My role here at the Devonshire Arms was to lead the Burlington restraunt
day to day running of the restraunt writing the menus, lead the food
and try to drive the food on and put my personality and food style onto the menu and onto the
restraunt I'm a keen advocate of quality ingredients
and it just happens to be that Yorkshire product, in certain areas is some of the best you can
get your hands on things like the grouse and the game
obviously when I was working in London these were things we were fighting for whereas now
it's on my doorstep the goal when I came to the Devonshire Arms
you know the Devonshire Arms has got amazing history and accolades with the last two chefs
previous to me, both having done fantastically well and now are icons in the industry, the
likes of Michael Wignall has been an idol of mine for years and then obviously after
him was Steve Smith so the goal here is to gain the same accolades that they had, for
the business, for the customers and for myself it's more about having a busy restaurant with
people that are actually enjoying it for me, there's nothing better than seeing
somebody after their dinner, and they've enjoyed their meal
in essence that's why I do what I do because I really enjoy positive feedback
about afternoon tea, since I started here at the Devonshire Arms, having spent such
a long time at such an iconic hotel like the Ritz in London, where afternoon tea is a massive
part of what we do we don't open for lunch service so afternoon
tea was the natural thing that we could put into there so we could grow as a business and
grow the quality of what we do for our customers I think, again it comes back to all the food
that we do there's nothing too wacky, there's nothing
out of the ordinary it's just things that are done well, things
that are done fresh scones, you bake fresh scones every day, pastry
we make every day sandwiches we're making to order
it's just about doing simple things but doing them really well and that makes it stand out
on its own so we do have a kitchen garden here at the
Devonshire Arms and it's an amazing thing to have
we've put a lot of time and thought into how we could build on that
we've planted over a hundred fruit bushes this year
currently more than twenty types of herb that are going into the ground most of this won't
work immediately, but we're building for the future with the fruit and things like that
but the idea is just to give us that other dimension to our business and to our style
of food so we can say we have that control over what we're growing and when we pick it
if you eat a radish that came out of the ground three days ago compared to ours that came
out three hours ago it's a totally different product
I think our goal over the next couple of years is to grow on what we already have
I've been here a year now, I've built a team, and I have a strong team around me now with
some people that were here previously and also brought some great people in
luckily with all the people that we've brought in, we haven't lost any
I think that's quite a positive that we're getting these young guys that come and put
the effort in and work hard for us we're just going to grow out style of food
it's like everybody, your food constantly evolves and hopefully evolves for the better
and you can just keep focusing on what you're doing and bettering what we do
and again, build our client base, build our reputation
being a destination restaurant people want to come and spend the weekend with us and
eat with us and leave very happy people.