7 minute read
Meet the Chef: Interview with Jason Atherton
On a bright cold morning earlier this year, Melanie Abrams meets Jason Atherton, one of Britain’s most prolific chefs in his new flagship restaurant in London, Row on 5.
Jason Atherton is busy. The multiMichelin-starred chef has opened five new eateries in London last year, bringing his tally of international restaurants to 14.
His latest one is Row on 5, which opened in November along Savile Row, famous for its gentleman’s tailoring shops like neighbouring Gieves & Hawkes. Here, he says, he shows off his prolific culinary skills, serving sophisticated tasting dishes like rich, buttery Cornish bluefin tuna served on a bespoke glass dish coated with Cornish sand.
Each restaurant has a distinctive cuisine, reflecting his penchant for innovative flavour combinations. Three Darlings' international dishes including succulent skate wing schnitzel served with aromatic Japanese katsu curry and lime.
Set near Sloane Square, the smart bistro, named after his three daughters, has a spin off space at Harrod’s serving gourmet hot dogs like the lamb Souk dog with smoky harissa, sour red onion, creamy tahini yoghurt and a sprinkle of coriander.
Then there’s some hearty British fare like shepherd’s pie at Sael in Saint James’s Market near Piccadilly Circus, or juicy steaks and lamb chops from the wood fired grill at Mary’s. A stone’s throw from Liberty, the iconic department store near Regent Street, this relaxed restaurant was once his Michelin starred Pollen Street Social, where his empire kicked off in 2011.
As the economy crunches and other restaurants shutter their doors for the final time, including Michel Roux Jr’s fabled Le Gavroche, we ask Atherton, one of Britain’s best-known chefs, what lies behind his ambitious strategy.
His aim is “to make sure that our restaurants don’t become irrelevant,” he says, sitting at one of the dining tables on the upper floor of Row on 5, which has 4,200 wines “so a monster of a wine list,” he says. The restaurant’s executive sommelier, Roxane Dupuy, recommended the Henri Giraud’s Perpetual Réserve 90-19 vintage champagne for the caviar and potato dish to bring out the flavours, as we met by the wine cellar on the lower ground floor.
According to Atherton, Row on 5 works now because the Michelin-starred restaurant “is more bespoke, more niche,” he says, and designed to resemble a private members club – take the hard-to-find entrance, where a simple dark plaque marks the stairs leading downstairs to the monumental front door.
“I can concentrate on 15 dishes with the best ingredients and showcase balance, originality, flow, textures and tastes, whereas with a la carte, I’ve got to do ten starters, ten main courses and six desserts and cheese, and the textures of each dish might not be the same," Atherton says.
Whilst the menu looks minimalistic – oyster and pearls (caviar) to start, for example – it took a year to devise, says Atherton, as with small tasters he had to decide “if you eat that, is it enough protein? Is it enough food? Do you feel full?” he says.
Furthermore, he is creating a more theatrical, immersive experience within this restaurant as customers move to a different table between courses as this “makes the night a bit more fun,” he says, because “you are in the restaurant for four hours so it’s a long time. Customers go upstairs after the cheese and onion third course and back downstairs after the ninth course – Colston Basset’s handmade stilton.
There’s benefit to the business too, he says, as customers order wine at their first table downstairs, then “come upstairs [and] order more wine”.
Born in Skegness, a seaside town in Lincolnshire, in 1971, Atherton had focused ambition. After leaving school at 16, he studied cooking at a local college but left after six months because he “was obsessed by being in London. I wanted to cook in the top restaurants. I wasn’t interested in being taught how to make a bechamel sauce,” he says.
After starting as a kitchen porter at a Kensington restaurant, he left to train as a chef at the three Michelin-starred restaurant, La Tante Claire (the Aunt Clare), in Chelsea and later at the award-strewn Chez Nico along Park Lane, where he said he learned how to run a family business. His wife, Irha Atherton, is a co-founder of the Social Company, which runs his restaurants.
“Your whole family has to be invested,” he says, proudly citing recent advice from his eldest daughter, who works a night shift at Three Darlings whilst studying at university. “There are too many staff down there for the amount of covers,” he recalls her saying.
In the 1990s, Atherton became a junior chef “or dogsbody,” he says, under Marco Pierre White at his celebrity-filled restaurant Harvey’s. He then became an executive chef at London’s Maze restaurant, owned by Gordon Ramsay, in 2001 where, he says, he learned the business of running a restaurant like “how to spot opportunities [and that] margins are everything,” he says.
After nine years with Ramsay, Atherton opened his first restaurant Table No. 1 in Shanghai and, in 2011, London’s Pollen Street Social. “At the time, I remember being scared stiff of not knowing if I could fill a restaurant on my own or be a Michelin star chef in my own right,” he recalls. But at 39 years old then, it was a now or never decision.
It's certainly a more challenging time to build a restaurant empire these days, he acknowledges, given the current economic climate. "However while it might feel a bit tricky navigating things, there are definitely still opportunities out there. Take Three Darlings, for instance. The Cadogan Estate actually approached us about opening a restaurant in a vacant space. I suppose having an established name can make those conversations a bit smoother."
Indeed, location is more important today than ever as London’s food scene has spread away from the West End, which “is not the coolest part of the city anymore,” he says.
“In the 1980s, there was no such thing as a cool food scene in Brixton,” he says, also naming Shoreditch and Borough Market. “Now, they are the hippest places in London to eat.”
Whilst it’s tough to keep restaurants afloat, Atherton “decided it was our time to have a little growth spurt and we backed it,” he says.
Increasing profit margins is key, he says. “If we operate as a business on 15 per cent profit, we’re doing good.
Words | Melanie Abrams
