The Elegant man

Chef Kelly Jackson has turned his back on the UK to go and work as head chef at Daphne's in Barbados. Gaby Huddart went to meet him.

Not many restaurants can claim to have celebrities such as pop singer Mariah Carey, supermodel Jodie Kidd and Sir David Frost among their patrons, or to be full every night of the week with a waiting list of more than 30 hoping for a cancellation. But that is the norm at Daphne's in Barbados.

Kelly Jackson, the British-born head chef of the restaurant, is frankly staggered by just how quickly and to what extent business is booming. "We only opened on 24 December, but already we've got people phoning up to book tables from the UK weeks before they arrive on holiday," he says. "It's amazing - there's such a buzz about the place in such a short space of time."

While clearly thrilled at the early success of the establishment, Jackson admits that cooking for a capacity crowd of 135 every night, plus a daily average of 90 at lunch, means that he is currently unable to take any time off to get to know his new home. "Since we opened, I've been working from 8am till 11pm, seven days a week," he says. "I have a pair of shorts in my office, which I thought I could put on in the afternoons between service to go to the beach - only inches from the restaurant - but so far I haven't been able to get near them."

In many ways, the stampede for a table and the glamorous clientele are to be expected. As a sister restaurant to the original Daphne's in London's South Kensington - a favourite of Princess Diana's and a haunt for many other celebrities - the Barbados incarnation was always going to have a head start in the popularity stakes.

The idea for opening a London-style restaurant on the Caribbean island was dreamt up by the Elegant Hotels Group, which operates five hotels there. The company wanted a destination restaurant next to its Tamarind Cove resort and came up with the idea of opening a sister to London's the Ivy. The directors got in touch with Caprice Holdings, owner of the Ivy, and operations director Des McDonald and chef-director Mark Hix flew out to Barbados early in 2001 to have a look. The duo concluded that an Ivy wouldn't work, but thought that a Daphne's would be a good fit, so a deal was signed in June allowing Elegant a Daphne's franchise - the first franchise to which Caprice Holdings has ever agreed.

Jackson himself came to be the chef at Daphne's Barbados after getting a severe dose of itchy feet while in the UK early last year. It was an unsurprising complaint, really, as he had travelled extensively earlier in his career, and worked aboard the QE2 as well as in Australia and on the West Indian island of Nevis for the Fours Seasons hotel group, before returning to London for a two-year stint as Eric Deblonde's number two at the Four Seasons in London's West End. Immediately before his Caribbean move, he held the job of executive chef at Sopwell House in St Albans.

"I saw an advert in Caterer to come and work for Elegant hotels in Barbados and thought it sounded like a great opportunity," he says. "Initially, I thought the job was to come and work at one of the resorts, and I flew out to do a trial at the Turtle Beach hotel. But I was then told about the Daphne's concept and asked whether I'd be interested in heading the kitchen here instead. It really appealed to me because, although I've spent most of my career in hotel kitchens, I saw this as a chance to make a bit of a name for myself. And it also meant being at the restaurant from the beginning and dealing with the challenge of a launch and getting things running smoothly."

On his arrival in Barbados last September, Jackson's first task was to recruit an entire 20-strong brigade from scratch and, on advertising for staff on the island, he received 120 applications. The most important appointment he made, he stresses, was that of his sous chef, Michael Hinds. "Michael is Bajan," Jackson says, using the local word for a native Barbadian, "so he knew who were the good people locally and could help me with the rest of the recruitment. He also plays a vital role because, being a local, if there are any problems with the staff, he can talk to them in a way I can't. He's very diplomatic and good at keeping things running smoothly."

Before the December opening Jackson also had to put the menu together, and he did this in partnership with Hix, who flew out to Barbados to work with him for a few weeks. The pair trialled numerous dishes to see what worked well in tropical conditions. "Even a week before opening," says Jackson, "we were changing a lot of dishes, because we felt we were relying too much on imported ingredients and we didn't want to be always waiting for a plane to arrive."

The finished menu carries a number of dishes that could just as easily be found at Daphne's in London - risotto nero, fillet of pork saltimbocca, and breast of chicken with caponata, rosemary and liver spiedini. But in order to reflect the Caribbean location, a number of other dishes - for instance, grilled local barracuda, or mahi mahi with Marsala, peperonata and zucchini - are unique to the Barbados Daphne's.

One frustration with the menu, Jackson says, is having to work with frozen meat. While decent chicken can be sourced locally, all beef and lamb has to be imported, and this means always thinking ahead in order to defrost enough each day to meet demand.

Another challenge, he adds, is coping with the intense heat. While the temperature on the beach is a pleasant 30ºC, in the kitchen it rises to 45-50ºC during service. In fact, in the first week of operation, Jackson lost half-a-stone in weight through perspiration. "I'm having to drink about six litres of water during every service," he says, "and I really hope we're going to get air conditioning in the kitchen before long."

Local cultural differences can also sometimes prove frustrating, says Jackson. In Barbados, there is a very Caribbean, laid-back, live-for-today mentality which can, on occasion, cause difficulties in the kitchen. "Guys will take the last of something from the stores and not think to tell me, so I have to check our supplies every day," he says. "And labelling and dating ingredients doesn't really come naturally to them, so I'm having to work hard at training them to do this."

Nevertheless, Jackson says he is impressed with how motivated his brigade is. While it's rare to work longer than an eight-hour shift in the Caribbean, his staff are currently putting in extra hours for no extra pay and are not uttering a word of dissatisfaction. "They're thoroughly excited and fired-up about the restaurant," he says.

There are, too, some major pluses to working on Barbados compared with the UK. For a start, the freshness and quality of the seafood is wonderful. "I have four different fish suppliers, each of whom calls me in the morning to tell me what they've caught," Jackson says. "Whoever has got the best catch, I'll buy from them that day." Then there's the 10-minute moped journey to work, compared with the one-and-a-quarter-hour journey on public transport that Jackson used to have to negotiate in London.

To cap it all, he says: "Every day here I wake up to sunshine and happy, smiling faces everywhere. I don't remember that back in England."

Daphne's, Payne's Bay, St James, Barbados, West Indies. Tel: 00 1 246 432 2731. Fax: 00 1 246 432 5161.

\* Gaby Huddart travelled to Barbados with tour operator Caribtours (www.caribtours.co.uk).