Alexia Dellaca-Minot is taking charge of Alexis Gauthier's latest restaurant, with a nod to French cuisine while embracing advanced techniques
At first glance, the menu at Alexis Gauthier's latest restaurant, Studio Gauthier, doesn't seem all that vegan. There's caviar with lemon, blinis and cream; sushi tacos with hoisin marinade and shallots; and a puff pastry pie. It's a deceptive selection from the Alain Ducasse-trained chef, who famously ditched foie gras at Gauthier Soho in 2016 after a protest at the restaurant. Since 2018, he has been serving exclusively vegan cuisine across his portfolio, which also includes the more casual brasserie 123V in London's Mayfair.
Of course, there's an elegantly daring twist. The caviar is made of brined black kelp, the nori tacos are filled with hoisin soy duck, and the pie crust is a vegan puff pastry recipe that took years for head chef Alexia Dellaca-Minot to perfect. Like Gauthier, Dellaca-Minot started her career with an understanding of the basics of the French kitchen, having worked for the three-Michelin-starred Épicure in Le Bristol Paris for three years following an internship aged 13. She was 17 when she first met Gauthier at Gauthier Soho, where she later became head chef. Nine years on, she is managing a brigade of four at the group's third site, which teeters between casual and fine-dining, offering both an à la carte and tasting menu. And for the past two years and counting, she has stopped eating meat.
"I'm too French, so I can't stop eating cheese. That's the only thing. But I don't eat meat or fish," she says. Everyone who works with Gauthier has made an effort to become vegan or at least adopt a plant-based diet. In fact, Studio Gauthier resides in the British Film Institute, just off Tottenham Court Road, which coincidentally has a meat-free policy in place.
Dellaca-Minot believes the shift to veganism has accelerated her culinary growth over the past five years. She's persevered through 47 different versions of vegan macarons made of potato cornstarch and devoted two years to replicate a chicken stock with vegetables.
"To be honest, since I became vegan, I think I've become more knowledgeable," she says. "The old way of cooking a duck, for example, is just finding new ways of rearranging the same thing. But as a vegan chef, you don't have this knowledge. We have to learn so much."
During lockdown, the team operated a weekly delivery box based on different cuisines, broadening and inspiring the techniques used at Studio Gauthier today. "We were very French at Gauthier Soho and we had to open our mind. At the moment we're doing an aubergine dish with kaffir limes, which we took from Israel," she adds.
Some of 123V's signature sushi, first developed by former sushi counter head chef Tes Ryu, have made a reappearance alongside the new sweet and savoury sushi tacos and the crispy rice ‘green dynamite', which has become a bestseller. The dish was founded created as a way to use leftover sushi rice, where the rice is deep-fried with a cornflour mix to create a golden base that is drizzled in soy sauce. A dainty portion of tofu ‘crab', made from silken tofu blended three times to create an angel-hair texture, is marinated with mayo, seaweed and lemons, which impart a sea-like flavour. The crispy rice roll is then topped with guacamole, sriracha sauce and sliced jalapeños.
By way of contrast, there's the pithivier d'été, which is filled with layers of cabbage and vegan Redefine Meat seasoned with beetroot purée, truffle oil, wild mushrooms and daikon radish, a hearty dish bursting with complex umami flavours, served with a blackberry salad.
While the quality of vegan substitutes continues to increase (except perhaps that of vegan cheese – "I'm sorry, but that is still not good," Dellaca-Minot admits, jokingly) a challenging mindset remains. She recalls meeting a fellow chef who claimed vegan chefs "don't know how to cook", but feels that is indicative of a wider problem in the industry, where training opportunities for vegan chefs are few and far between.
"We had a student and we did our best, teaching him how to do everything, and then he went back to school and he had to do a cut of lamb," she says. "He was totally vegan himself."
For now, Dellaca-Minot is grateful for what she has. "We are all passionate about what we're doing. We have a lot of customers [who] are not vegan, but they come too."
From the menu
Canapés and small plates
- Coriander hummus, pineapple, jalapeño oil, coriander sourdough £6
- Black kelp Gauthier caviar for two, lemon, blinis, cream £24
Sushi
- Crispy rice ‘green dynamite', spicy tofu crab, guacamole, battered crispy rice, sriracha, jalapeño (3pc) £8
Larger plates
- Swiss chard pastis, saffron, garlic £16
- Pithivier d'été, wild mushroom, blackberry salad £26
Desserts
- Peach and rose, prosecco, almond biscuit £8.50
- Dark chocolate, praline, gold, mousse £10
BFI, 21 Stephen Street, London W1S 1RQ www.studiogauthier.co.uk
