Chris Staines, Allium Brasserie at The Abbey, Bath

Photographs by kind permission of Rob Whitrow

Chris Staines is head chef at Allium Brasserie in Bath, Somerset, a hotel restaurant which strives to be exciting and ever changing in terms of food. Before starting at the Allium, Chris worked for seven years at Foliage at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in London, where he held a Michelin Star. He also worked as the chef de cuisine at Marco Pierre White’s The Oak Room, which held three Michelin Stars the whole time Chris worked there. Chris’s main influences are Asian and Vietnamese food, which have inspired him throughout his career.   Chris Staines Tell me how many menus you run? I know it’s very new for you here at the Abbey but how many menus do you run currently? We run one menu which is basically all encompassing; we're open from 12 noon, right the way through to ten o'clock at night. We effectively run the one menu which changes slightly in the evening, and on that menu there's also a snack section which works really well for the terrace and bar and a pre-fixed £14.95 for two courses. So it’s three menus but engineered into one. I guess it’s fair to say probably a big change in your career for you in terms of an operation like this, you've had predominantly the Michelin star background, is that what you've been brought here to do, or is it a change of direction for you as well? This move was a much more grown up move for me. Up until now it has been always been about chasing accolades and getting Michelin stars, and when I was presented with this opportunity it was much more of a business partnership rather than me just being a cook in the kitchen and doing my thing with the food. That’s not to say we wouldn’t appreciate any accolades if they came our way. Just to clarify this is now owned by the Taylors, ex Cotswold House, so again great pedigree there in terms of running quality establishments. Yes. At this stage in my career my ultimate aim is to run my own business, all of the great places I’ve worked were very good learning grounds in terms of the cooking, the managing people and building teams, but the business side of it was run by someone else. I really wanted to get the experience of running a profitable, successful business and learning from someone who has a great track record, so that I have all the tools I will need to open my own business. When you say your own business are you talking restaurant or something that's food led? It will definitely be food led, I'd like to think it will be a restaurant with rooms, I hope a destination place in the country where you've got a few rooms, with fantastic food. I'd love to have my own pigs and grow my own veg etc and just go with what’s good on the day. To do that I need to be sure in myself that I am able to run a successful business. We came to Bath and we looked at this property and saw the potential here, it’s a great location and it’s got a great frontage. There's a bit of a gap in the market in Bath, there are lots of very simple, approachable places, lots of sandwich joints, chains and lower end market restaurants; and then you've got places like The Priory and The Royal Crescent, who are doing great fine dining. But there's very little inbetween to fill that gap. We hope Allium does that very nicely. Do you think there's a real big trend at the moment for hotels to go that way? Using great ingredients, employing great chefs like yourself but you can come in, in your jeans and a shirt and the price point is a much more relaxed. I'm not saying the days of fine dining are dead, because there will always be a market for that. But the second half of your question hit the nail on the head; I'm not using any less skill than I did when I was cooking at Foliage, not buying any lesser ingredients, we haven’t decided to just chuck the recipe book out of the window. We're simply trying to do it at a price point where you can come and have a three course meal at 35 or 40 quid, a nice bottle of wine and walk away with a bill under a hundred quid for great food, fantastic service and some really interesting wines. We definitely don’t want to become a special occasion restaurant! There are 200 odd ‘restaurants’ in Bath and it’s a tough market, so we wanted to hit it at just the point where people can say, “Oh let’s go down to Allium,” without having to think “Have we got enough money in the bank…” How do you adjust your menus then if you’re using the same quality ingredients, you’re using the same skill, the same technique but obviously your price point’s lower, how do you balance that in terms of menu costing? ((laughs)) It’s tough. Is it making sure that you’re using say a mackerel starter and looking at what you put on the menu? It’s been a huge challenge and we are finding that we have to be a lot cleverer about how we write the menu. We're not in a position to buy “premium” products because the price point is such that in order to make the margin we just can't have them on the menu. That’s not to say we’re not using quality ingredients,