Hywel Jones Lucknam Park Wiltshire

huge responsibility being a chef at somewhere like this, guests' expectations, my own expectations, my obligation to the team, there's a lot of pressure on. It's different to London yeah but you come in, in the morning and you could be walking into a London kitchen. From seven, eight in the morning the kitchen's flat out until ten, 11, at night. In a way it's a tougher pressure than London because it's relentless, it's non-stop throughout the day and you never know when you're going to get called for a sandwich, afternoon tea, for room service, the brasserie's getting hit, the Park's busy tonight. I guess as well almost that there's probably a little bit more added pressure in as much as if somebody comes to Foliage and doesn't have a nice meal they probably won't come back, if they're in here for four nights and their first night isn't very good you've got to try and convert them before they depart from the hotel. I think the thing that I found tougher than being in London was people come to Lucknam for a number of reasons, whether it's the gardens, whether it's the manor house itself, whether it's the spa, the equestrian, the food is one small element and I think what makes Lucknam so successful is that each individual thing is performing well. So the pressures are to make sure that what I'm responsible for, i.e the kitchens perform well and contribute to the overall experience. We talked earlier about great Chefs one being Peter Kromberg and in your own words he was a master chef a lot has changed with the hotel chef, many hotel restaurants, all now occupied by leading restaurant chefs you've got Heston in Foliage and Alan Ducasse in the Dorchester, why is that will it will generate instant success and it's almost like the Premiership I guess it's about making an instant impact The way certainly the big hotels and operators change is mainly because through media, decades ago the biggest high profile job to get as a UK chef was one of the top hotels and you think of the Savoy and the Dorchester, the Ritz, if you were in charge of one those you were the top dog. Nowadays through the world of media and TV it's celebrity chefs so at the end of the day they're what's going to sell the product for a hotel"¦as soon as one of them does it then the others have to do it to catch up. Okay you can argue the point that that's no longer breeding hotel chefs of a calibre but it's opening up other opportunities. It gives people who possibly wouldn't have the funding to have a three star restaurant the opportunity now to do it. Have you as a business at Lucknam Park have you changed the way you do things because of modern media? I mean for example somebody can come here now and they take a photograph of their main course, they can have it on Twitter and it can be out in the world before the waitress has even come back with the tray. So are you conscious of the way media's changing and do you embrace that? Yeah I think you have to embrace the changes with things like media but the key with anything as long as you don't lose track of what you're here to do. I mean my job is to cook for the guests, whether it's breakfast, a sandwich or dinner in the park, you shouldn't worry too much about if it's going to end up here there or anywhere as long as you do things to the best of your ability and you get good feedback off the guests How has your cooking style evolved over the last seven years? My style over the last seven years I would say has definitely simplified. I think I've grown up a little bit. Maybe when I was in London I was being a bit experimental because I felt I had to but I never felt comfortable with it. I think the key is to get to a stage where you think, "˜Okay maybe I'm not doing what Jo Blogs is doing, but this is what I'm comfortable with, the food I cook is the sort of food I'd like to eat, if I went out that's the sort of stuff I'd choose on the menu. You've got to have faith in the style of food you've put on the plate. Last question I guess from looking at your cooking today you've almost taken some very, very classic flavour combinations, mushrooms, Madeira, lamb, mint, and I've noticed everything you've used i.e. you've cooked the sweetbreads in a poaching liquor, then used that in the dish, does that highlight your cooking style, how you like to cook? I think with my cooking the aim is to let the ingredients do the work for me ,to try to capture the natural flavours and build on them not mask them. We go to a lot of trouble to source fantastic ingredients so why mess about too much. Actually I lied last question where do you see yourself in five years time? You've had great success here, seven wonderful years, where's Hywel Jones going to be in five years time? Five years time I'd like to think I'm still going to be at Lucknam, it's been seven and a half years now but it only feels like yesterday that I travelled down the M4. There's so much happened here already from refurbishing kitchens, the spa, the brasserie, training the lads in the kitchen, developing the team and I think I'm at the stage now where if you like a lot of the donkey work is out of the way but there's so many other things we need to get done now. We're looking at the veg garden, got a few other things in the pipeline so it's about keeping my head down and working as hard as I can, motivating the team and producing consistent food. Well I genuinely wish you every success. Thank you Mark. Thank you Hywel thank you very much.