Fabrice Uhryn, The Waterside Inn, Bray

the kitchen with me, but I do have the opportunity to put the ideas of new dishes to him. I understand what we’re trying to do at The Waterside Inn, the style of cooking here, so when I’m creating dishes it’s inherently reflecting our philosophy, it’s what I like now, it’s my style of cooking too now. It’s not much effort for me to create dishes that fit the style of The Waterside: it’s what I like to do. When we make new dishes I really try to get the whole team involved, to progress, to better what we are cooking. Alain has stepped back over the past years from the main kitchen, but he’s still very much involved with what we do and he looks after pastry. Anything I make we taste together, we asses it together, we do it together. It’s always good to have him taste something, because he may have a different view, a different take on things sometimes, which can make you think; I listen to what Alain says and I take it on board. It’s about making it as close to perfect as we can and creating something to the customers’ liking. How much importance do you place on training and the development of yourself and your team and how important is this to the operation as a whole? Training is a vital part of our daily work. We work with a lot of young people; they not only need to learn the basics of cooking, but also how to cook for our customers. We have a lot of regular customers, who can be demanding, there is a level of quality we have to maintain. We are often asked to do a lot of special things for our customers. We like our team to understand the customers, to know what they want and be able to deliver that. The legacy of The Waterside means a lot of special things happen here, which perhaps wouldn’t happen in another kitchen. How have you developed and improved as a person, a manager and a Chef whilst working at The Waterside Inn? The ethos at The Waterside Inn is about pleasing our customers, both our regulars and our new guests. Some customers have been coming here for twenty years or longer, so they know The Waterside better than I do and what we do in the kitchen. In the beginning, you don’t understand this – you think about your ego, how you can progress. When you’re young, you do a lot of things for yourself. Today it’s about the customer; it’s about understanding the details, even if you have to do things that you feel you don’t want to do, but it’s about keeping that customer happy. That’s all we want: happy customers. Classic, French cooking and its boundaries are being challenge by the industry; do you feel The Waterside is still relevant to the industry today and do you feel classical, traditional techniques are still relevant to chefs in other kitchens? Yes, what we do is classical but we always try to give a modern twist on things. A dish can be made with a very special technique, but if the flavour isn’t there then the technique is irrelevant. The Waterside Inn is still very relevant to the industry. To do any type of cooking, if you don’t have the basics in classical cooking then you can’t understand what you’re doing and you can’t carry other techniques out properly. Young chefs really need to have a solid foundation in learning the basic classics to be able to move on. Modern cooking isn’t relevant without classic cooking. You have been at The Waterside for over 10 years now; how do you keep what you’re doing fresh? I am constantly trying to improve things – not just the cooking but also the conditions of work. Working conditions today are much better than they were before, throughout the industry. Staff are more demanding today about hours, money, the environment we work in, the way we work in the kitchen, so we have to reassess ourselves to meet their demands. Without our staff we are nothing. Ten years ago there were also fewer places to work; today there is a lot of good quality, high-end restaurants where you can go and work. There’s plenty of choice out there, so we have to be competitive with what we’re offering to prospective chefs to attract them to come and work at The Waterside.