Brett Graham: The green-fingered chef

The chef behind the two Michelin-starred restaurant The Ledbury talks seasonality, growing his own vegetables and leaving someone else to clear up his mess in the kitchen

Brett Graham is a busy man. His restaurant, The Ledbury, in London’s Notting Hill was this year voted the 34th best restaurant in the world, the highest new entrant in the San Pellegrino list.

He also scooped the Restaurant Magazine National Restaurant of the Year Award in 2010, holds two Michelin stars, and if he’s not at the restaurant, he’s usually cooking a charity dinner for 300 people.

Down Under

Yet cooking hasn’t always been a huge part of the 32-year-old’s life. Growing up in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, food wasn’t at all a focus of his family. ‘We got our veg out of the freezer and we never went to nice restaurants,’ says Graham. ‘I didn’t know that nice restaurants existed to be honest.’

It was a neighbour that first showed him how to prepare and roast a chicken. ‘I cooked it for Sunday lunch for my family. I thought there was something in it you know.’

From Australia to England

Graham soon started working in a local restaurant, moving quickly to a seafood joint where he turned out thousands of Kilpatrick oysters and seafood platters. Next, he moved to Sydney to Banc and the world of fine dining. Graham excelled, winning the Josephine Pignolet Award in 2000, which gave him the cash to get to England.

He thought he’d stay a year and then go travelling in Spain to meet a sexy senorita, but then he started working in London as the pastry chef at Philip Howard’s The Square.

He graduated quickly to sous-chef where his talent was brought into the spotlight, and he picked up the British Young Chef of the Year in 2002, as well as a couple of Michelin stars. It was Howard who suggested going into business together, and the pair opened the Ledbury together in 2005.

Eat the seasons

Seasonality is the driving force behind Graham’s menu. ‘It’s frustrating to see ingredients that are out of season on a menu. Sometimes I see something like asparagus or ratatouille on a menu in the middle of winter, and I just think, “where are you getting all that stuff from?”,’ says Graham. ‘I love that seasonality, and thinking about what’s around, what’s coming up, keeps you on your toes.’

Ledbury dishes can take between a day and many months to ripen, but Graham places huge emphasis on British food. ‘I think the feeling now is people are tending towards more local food and British ingredients are increasingly meeting the standards that we need, so I’m trying harder not to order from abroad.’

Shooting and gardening

As well as serving up game he has shot himself (he shoots about 12 days a year), Graham also grows some of the produce used at the restaurant himself in his vegetable garden.

‘I’ve always liked gardening. I started doing a bit when I was 13 or 14 and now I do an hour every morning before I got to work. It’s my bit of therapy. And I’ve got lots of great stuff growing - wild strawberry plants, potatoes, all different sorts of varieties of stuff. It makes you respect produce so much more when you see how hard it is to grow.’

At home

On the rare occasion that he gets to cook at home, Graham doesn’t use recipes, although he does like to skim through the 1979 tome Great Chefs of France for inspiration. He also doesn’t keep to his rigid restaurant standards in his own kitchen.

‘I’m a disciplined person. I try to carry this into my own kitchen, but actually when I get home I’m the opposite. I’m so relaxed, I usually leave the washing up to my fiancée.’

But Graham’s partner of ten years, Natalie, shouldn’t have too much clearing up to do, as when he cooks for friends and family, he keeps it simple.

‘I’ll get a nice piece of fish or some lamb, or right now I’d cook a roast poulet de Bresse with morels. I’ve actually got a couple of Poulet de Bresse in my back yard at the moment. I bred them from the eggs with an incubator. They aren’t too big, but they’re getting there.’

Do they crow in French? ‘No. Well, not yet anyway.’

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