Paul Tamburrini, The Honours Brasserie, Edinburgh

Paul Tamburrini is head chef at The Honours Brasserie, one of the top restaurants in Edinburgh. Paul’s first catering job was as an apprentice commis chef at Rogano in Glasgow. He has worked in some of the UK's most renowned Michelin star restaurants such as Marco Pierre White's L'Escargot Restaurant in London, Airds Hotel in Argyll as well as Martin Wishart's fine dining restaurant in Leith, Edinburgh. He was head chef at the relaunch of the restaurant at One Devonshire Garden in Glasgow where he started in 2006. In November 2010, Martin Wishart contacted Paul with a business idea and in January he bought the restaurant which used to be Tony’s Table. In February 2011 Martin and Paul announced that they would work together and by June that year Paul had left One Devonshire Gardens. Opened in 2011, The Honours Brasserie is known for its dishes where traditional French cuisine meets the flavours of the Scottish market.

Paul can give us an outline of name, concept, food style, operation; bit of an over view please Paul.

I'm working in partnership with Martin Wishart to open a new brasserie, an up market brasserie which is going to be called, "˜The Honours Brasserie' based in Edinburgh. It's going to be doing roughly about, 80 covers; it will have a bar area and we've pinched some of Martin's waiting staff to take over front of house and I'm taking some guys from One Devonshire Gardens; Martin's sous chef...is going to be part of the team, and that's great news. We want to strip away the kind of fine dining aspect of the service and food and we believe that there's a market in Edinburgh that's going to be looking for this style of dining. Are you going to be lunch and dinner? Lunch and dinner, yes. Seven days a week? Initially, yes. Seven days a week to get us through the Festival and then after that we'll review it and then possibly look at opening, closing possibly on Sunday night and Monday, but depending on the business levels. And in terms of number of chefs in your team, how many are you going to have? Including myself there'll be 8 chefs. I think in the business there are going to be around 22 to 25 8 chefs is just initially. Martin is going to help support it and then we're possibly going to be taking up to ten chefs. Once we've got a good overview of the revenue and business levels that is. You use the phrase "˜up market brasserie', give us a kind of over view of what you would describe as an up market brasserie. Give us the type of food that you are going to be doing there, Paul. A lot of Scottish produce and we've got some wonderful artisan suppliers up here, from my side of the city, Glasgow and from Martin's side, Edinburgh. We're bringing that all together we're going to support Scottish suppliers as much as possible, British suppliers also, however, that isn't always possible, so we have to go maybe further afield to Italy and France. We're not going to shoot ourself in the foot and say we're going to have nothing out a 30 mile radius, will get the best we possibly can. Paul give us an example of a dish that might be on the menu? Martin's just back, from New York full of ideas a chicken base dish with crispy cornflakes a lime soy beurre blanc. So there are not any boundaries. I'm not going to say we're not going to do daub of beef. However, we might do a slow braised rib of beef with pommes purées. Martin's got a cracker of a dish, it's a coq au vin, a slice of coq au vin we are using a St Brides chickens, which we poach it at 63c for four hours; presses it, slices it, trim it up, sous vides and then serve it with a typical coq au vin garnish. So there will be some twists on classic garnishes and I think the desserts will be, on along the same line It seems quite common at the moment that everyone's into sharing plates, tapas, are you going to have elements of that or is it still going to be a sort of formal starter, main, dessert? No. We are just putting the finishing touches on small bites,... It's very en vogue at the moment isn't it? Yes, small bites and aruccini, bowls, crispy baby squid with aioli and lime and Which is great to eat? Yes, it is,. ...because it creates debate and topic and interaction... Sharing is going to feature quite heavily, people can eat at their leisure. And, then we have olives, then we have crispy squid which we've touched on, pigs on toast which would be the pig's trotters en croute... There's so much scope it's incredible. People can have a few dishes, you can have it for the starter; there's oysters and lobsters, and we think it will take off in the city. What is your motivation to leave Glasgow then? You were at Hotel du Vin, you'd built up a good name there, you've worked in the Georgian Room and again, great reputation there. You've got quite a, quite a fine dining background, what's your motivation to leave that and come into Edinburgh; not your home city, and do maybe a food style that is not necessarily associated with you? Hotel du Vin, One Devonshire Gardens, absolutely fabulous and I had 12 wonderful guys who I kind of looked up to and admired. A gentleman called Robert Cook, who was the Chief Executive of the company and my direct boss was a chap called Keith Shearer, brilliant guys, who just let me do my job, in terms of, the rest of the Hotel du Vin group, they were given their menus to adhere to but I had freedom. You were pretty well left alone there weren't you? Yes, and, I admired them for that... But then equally you'd built a good reputation. Very much so, Not just me but my guys, one of the things I learnt quite well at One Devonshire was staff retention. And most of the guys I'm taking with me have been with me for four or five years; one or two that I can't take purely because of financial side, but you never know what is going to happen further down the line. In terms of going from Glasgow to Edinburgh; I did it for about four years initially; I stayed in Glasgow and I travelled to with Martin in Leith and also at the Balmoral prior to that. I'm a little bit older, I'm now going