To talk to Jason Atherton about his evolution as a chef and restaurateur, is to talk about the rise and evolution of British cooking. As Atherton cut his teeth under Pierre Koffmann, Nico Ladenis, and Marco Pierre White, finessing classic French technique and harnessing a work ethic essential for the highest level of cooking. It was under such illustrious tutelage that the British Isles rediscovered the quality of their local ingredients and how to bring out the best in them. Time as the first British chef interning for Ferran Adria at El Bulli inspired experimentation within Atherton’s own cuisine. British dining grew up–and became quite formidable–alongside the Sheffield-born creative. The rest, from Atherton’s flagship MICHELIN One Star Pollen Street Social to his more recent adventures in upscale club dining in St. Moritz, Dubai, and Shanghai, is, as we can now say, history.
On a recent trip to London, Atherton and I met in Berners Tavern, the stunning British brasserie at Ian Schrager’s London Edition (also a MICHELIN Guide Hotel). The hotel is a personal favorite; I used to stay there when I covered London Fashion Week, running into friends and editors in the cavernous lobby bar and the more intimate, 70s-influenced punch room. Atherton’s restaurant serves rich, comfort food with a signature subtle twist, is the spiritual center of the property.
Ahead of King Charles III's Coronation, we spoke with Atherton about his ongoing culinary contributions to the English gastronomic scene, local ingredients, and what's next for the star.
Tell us the story behind the space we are in.
Berners Tavern is now ten years old. At the time, I had pretty much only worked in MICHELIN Star restaurants. I was Gordon Ramsay’s executive chef. And I left and opened up Pollen Street Social. We then opened up Little Social, which is our little sister restaurant down the road. We just did classic French cooking with an amazing burger. Food you want to eat everyday. We then opened up Social Eating House. So, at this point, I’ve got two restaurants, a bistro, and that was beyond my wildest dreams.
Then, Ian Schrager approached us to do this. I turned it down. I didn’t hear anything for six months. Then the email came back again saying, "look, can you come and meet us?" So, I said no again. I really don’t want to do an all day dining restaurant. I hate that terminology. It cheapens it. And then three months later he said, "I’m going to try one more time. Come to New York, come visit me at my studio." I said to my wife, let’s go to New York, let’s meet Mr. Schrager. And we went. We ate at loads of MICHELIN Star restaurants. And then we met him, showed us the plans. And I was like, sh*t. Look at the place, it's stunning.
The space is stunning.
He said, "look, you’re the only British chef we feel can really give this relevance." I was flattered. If we are ever going to go into the brasserie space, this investment was so colossal, we could never afford it. And Mr. Schrager is a really cool guy. So, we said, yeah. And then we started writing the menu. Really started getting into the bones of what an all day brasserie should do, how it should impact the local community. What it should stand for. And then I invented the name Berners Tavern.
I would love to hear about how your spaces relate to the community.
We were one of the first people, all those years ago, to put food miles on our menu. So, if you were eating a piece of cod, we would tell you exactly how it was caught and how far it traveled. Everyone does it now. But we were the pioneers of it. I really wanted to showcase to people that even though they were having breakfast here, the Stornoway black pudding was from a small farm in the northern Hebrides of Scotland. I consider it to be the best black pudding in the world. Everything on our menu had to be British. We really want to do a brasserie that was not French, not Italian, but 100% British.
Can you speak about the development of British cuisine.
There was a very famous quote by the French president Jacques Chirac, that you can never trust a country with such bad cuisine, and it's almost laughable when you look at that quote now. But back then it wasn’t. We’re talking the 70s and the 80s. We then had people like the Roux's in the 60s; Albert Roux, the first Three MICHELIN Star restaurant chef in Britain, and everybody flocked to work there. I remember a time when I worked for Marco Pierre White at Harvey’s and it was a three-and-a-half-year waitlist to have a job. Can you imagine that today? You were scared stiff to make a mistake because if you did and you got fired, to get back into a Three MICHELIN Star restaurant was impossible. You really did cherish your job. Every single Michelin star restaurant in the country was full of young British chefs hungry for knowledge, so they were learning this refined Michelin cooking from Raymond Blanc, Albert Roux, Bruno Loubet, Jean Christophe Novelli, Marco Pierre White… and then you had this underbelly of more cult chefs like Simon Hopkinson, Fergus Henderson. They were doing things a little more unusual. Not necessarily Michelin, but still nonetheless great. So, all of a sudden you have young British guys and girls working for all these amazing chefs and then breaking off opening pubs, brasseries, bistros. Over two decades, the landscape of British food transformed itself into this amazing culinary outburst which I’m proud to be a part of. Rather than just people who were also-ran. People were desperate to know about British cuisine.
But, the second thing to that is, British food has always been good, the products. We’ve always had amazing scallops, langoustine, fish, amazing vegetables, amazing cattle. We’ve always had that! But we just never had the skills to use it. We lost it, right? Thank goodness it's back.
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Tell us about the experiences you had working with Pierre Koffmann, Nico Ladenis, Marco Pierre White.
It was a different world back then. I’m glad that in the industry now we had a work life balance. I don’t. It’s my life. At the end of the day, let’s be frank, if you want to cook at a high level, it doesn’t matter if it's Michelin or not, and you want to learn as much as possible about food, it has to be a lifetime journey. A lot of people don’t know me because I’m quite a private person. I don’t go out to parties. Any spare moment I’ve got to be with my family. If I’m not in my own restaurants, I go to other people’s restaurants, and I enjoy eating out as much as everybody else. I use it as a learning experience as well as a fun experience. I feel privileged to have a job where I wake up every day and it doesn’t feel like work.
It’s an adventure.
Exactly. I know full well what I’m going to do in my retirement. I’m going to go off and discover cuisines I’ve been wanting to discover since learning to be a chef.
What are some of those cuisines?
I’ve never traveled Latin America. I’m desperate to go. With the impact of the chefs, working for Marco, Nico, Pierre–once you get on the MICHELIN Two and Three Star bandwagon, as a cook, one leads to another, right? I never took any holidays because I couldn’t afford it. I always was obsessed with learning as much as I could. Every single [chef] had a massive impact on my career. Massive. Still today, the hard work, the dedication you have to show them, stands me in good stead because when we do get short staffed I know that doing the hours is just water off the back. As far as the cuisines are concerned, having that fundamental upbringing in French classic cuisine [is essential]. That’s a lot of what I learned. But then when I went to El Bulli, it really unlocked the creativeness in me. I like taking a classic dish and giving it a bit of a modern twist. That’s the base of my food really. Without working for the chefs I work for, I wouldn’t have been able to do that.
Where do you like to eat right now?
My two favorite restaurants in the world at the moment are [MICHELIN Three Star] Chef’s Table in Brooklyn Fare in New York. I absolutely adore it. And I also love [MICHELIN Three Star] Frantzen in Stockholm. Where else do I like to eat? I mean, there are so many good restaurants! Me and my wife for our tenth wedding anniversary, we went to San Francisco for a week in Napa Valley and went to Saison when Joshua Skenes was still cooking there and it was two stars at the time and we ate there and I was like, this is definitely three stars! I love going to restaurants. Not just for the Michelin thing. There’s a restaurant in San Sebastian I go to a lot. It’s just a neighborhood little joint called Gant. It specializes in mushrooms, seafood and steak. It is amazing!
Do you have any particular dishes that you are developing right now you are excited about?
I really like working at Pollen Street and seeing how simple I can get a dish to look. We’re working on a rabbit dish at the moment which we literally just finished. These are spring rabbits from Lincolnshire, and we brine it in a Japanese seaweed brine, and then we [put] crayfish, and these are from a river not far from where the rabbits are from. We then make a bisque with their heads. We then make a morel and rabbit sauce to braise the morels in. White valley asparagus, English peas, little garlic flowers, then we wrap the liver and the foie from the rabbit in and then we put it back in, poach it, and then roast it and it's just so simple but so perfect. When you eat it, it is absolutely delicious. It looks really simple, but there is a lot that goes into that. That’s what excites me.
It’s a more pure relationship.
The person who taught me the most about that - he didn’t know he taught me, I just admired his food so much- was Cesar Ramirez at Brooklyn Fare. The food is so pure and so perfect, and you eat it and you go, Jesus, all it is is rice, a piece of langoustine, a bit of braised oxtail and a bisque and it is so intense and clear and flavorful. I could go and eat that dish in another twenty restaurants and it wouldn’t even get close, right? And that’s when I really started to change my view of how I cook my dishes. I was really passionate about that.
What’s next?
We’re doing a couple more restaurants in London. I’m not cooking them. We do see the sea of change. There’s a saying now called “club restaurant.” You’re talking about the Big Mamma Group, Major Food Group, all these guys who create restaurants that are far more than going for dinner or lunch. And it’s about the deejay…we all know the type of restaurants we’re talking about. Without being rude, normally the food is not that focused on, and I mean that in the best possible way. Could you imagine the power if we created a space which did that with great food and great service and a well considered wine list for that guest? You’d have the whole package. So, we are now really starting to see the future of what that hole is. And we’re now starting to create spaces where we’re going to back chefs and managers. It’s their space. We’re in the background.
