Daniel Watkins, executive chef, Holy Carrot: 'We're writing our own rules'

New Notting Hill venue Holy Carrot is looking to break the mould when it comes to vegan restaurants.

For executive chef Daniel Watkins, his main focus is making the vegetable the ‘star of the show’ and working sustainably in the process, cooking over fire and utilising fermentation.

After some successful pop-ups and supper clubs, Holy Carrot opened on Portobello Road in July of this year, founded by first-time restaurateur Irina Linovich, formerly an international producer of Vogue in Ukraine.

As for Daniel, his three decades in hospitality saw him more recently take in spells at The Anchor in Hullbridge, Essex, St Leonards in Shoreditch and Hackney’s ACME Fire Cult.

Building to this moment

“I would say I've always been pretty much vegetable-led or always had a passion for vegetables,” Daniel explained.

“Certainly the fire and ferment has been the last sort of 10-15 years. That's where I've grown and kind of just matured and developed my own identity, which has then led me pretty much to where we are today at Holy Carrot.

“This has kind of come quite organically.”

He added: “We’re only three months old now. It's been a really exciting journey.

“I think it’s that we’re micro-seasonal. Where I’ve been before, we've always been seasonal, but because our focus is that vegetable, when it's coming towards the end of the season, you have it switch out.

“You don't really have a protein or something to switch out a dish. You've got to literally keep an eye on the seasons, keep an eye on what's coming up and that's really exciting that you do have to think on your feet a lot more.”

Breaking the mould

Desire for plant-based food is on the rise, with various options for diners across London.

Asked what he feels sets Holy Carrot apart, Daniel said: “There's a lot of plant-based restaurants. There's a lot of vegan restaurants.

“I would say what's going to set us apart is that our focus really is on vegetables and then it has a couple of friends and that's cooking these vegetables over fire and then tapping into fermentation, which has been around forever.

“It's a really good tool to help out the other two.

“I think it was Kirk (Haworth) at Plates that said it - we both sit in a similar kind of realm of there isn't a manual, nothing's written yet. So we're writing our own kind of rules now.

“There are plant-based or vegan restaurants that all almost sit in the same kind of category. What we're trying to do is literally break away from that and bring everybody in.

“I think that's really important to have that scope on not just being a restaurant that's plant-based or veg-forward or vegan, but a restaurant that serves seasonal vegetables.”

He added: “Our aim is to be a restaurant that caters for everybody. So not just a vegan restaurant.

“It's literally a restaurant that serves delicious vegetables for everyone. That's what our client base has been so far, a really good mix of people - the average Joe, plant-based, vegan and vegetarians.”

Discussing the plant-based restaurant scene more broadly, Daniel continued: “I think what we're going to start to see is a lot more of the focus on the actual vegetable.

“Rather than being a vegan restaurant or a plant-based restaurant, it is more of a focus on being a vegetable restaurant. I think we're going to see a lot more vegetarian restaurants. We're going to see a lot more plant-based or vegetable-forward restaurants.

“I think there's certainly a very big market and it's going to get a lot busier with these restaurants, because we do need to start having a more balanced, rounded diet.

“I think there's definitely a market for vegetable restaurants, but with good vegetables, not mimicking meat vegetables. Like mushroom wings - mushrooms don't have wings! Or a lot of these kind of products that are just heavily processed to mimic something else.

“You can achieve delicious food by not doing these things, I think.

“There is a lot of creativity to be had.

“At the same time, I want to really showcase that produce that's just come in. So whether it's the Crown Prince pumpkin, if it's the coral tooth mushroom, they're the stars of the show.

“But with all of these things, it just needs a couple of friends. It needs some good seasoning, it needs a good sauce. That's where creativity comes in.”

He added: “It is making things incredibly tasty and interesting, but at the same time fun.

“It does have to be fun and then nutritional as well, which kind of gets missed a lot in food and cooking.”

Another focus at Holy Carrot is reducing waste, where possible.

“That's something that's been with me for quite some time now,” said Daniel.

“There's a couple of sides to this. One, everything's getting really expensive. So each time a box of something comes through that door, we've got to make the most of it.

“The second part is with that waste, there's so many things you can do with it.

“The biggest kind of rule that I have is whatever we’re going to do with this waste, the bottom line needs to be delicious, yummy. It's not doing it for the sake of doing it.

“Things like pumpkin guts – nine times out of 10 completely go in the bin. But we've already paid for that weight. So what we try and do is just be creative with that waste.

“So we make a smoked pumpkin garam, pumpkin vinegar and a pumpkin tare, so where normally a lot of that just would have ended up as waste in the bin, we try and put it to good use. That's the same with mushroom trim, carrot peelings or onion peelings.

“Without overcomplicating things and spending too much time on it, because it is a restaurant and most of us chefs don't have a great deal of time on these things, but it's just carving out a little bit of time to just try and kind of find that way of, well, what can we do with this?”

big future plans

As far as Daniel is concerned, the restaurant in Notting Hill is just the start for Holy Carrot.

He said: “I think Portobello Road will always be kind of like the flagship. This was our first one.

“But there will be multiple sites.

“Another avenue that we're going to look at, which will be really exciting, is to start bottling and producing small scale sauces, dressings, sauerkrauts, literally all of the stuff that becomes a byproduct of this kitchen and what we can’t use here or in other kitchens, we’ll start jarring it and selling it.

“I think there’s a big future with Holy Carrot.”