It’s lockdown – but is it showdown for city’s chefs?

Cooking along to Jamie Bosworth’s Facebook show

EVEN before the government turned the key on the nation’s restaurants Marco Giove had acted. Rather than take out tables to preserve social distancing he closed the fine dining business he has run for the last 20 years from a former police station in Archer Road, Sheffield.

And he turned into a one-man-and-his-family ‘Deliveroo’ service, cooking up pizza, pasta and parmigiani for customers who were dining in rather than dining out.

“When Boris came on the television we shut almost immediately because I knew people were going to stop visiting  restaurants,” says Marco.

All across Sheffield restaurants are having to rethink their business models. Some, like the Summer House, on Abbeydale Road South, offered a takeaway service and were “overwhelmed by demand.” But they had to abandon it as the sheer logistics of working and finding staff became too difficult.

So did Michelin-listed Rafters, on Oakbrook Road. Tables were taken out and takeaways sold but the moment social distancing came in they knew it it was time to stop, says front-of-house Alistair Myers, co-owner with talented chef Tom Lawson.

The pair have kept their core team of 12 on furlough – the government money came within three weeks – and are using the time wisely, devising new menus and drinks (Alistair has one made from pineapple skins) and cultivating the restaurant allotment.

They realise keeping the talent in the restaurant is as important as keeping a loyal following in this high-end sector of the business. Alistair  thinks the accent is going to be even more on local produce when things return – but that will be the crunch time. “There will be casualties, more when we are eventually allowed to re-open when there is no government support. The ones which will survive will be those with a loyal following.”

Others, like the guide book listed No Name Bistro, abandoned fancy meals and offered bangers and mash (although with some style) to NHS and other key workers on the Coronavirus front line.

Others tried to keep a presence on social media so they would not be forgotten if and when their doors reopen. At the George Hotel, Hathersage, where new head chef Carl Riley had hardly time to warm up the ovens after arriving, cocktail recipes such as the racy Porn Star Martini have been posted online.

A customer enjoys a meal at home from Marco@Milano

Over at Thyme in Broomhill, Sheffield, there are plans to put dishes from its 15 year old recipe book online.

But few can have made a bigger splash than Jamie Bosworth. No stranger to the cookery demo – he’s a regular fixture on BBC Radio Sheffield – he streamed a live show on Facebook which has had well over 7,000 views.

“I try and cook simple, easy dishes for three course meals using store cupboard ingredients with plugs for local producers,” says Jamie, who was joined for the second by vocalist daughter Katie for the second,  60 minute cook-a-long. “I could catch up at the stove while Katie sang.”

It was a family affair with wife Jayne holding the camera for a Floyd-esque show, with guest appearances from son, cat and dog.

Jamie has owned and run a clutch of top restaurants and is now a development chef who “keeps his hand in” with regular pop-up bistro evenings at the Rendezvous coffee shop, Totley.

“I had to cancel the last two because of Coronavirus so there’s going to be one hell of a night when we re-open.”

Meanwhile, back at Marco@Milano  Marco Giove, with a helper, is busy prepping orders for deliveries. His partner and her son help take the food to the right doorsteps. To emphasise the new informality customers are encouraged to send in photos of themselves enjoying a Marco meal.

But the current crisis has prompted him to take a different direction, one he has been contemplating for a while. “This restaurant will be one of the last to go back. I am going to change it completely, away from fine dining to something more relaxed with a deli and coffee shop for all the family,” he says.

There is no doubt the crisis has been a big jolt for the city’s restaurants. Some will fall by the wayside. The survivors may take other directions. But it has given restaurateurs and chefs the time to talk to each other and perhaps help each other out.

As the government keeps saying, we really are all  in this together – restaurants and customers alike.

*If you have a coronavirus story or views on the situation do get in touch.

Tom Lawson ( left) and Alistair Myers in lighter mood

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Still shouting to the Rafters

 

My review soon after Rafters opened in 1989

THE chef didn’t cook with onions and garlic, the waiter started a discussion about Adolf Hitler within minutes of us sitting down and we had no idea this odd little restaurant would become such a shining star in Sheffield’s culinary story.

 But by the end of the evening we knew we’d had a damn good meal at Rafters even though we had the whole place to ourselves.

 The other day Alistair Myers, the current owner (along with head chef Tom Lawson) posted on Facebook that the Good Food Guide-listed place was celebrating its 25^th anniversary. Great news in an industry where even the best places can be short-lived but it is not the whole story. It may be 25 years since the Bosworth brothers, Wayne and Jamie, put the restaurant on the map but the roots go back even further, to 1989.

 The establishment of the restaurant, the naming and its ambition was the work of three enthusiastic amateurs in the hospitality business although they were not new to another branch of catering.

 They were June Hall , a former bakery worker and mother of six, George Taylor, her partner, financier and, on our night, the rookie waiter, and baker Steve Sanderson, with June, the chef at Rafters.

 Between them they had a burning ambition to run a posh restaurant. So do a lot of other people but it was the way they went about it that impressed. The two chefs honed up their cooking skills at evening classes at Earl Marshall, where June even found the time to learn upholstery to recover antique dining chairs they’d bought on Abbeydale Road.

The upstairs restaurant had previously been the Carriageway café and before that it was known as the Lord Mayor’s Parlour.

 She was determined to get the look of the place right. There was white linen, cut glass, Wedgwood plates and Sheffield cutlery underneath the black rafters which spidered across the ceiling and which gave the place its name.

Wayne Bosworth in the Rafters van in the Nineties

 We paid £51.50 for our meal, big money back then, which is why, perhaps, we were the only customers that night. They had opened in February and we went in April. But the food was good.

 We began with prawn gratinee (£3.25) and smoked salmon and egg roll (£4), followed by soup and sorbet, the country house fashion at the time. There were 14 main courses, half of them steaks, but we had duck with Cumberland sauce (£12) and veal with a watercress and almond sauce (£12.75). Steve was responsible for the mains. “I cook without onions and garlic and I keep asking myself if I’m doing wrong,” he said afterwards.

A youthful Jamie and Wayne Bosworth

 It’s fascinating looking back on menus from 30 years ago. There was crab and avocado among the starters and a main called chicken mango, rubbed with sesame seeds and cooked with a mango and cream sauce.

 “I’ll shout it to the rafters . . . that we know something Sheffield doesn’t. They serve a memorable meal” I wrote after we finished off with petit pot of chocolate and a frozen Grand Marnier orange, a sweet from the era of Abigail’s Party, if ever there was.

 Despite my praise it did not thrive. By the time the Bosworths took over Rafters was closed more times than it was open. “They were just opening Saturdays and using the restaurant as a base for outside catering,” recalls Jamie.

He and Wayne, who had come from working at the Chantry, Dronfield, were innocents abroad in those days and set about running it without the restaurant licence they required. To cover themselves either June or Steve sat in the kitchen with them until the licence came through. It was then they saw the quick cheffy techniques which had taken them ages!

Meanwhile the brothers were agonising whether to change the name but they couldn’t come up with anything both agreed on. “It’s not easy. Eventually we settled on Bosworth Brothers @ Rafters for a while,” says Jamie, who is glad they didn’t change it.

The Bosworths put Rafters into the guides and made it one of the city’s leading restaurants. After Wayne’s death in 2000 Marcus Layne joined the partnership, eventually buying the business and running it until, beset by ill-health, he sold it on in 2013 to Alistair and Tom. At 14 years, his has been the longest tenure at Oakbrook Road.

.So while Rafters is right to celebrate those 25 years we shouldn’t forget those brave pioneers who laid the groundwork.

Tom Lawson and Alistair Myers

 

 

 

 

How bread and butter pud went classy

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How it was. Wayne Bosworth (l) and Cary Brown: Puddings and pals

BREAD and butter pudding might just be a humble British dessert in many parts of the country but in Sheffield it takes on a bit of class. At one time you couldn’t go into any half-decent city restaurant and not find it on the menu.

It is still a firm favourite although perhaps not seen quite as much. Fashions change. But as far as this neck of the woods is concerned there’s a good story behind how a simple pudding was elevated into a fine dining dish.

This post has come together through a series of coincidences. Firstly, I reported late last year on the death of Chris King, founder of the former Charnwood Hotel, which was the high-end home of bread and butter pud. Around the same time chef Jamie Bosworth posted on social media that it was the 25th anniversary of the famous Bosworth Brothers baked apple bread and butter pudding recipe, originally created by his late brother Wayne.

Then I came across an old copy of Profile magazine, for which I used to write, from November, 1999. The main food feature was a bread and butter ‘cook-off’ between Cary Brown and Wayne, both in their time head chefs at the Charnwood. With two such highly talented chefs I knew better than to rate one dish above the other!

When Cary was head chef at the Charnwood in the late 1980s the menu was full of dishes with a French flavour but owner Chris wanted to offer guests something simple and comforting – and British – to end the meal. Cary came up with bread and butter pudding. Talking to him the other day, he recollects being influenced by his time at the Savoy Hotel and by Gary Rhodes in his Greenhouse days.

He turned in a super-eggy, creamy, luxurious dish which became quite a hit at the Charnwood. Cary moved on but when Wayne followed him into the hot seat a year or two later he was big enough and talented enough to dislike copying another chef’s recipe. So his was much that Cary’s was not.

“For a start I don’t like dried fruit like sultanas and raisins so they weren’t going in,” Wayne told me back then. “So I thought let’s use apricot jam and insert apple slices between the bread.” It turned out Cary didn’t like dried fruit either but used it because his customers wanted it.

The photoshoot was at Wayne’s then restaurant, Rafters, on Oakbrook Road, while Cary came up from Carriages (now Peppercorn) on Abbeydale Road South.

Both chefs, who had started out being slightly wary of each other, were by then great friends and were complimentary about each other’s version. “Cary’s is slightly sweeter and richer than mine,” said Wayne. His friend countered: “Wayne’ is more up to date. Mine is more classical.”

Both chefs took the recipe with them wherever they went and while Wayne dropped his for a time customer pressure got it back on the menu. Other restaurants copied one or the other or came up with their own versions. Cary’s dish is often served with a butterscotch sauce, the Bosworth version with sticky toffee sauce.

Cary’s tray version for a Sunday lunch at Barlow Woodseats Hall

Since Wayne’s death it has been left to Jamie to carry the flame. And he’s updated it. “For about the last ten years I have been using brioche – it saves buttering bread – and is now richer from using a brulee-style egg yolk and cream using yolks instead of whole eggs,” he says.

And he adds Wayne nicked the idea of using jam and apples from his mother Gwen because the whole family disliked dried fruit. Judging from the then and now pictures he still garnishes it with three raspberries.

Jamie Bosworth’s pudding today

He dates the Bosworth version from the time he and Wayne took over Rafters in 1992, although they had obviously been cooking it much earlier at the Charnwood and the Chantry hotel, Dronfield. Like Cary, he still gets asked for it when running pop-up restaurants and catering for private parties. “If it’s not on the menu nine times out of ten they’ll ask for it.”

For old times sake, here are the original recipes from 1999.

Cary’s version:

1 medium sliced loaf, crusts removed
6 eggs
1 pt double cream
6oz caster sugar
6oz butter
5oz mixed fruit
4oz brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence

Butter oven dish, butter bread, put one layer of bread on bottom and sprinkle with half the fruit and some of the sugar. Repeat. The top layer has no fruit or sugar. Cream eggs with remaining caster sugar and essence, pour over the bread and spinkle on brown sugar. Cover with tinfoil and bake in bain marie for 30 mins at 180C, removing the foil for a further 15 mins.

Wayne’s version

6 whole eggs
1 sliced loaf, crusts removed
3.5oz caster sugar
1 pt milk
½ pt double cream
1 vanilla pod, split
2 large Bramley apples, peeled and sliced
apricot jam
8oz butter

Spread slices with butter and jam and layer, jam side upwards, with bread, apple then bread. Repeat twice, ending with bread jam side down. Beat eggs, sugar and vanilla seeds together. Bring milk and cream to boil, pour over egg mix and whisk. Strain through a sieve over bread. Bake at 150C for 45-60 mins.

It’s a tempting recipe to play around with. I’ve used elements from both versions but prefer to make mine with leftover croissants or surplus panettone.

Still in the pudding club: Jamie (l) and Cary

The King who came to dinner

The Charnwood Hotel

 CHRIS King, the man who restored an historic building into Sheffield’s first boutique hotel and was a driving force behind the city’s culinary renaissance, has died. He had Parkinson’s Disease. He was 81.

FUNERAL DETAILS AT END OF STORY

WHENEVER Chris King passed the crumbling Georgian mansion at the corner of Sharrow Lane and London Road he knew the best way to bring it back to life was as a hotel. The Grade II listed building had been built around 1780 by Master Cutler and scissorsmith John Henfrey on a site then on the outskirts of the city.

Chris didn’t start out as a hotelier, he was a structural engineer. So he knew if a building could be saved. However, as with so much of what happens in Sheffield, he had to battle with a city council which lacked imagination. It took over two years for him and his wife Val to get planning permission for the Charnwood, Sheffield’s first boutique hotel. It lasted for almost 20 years as a popular wedding venue and the focus of much of the city’s good cooking.

The 22-bed Charnwood opened in 1985. Its guests included stars from the World Snooker Championship and comedians Victoria Wood and Mike Harding. It also became the home of two top restaurants, Brasserie Leo and the smaller more upmarket Henfrey’s. Chris was not a man to cut corners. He employed celebrity chef and local lad Kevin Woodford as catering consultant. The Woodford Suite was named after him.

“Chris told me he wanted to do things right,” says Cary Brown, whom he appointed the hotel’s (and the country’s) youngest head chef at 21. He had dropped by to do a two day shift after leaving Claridges and was on his way out when he was offered the head chef’s job, provided he passed a three month’s trial.

Chris sent Cary to Paris to see how things were done there before opening Brasserie Leo. When Cary left, Wayne Bosworth and his sous Marcus Lane made similar trips. The restaurant was designed with banquettes, alcoves, gleaming brass, big mirrors and a splendid bar. Even the coat stands were authentic. And in the kitchen were a dozen copper pans.

The hotel aimed high. A lobster, truffle and veal sweetbread starter was on the menu for £17.95, a fortune, then as now, for Sheffield in the Eighties. Even Cary was worried about the price. “Chris said if it’s worth that, charge it,” he recalls.

He enjoyed his new life. Always impeccably dressed, he and Val could often be seen dining quietly in a corner checking the quality of the food and the reactions of customers.

Other chefs who made a name in the kitchen included Wayne, Murray Chapman and Stephen Hall as head chefs while others including Marcus and Jamie Bosworth, who would both later run Rafters, and Richard Irving also cooked.

While the cooking got the Charnwood into the guides the hotel ran smoothly with Chris and Val at the helm and her sister Ann Sommerfield as duty manager. There were good years then bad as business was hit by a slowdown at the turn of the century. “The economics did not stack up, the economics of a small hotel against a big one,” he said then. Chris tried unsuccessfully to sell the hotel, on the market for £1.3 million.

Chris King presents an award at a hospitality event

It closed on Christmas Eve, 2004. The 16 staff were all found jobs, according to Anne. If Chris couldn’t sell the place as a hotel he would turn it into apartments. He supervised the work himself. “I do not want to pay people for what I already know,” he said. The project opened the following year renamed Wisteria Gardens, after the striking mauve and blue flowers which covered the walls. He had planted them a quarter century before.

Val, who predeceased him, died from cancer. Chris also had it but recovered and went to run a smallholding near Lincoln where he planted 2,000 walnut trees. However he returned to Sheffield later and died at Beauchief.

Cary Brown said: “He was a legend and pioneer in the hotel and catering industry. What he brought to Sheffield wasn’t realised until later. If it wasn’t for that hotel Sheffield would not have got on the culinary map until years later.”

#Chris King died on Thursday, 16 November, 2017. Details of the funeral will be announced here shortly.

Picture of Chris King sourced courtesy of Craig Harris.

*The funeral will be held at Hutcliffe Wood Crematorium at 1.15pm on Thursday,7 December, followed by a wake at the Double Tree Hilton, Meadowhead.

Jamie pops up with a classic

Earl Grey tea smoked salmon

Now that’s a blast from the past! Looking at the menu of Jamie Bosworth’s ‘pop up’ restaurant at the Rendezvous cafe, Totley, one dish leaps out at us: the tea smoked salmon. It was the dish his late, talented brother Wayne introduced to Sheffield back in the Nineties.

It was new to the city and became a sort of classic although since then seems to have fallen out of favour until recently. Jamie credits his brother on the menu.

 We disagree over where we ate it. Rafters, I say, referring to the restaurant the Bosworth brothers ran together at Nether Green. Brasserie Leo at London Road’s Charnwood Hotel, she says.

 Jamie, after the meal, solves the riddle: it was at Henfrey’s, the posh little room upstairs at the Charnwood. Wayne used to smoke it on demand then and serve it hot. We had it and thought it lovely. The Yorkshire Post critic complained that the aroma made him think it was November 5.

 He might have had a point. One night Wayne was cooking with Nathan Smith, now at the Old Vicarage, as his sous and Nathan put the hot pan on the vinyl floor, welding the two together.

 Tonight the salmon is not smoked on demand – there are 24 covers to be fed from a tiny kitchen with only four rings – but is prepared in advance. The smokiness from the Earl Grey tea is subtle, the overall impression, aided by a citrus miso glaze and little blobs of pickled cucumber jelly, is a starburst of flavour.

The beef main course at Jamie’s pop up restaurant

 “With such a small kitchen I have to think very carefully about the menus,” says Jamie. But if not everything is cooked, rather than assembled, on the night there is some impressive attention to detail.

 Canapes of crab fritters come with a spicy mango ketchup which makes me yearn to get the recipe and copy it (I forget to ask). Goats cheese arrives in a creamy swirl with roasted beets, a crostini and, oddly, hazelnut praline.

 The main course is terrific: a tender slice of Angus beef which had been barbecued first so the fatty exterior was crozzled into lip-smacking sweetness, a rich wild mushroom and truffle oil gravy moistening it.

 ‘Pop ups’ have become trendy, of late, but Jamie points out he has been running them for the last five years. This is his third location, suggested by his daughter Katie who, following in the family tradition, works there as a waitress.

 Jamie has left behind his restaurant days – Rafters, Bosworth’s at Sheffield United and his acclaimed Taste gastro-café – and is now development chef for Jigsaw Foods and available for private hire. The once a month evening is highly popular and helps to scratch an itch, I’d guess. With a waiting list of around 60, Jamie ran the menu on two successive nights to eat into the backlog.

 We finish on a lovely note, an Amarula flavoured panna cotta in a Kilner jar. It’s a South African liqueur. Again, there’s plenty of work involved. There’s a very rich chocolate orange ganache, some honeycomb and a white chocolate crumb. Not so much that your palate loses a sense of direction but enough to maintain interest and surprise.

 Five courses with coffee cost £28. Well worth it.

 Rendezvous is at 185 Baslow Road, Sheffield S17 4DT. To book a table call 0114 235 0884

 

Jamie Bosworth