Now we are ten
London restaurant Pied à Terre is about to celebrate its 10th birthday. Fiona Sims looks back at its achievements and discovers how current head chef Shane Osborn is continuing to woo diners
Pied à Terre owner David Moore leans over the plan of his restaurant's refurbishment, due to take place this winter. "What do you think?" he asks, stroking a piece of taupe fabric.
The refurbishment of the restaurant, in London's Charlotte Street, coincides with its 10th birthday next January. Reaching double figures is quite a feat in the fickle world of restaurants; considering Pied à Terre's mixed publicity in recent years, it's also something of a triumph.
Pied à Terre hit the headlines almost as soon as it opened in December 1991. Moore, who had spent six years working his way up through the restaurant floor ranks at Raymond Blanc's Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, decided it was time to go it alone. "I loved working at Le Manoir," he recalls. "But at the time, Raymond wasn't looking to expand and I had gone as far as I was going to go there. I started thinking about what to do next."
Blanc had a number of talented chefs in the kitchen, one of whom was Richard Neat. Moore and Neat became friends and kept in touch after Neat took himself off to Paris to work with Joël Robuchon. So, when Moore decided to open his own place, not only was Blanc behind him (he is still a non-executive director of Pied à Terre), but Neat also saw an opportunity and joined forces with him as his head chef.
"I recognised Richard as a huge talent," declares Moore, who snapped up a struggling Indian restaurant in Charlotte Street and set about transforming the place into a smart, 38-seat, contemporary-spin-on-a-classical-French restaurant.
On the first day of opening - and much to his horror - Moore showed The Times‘s restaurant critic Jonathan Meades to one table and the Guardian‘s Matthew Fort to another. But he needn't have worried: the reviews were very positive. And then came the Michelin stars - one in January 1993, the second in 1996.
However, soon afterwards the pressure got to Neat, who was still only 26 years old. Just weeks after the second Michelin star, he shocked the culinary world by abandoning Moore and accepting a lucrative offer from the Taj group of hotels to run its flagship restaurant in Delhi. (He worked in India until 1999, when he returned to Europe and opened his own place, Neat, in Cannes on the Cöte d'Azur. He has since opened another restaurant in London, also called Neat.)
Moore rapidly filled the vacancy by promoting Neat's sous chef, Tom Aikens. "He was my first choice to take over the position of head chef," Moore says. Aikens subsequently ran the kitchen for nearly three years, keeping London's attention - and the second Michelin star - until it all came to an explosive end in late 1999. Aikens made a swift departure following a well-publicised "incident" involving a member of his brigade. "I don't want to talk about it," says Moore. "The notoriety was fabulous for business though," he adds, claiming he didn't drop one cover during the whole affair.
But the following year was a tough one nonetheless. "We were a Michelin-starred restaurant with a new chef and a dodgy future," says Moore. "But everybody stuck by us. Nobody else walked out in solidarity with Tom."
Next to wear the head chef mantle was Shane Osborn, Aikens's sous chef, whom Moore pushed into the limelight when Aikens left.
And Osborn has risen to the challenge, continuing to attract diners, 35% of whom are regulars, and retaining one of the Michelin stars. He has also just managed to pick up a fourth rosette from the AA Restaurant Guide 2002. "He's the best of all three chefs," declares Moore.
Osborn, an Australian, left his home town of Perth - "a culinary desert" - after catering college when he was 20 years old. He then travelled around Scandinavia ("after a girl") before settling in the UK. He has worked with Marcus Wareing at L'Oranger and with Philip Howard at the Square.
"Marcus has a very structured, technically precise way of cooking. Everything he does is 100%," Osborn says. "After working with him I wanted to see someone doing something different. Phil is very flavour-orientated. It's honest food, not played around with."
He joined Pied à Terre in 1998. "After looking around for a bit, I came to see what Tom was doing. He was cooking the most visually exciting food I've ever come across. He has a real knack for making it look so different," he says.
According to Osborn, Aikens was greatly influenced by a visit to Ferran Adrià and his revolutionary restaurant, El Bulli, in north-east Spain. Osborn and Moore have been there too. "It's one of a kind, an amazing place."
Osborn's own cooking is more straightforward than this. "My food is about simple marriages, about two or three flavours that are brought together." The seared sea bass with green olive and vanilla sauce, a starter on the set-price dinner menu (£39.50 for a starter and main course) is a good illustration of this. "Phil used to do a green olive pasta at the Square. I could always taste vanilla in it even though there wasn't any in there, so I thought I'd try the combination and it worked really well."
He de-stones green olives marinated in fresh herbs from the Fresh Olive Company and makes an emulsion with fresh vanilla.
The venison fillet with pine nut and swede gratin, confit cabbage with swede and honey purée is another of his favourite dishes. Roasted pine nuts are infused with cream, garlic, thyme and rosemary and layered up with swede and potato. The honey, added to the accompanying swede purée, intensifies the flavour.
Considering the restaurant's French leanings, it's surprising that Osborn uses foie gras only once in any volume on the menu - it's seared then poached, and served with a fresh pea and Sauternes consomm‚. And there's not a sturgeon egg to be seen: "I don't want to use caviar because it's all fished out," he declares.
Osborn, who used to run L'Oranger's pastry section, is also responsible for the desserts at Pied à Terre. He's gone ice-cream mad recently, using his favourite bit of kit, a Paco Jet ice-cream maker, which he bought six months ago. Of the five desserts listed, four have an ice-cream or sorbet accompanying the dish, such as the caramelised banana with coconut savarin and basil ice-cream; and the apricot tarte fine with pain d'épice ice-cream. What's more, he's working on a warm chocolate mousse with a chocolate stout ice-cream (using London brewer Young's chocolate stout).
He also uses the PacoJet for fine pur‚es and is experimenting with sardines, marinating the fish for three days then roasting and freezing it before putting it through the machine. He plans to serve the sardines with red mullet, smoked eel and fresh basil.
Osborn claims that none of his dishes are created with Michelin stars in mind - he just does what comes naturally. "I enjoy cooking this food best and I feel confident about cooking it. I'm in no hurry to achieve massive status."
Pied à Terre, 34 Charlotte Street, London W1P 1HJ. Tel: 020 7636 1178
