Alyn Williams Restaurant Alyn Williams The Westbury London

Alyn Williams is the chef-patron of Alyn Williams at the Westbury, a restaurant located in the Westbury hotel in London’s Mayfair. He opened his eponymous restaurant in November 2011, after a career working with top chefs such as Marcus Wareing and Gordon Ramsay. Born in London, Alyn was influenced to be a chef by his dad, who was a passionate cook and grew his own vegetables. He studied at Waltham College, also doing a placement at Claridges. His first proper restaurant job was at Fredericks in Camden, which followed Michel Guerrard’s cuisine minceur style. After this he moved on to Les Alouettes in Claygate, which gained a Michelin star after two years, and David Everitt-Matthias’s Le Champignon Sauvage. He took a break to teach snowboarding in France and Colorado before returning to work in restaurants like The Greenhouse, Zafferano, Chez Bruce and Petrus, where he first worked with Marcus Wareing. After this he worked at Claridges, followed by the three star Restaurant Gordon Ramsay at Royal Hospital Road. He was head chef of the two star Marcus Wareing at the Berkeley before finally getting his own name on the door of Alyn Williams at The Westbury.   First and foremost, Alyn thanks for inviting me in today, wonderful to come and see you. Give us a brief of your forthcoming role, and why you made the transition, from a great career under Marcus? It was a great career I worked for Marcus for eight years in total, started off with him in the original Pétrus in St James, in fact I started off with him originally in L'Oranger. I had just finished a series of ski seasons working as a chalet rep/snowboard guide. I'd come back to London to settle down and establish my career so I went to L'Oranger. I'd started my career in Michelin star restaurants, I'd done a few ski seasons, I'd taught snowboarding and I loved that but I could never make a living of it so I focused on my other love which is cooking. I saw Stuart Gillies who was opening Teatro in Shaftsbury avenue and he gave me a job, but before we opened, I worked for a couple of months at L'Oranger with Marcus (Wareing) where I also met Angela Hartnett and a few other chefs, Shane Osborn was there. I did a year and half at Teatro with Stuart before I decided to leave, I wanted to progress, move up a notch up, Angela approached me, she was Marcus' sous chef at the time, and was about to open Petrus,. I spent the next two and a half years there, went in as a chef de partie and got promoted to sous chef after about six months, Angela left, went to Dubai and me and Darren Velvick were the two sous chefs. I then went on to help open Gordon Ramsay at Claridge's. Was Mark (Sergeant) head chef then? Mark was head chef. Josh Emett who went on to run the London in New York for Gordon was also there. It was a good experience and a real eye-opener, they were all good chefs to work with but it didn't really suit me. So Gordon took me out of there and moved me to Royal Hospital Road where I spent a year as sous chef, which was exactly what I wanted. Who's in the brigade at Royal Hospital Road at this time? There was myself and Rusty (Richard Wood), who was a sous chef too. Mark Askew was heading the brigade and then we had Paul Ainsworth, Richard Davies, those two stood out, they shone. Clare Smyth was there too. We had a fantastic kitchen in regards of talent and discipline, there and Pétrus I think were instrumental in developing self-discipline, which I had in me, but it just needed to be brought out because ever since then it's been second nature "¦you develop a self-alarm, you develop a sense of absolute right and wrong. But when you're cooking at that level its paramount isn't it? You need a deep a sense of professionalism I suppose, if something's not right, if it's not in a line, if it's not cooked perfectly, if it's not cut properly or whatever an alarm bell goes off in your head that won't let you carry on, Mark Askew set that reaction and was tough in enforcing it. Marcus always strikes me as being very, very analytical, very, very regimented, very, very disciplined to running a kitchen? In a way yes, Marcus is exceptionally precise and runs a very disciplined kitchen but he is also a bit more emotional than Mark and I think that's the difference. Marcus' temperament moves whereas Mark's never did. Mark was straight down the line, constantly and he gets criticised for the way he is but he's a really nice man and if you know him personally he's not always like that, he's a good character, he's got a good sense of humour but in the kitchen its all about the kitchen, every single element of every single dish was checked so you knew that even if the skin of a pea was slightly split it would go back, there were an awful lot of cooks that never made it through because they couldn't cope with that level of scrutiny. So how do you make the transition from there then to Pétrus at the Berkeley? I spent my year at Royal Hospital Road, and I was then approached by two people who heard that I was leaving, one of them was John Wood, executive chef at the Burj Al Arab in Dubai, to head up one of their kitchens and also by Joel Cadbury who owned the Groucho Club. My wife was six months pregnant at the time with our first son and she thought that Dubai might be a bit hot, sticky and too uncomfortable to bring up a baby. It's also a long way from her family. So I went to the Groucho Club where I was executive chef of Longshot Estates, they owned the Groucho Club, a place called Vingt Quatre on Fulham Road, The Admiral Codrington which is in Mossop Street and The Salisbury Tavern in Fulham. I had a brigade of nine chefs at the Groucho Club, we had a brasserie, a fine dining restaurant a busy bar and three big, busy function rooms. I had to try and make a good margin out of very little revenue, bloody hell that was hard work, but it was good, it was great fun, I met loads of great people. I mean if you can sit down after work and have a drink and a chat with people like Tom Jones, Chris Evans and Giles Coren! It was a great life experience. But you can learn from all experiences can't you? Absolutely and I'm pragmatic about that. I that life's not all about food and cooking there's a lot more to it. I mean conversations with some of these people it was incredible, it was great. So you return to Petrus, how big an impact did that have on your career? Massive, the most fundamental part of my career was spent with Marcus, he taught me an awful lot without necessarily saying a lot. I followed what he did and I saw the way that he operated and the attention that he gave to everything from the business side through to the culinary side as well, he's a fantastic chef and he can still jump up to a stove and cook as well as anybody. He taught me a lot about dedication as much as anything, but the attention to detail and my palate obviously developed, which I consider to be a chef's most important piece of equipment. I don't think a lot of chefs appreciate that. They think that technique and new fashions, all the chemicals are what a chef needs but what a chef really needs is to know how to taste, absolutely the most important thing. So here we are at the Westbury then talk us through how it's evolved? I was 43 when I left Marcus in January. About a year ago I started to think about doing something on my own. Because it's always going to be Marcus' name above the door isn't it? Yeah and I appreciate that. Again you have to be pragmatic about where you are, your position, who's involved and who's going to take the plaudits. He always would and why shouldn't he, he's the chef patron and that's his prerogative. But there comes a point that you need to stand on your own two feet. Not everybody does and there are a lot of chefs who manage to carve their own way underneath someone. I mean André Garrett Galvin at Windows is a prime example of someone who's made a great career and he's well regarded in his own right, the Galvins allow him to do that and I think it's commendable of them that they can but not everybody wants to do that and not everybody wants to give up and Marcus worked bloody hard to create what he created. Absolutely. And make no bones about it Petrus and Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley would have never been anything like as successful without Marcus. He created the restaurant in his own style and was at the front of the ship every single day, certainly throughout the formative years he never left the stove. So he created what he had and we all streamlined with him and I followed his direction, I drove his way and fortunately grew along. I was his head chef at Petrus and Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley for almost five years, together we made it what it became but then there came a time when I thought right I'm ambitious enough to want to do something on my own. I also wanted to establish a secure future for my wife and sons. So I started looking around for investors to go out and open a stand alone restaurant. I was looking for some sites around London and that's a bloody hard thing to do to, find a suitable site. And equally I guess you're doing it at a very, very difficult time because we're right in the height of one of the worst recessions known to man. Exactly which is a double-edged sword really because if you look hard enough you can find some good properties where you can negotiate deals on the rent and get refurbs, so it can be a shrewd time to buy. But they're not always in the best locations. I had two people approach me about investing who subsequently fell through. They both went into it with the right intentions but as you say the recession was biting, one of them had just set up his own company that needed an awful lot of its own investment so I couldn't blame him, he's going to look after himself before he looks after me. I just thought that I could stay with Marcus and just keep going, I was in a very comfortable position and I could probably keep going for the next eight years, but there was this thing at the back of my brain saying, "Well no, that's the easy thing to do let's do something that will put you in the driving seat rather than always being in the shadow," and so I took the decision to give my notice. My wife nearly throttled me when I told her because I didn't have anything lined up but I just thought well if I don't, nothing will change and I needed that impetus to get me going. By chance I bumped into Mike West who is Jason Atherton's restaurant manager I've known Mike for years, he's a good friend of the general manager at The Westbury, he said, "I might just have something that may interest you," so he put me in touch with Stass who's the general manager, I'd met him at Claridges all those years ago in 2001 we got together and