Flavour first
Bruno Loubet is used to being referred to as one of the UK's most exciting young chefs. But the imminent opening of L'Odéon, his first restaurant venture, will allow him to take his cooking on to an even greater level.
According to Loubet, the 220-seat restaurant in the Sir John Nash Terrace, Regent Street, "will be one of the most creative places in London".
"For the first time in my life, I will have all the right tools - a modern, well-equipped kitchen and the support of a large brigade. I will be able to do what I want to do and what I am able to do."
His partners in the restaurant venture are Pierre and Kathleen Condou, who also own Bistrot Bruno and Café Bruno in Soho's Frith Street, where Loubet has worked for the past two years. "My two partners understand and respect what I want to do and the way I see things. They trust me 100%," says Loubet. "When you have this level of support you feel like giving 120%."
Loubet has been dreaming about a place of his own for more than two years. When he left London's Four Seasons Hotel in September 1993, he thought it was only a matter of locating a suitable site before his ideal restaurant would be up and running. But a series of setbacks, including being gazumped and difficulties with planning permission at the current site - a Grade II-listed building - delayed his dream from becoming reality.
A week before L'Odéon's opening, though, and Loubet's excitement has not subsided: "I want everything to happen as quickly as possible - every day is an eternity for me."
Essentially, what L'Odéon will offer Loubet is freedom of choice, an opportunity to break the rules. "At the Four Seasons I had to use expensive ingredients such as lobster and foie gras; hotels are full of politics. Here, we can do whatever we want."
The à la carte menu at L'Odéon sports 15 starters, 16 mains and 11 desserts, including a cheese selection, and will change twice a year. Highlighting its eclecticism, Loubet says: "You can choose between a simple red mullet consommé or a classic haute cuisine dish such as game terrine en croûte, except we serve ours with a walnut chutney which is influenced by my stay in England. Alternatively, you can have a crazy dish like jellied eels or scallops and black pudding."
Loubet will also be offering daily changing, pre-theatre menus, priced at £14.50 for two courses and £17.50 for three.
His brigade of 53 chefs will work straight shifts from 7am-4.30pm or 2pm until end of service. Twenty chefs will be on duty at any one time, but in the crossover period between 2pm-4.30pm, 40 chefs will be in the kitchen. Service runs from 12pm-3pm and 5.30-midnight.
Loubet conceived several of the dishes on the new menu two years ago. Jellied eels (£5.50), incorporates a delicate-tasting jelly made from Gewürztraminer wine, apple juice and sole fumé. "I like using neglected ingredients and adapting them in a skilful way." A caviar supplement, £15 for 20g, is available for this dish. "I think our jellied eels make the caviar taste better," he says.
Loubet describes his starter of roast scallops and black pudding with mashed potato, garlic and parsley coulis (£9.95), featured in his book Bistrot Bruno: Cooking from L'Odéon (published by Macmillan, £20), as a classic. "I've already seen it in other London restaurants," he says proudly.
A sparky dish
A main course of mackerel stuffed with greens, lime pickles and potatoes (£12) is representative of L'Odéon cooking. "The lime pickle gives the fish an exciting flavour - it's a sparky dish."
The fish is boned out and stuffed with a selection of green leaves, such as parsley, spinach and basil, and then roasted. New potatoes are peeled, roasted and, just before service, draped with lime pickle, which Loubet makes himself.
Although he will be using less expensive ingredients, he believes average spend at L'Odéon will be higher than at Bistrot Bruno, at about £35. "What we do at Bistrot Bruno is fantastic with the space we have and the number of staff we can afford. But I think of the Bistrot as amateur in a way. L'Odéon will be a professional, top-class job."
Few dishes at L'Odéon will be pot-roasted, veal sweetbreads on mushy chestnuts with a dark and white sauce (£18.50) being an exception. "It's one of the best ways to cook sweetbreads, but it may be too time-consuming in reality."
The dark sauce is veal jus, made with a dash of Madeira and some truffle jus, while the white sauce is made from trimmings of sweetbreads, with a touch of cream, finished with butter, rosemary and a squeeze of lemon.
Roast pineapple with Szechuan pepper and star anise with lime sorbet (£5) is a fine example of Loubet's style of sweets. "I've always liked desserts with fruit, I'm not into nougat glacés or pyramids of this and that."
The pineapple is roasted with sugar, ground star anise and ground Szechuan pepper, "which caramelises nicely". The sauce is made from passion fruit, lemon juice, sugar and water, and the pineapple is topped with a lime sorbet.
With two head chefs working under him - Anthony Demetre at L'Odéon and Pierre Khodja at Bistrot Bruno - one wonders what title Loubet will give himself. "I'm a working chef, that's all," he says, adding that he is reluctant to join many chefs in their executive chef or media roles that take them out of the kitchen.
"The media side is so important these days. Everybody is so concerned about media - but some attach more importance to it than their cooking," says Loubet. "I can understand them, but my place is in the kitchen."
