Theo Randall Interview | Chef Theo Randall at Pizza Express
Chef Theo Randall at Pizza Express
Helen Forrest attends the launch of the new Theo Randall pizza range at Pizza Express and has a nice chat with the main man himself – Theo Randall
In a world full of swagger, quick tempers and massive egos, Chef Theo Randall, recent winner of Italian restaurant of the year, is a breath of fresh air. After 17 years at the much lauded River Café, (he was Head Chef when they received their first Michelin star), this unprepossessing Englishman opened his own restaurant in 2006 to great critical acclaim.
Brought up in an enviably food-loving family, the young Theo would regularly be taken on holidays to France and Italy where the family car would be filled with olive oils, tomatoes and proseuto. For him growing up to cook Italian food was something of a natural progression.
Ask Randall if he is surprised by achieving so much success so quickly and he typically downplays his natural talent:
“I don’t know, what do you call success? You have to work on it and I think I have worked very hard in the last couple of years. I am pleased the way it’s going but you can never rest on your laurels.”
40 year old Randall could never be accused of that. His innovative and inspired menu has led to such well-respected critics as Jay Rayner (who finds his lemon tart superior to Heston Blumenthal’s) and Marina O’Loughlin raving over his dishes. Yet he is still something of a well-kept secret outside of foodie circles.
One imagines that a new partnership with PizzaExpress will begin to bring him the higher level of celebrity that his River Café contemporaries, Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, enjoy.
The four pizzas that bear Randall’s name were selected from twenty that he created and were brought to fruition with the utmost care and consideration given to the ingredients, the method and the presentation. Ingredients include the same tiny brown shrimps he uses at the Intercontinental, and everything from the peppers and cheeses to the Gaziello extra virgin olive oil are authentic and superior. Jane Ahearne, Head of External Communications at PizzaExpress, was thrilled that a Chef so clearly on the ascent jumped at the chance of working with the chain:
“Theo was just wonderful, he was so enthusiastic and really inspired everyone at the company. As he says, this is his interpretation of PizzaExpress and we couldn’t be happier with the results.”
Randall went on a whirlwind tour of the chain’s restaurants training and rousing staff so that the pizzas will be a success:
“All the PizzaExpress chefs need to want to do it. The method has to be totally practical so that anyone could make them. I am putting my name to the pizzas so it is important they deliver well and are consistent.”
Each pizza will be cooked in an oval shape, on a perforated pan so that the base will cook from the underneath, leaving it crisp yet chewy with a stone baked flavour. As Randall believes that pizzas taste better when eaten with the fingers, the pizzas will be served on a stylish black board with a pizza cutter.
The pizzas are:
Theo’s Piemontese – Named after the region in Italy, the topping is made up of fresh yellow and red peppers, anchovies, tiny sweet lilliput capers and fontal cheese. The cheese is added near the end in order that it remains wet and creamy.
Tasting notes: a sweet and creamy pizza bursting with flavour, the fontal cheese is a perfect foil for the saltiness of the anchovies.
Theo’s Tonnara – Named after the traditional method of tuna fishing, this pizza combines yellowfin tuna, nicoise olives, anchovies, garlic and again, the lilliput capers. It has a rustic look and is finished with grana padano, fresh parsley, rocket and lemon. The base is spread with tomato and crème frai?che sauce in place of mozzarella.
Tasting notes: The delicate flavour of the tuna isn’t overpowered by the tang of the olives and the fresh notes of the rocket and lemon.
Theo’s Favorita – Santos tomatoes marinated with fresh oregano and then once baked (3-4 mins) is scattered with hand-torn fior di latte mozzarella, prosciutto di Parma, nicoise olives and rocket. True to his word there is a vegetarian option of the proscuitto being replaced with equally salty artichokes.
Tasting notes: A tang, rich, yet very fresh-tasting pizza full of herby flavours which work equally well in the vegetarian option.
Theo’s Gamberettini – The most costly of the pizzas, the base sauce is also crème frai?che as Theo does not believe that cheese goes well with fishy flavours. The toppings of exquisite brown shrimps and grated zucchini is finished with grana padano, fresh parsley, lemon and chilli oil on the side.
Tasting notes: My favourite of the four pizzas; the perfect blend of crème frai?che with the gorgeous shrimps and bite of the chilli is to die for.
When I met Theo Randall on the evening of the launch of his pizzas for PizzaExpress’s autumn menu, he was relaxed and keen to talk about his venture into high-street restaurant food.
Congratulations on tonight. What made you want to work with PizzaExpress?
PizzaExpress approached me and I was really chuffed because I’ve been going there for years and I always take my kids there. It’s a really family friendly place. They asked me if I would like to create four pizzas and I just thought that’s quite an honour. You know, why me? Then when I started working with them I loved their whole ethos, I met Peter Boizot, (founder of PizzaExpress) and he was a very interesting chap and I liked the fact it was an Englishman creating an Italian idea. I always used to think when I went to Pizza Express – I’d like to change this or I’d like to change that, but having your name on something like this, creating four pizzas was a real treat. I didn’t take that much persuading to be honest with you.
Congratulations also on winning Italian restaurant of the year, you must be pleased.
Thank you, yes.
Who do you see as your peers in that kind of area?
Well obviously there are some brilliant Italian restaurants in London, there’s the River Café, Giorgio Locatelli, you know, Zafferano, they all really successful restaurants and very well established and have been winning awards for years. So to win best Italian restaurant and the fact that I am English cooking Italian food is a real honour. It’s great for everyone, for the team, everyone at the restaurant feels good about it.
I was wondering why you chose to open a restaurant on Park Lane, your whole ethos seems to be at odds with the stuffiness that you sometimes find there?
Well, no, the thing is one of the challenges, one of the interesting things of opening a restaurant there was the fact that it was Park Lane and it was stuffy and when I met the general manager of the hotel, Roland Fasel, I loved his forward thinking and he was just a very interesting person. He wanted a restaurant that was different and so we had this conversation about what we wanted to do and what I wanted to create was great food simple food, and also with a nice relaxed atmosphere. I wanted service that wasn’t stuffy; none of this sort of lifting of chrome plates and it was the kind of thing I wanted to do and you know having your name on Park Lane on a restaurant is a fabulous position to be in…
What made you decide to have a whole menu for vegetarians as many restaurants still only have one or two choices.
Well I do love vegetables and obviously we have some amazing fish and amazing meat on the menu but I am a big fan of vegetables. Also Italian food when you think about it an Italian meal will probably start off with an antipasto of different vegetables and then you might have a pasta course and those two courses could be vegetarian. And then the main course is more likely to be meat or fish or something.
I think if you have a restaurant you have got to please everyone that comes. I mean you are the paying guest you should have some kind of choice and I mean if there’s something you don’t like in a restaurant I always say never say no, within reason. I mean if someone wants something wacky then forget it, but if you can deliver something that’s delicious and within your parameters then do it!
What age you decided to be a chef and was that contributed to by your upbringing, I know your parents took you around Italy a lot?
I grew up with food, as a family we grew vegetables in our back garden. I was the kid that went to school with the gorgonzola homemade bread sandwiches, and I felt a little bit odd then but in later life realised it was actually quite unusual to have this kind of upbringing.
From a very early age we used to talk about food, we used to talk about what we were having for lunch and what we were having for dinner. Mum would say go and pick some carrots from the garden, it sounds like the good life I know [laughs] but it was a bit like that. It was just the kind of way we grew up. My mother had an amazing collection of cookbooks, still does, and particularly some old Elizabeth David ones. So we had that kind of simplicity “less is more” kind of thing. It wasn’t about following recipes it was more let’s make this dish and we all used to help.
My mother she was an art teacher so she used to work a few nights a week so I would do a bit of cooking, you know I would come home from school, do your homework and everything and then do little jobs like cook from cookbooks or make the salad or something. From an early age I have always enjoyed food.
Obviously that has contributed to your being so enthusiastic about it, which is great…
Well I have always been so enthusiastic about food and I love eating. I think it’s really important if you are going to cook, it’s very important you like eating, I mean it sounds obvious but a lot of cooks don’t actually enjoy eating.
Yes, that’s weird isn’t it? Who do you consider to be your inspiration, either as a mentor or more from afar?
Um, a lot of people, I’ve got a lot of people that have inspired me over the years. I mean obviously my mother who has been a huge inspiration as far as her cooking. Obviously Rose and Ruthie from the River Café, Alice Waters (a very influential American Chef who Randall spent a year working with) from Chez Panisse, chefs that I have met, restaurants I have been to.
I think the thing about food is you that you learn a lot yourself from experience and you kind of teach yourself from experience but you get inspiration from other people certain people say things to you and I think its very important you follow that advice.
I remember Alice Waters saying to me once, “trust your instincts”, it seems such a odd thing to say, but its such a brilliant thing because if you should trust your instincts whether its if you know something is right or wrong. If your instincts are telling you not to do it that way but to do it this way, then listen to it. The times you haven’t done it that way and its been a mistake or something are the times you realise that it’s a very good thing to follow.
You were in the River Café’s Italian kitchen programme a while back and have appeared in other cookery programmes, would you say yes if you were offered your own show?
Ah, it depends what it’s about. I mean I actually do quite enjoy doing a bit of TV I think you‘ve got to be careful though that it’s enjoyable and its fun. If you had a TV programme about meeting all these suppliers and going to lots of places I don’t think the format would be right. But with the right kind of format and something that I think would be interesting and I would have a say in what it’s about, then I would be keen to do something.
In a recent poll by Olive magazine Italian food came out as the most popular food in this country, why do you think that is? Is it because it’s quite accessible?
It is accessible, it’s very much ingredient based, it’s very seasonal and everyone is very keen on seasonality at the moment. I think its one of those foods where I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like Italian food, I mean we all like pasta, its good for vegetarians, it’s simple, the prep is quite simple, it’s not fussy and it’s actually very healthy. You know I just think it has a lot going for it.
It’s an easy thing to cook if you have friends round.
Yeah, but if you think about Italian food in Italy as a whole, you got northern Italy, southern Italy, you got all these parts of Italy where the food is so different and the recipes are all based around local ingredients and I think it’s a very creative cuisine. I think Italians have the less is more mentality which I think is a great thing.
About seasonal ingredients, I know you believe in using them wherever possible, do you think the British public have picked up on that? Or do you think because of the credit crunch people will revert to buying the cheapest foods no matter where they are from?
I think people will be a bit more selective about what they buy but I think people will also start probably growing their own ingredients I think the public are starting to grow herbs in their gardens, and actually realize how easy it is. Not everyone’s got a whacking great garden but people that have a decent sized patch or even an allotment can you know enjoy growing something and cooking it. It is just an amazing thing to do, to say these are my carrots or this is my swiss chard or something.
I think the public are much more astute about what they buy and I think they are probably going to butchers, going to farmer’s markets. Picking up the carrots from a farmer’s market and actually realizing you know, I can buy a couple of kilos of dirty old carrots and they have got so much more flavour than those that cost twice the price in the plastic bags from supermarkets.
Have you got any tips for up and coming chefs or anything you wish you had been told when you were starting out?
Um, I think the thing that up and coming chefs have got to understand is that its bloody hard work. I mean it is really hard work and you don’t just become a chef. You’re not a chef really until you’ve probably been cooking for about five years. You can’t say “I’m a chef” and you’ve only been cooking for six months. You really have to understand that. And I would say you know eat out, eat out if you can or cook. If you haven’t had a great experience of food, try and get one. It’s like reading I imagine it’s like being a journalist or a writer the more you read the better you get I think the more you eat the better you will become. And trust your instincts, of course!
That’s good advice. If you could only cook with five ingredients what would they be, what are your top five?
Well it would probably be tomatoes. I love cooking mushrooms. I love the whole kind of fungal thing, the porcini mushrooms you get this time of year. I love using olive oil. You obviously use butter in some pastas and things but I love the taste of olive oil. I also love anchovies, I love the seasoning ingredients like anchovies. I also like things like dried chilies, those things that are just like a little kind of sprinkle or a squeeze of lemon, those little things that just add a extra dimension to something, you know something that just gives it a little bit more pizazz.
That’s great, and finally what is your next ambition, what would you like to achieve in the next five years?
The next five years… well I think the thing about restaurants is you have to be, you have to take the restaurant forwards and I think that was what a great ethos of the River Café was that it was never resting on its laurels it was always moving ahead. So I think recreate that and also recreate an environment that people enjoy working in.
I mean I love the fact that my staff are happy about winning the award or the fact that the restaurant is busy or full. I think that’s really what you’ve got to look forward to if other things happen then great but my main focus is my restaurant and making it as successful as possible.
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Theo’s pizzas will be available at PizzaExpress until 19th April 2009.
http://www.pizzaexpress.com/our-food/mains/introducing-theo-randall/
Theo Randall at the Intercontinental Park Lane
1 Hamilton Place London W1J 7QY reservations@theorandall.com 020 7318 8747
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