Tom Sellers - A Kind of Love Story

A Kind of Love Story Story-part one 0-97.indd 1 20/04/2016 12:39 Story-part one 0-97.indd 2 20/04/2016 12:39 A Kind of Love Story Tom Sellers Story-part one 0-97.indd 3 20/04/2016 12:40 Story-part one 0-97.indd 4 27/04/2016 10:56 My restaurant is my home: I work there. Sweat there. Bleed there. Create there. Sleep there. And will most probably die there.

This book is about finding where you belong and pushing yourself to the limits. It is for the believers, for all those people who dare to dream. Story-part one 0-97.indd 5 20/04/2016 12:40 I believe in the power of food to tell a story, spark conversation, make people smile. Change lives. The moment I fell in love with food it changed mine. People sometimes say that food is an art form, and arts only purpose is to be itself.

I think thats bollocks. Food A Kind of Love Story is so much more than style or ingredients. It is about emotion and memories. It can be challenging and entertaining. It can take you to an exciting place. I am nowhere near fully formed as a cook; I dont think anyone ever is.

We are all on a journey of discovery. The way I cook and think about food wont be the same next year, as now. Things move fast. In five years time Ill probably be using techniques and ingredients that none of us have even heard of yet. Because we have only discovered a fraction of what is out there. There isnt a single full stop in the evolution of food.

That is the beauty and excitement of it. Progress is the pulse of the kitchen. Its what keeps us alive. There will always be more stories to tell and more people to tell them. Story-part one 0-97.indd 6 20/04/2016 12:40 Cooking doesnt define me,but the need to achieve does.Am I obsessed with cooking?A Kind of Love StoryOr is cooking the mediumI have chosen to feed myobsession to learn, improve,achieve? Its an interestingquestion. I only know thatfrom the first time I setfoot in a kitchen I lovedeverything about it: the heat,the chal enge, the pressure,the potential for violence.The kitchen is the only placein which I have ever feltI belonged. Story-part one 0-97.indd 7 20/04/2016 12:40 Story-part one 0-97.indd 8 20/04/2016 12:40 Story-part one 0-97.indd 9 20/04/2016 12:40 Service I still get that excited, nervous, anxious, butterfly feeling before every service starts, but I like this early evening time in the kitchen, when the music is on and the banter and the jokes are flying, while 6pm everyone works, deftly, smoothly, calmly.

We all know what is coming. In forty-five minutes it will be insane, full-on, total focus. A bag of jelly babies is doing the rounds and is gone in moments; bottles of water and sugary drinks are being downed. Frank (FG), my sous chef, is plunging a can into liquid nitrogen to cool it down. Everyone needs sugar and hydration to keep going. Table 5 is in the house...Yes, Chef! The guests are coming in, the snacks are going out.

Quick hands are piping dots of smoked cod roe emulsion onto crispy cod skins then finishing them with sprigs of carrot tops. Radishes filled with kelp butter are sent out on folded napkins. The Pea Diddy, as we call it in the kitchen, is back on a snack of fresh pea pods with peas and dots of black truffle pure inside. The guy on Table 3 has just plucked a pink rose from the little garden outside the restaurant on his way in and presented it to the girl he is meeting for dinner. Cheeky. Thats something I would probably do.

Story-part one 0-97.indd 10 20/04/2016 12:40 She is looking impressed; either because she didnt see, and she thinks he arrived with it. Or she likes his bravado. From our glass box of a kitchen we see the guests and they see us. I want them to feel that we are enjoying ourselves as much as they are, because we love what we do. We are a tight family: young, professional, slick, no passengers, everyone totally committed to giving their all, but we dont take ourselves too seriously. It wasnt always this smooth.

In the early days of Story every service was a crisis. We had five chefs and me. It was fucking insane, a blur. Everyone screaming at each other. Me trying to cook everything, touch everything, taste everything, because I hadnt learned how to take a step back; how to trust the people around me. At the end of the lunchtime service I used to fall asleep on the counter in the kitchen because I was so exhausted I couldnt move.

I dont think anything or anybody can totally prepare you for opening the doors of your first restaurant: spotlights on; show time. I remember the first night, seeing the first guests arriving and thinking, They are actually coming to eat my food. It wasnt fear. It was excitement. Story-part one 0-97.indd 11 20/04/2016 12:40 Story-part one 0-97.indd 12 20/04/2016 12:40 Legacy I think the hardest thing for a chef is to establish your own identity in food, because of course you soak up influences everywhere you work. Doesnt everyone, in any walk of life? But inevitably once you open your own doors people will always make comparisons.

I embrace that, though. I have worked in some of the best restaurants in the world, with some of the greatest cooks that walk this planet, and they, in turn, have taken qualities from the great chefs they trained with. That is the way food evolves. I dont want to shy away from any of those influences; I want to celebrate them, acknowledge them as a way of paying respect to the people who have taught me, showed me the way. Ultimately I believe you have to take the best of every experience and then forge your own identity. Identity is what it is all about.

There are a lot of great restaurants that produce beautiful dishes to perfection, but so many of them could have come out of the same box. Story-part one 0-97.indd 13 20/04/2016 12:40 Potwash I didnt set out to be a chef. But when you are sixteen, and theres a job going washing pots at a local pub, a few shifts a week, 5 an hour, thats enough to keep you in trainers and jeans. I was fast at washing pots, still am. I can put a dishwasher to shame and Im better for the environment! The pub was the Hammer and Pincers near Nottingham and I had no idea what to expect. It was just a job.

But straight away I was attracted to the environment of the kitchen. It reminded me of the building site where I did some stints labouring when I left school: proper hard work, digging trenches, laying pipes. Tough in winter, but nice in the summer; radio on, banter, fun, initiations, I loved all of that, and the physicality of it. I was very fit from all the sports that I played: ice hockey, martial arts, football. In the kitchen I sensed the same mix of boyish pranks, humour and sheer hard work, pushing through the pain barrier of being tired. Plus, even at that level, you had to work at pace, under pressure.