is they kind of mould into our team, that’s where the collaborative part of carousel is.”
Ollie added: “The whole thing is that these guests are coming to experience these chefs and their food and we’re just trying to elevate that experience. So we’re here to cook with them, have fun with them and to showcase what they’re about.”
Aside from being head chef, Ollie also has the exciting challenge of curating the line-up and enticing chefs from across the globe to travel to London to share their signature dishes with Carousel’s enthusiastic diners.
He said: “I have quite a fun job, I get to pick and persuade people to come to Carousel. It can be tough, especially if you’re going for a high standard restaurant as they can be really focused on what they’re doing so the lead-in times are often more than a year.
“If I don’t get the time to leave the UK to try things I get recommendations from friends who work in the industry. I was in Stockholm on holiday with my girlfriend and while we were out there I was talking to all the chefs about food and trying to convince them to come to Carousel!”
With Carousel building a strong reputation for itself in the industry, Ollie and the team are constantly on the look-out for fresh talent that embody Carousel’s ethos, even catching the eye of Gordon Ramsay!
“There’s someone that we were really trying to get to work with who I met in Stockholm called Niklas Ekstedt. His kind of food is what we’re all about at Carousel. I would really love to work with him,” explained Ollie. "I would bloody love to have someone like Gordon Ramsay come or Heston Blumenthal, it would be epic. I think I would rather have Gordon Ramsay because he’s a fun guy. He nearly came to Carousel last summer but had to cancel at the last minute, maybe I’ll ask him again.”
Having an endless line up of chefs take centre stage at Carousel, Ollie and the team have certainly come across one or two whose skills were more impressive on paper.
He said: “I won’t say any names or talk badly about anyone but there have been a few where their CV was better than the reality. It was a shame but at the same time it’s not necessarily them or that they served bad food, it’s just that sometimes they would mess around with textures and flavours which can be a bit challenging if you’re eating a whole plate of it.”
In the not too distant future Ollie would eventually like to settle in Spain with his own restaurant but not until he and his family have accomplished what they set out to do with Carousel.
He said: “Our ultimate aim for carousel is to showcase and work with the best undiscovered and discovered chefs from around the world, bring them to London and offer the best food experiences. No one that I’m aware of is doing it, how we envisioned it, with the service, the layout and the atmosphere you get when you come here with the family. It’s all of those things and we never want to change that, it’s only the food that is changing.”
By Michael Parker
