36:29

I'm actually finding it rather difficult to sit here talking about your. Well, I can see something like that happening. Can I talk to you about another thing which fascinates me? I don't regularly read them. But the notion of the restaurant review. I know there are people who read them slavishly. Yeah. And I mean the latest restaurant to open in Barrison Evans, which is a Spanish restaurant called La Belota. I don't know how they did it, but they got amazing reviews from William Sitwell and Grace Dent, and you cannot get a seat in the for Absolutely. And so I thought I'd look up some reviews for Vardis. They're all shit. No, they're not. I mean it's a royal mixed bag. Well, the evocative one is the one that I know you use, which is Quebardis walks the line between tradition and innovation and manages to cultivate a spirit of insider touchiness. Absolutely sure what that means. Without being remotely snooty, sneary, or exclusive. I mean, I read that and I think I want to go there. Thank you. And find out what the touchiness is all about. Can I just tell you my favourite restaurant review, actually? Yes. Before I ask you for yours, just to warn you. A friend of mine showed me this. About a restaurant you'll be familiar with called Oslo Court. Yes, gosh. And for readers who don't know, Oslo Court is stuck in a cocktail central. It's stuck in a time walk. And still, last time I went there, it was a few years ago. It still offered chilled orange juice as one of its as one of its starters. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 38:14

It's so fondly considered. And nobody wants it to change. Exactly. That's the other thing. That's what's most important. Please don't change. I mean, just don't do anything. It's great.

Jeremy Lee 38:24

But how's this for a description? Not of the cooking, it turns out. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oslo Court is where fish knives go to die. So cruel. Well, cruel.

SPEAKER_00 38:40

But accurate and friendly in a kind of way. No, it's it's no, it's it's extraordinary because there's almost a guilt felt for liking it because it's so old-fashioned. But that's paper thin, because folk just love it.

Jeremy Lee 38:53

Yeah, no, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 38:54

So what's your favourite review? Either you have written or that you have received it. Lordy. Well, I remember wincing once when Faye Mashler described uh I must have been a pot of fur or something. And I can't for the life of me remember who's in ruin, but describing it as a pond life of winter vegetables. And just go, oh God, there for the grace of God, you know, and just going, ah, you know, that was one that stuck. And then a hilarious one when we had to take smoked sandwich off the menu briefly at Covid's because there was, you know, the whole sustainability thing that was really at its height then. And not fully understood. Nobody nobody understood what sustainability meant, really. And it had to be very carefully unpicked to understand what actually this meant. Otherwise, quite frankly, fish was off the menu, period, nearly in those days. I mean, we'd already had a moratorium on cod, as it was, which I'm not sure if most folk even remember. And CJD and BSE had done unbelievable damage to the food chain. These enormous mountains of carcasses being burned on the blare. I mean, it was it was an amazing time. And it's just not enough to say organic on a tin or a packet or a bottle. That's just, you know, right to find what's organic. And being truly organic is very, very expensive. Yeah. So there was all this stuff to weather. And we got a site, there was a very polite but small, powerful lobby saying smoke teal needs to come off. It's an endangered species, you shouldn't have it on the menu. Gone a par with wild salmon, which all of us have taken off our menus and have done for years now. Anyway, Adrian Gill came in for dinner, as was his wont, very sweetly, to bring a powerful in London. Oh, you've got to come and have a smoked teal sandwich at Corvalis. And Julia Rise sat down and hit the indignation button. What do you mean there's no smoke teal sandwich? The only reason I'm here. Surely there's other things we like on the menu. And he went berserk, rightly, hilariously so. And so I'd kindly remember who was being reviewed the following Sunday. Um, but it booked it, you know, he just fast-tracked this review. And I think the poor rest of the pair of the end, well, it just said, if you don't the gist was, if you don't put smoke teal sandwich back on the menu, I'm gonna close you.

unknown 41:12

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 41:14

Oh my god, you go, there's notoriety in a bucket for you. Oh, hilariously, and brilliantly. And so Sam just said, Oh God, no, let's just go. And of course, in due time, you know, the smoketeal fisheries, you know, you just go on their website from Meadowsweet Bakery, and there's just screeds of all the sustainability for our kids. Because you have that's now the world we live in. It's amazing.

Jeremy Lee 41:35

And it's good, actually.

SPEAKER_00 41:37

So other generations can enjoy talking, talking bad about record because what's it because when I was coming up through the ranks, the glory days of the broadsheets when they were all still the Guardian, The Observer, The Times, the Sunday Times, you know, all of them. And there was a religious moment almost on a Saturday and a Sunday to sit down and read the Great Reviewers, Emily Green and Independent, Jonathan Meads at The Times, Adrian Gill in the Sunday Times, Matthew Fort, who gave me my first writing break as well, funnily enough. And, you know, you opened these broadsheets, and there was this enormous great spread. And so if you if you did appear on those pages and your presence was there, it was an amazing feeling, I have to say. And then the you know, the new generations came in. So it's fascinating now that Jonathan Meads is now replaced by Jonathan Lunn. And Jonathan Meads had famously said, I will retire when I have exhausted every last word in the English dictionary. And bowed out reviewing harvester, and I went, ooh, that's quite an indictment. Ouch. Listen, Jeremy, we're gonna have to wrap this up.

Jeremy Lee 42:46

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 42:46

Sadly. Oh, then it should come to this.

Jeremy Lee 42:51

What would we do that? One last question. Slightly cheeky question. You can refuse to answer it. But I'll go for it. Okay, ready? Just between us.

SPEAKER_00 43:01

Do I have to take the Fifth Amendment for this one?

Jeremy Lee 43:03

No. Okay. If Nigel Farage were to walk into Quovardis, would you give him a table? Of course. Good one or a bad one? No such thing as a bad table. You'd say that. Thank you very much, Jeremy. Let me tell the Belgian crowd, because I I imagine the others have already made a note. Kitchening. Yes. Out in September. Unbelievably good value. Every kitchen will need it. And quite a good gift, I would have thought. Perhaps to Nigel Farage, who knows? Who does he read? I'm so pleased. I can't be that line. Thank you very much for listening. Bye.