Graham Garrett, West House, Biddenden, Kent

Graham Garrett is the owner and head chef of his own restaurant, The West House in Biddenden, Kent. The restaurant is set in a fifteenth-century weaver’s cottage and specialises in making the best use of seasonal ingredients.

Graham Garrett didn’t have your usual career start as a chef. Before holding a knife he held a pair of drum sticks as the drummer for 80s bands Ya Ya and Dumb Blondes. He left his career at the age of 31 and worked with Michelin star chefs such as Nico Ladenis and Richard Corrigan in London before establishing The West House in 2002. It earned its first Michelin star in 2004 and has kept it ever since. It has also achieved the highest rating for its food in the Harden’s Guide. Graham describes his food as ‘centred on the best local produce, with clean, strong flavours’.

 

The first question I have to ask you what is an ex rock musician doing as a chef?

Well it’s the question everybody asks.

 I'm sure it is. I'm sure you get fed up of that one.

Yes I do but you can’t dodge your past can you, not any more, not with the internet. I was going to go into cooking when I was at school…

Isn’t it the other way round you want to be a chef and then become a rock star?

It was weird, obviously I always wanted to be a rock star I was always into music and that was my main passion, it was what I always done but in the real world you've got to get a job.

But cooking was always your passion.

Cooking and music were the passions, cooking was a hobby and when leaving school,  I told the career’s officer that I wanted to be a rock star,I got the cane. I wanted to go into catering but at the time there was a real stigma to it. My dad was like, “What do you want to do that for?” his classic line was, “Don’t you like girls?” Boys don’t cook. But I then went into butchery strangely enough.

.So you came into it quite late, no real formal training, so are you one of those self-taught chefs?

It’s very easy to say, “Yes I'm a self-taught chef,” in as much as it’s all out there to learn, there's loads of books and TV, there's access to everything. it was always a passion anyway. I'd be on tour, , reading cookbooks and cooking bits and pieces whenever I could.

So you weren't snorting cocaine off groupies’ naked bodies and things like that?

After dinner, I'd get the cooking done first.

((laughs))

So I guess you’re picking up all these little bits anyway aren’t you?

Yes because if you’re interested in food you’re always looking. Whatever country we’d be in, we’d be taken to the best restaurant or latest opening and I would be the one to tell the other boys in the band what to order and what things were on the menu. I was one of these dinner party cooks, and it was always an interest so it was inevitable really when I stopped music that I would get more involved in cooking.

Do you think having no preconceived ideas about what food should and shouldn’t be is a help or a hindrance?

I think it’s a help, the help is seeing it from a customer’s point of view from eating in lots of restaurants, I'm really big on that. I always encourage anyone who’s ever worked for me to eat out as much as possible, either taking them to different restaurants or getting them into places to eat and not just to work because chefs, , we all know what we’re like. You’re in the kitchen and it’s very tunnel vision and you see it from your perspective only.

If you had your time again Graham would you do it differently? Would you train as a chef?

I’ve been cooking for twenty years now, working for the likes of Nico and Corrigan and in my own restaurant for the last ten, so feel I’ve done my time and really don’t regret any of my misspent youth.

So was your own restaurant the ultimate goal?

Yes it was always the plan, as I say even back in the band days, it might not have been the restaurant that this is but it was always to have my own place, to be able to have that freedom to do what you want to do.

So talk us through here now then, how long have you been here now?

I've been here just over ten years, June was our tenth anniversary.  I'd had enough of London

The whole clique.

That whole scene really, the rat race. I wanted to cook and enjoy what I was cooking. That was the plan, so I started looking for a pub. like most chefs I didn’t have any money, then this place came along. It was a real dilemma because I didn’t really want to do the restauranty thing but it was kind of small enough that I thought I could get it going on my own. I kept it to about seven tables. I told the missus, “Look you've got to help me just to get it open,” she'd never worked in the industry and didn’t want to. I had a service plan that I used to have when I was at Nico’s I went through it all, like do this, do that, give her the whole spiel on what to do, how to say hello to someone etc, and I said, “Just call me if you get stuck and we’ll do it between us just to get open, we probably won't have any customers anyway and then we’ll try and get some help.” And ten years later…

Do you still have the same passion for cooking?

Oh I do yes, it gets me out of bed in the morning. I still get excited. I'm the sad person that if I make a terrine I wake up earlier than normal because I want to turn it out…

Do you think as a chef you have to have that it can’t just be a job?

That's what I'm telling everybody all the time, it’s not a job it’s a lifestyle and it probably sounds wrong but we get stages come in and young kids from college and they come and ask you stuff and I always sit and try to put them off,…being honest, trying to tell them what it’s like, preparing them for the graft that they’re going to have to  put in and the stuff they’re going to do because if they still really, really want to do it and they know it’s for them then fantastic, but so  many people they come in with a weird idea of what it’s like and then the reality hits them and then they’re just miserable, for usually about three days and then they’re gone.

You've been the rock and roll star, passionate cook, you've got your own restaurant, you've got a Michelin star what are your goals and aspirations now?

That's a tough one because every time I make plans they go wrong so I try not to.

Is it sustaining what you've got? Is it expanding? I mean you’re still very hands on aren’t you?

If I'm not here we close, which has never been a problem but after ten years at the stove you start to wonder if you can you do it for another ten years?

Because it’s a hard game isn’t it?

It’s tough, it’s full on, we don’t have a break, we go all the way through, there are two of us in the kitchen, myself and Ben and I would ideally like to add a third, so that I could do some of the many other bits and pieces that come along, stuff that brings people into the restaurant and gives you that chance to maybe move forward and expand

Do you ever see the chef/patron role

I mean it’s hard after ten years to…but again being fair Ben to help him develop and move on because he's more than capable and more than ready and willing to do it, it’s very difficult without someone else in there to kind of bring him on as well. But that's the plan at the moment, to get somebody else in to take some of his work away from him so that I can develop him , perhaps maybe stand back a bit but you never do you, you just make your life harder and do more don’t you,

How much has Great British Menu changed you because in the nicest possible way I think a lot of people knew you because you had the star but you weren't a publicly known figure, how much has that changed the perception of you and what you do here?

I wouldn’t say it’s changed anything.

I think you come across brilliant by the way.

Well thank you.

You came across as down to earth, genuine

It’s interesting that you say that because that's the best thing from the programme for me, yesterday I think at least three tables wanted to come and meet me and talk to me, which was a bit strange at first but that’s all they ever say and it’s all about how you came across and so yeah it’s a great advert for what you do, it’s a great advert for the restaurant

I sometimes say it’s a necessary evil now of what we do because I can remember back in ’96 when I was at Christophs’ next door to Gordon (Ramsay)at the Aubergine and I screen tested for Ready Steady Cook and Gordon was, “What you doing that for?” and he was all anti and telling me to turn everything down saying chefs should be in the kitchen, not on the telly. Look at him now. It’s become such a big deal now, there's some people that that's all they want to do, that's their chosen career path which I'm not a great fan of  but as a tool, as a marketing tool for your restaurant and for what you do I think you have to do it and if I didn’t do it then my competitor down the road will,  and I'll be standing wondering why they’re streaming into his restaurant and not mine. So that's the reason you do it and the positives are yes if you don’t get edited badly and you can come across all right then it can do you good.

Well look Graham thank you very much for your time. Wonderful to come and meet you.

Cheers.

Thank you.