Paul Proffitt, Henne Kirkeby Kro: Restaurants and chefs place too much emphasis on things that aren't food. If they focused solely on the food, how much would it improve?

Chef Paul Proffitt of two Michelin-starred Henne Kirkeby Kro had to convince his wife to move his family to Denmark, but from the outset, he had a sense that it was the right move.

The Staff Canteen's Grilled podcast is back for a new series, and for the first episode our editor Cara was joined by first-time co-host Richard Bainbridge, the chef proprietor of Benedicts in Norwich, and his fellow guest Paul Proffitt, to discuss the chef's seven years (and counting) in Denmark.

moving for more time and a better workplace

Staffordshire born, Michelin star-trained Paul moved to the Nordics in 2015 and became the head chef at Paul Cunningham's Henne Kirkeby Kro, where, despite an hour and a half commute to and from work, he gets to see his children every day. Back when he worked in England, he had little time to spare for his family.

“It was just driving me into the ground, it was sucking the life out of me," he said. "I was probably not that nice to be around. Even when I wasn’t at work, it was all-consuming.”

Even though the hotel and restaurant were doing well, he said, "behind the scenes, I was falling apart."

“The final straw for me was when I worked 31 days in a row over December without a day off, while the owner was in the Bahamas."

"I really thought, 'they just don't give a s**t about me.'"

"So I needed to make a change." 

Henne

Within a year at Henne, the restaurant had earned a Michelin star. Within two, it had earned a second. And even with his long commute, he still has a better balance than when he worked in England.

"I have the mornings with the children, that's important to me. We have breakfast together as a family, my wife goes off to work, I drop both of my kids off at school, then I drive to the restaurant. So I see them everyday." 

"Part of the magic of Henne is the drive out there, the setting, the rural environment that it's in, so everytime I think, 'wouldn't it be great if this was ten minutes from my house,' I also then think, 'well it wouldn't be what it is if it was ten minutes from my house, and I'd rather drive 90 minutes each way to a job that I really enjoy than ten minutes to one that I hate."

'Working at henne opened my eyes'

It wasn't just Paul's relationship to his job that changed with the move, but his approach to cooking, too. Before, he was mostly focused on his achievements and accolades, and felt that his food barely or didn’t represent him at all.

But when he started at Henne, he said, "it challenged a lot of my ideology around what a restaurant should be, and things that were and weren’t acceptable.”

"It really dawned on me that when you have a restaurant - or when you're in charge of running a restaurant - you are the person that decides what is acceptable and what's not." 

"A convention in the industry has said that you should always wear a chef's jacket, you should have these shoes, and you should do this," but when he scrutinised it more closely, this all fell away. 

A good example came on his first day, he said, "we sent out two of the same dish, two different plates to a table, and I thought, 'we can't do that,' and [Paul Cunningham] said, 'why?' and I went, 'well, uniformity.'"

"You get taught all this stuff, but then you just stop and go, 'oh, well of course you can.' Maybe in other places they say, 'we dislike it, that's not acceptable,' but at Henne, we decide what is acceptable." 

Focus on the food

It was a really eye opening experience for Paul and it has further opened his eyes to what he wants his food to be - and how that should speak louder than the codified structure many restaurants bind themselves to. 

After all, when it comes to his food, he explained, "a lot of it is classically-founded, and I think the food is what speaks the loudest."

“I think a lot of chefs and places place such an emphasis on stuff that’s not the food - if you placed such an emphasis on the food, how much more would the food improve?"

And just like restaurants like Ynyshir are breaking codes and boundaries in the world of fine dining, the team at Henne like to go their own way. 

"I've said it a million times, if the guy who works on the floor section wants to come in there in a mini-skirt, I couldn't give a s**t, as long as he cooks the best piece of meat and does the job to the best of his ability. The rest is not really that relevant."

"I think it’s about focusing your attention in the right place,” he added.

'A storm in a teacup'

As Paul Cunningham has taken a backfoot in the business in recent years, Paul and his team, including general manager Garrey Dawson, have pushed on with the vision they created together, which defies all expectations at the two Michelin star level.

"I always describe Henne as a storm in a teacup," Paul explained. "I could tell you why I think it's good, but in all honesty, it's a combination of all different things, and it's unlike anything else that I've seen." 

"I try and describe it to people as, 'it's not a two-star restaurant, it's a restaurant that has two stars." 

For Paul, guests shouldn't come to Henne "expecting someone to open the door with a dickie bow, and kiss your a** and the ultimate formality of a two Michelin star restaurant.

"There's a lot of places you can go to get that - this is not the restaurant for you."