Cooking’s serious business
Raymond Blanc and Mark Derry discuss the growth of their restaurant group, Brasserie Blanc.
 Few people would fail to recognise Raymond Blanc these days. The French chef’s warmth and charisma, along with his astonishing culinary creations, have made him a hit with television audiences in the UK.
Mark Derry might not be a household name, but his achievements in the restaurant business are just as impressive.
He is the man who, together with business partner Ian Glyn, developed the Loch Fyne group before selling to Greene King for £70million in 2007.
He is now CEO of Brasserie Bar Co. the company behind Brasserie Blanc, a vision of Blanc’s since he arrived in the UK in the 1970’s.
The group is in the middle of some pretty major investment. Brasserie Bar Co. acquired eight Chez Gérard premises for £10million last year and are in the process of transforming the restaurants with Blanc’s trademark style and panache. I meet Blanc and Derry at the most recent of their new restaurants to undergo the Brasserie Blanc transformation in Watling Street, near St Paul’s.
Blanc explained: “It had always been a dream of mine to create such a brasserie, such a popular restaurant. Because that was so much what was missing in Britain. We had the high end restaurant temples and shrines but you were missing really mostly the little local restaurant, who can deliver day after day quality, value for money, a perfect smile, a real smile, good quality produce, seasonally driven, each of the restaurants has got their own personality by bringing their own specialities adapted to their own regions. So to create a place where a businessman in hurry as much as my parents would want to come, not once a year, but once a week. That was really the very heart of Brasserie Blanc and still is, what drives all of its values.”
The newly opened Brasserie Blanc at Watling Street is very chic and stylish, lots of comfortable leather seating, crisp table settings and chrome lighting. All very Parisian and equally as suitable for a business lunch or intimate dinner. It comes as a surprise to learn you can eat three courses in such surroundings for just £16.45.
Blanc points out that this value for money doesn’t mean he compromises on ingredients.
“Actually we are very proud to be able to deliver to our guests quality food which is well sourced, you know? We know every single traceability of every single food.
“Here we are delivering quality produce at a price which is truly affordable but mostly what is about Brasserie Blanc, is about the local... more and more Brasseries are becoming the place for the local people to eat and here we can already see it. I’m amazed how quickly some people come twice or three times a week here. So that’s what we’re looking for.”
This traceability of ingredients is vital, Blanc mentions a survey that puts it ahead of organic values in terms of what diners look for. Customers, he says, are becoming more knowledgeable and educated.
When Brasserie Blanc took over the eight Chez Gérard restaurants they also retained all of the staff as well.
“Chez Gérard, over a period of time, they have been deskilling the business, which was their approach.” Derry explains. “You’ve got to recognise that all chefs want to cook and they want to cook great food. When we came along and said ‘we’re going back to proper chefing’ you can imagine, they were delighted. But it’s taken a degree of retraining, because some of them have not been cooking at this level for several years.”
Blanc visibly winces when I use the word chain, he prefers the term restaurant group as he doesn’t like what the alternative implies.
“Each of these brasseries are working, sure, on the principle that its the same menu, but we also give the flexibility and the freedom to the chefs to bring their specialities and local produce. That’s a lovely freedom. We change our menu four times a year, which chain does that?”
Derry interjects. “There is a very key, fundamental difference between this and what you would see as an ordinary chain and that is the skill level in the business. Whereas many groups as they grow deskill, and by deskilling they are buying premade food. We have always recognised that creating great food is a skill and so what we do is we hire great chefs, great staff, great management and we accept that we need to keep developing them and give them careers. But the skill level is already in the restaurant so we don’t bring stuff in, we make it all on site.”
Blanc backs that up. Everything except ice-cream (apparently risky on health and safety grounds) is made on site and cooked fresh.
Blanc’s expertise and commitment to developing staff means they tend to work with him longer than the normal nomadic course a chef’s career path takes. Brasserie Blanc’s Executive Chef Clive Fretwell has been working for Blanc for 23 years, since the tender age of 18.
This nurturing philosophy seems to have had a major effect on the staff since the change from Chez Gerard to Brasserie Blanc. Down in the kitchen Blanc’s newest recruits are busy prepping for lunch, the atmosphere is relaxed. I speak to one chef who tells me how good it is to be cooking again and how much that has lifted spirits.
“This place is going to be led by craft not by just volume. These ideals must stay in place and it translates into the business, simple as that.” says Blanc.
“The craft will remain here and we have all understood that. These cooks get bigger and bigger and they forget about the craft and they forget that their success was made on that craft and then you get greedy and you start cutting corners and then you start losing it. Here, if anything, the craft is even stronger, more important.”
Sat at a table, Blanc is focused and passionate when discussing food but get him near a kitchen he can’t help darting from station to station, watching his team assemble dishes, checking pots of risotto - he tells me he has been experimenting with new time-saving methods of cooking the rice - and tasting the mixture for a blue cheese souffle, he’s not impressed “it’s flat, add some lemon juice and cayenne pepper. It was down here, now it’s up here. The recipe is everything”.
|
|
