Simple charms
La Chaumière intends to be, and succeeds in being, an antidote to a particular style of eaterie that has dominated the London restaurant scene over the past decade.
"Most of the restaurants here are too sterile," says Zoran Marchetich, owner of the 90-seat establishment, which opened in the former location of the King's Head and Eight Bells pub in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, in July. "Too often you are made to feel like you are in a furniture shop or some kind of showpiece. At La Chaumière I want people to feel like they are coming into my home."
The rustic, Proven‡al decor of the restaurant, with its mustard-dragged walls, dark wooden panelling, and twee touches (including, inexplicably, doll's-house furniture in the loos), is certainly a million miles from the stark, colour-free designs that can be found in so many of London's contemporary restaurants.
The food, too, is quite different from anywhere else in town. While the succession of dishes served to every customer creates a certain busy-ness, the actual components are simple. So simple, in fact, that some elements have undergone virtually no preparation by Yvan Gaydon, who was appointed as head chef to replicate the style of operation at La Chaumière, situated in Eze, high in the hills above the Côte d'Azur in France.
Marchetich, an architect and designer, had hoped to persuade the owners of the original restaurant to open a second branch in London, but when they declined he decided to set up the restaurant himself, supported by Gaydon, who takes a share in the profits.
Gaydon spent much of his earlier career working in Michelin-starred establishments, such as the Hotel Aston, Nice, and the Hotel Nikko in Paris, and he was eager to adopt a simpler approach to cooking when he became head chef at the French version of La Chaumière. He was attracted by the opportunity to cook on the large wood-burning fire that forms the centrepiece of the restaurants in both France and London. "I immediately enjoyed the contact I had with the customers," he says. "They would chat to me as I cooked, because it was like going to someone's house for dinner."
Although customers choose their main-course meat, cooked by Gaydon on the wood-burning fire, and then later their dessert, the first part of the meal involves all the starters being shared family-style by each table. Gaydon prepares all the starters and desserts in the restaurant's main kitchen during the day (the restaurant is only open for dinner during the week, and for lunch on Saturday and Sundays). He supported by just one other chef.
On being seated at their tables, customers are each served a dish containing one hard-boiled egg, still in its shell, and one tomato. Then a succession of hors d'oeuvres starts to arrive - slivers of Parma ham served on a wooden platter, champignons à la grecque and caviar d'aubergines, all served with slices of bread toasted on the open fire.
More dishes follow, including a terrine maison made from duck and pork, salade à la crème and a gigantic basket of raw vegetables. While the latter is described as a panier des crudit‚s, the vegetables are not prepared in the way that one would normally expect. The panier is served with an accompanying vinaigrette, but the contents, including a cauliflower, fennel bulbs and red peppers, are left whole for customers to dissect without the help of a vegetable knife. For Gaydon, this is the best way to serve crudités. "The customers can see that the vegetables are fresh and good-looking," he says.
The main course is simply served: a choice of beef, lamb or chicken cooked over the open grill fired by green-oak charcoal and served with a green salad and jacket potato. Gaydon describes the cooking of the meat, all sourced in Simmenthal in France, as a major organisational feat. "I add nothing to the meat other than some fresh rosemary and bay leaves and then I constantly move it around the fire, on to and off the hot spots when necessary. Remembering what meat everyone wants and how they want it cooked is a nightmare. I might have enough meat on the fire for 50 or 60 people at a time and I must make sure that none of it is overcooked. In a kitchen, a chef would test the meat with his finger, but out here in front of the customer I have to do it with a fork. It is a very hard, hot job."
Rounding off the meal, customers are served a choice of desserts - apple tart, crème brûlée, chocolate mousse, fresh pineapple or seasonal fruits - a selection of French cheeses and coffee.
Gaydon says he can justify the charge of £45 per head that has irritated several restaurant critics. "The quality of the meat, the expensive transport, the fresh vegetables… " he says. "I just don't think some of the critics understand the concept. They were probably expecting the kind of chic French food that they usually get elsewhere in London. What I am offering is simplicity, using the best ingredients."
Mixed reviews
La Chaumière has attracted a mixed selection of extreme reviews, veering from Jan Moir of the Daily Telegraph who said: "I love it to bits", to Fay Maschler of London's Evening Standard, AA Gill of the Sunday Times and Giles Coren of The Times, who all criticised the restaurant for charging £45 per head and for serving such simply prepared food.
Maschler, in particular, picked out the starters as having "concentrated the mind forcefully on the food costs involved in this performance. I reckon that out of the £45 per person charged, starters must have accounted for about £4 each, if that, and needed no skilled chef to organise, so no skilled chef's salary either."
In typically direct fashion, Gill said that, for a restaurant that aimed to be "epicureanly puritanical", its ingredients needed to be beyond reproach. "And they weren't," he wrote. "Starters were very underpowered: gritty, tasteless pâté; chilly mushroom; slimy aubergine; and a salad doused in white cream that was positively horrid."
Like Maschler, Gill balked at paying £45 per head. "This really is far, far too much for food this simple, even if it were what it promised… To put it in context, this is in the same ballpark as the set-price dinner at Pétrus."
There was also much criticism of La Chaumière's policy regarding the way in which customers order the meat for their main course, as summed up by Gill: "You can choose from two sorts of steak, rack or leg of lamb or chicken. The chicken and the leg have to be ordered when you book (which we weren't told). The steaks are for two people, so if you eat alone, the option is… well, lamb. And if you are a couple, you have to have the same thing."
The cooking of the meat, though, did receive universal praise. Gill said his steak was "excellent: bloody and seared with the scent of wood smoke". Coren described the beef and lamb as "nice and rare, with lovely burnt bits on the beef", while Maschler praised the meats for being "skilfully cooked". Moir, though, was the most effusive. "It is no exaggeration when I say that the meats are sensational, cooked to perfection," she wrote.
