James Golding: Reshaping beach dining after The PIG success
After well over a decade shaping and growing The PIG brand, earning national acclaim along the way, James Golding decided to follow a new path.
Opting to step away from the day-to-day hustle and bustle of kitchen life, James left England to move to Italy with his wife Ericka and young family.
After investing in an area of woodland, James and Ericka set up and ran ‘truffle trips’ as part of ‘experience weekends’ in Tuscany.
He still had TV work, regularly appearing on shows such as Sunday Brunch on Channel 4, food festivals and his podcast Always in Season, linked to his work as ambassador for Maple from Canada.
But the pace of life was slower, something James has since realised did not quite suit him.
Still with good connections and a high reputation across the south coast of England, James was last year contacted by Luke Davis, who owns Rockwater.
They currently have seaside restaurants in Hove and Poole, with another in the works in the opulent surroundings of Sandbanks.
Being from the area, just up the road in Christchurch, and having trained at Bournemouth and Poole College, the opportunity piqued James’s interest and he soon joined in a consultancy role. That developed a few months later to his current position as chef director, overseeing strategy across all the sites.
Why I Missed the Kitchen
“I didn't realise when I left The PIG how much I would miss being with a team of chefs,” James told The Staff Canteen.
“Working by myself was a very strange kind of experience.
“I think, as chefs, we are very sociable people. We like to come in and say good morning to everybody, talk a bit about what everybody did the day before, talking about what’s coming, talk about new dishes going on the menu and really have that kind of back and forth.
“You don't have that when you're just organising events, until the actual day. And then when you do the events, you realise how much you miss being in the kitchen.
“For my sanity, I needed to be back in a position working with multiple sites, but also with lots of chefs to keep that whole creativity going.
“Working with a team has been a massive godsend.”
Leaving THE PIG: A Legacy Built on Local Food and Sustainability
The PIG hotel group started in the New Forest and now has more than 10 sites, across the south, as well as in Warwickshire and The Cotswolds.
Reflecting on his legacy and exit in 2023, 14 years after arriving, James said: “I really enjoyed my time with The PIG. It was something which I was lucky enough to be there from the beginning of.
“The whole idea was utilising that kitchen garden and utilising the local producers. But the journey of The PIG was fantastic and we won so many accolades.
“By the time I left, we had eight hotels and eight head chefs and all the headaches that go with large amounts of staff on high volume hotels.
“Nowadays you'd hope that your local restaurants were using British products. You'd hope that the menus would be seasonal. But I think back then it probably wasn't as much thought about as it is now. I'd like to think that we were credited for leading the way there.
“The only other place that was doing it was Le Manoir, who had their kitchen garden, but I think as far as home grown produce, The PIG really took it to another level.
“It was a very big part of my career and one that I'll always treasure.”
Among The PIG’s accolades during James’s time there was featuring at number four and winning the Sustainability Awards in the Top 100 Restaurant Awards.
“The first year we were open I think we were the most spoken about hotel in the country,” said James.
“As is with anything, once you start rolling them out and you start doing more, things have to change a little bit and then it then became more of the business side of it.
“Fourteen years for a chef is a very long time. After the sale of The PIG, myself and my wife Ericka have always wanted to have a place in northern Tuscany.
“We bought a property in Italy and we bought some black truffle woods and the idea was to start doing truffle trips out there. We also did pop-ups on the top of the mountain. We had Ben Murphy, Sam and Shauna, Dhruv Baker and Paul Foster come out. These events were hugely
“But then I got approached by Luke Davis from Rockwater.”
Le Caprice and Mark Hix’s influence
Before his storming success on the south coast, James gained experience working in London initially, at The Savoy under Anton Edelmann, ahead of a “turning point” learning from the food philosophy of Mark Hix at Le Caprice and then onto renowned fish restaurant J Sheekey.
A spell in New York followed at Soho House, before returning to England, where he was drawn back to the south coast.
James has big plans for Rockwater. Its current offering in the Branksome suburb of Poole provides a more relaxed downstairs space for families with food like burgers and pizza, as well as a more refined fish-led menu upstairs, under the watchful eye of James’ long-time friend and group head chef Adam Stocker.
“Rockwater has been here for two years now and I think it was a bit of shaky start, but over the past year we've managed to really elevate the food,” James said.
“We’ve brought on some really, really key good people. Emily (Davies), the group operations manager, is absolute legend and working with Adam again, who was a chef in my year at college.
“When I first came here, the menu was quite eclectic, a little bit of everything.
“My biggest thing about food is I think you should be eating food that you'd expect to be eating in an area.
“People romanticise restaurants quite a bit. If we’re sat here looking out at the sea, you can see the boats and all this lovely coastline, in my mind, this upstairs area should be a fish-led menu.
“We're not looking for any kind of crazy accolades. We just want an honest approach, with a view that conjures up ideas of where your food came from.”
Supper Clubs, School Workshops and Community Plans
Business is currently booming over the summer during peak season, but James also has plans to keep things ticking over the winter, using the space to bring the community into the restaurant.
“It's quite interesting, Rockwater, because it sort of embraces all of the similar philosophy of what we had at The PIG,” James explained.
“We use local producers, we have seasonal menus, but being on the beach here, it's also high volume.
“We want people to be able to come down, go to the beach and come in here, maybe have lunch, sit down outside and have some food with the kids and then maybe get back on the beach, nip home and come back here for dinner. That's what we would like to see.
“Also we have membership here, so in the mornings we have people doing yoga overlooking the sea. We have paddleboarding, we have all these members discounts, do a lot of stuff with AFC Bournemouth, so the membership side of it is also very healthy.
“Once a month we do like a supper club, for maximum 50 people. It usually sells out within two days. We do one big table in the middle and I'll come out, write the menu, then that's a one-on-one with me coming out talking to the guests, explaining the dishes, a bit of entertainment.
“That's proven to be really, really successful to the point where now we're considering doing it bi-monthly.”
James also wants to get youngsters into cooking. Having been involved in the kitchen at home from a young age, which he initially saw as a chore to allow him permission from his parents to play on his new Sega Mega Drive, James also now has a daughter, Rio, on her own path to becoming a chef.
James said: “Food education in schools is a challenge. Kids aren't being inspired. We’re going to start doing a kids’ cooking workshop here once a month.
“I want to use this space while the weather is still warm to start getting people down here. So in the winter we can also run community led workshops that benefit the area and benefit the company to show off what we've got here.”
Next in the pipeline is getting the site at Sandbanks opened, which James hopes will be later this year, built around a different atmosphere of “elevated street food” and dance music.
“It's been one of those projects which has probably taken a bit too long,” James admitted.
“But it's important that we get it right and important that when it does open, it’s the nuts. And I think it will be.”
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James Golding: Reshaping beach dining after The PIG success
