Hibiscus in bloom
Rarely is a chef tipped to take two Michelin stars before he has even got one, yet the industry verdict on Ludlow's newest fine-dining establishment, Hibiscus, is that it will only be a matter of time before its chef-proprietor, Claude Bosi, attains that status.
But then, 28-year-old Bosi has a track record of gaining accolades quickly. Within a year of taking over the kitchen in his first head chef tenure at former Caterer Adopted Business Overton Grange, just outside Ludlow, he netted a star in the 1999 Michelin listings, a mere 10 months after arriving in Britain.
"His food is stunning - very inventive, very French," attests fellow Ludlow restaurateur Shaun Hill, whose own one-Michelin-starred restaurant, the Merchant House, is a stone's throw from Hibiscus's doors. "Claude's got tons of potential and he's got the energy to have a glittering career. I've eaten there three times since it opened in May, and the craft skills at the base of the food are very obvious."
Bosi himself says that he did not anticipate gaining a Michelin star so rapidly at Overton Grange. "When I came to England, it was not to get a star but to improve my English," he grins. "I was lucky at Overton Grange because I had a chance to do what I wanted." He suspects that, had he remained in France, the accolade would not have come his way at the age of 26."I could probably only have done it working under one of the big names, like Alain Passard or Alain Ducasse. But I didn't want to do it for someone else. I wanted to get something for me."
Relaxing in the comfort of his restaurant, the pony-tailed Bosi exudes laid-back confidence. He is obviously passionate about food but not incestuously obsessed with industry gossip. His is not a flamboyant character, he just gets on with his career in a matter-of-fact way. How could he not, having been born into a family of restaurateurs in the gastronomic mecca of Lyon? Cooking is almost as natural to him as breathing.
The hallmark of his style, based on a solid classical training and seasonal ingredients, is a directness of approach, an understanding of how to balance a dish, and interesting, sometimes surprising, couplings of main-dish components and accompanying flavours. A glance at one of Bosi's menus would reveal classic Gallic food - for example, fricassée of frogs' legs, pork terrine, Bresse pigeon, foie gras and suckling pig. But a closer reading exposes the ingenuity spotted by Hill.
Another pigeon creation impressed Hill. Bresse pigeon with a pink praline crust made of vividly coloured, crushed, almond-centred pink sweets (see recipe) sounds unlikely but succeeds in being evolutionary rather than revolutionary. "All the components work well," says Hill. "The dish is stimulating without being off-the-wall, but in less skilled hands it would be a disaster." The roots of the crust are in the French tradition of putting the sweets into brioche. Bosi explains: "When the brioche is cooked, the sugar in the sweets melts into the bread."
In fact, crusts, not to mention purées, are a bit of a Bosi trademark. His latest experiment makes use of the two techniques and comprises lamb covered in a walnut paste mixed with crushed fresh almonds, lemon and tarragon served with a horeseradish purée. This is accompanied by individual endive leaves stuffed with a Golden Delicious and thyme confit.
That Bosi is a chef who pays respect to his French culinary heritage while giving it a modern edge comes as no surprise. His formative years as a chef were spent in two- and three-starred Michelin kitchens working for some of his country's most respected and influential chefs - in Lyon's two-starred La Pyramid Fernand Point (named in honour of Vienne's founder of nouvelle cuisine) with Patrick Henriroux, in Paris's two-starred Restaurant Chiberta with Phillipe Dasilva, and in the French capital's three-starred L'ArpÁ¤ge (under Alain Passard) and Restaurant Alain Ducasse.
To date, the chef who has exerted the greatest influence on him is Passard, for whom Bosi worked as a sous chef for two-and-a-half years between 1994 and 1996. "Passard taught me how to cook," he says. "His technical cuissance is amazing. He takes Escoffier and changes a few things to give a bit of an edge. He works with ingredients that anyone can buy - not just the best produce - and he does something special with them. He makes something perfect out of ingredients that are less than perfect. I try to do the same."
He jokes: "I love to go to the market and buy a pig's head very cheaply and then do a terrine - only we have to call it pork terrine, otherwise we wouldn't sell it."
The ability to make something special out of ordinary ingredients is a quality that Bosi recognises in British chef David Everitt-Matthias, whose Cheltenham restaurant, Le Champignon Sauvage, was awarded a second Michelin star earlier this year. He is particularly impressed by the fact that Everitt-Matthias achieved the accolade with a tiny brigade. "Some chefs are doing the same food with eight or 12 people," Bosi says, "but David has just two in the kitchen and his consistency is superb. He deserved the two stars."
Other chefs who draw praise from Bosi are Switzerland's Freddie Girardet, Spain's ground-breaking Ferran AdriÁ (Caterer, 15 June, page 42), and Heston Blumenthal at Bray's Fat Duck. The latter two, he recognises, have a scientific approach to food completely at odds with his own method. "Not for me, that cooking, but this man AdriÁ is a genius," he says with a smile, although he voices a concern that people will be tempted to pick up on AdriÁ 's unique style without understanding its clinical base. "Blumenthal is on the same level," he says. "But, unlike them, not everybody is a genius."
However, Bosi does have one thing in common with AdriÁ and Blumenthal - a Pacojet ice-cream machine. "I used to work with one in France, at Ducasse's," he says. "You can do everything with it - ice-cream, sorbet, soup, consommé - but there's only two of us in the kitchen so there's no time to experiment with it like at El Bulli."
He may have had no time yet to stretch himself, but Bosi is certainly putting out ice-creams and sorbets that are three cuts above the ordinary. Hawthorn ice-cream (made with dried hawthorn seed), with its faint hint of aniseed and mayflower, for instance, just takes the edge off the sweet, purple-red Roussillon peaches it is currently matched with (see recipe opposite), and in his clove ice-cream, the aromatic mellowness balances a sharp lemon soufflé in an allusion to classic mulled wine flavours.
However, perhaps the most interesting and appropriate dessert ice, given the restaurant's name, is a hibiscus sorbet made from the plant's crushed dried flower, which Bosi serves with a raspberry and gin tonic as a palate-cleansing pre-dessert. Red in colour, the sorbet is reminiscent of the mulberry fruit beloved in eastern Mediterranean sorbets. "It's very fresh - very much like summer fruit," says Bosi, who carried it on his opening menu as a jelly, holding red summer fruits.
As for naming the restaurant Hibiscus, Bosi confesses: "I love this plant. My mother has 23 of them in Lyon." And Mrs Bosi will be in Britain at Christmas with her husband to check on her son's progress, so Claude had better watch out. "My mum's the chef," he says. "She chases me out of the kitchen." n
