Showing mercy

There aren't many 26-year-old chefs who will tell you boldly that they don't have any role models in the industry. But in Mercy Fenton's case, it is hard to question her self-confidence. She was the first female chef to win the Young Chef of the Year award and the Roux Diners Scholarship, and has just secured her first head chef's position at London's Stephen Bull restaurant.

Relaxing in the restaurant bar between lunchtime and evening service, the Irish-born chef speaks candidly about the industry and the part she wants to play in it. She has little interest in the goings on outside the restaurant, however. Just nine weeks into her job at Stephen Bull, all her energies are focused on the kitchen.

"I eat, sleep and talk food at the moment," she says. "It's not so much that I'm anxious about anything, I just want everything to be right, everything to be ready for service."

She speaks about her past achievements reluctantly, playing down her successes in both commercial and competition kitchens. Flattery of a kind came recently from Fay Maschler, restaurant critic on London's Evening Standard, who seemingly charged round to the Marylebone restaurant on hearing that there was a woman heading the kitchen and awarded Fenton's cooking a "notable" two stars.

Fenton does not bask in such praise, although she admits the restaurant has been fully booked since Maschler's review. Fenton is concerned only with pleasing her customers, her boss, and, possibly the hardest to please of all, herself.

Ideal situation

Owned by chef and restaurateur Stephen Bull, the 55-seat, five-year-old restaurant in Blandford Street appears to be the ideal place for a young head chef to work, for Bull not only has a reputation for setting food trends he is also known as an employer who draws the best from his employees.

The menus, which can change daily, twice a week or three times a week, carry a number of Bull's own dishes, such as his twice-cooked goats' cheese soufflé (£7.50), alongside Fenton's.

"Mr Bull doesn't mind what's featured on the menus as long as the food is different and it maintains high standards of quality," says Fenton.

She is introducing her dishes gradually and gauging customer reaction. "It would be silly to come in here and change everything drastically," she explains. "Customers eat here because they are familiar with the restaurant - they don't want things pulled out from under their feet," she explains.

Fenton has retained the menu format of three or four fish dishes, three or four meat dishes, and a vegetarian dish. A recent starter of ballottine of duck confit and lentils with garlic cream (£6.50) is a dish from Morels restaurant in Haslemere, Surrey, where Fenton worked for more than two years. Grilled mackerel on warm potato salad (£5.75) and roast cod, couscous and vegetable salad with garlic jus (£12) are Fenton's creations.

"I like using ingredients such as pulses and couscous. I used to live with a vegetarian and so we used those things a lot at home," says Fenton.

Her recipe for Chinese leaves stuffed with Oriental-flavoured black beans (£8.50) - the dish she has chosen to share with Chef - was inspired by those times. "We made a black bean salad one day and I just knew I had to use it for something."

With her successes in the 1993 Young Chef of the Year competition and the 1994 Roux Diners Scholarship, it would be easy to assume that Fenton is a keen competition chef, but she says she takes part in competitions only if she can see a benefit from them.

"Some people do competition work all the time. But I saw Young Chef of the Year and the Roux Diners Scholarship as something very worthwhile, I had always wanted to work in France. But doing competitions for the sake of it doesn't interest me now, I just want to get on with my new job."

She puts her past competition success down to tasting her food and not panicking. "A lot of competition chefs try to make things too complicated. For Young Chef of the Year, I made my menu and presentation really simple. Presentation is not my strongest point - it's not that I'm messy, I'm just far more interested in flavours."

Although there is no-one Fenton aspires to be like, there are people in the industry that she admires. Jean-Yves Morel of former Michelin-starred restaurant Morels had the greatest influence on Fenton's career, having taken her on at 21 as a junior member of the team.

There is also restaurateur Antony Worrall Thompson, for whom she most recently worked as sous chef at dell'Ugo in Soho. He has an equally high regard for Fenton, describing her as a chef with exceptional skills. "She has a natural talent and a caring talent not often found in chefs," says Worrall Thompson. "If something doesn't work, she doesn't just scrap the idea, she wants to know why it doesn't work."

Worrall Thompson says he was sorry to learn of Fenton's appointment as head chef at Stephen Bull because he was considering promoting her to head chef within his own group of restaurants. But he says: "I wish her well and hope she will come back to us one day."

One similarity that Fenton does share with other young chefs is her burning ambition to have a place of her own. This was something she had in mind while working as sous chef at Morels. "I've always wanted to have my own restaurant so the next progression was a head chef's position in a small restaurant."

Ideally, Fenton would like to go home to Ireland to open a restaurant in Kerry or Galway, "but it might be that I'll have to head for a city because that's where the business is".

Wherever Fenton ends up, she is adamant that her restaurant will be a place where people enjoy themselves. "I want to serve fresh, carefully prepared food at prices that people can afford. I think going out to eat has got a bit silly - people have forgotten that they are supposed to be enjoying themselves."