Cavalier acts

DAVID Cavalier, head chef at London restaurant High Holborn, which opened in August, is a changed man. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when he cooked at his own restaurant, Cavalier's, in Battersea, and then worked as joint head chef at L'Escargot in London's Soho, he was the embodiment of culinary ambition - but no more.

In those days, Cavalier spent all hours of the day and night in the kitchen in the relentless pursuit of Michelin stars - both Cavalier's and L'Escargot were duly awarded one each - and he drove himself hard in order to win recognition from his peers and restaurant critics. It was his ambition to be one of the hottest names on the restaurant scene.

But these days, the 38-year-old Cavalier's goals are not what they used to be. Now he wants to do his job as well as he can, he says, but has no wish to have his name in lights. "I still cook to the best of my ability," he says, "but I have no desire any more to becomea megastar. Publicity for the restaurant is great, butI don't give a damn about personal profile."

Nor does Cavalier regard his career as the be-all and end-all of life any more. He got married to his second wife, Jo-Anne, in June this year and is adamant that he will work harder at the marriage than at any stove. "I'm still dedicated and want everything we produce at the restaurant to be perfect," he says, "but I can't always be here. I want some balance in my life. I've had one wife and lost her because I gave everything to the job, and I'm not going to let it happen again."

In the earlier years of his career, Cavalier had to face a number of disappointments. In 1991, he was forced to sell Cavalier's to the Restaurant Partnership because he was close to bankruptcy. And then, in 1996, a deal to secure the lease on a property at London's County Hall fell through. He had planned to open a restaurant called Memo on the site, had spent two years working on it and invested tens of thousands of pounds of his own money into it. Understandably, he was devastated.

Today, he acknowledges that these experiences have had a lasting effect on him and help to explain his new, laid-back attitude. "Once, it seemed like being a big-name chef was around the corner for me," he says. "It almost happened. But it didn't and that's life - some people are lucky and some people aren't and there's no point in worrying about it. I've learnt not to worry about anything. These days, when I go home, I leave work behind and switch off. We've got 120 booked tomorrow, but I'm not going to lie awake fretting about it."

The Michelin stars that were once so important to Cavalier seem to have lost some of their shine, too. It is covers rather than accolades that he most craves at High Holborn, the London restaurant where he now works. "I think, ‘Let's keep the punters coming here to pay the wages.' I cost money, the staff cost money and that's the bottom line," he says. "I'm not setting out to make this the next all-singing, all-dancing Tante Claire or Gordon Ramsay. We are working very hard at being consistently good, but if we overcook one potato, I'm not going to get upset about it or rap it over someone's head."

Classical French

Cavalier confesses, however, that having spent the two years prior to opening High Holborn as head chef at Mosimann's private dining club, he is enjoying the freedom to cook entirely classical French food again. The menus at Mosimann's had a number of Oriental influences, something Cavalier admits that he found difficult because the cuisine style had no part in his training.

"The menu at High Holborn is based on classical French food because it's what I understand, what I cook well," he says. "If we cook a piece of fish, we do it properly according to French technique, and if we cook a piece of lamb, we send it out pink, as it should be. But I'm not going to set the world on fire with any of this."

He is being modest. Setting the world on fire - or leading restaurant critics - is exactly what he is doing. Fay Maschler, critic for London's Evening Standard, recently awarded the restaurant two stars, describing Cavalier as a "precise, industrious, classic chef". She could find no fault with any of the dishes she tried, she said - nage of shellfish, Savoy cabbage (£12); steamed asparagus, poached egg, truffle dressing (£9); velouté of Jerusalem artichoke, smoked wood pigeon (£7); halibut pot au feu (£19); and poulet vin jaune (£16).

Unfaultable technique

Matthew Fort, the Guardian's food critic, went even further. Awarding High Holborn a score of 17 out of 20, he called its dishes "elegant and sophisticated" and said that Cavalier "has unfaultable technique". Fort added: "This fits easily within the canon of French cooking. It is French in technique and tastes. Such intelligence and technical mastery are quite exhilarating in the midst of so many examples of extravagant, ill-assorted experimentation."

Indeed, such negative comments as there were had nothing to do with the food, but rather to do with High Holborn's unusual decor. It has a lurid colour scheme and huge, pod-like light fittings, which would not be out of place in a set from Star Trek - Maschler likened them to "fruit lozenges" and Fort to "inflamed gonads". Cavalier himself admits: "People either love them or hate them. Personally, I hate them."

The outstandingly positive reviews appear to have somewhat bemused Cavalier, who has not cooked for the public for four years, having worked as a consultant for Regal Hotels for the two years prior to his tenure at Mosimann's. However, he is clearly pleased about them. "It's a surprise, I wasn't expecting all this. It's only food, for goodness' sake," he says with a grin.

Asked which are his own favourite dishes on High Holborn's menu, Cavalier sweeps the question aside. "I don't get excited by individual dishes any more," he says. "What gives me the biggest buzz now is teaching the youngsters and watching them go through their learning curve. It's great to watch people develop and become excellent chefs in their own right."

With such an attitude, it is perhaps unsurprising that, after he left Mosimann's, many of his former brigade approached Cavalier with a mind to transferring to High Holborn. One by one, they asked him for a job at the new restaurant, he says, and his 12-strong brigade is centred around old Mosimann colleagues.

When it comes to discussing the future, Cavalier is philosophical and non-committal. "I'd like to think I'm going to be here for the next five to 10 years," he says. "But the one thing I've learnt in my career is that nothing is for sure. When I opened Cavalier's in 1987,I thought I'd have it forever, but it lasted four years.I really can't say my entire future is mapped out."