Sticky Walnut's Gary Usher unveils new restaurant Burnt Truffle
After a successful Kickstarter campaign, Burnt Truffle has finally opened its doors. Janie Manzoori-Stamford speaks to Gary Usher about the pressures of opening restaurant number two
The Caterer's interview with Gary Usher was rather appropriately arranged via direct message on Twitter, arguably the chef's favourite method of communication. Dates were negotiated, train tickets from London to Chester were booked and Usher offered to cook for me ahead of our chat.
The interview that followed lasted more than an hour and a half, but it was only as the conversation drew to a close that he thought to ask what it was all for.
Had it really not occurred to Usher that the hotly anticipated opening of his crowdfunded second restaurant Burnt Truffle might be the perfect excuse for a catch-up? Genuinely not, it would seem.
Usher is the man behind restaurant Sticky Walnut's Twitter timeline, which features gems such as last week's: "We're number 15 in the country on the Square Meal list. Sorry to anyone who feels we shouldn't be there. I don't fucking ask to be on them," and this wonderfully sarcastic riposte to a vitriolic TripAdvisor reviewer: "We're so rude at Sticky that once a guest gets back to their table from visiting the toilet, we walk past the table pinching our nose." One might imagine that such a character might carry himself with swagger. But while Usher is undoubtedly charming, his manner when we meet is surprisingly self-deprecating. Any assumption that he might be a shining beacon of confidence, which some might suggest is a hair's breadth away from arrogance, is undoubtedly mistaken. The bravado masks misplaced insecurities in his talents as a business-savvy chef. Where Usher insists that he is reckless, others myself included would argue that, though humble to the core, he possesses an invaluable sense of instinct. If he could bottle and sell it, he'd be minted. Usher opened Sticky Walnut in Hoole, Chester, in January 2011. He did so following a one week "get in" and on a budget so tight that he, now famously, had to choose between a combi-oven and new tables and chairs. The toss-up between whether diners would be drawn to the décor or the precision of the cooking was won by the latter and the cash was spent on a Rational oven. That he made the right decision is in no doubt. A Menuwatch write-up in The Caterer in 2012 led Sticky Walnut to the Cateys the following summer, where Usher and his team picked up the Menu of the Year award the first in a long line of well-earned accolades for this unassuming bistro. The *Guardian* restaurant critic Marina O'Loughlin further thrust Usher's first solo venture into the spotlight with a rave review in Spring 2014, despite the chef publicly instructing her not to visit. "Please don't travel to eat here," he tweeted. "It's just a bistro," and "we are not worth 400-mile trip" \[sic\]. But Usher's food dishes such as crumbed crispy lamb's tongue served with smoky chickpea puree, soothing goats curd, and green chermoula, which was on the menu that O'Loughlin described as "exactly the sort of thing you'd like to eat any day of the week, any time of the day" paired with his starkly honest and frankly hilarious Twitter timeline, helped earn the restaurant a loyal following and in September Sticky Walnut was named the AA Restaurant of the Year for England 2014. Last October, Usher announced and launched his plan to finance his second restaurant via the crowdfunding website Kickstarter (see panel), having had very little support from banks. A month later he had secured more than £100,000 thanks to 891 backers who between them made pledges of £10 to £5,000. "I felt really shocked. And I felt a lot of pressure," says Usher. "It was quite scary to be honest. All of a sudden a load people you don't know have given you a hundred grand. And you're like, fucking hell, Jesus, we'd better open this restaurant." The £100,000 figure was chosen after Usher played around with the idea of how much the lease would be and the likely cost of fitting out the kitchen. But in truth the new venture has cost him closer to £300,000, with the extra capital coming from revenue at Sticky Walnut, a finance deal with equipment supplier C&C Catering for the kitchen, and credit cards. "A scrape of this, a scrape of that," says Usher, who admits that his second experience of launching a restaurant has matched his first. What's in a name?