Jake Watkins, JSW, Petersfield, Hampshire

Jake Watkins started his culinary career at 16, working in a restaurant for Jean-Christophe Novelli in his hometown of Southampton. By the age of 20 he had his first job as a head chef. He worked at Holne Chase country house hotel in Dartmoor until the late 1990’s, before opening his own restaurant JSW in Petersfield in 2000. In 2002 he received his first Michelin Star, making him one of the few Michelin Starred chefs in Hampshire. He has been heavily influenced from a young age by his older sister Helen, whose restaurant in Bishop Stortfod, Hertfordshire had a Michelin Red M. When Jake is not cooking he is an avid fisherman and is a big supporter of community projects.   Jake Give us an overview of the number of menus that you run here at the restaurant. We have four menus, the set menu which runs Tuesday to Friday lunch, Tuesday to Thursday evening which is £19.50 for two courses £25 for three courses at lunch and, dinner is £25 for two courses and £29 for three. A daily menu with just two choices, two starters, two mains and two puds obviously we've got vegetarian options and they have a choice of something that they like. The other menu is the à la carte menu, with four starters, four mains, three puds and a cheese. Would your daily menus take dishes off the à la carte? Yes absolutely, so we've only really got four starters, four mains and three puddings but then that leads on to the five course taster which is the same price as the à la carte which is £38.50 for lunch and  £48.50 for dinner and Then we've got a seven course taster which again is just dishes from the à la carte, It makes sense to have those all interlinked because,you’re a relatively small operation and by extending the number of items that you have is increasing your cost. It’s genuinely fresh, everything’s done every day, obviously because it’s a one star restaurant but the thing is it just is super fresh Your own business, you've got your name above the door how do you go about costing your menus because let’s be honest here stars are great but they don’t pay the bank manager do they? No I'm very lucky I owned the freehold round the corner before I bought this the restaurant, big fancy one and originally that was the answer so I just do 65% GP. Do you cost each dish individually or do you take a view over the menu? We take a view over it so we’ll always have some expensive items on the menu and like any other one star obviously we will do things like ox cheeks and pork cheek and belly. So obviously it’s a balance, I've never individually priced  the menu. Can you make money in Michelin star restaurants? Yes of course. There was this perception that Michelin stars didn’t make money, If I were to sell you this building it cost me £1.15 million, if I was to sell that to you and then you pay me, what would you pay me as general manager/chef, about 65 grand a year, I don't know? Then you’d go bust, but over time your grow invest and you add value How big an impact has the 20% VAT had on your business? None really. I didn’t put the prices down when it went down to 15% and I didn’t put it back up when they went up to 20 and I want to, we're only a one star, I want to be a very good one star and I want to overachieve in the market or the price point or the perception of what we are, I'd rather people think oh yeah we're a really good one star and it is cheaper than so and so. We have a very long term view of everything we do and I think as a result it pays dividends. We had quite a big refurb about a year ago, just lots of little things, different paint, new carpet and chairs, crockery, cutlery, glasses, the bedrooms upstairs, new coffee machines, new vac pack machines and water baths,just to make life a lot easier and then I think it’s paid dividends, lots of little things done and according to the greatest chef in British history Marco it’s perfection.  I know no one likes to pigeonhole their food and this is always a difficult question but if you had to pigeonhole your food how would you describe your food style? It’s just classic really. We use lots of modern ingredients and techniques but it’s just food that tastes nice and every year when something comes into season you look forward to it. The grouse is just simply with chestnuts and roasted veg. You wouldn’t take that, you mentioned expensive Rhone valley wine and warm it up with a cinnamon stick in it would you so why would you corrupt a grouse? Fair comment. That's my view on it only I know Michelin say for your next star you have to have more dishes that are your own but I'm very happy to keep back from it for the rest of my days I can’t wait for that, you know, the 1^st September when I start using, I know it’s the Glorious 12^th but when the prices become balanced there's nothing better than that with a nice bottle of old pinot ’96 Burgundy is a great meal. How do you drive menu change is it based around seasonality, is it based around customer feedback, is it based around boredom? Is it all of those things? The menu sort of muddles along and evolves, we never change it seasonally but when the new ingredients come in then of course the game, obviously the partridge… There's no such thing as the four seasons any more is there? There's micro seasons now isn’t there? Sure, absolutely and things don’t last very long do they? They have their tiny little windows and they just go on and I'm very happy if three of my dishes have got asparagus on or three have got morels on or three have got broad beans on, or wild garlic or wood sorrel etc. or there's three game dishes on there and customers can always ask, I mean I'm very relaxed that we can let them change the tasting menus, half the table can have a tasting menu it doesn’t bother me, if we can't cope with that then I'm a bad manager. Is there a dish on your menu that you cannot take off? Is there a dish that people associate with you or with this restaurant? There's a few I suppose. the grouse dish. We have regulars that come in for their old bottle of claret and their grouse, they come here for lunch because they don’t make it for the evening and it’s cheaper as well. In the very short time I've been talking to you one thing that really strikes me is you've obviously got a great business head on. what is it? Is it just being thrown into the deep end and then sink or swim? No I was very lucky my sister had a decent restaurant when I was younger and my dad was to start with an accountant but became a big executive and owned lots of companies I said to a young chef that came here not long ago and had ambitions of a star and he said that the problem is in the city that he was in they want chicken in 45 minutes. And I said, “Well the best chef of the last century many people claim is Joël Robuchon and his famous dish was chicken, give them chicken and say you can have two courses and coffee in 45 minutes or you don’t pay for it.” And I said, “There's no point for you being there for the 20 customers who want to eat per week if you ain't there, if you've gone bust,” and I said the thing is, you know, I mean money is no ambition of mine but it does oil the wheels of life for sure, it pays the mortgages I said to another chef that came and worked for me, his chef brought me the most stunning chocolates, sent me a box and they were stunning and I said to him, “Well taste our chocolates,” and I said, “In the 12 years I've been open the difference is £64,000,” I worked it out in less than 30 seconds, the difference between him buying the chocolates and me making them and I said, “It just paid the deposit on the staff house,” Sometimes people’s heart rules their head and it should be the other way around shouldn’t it? People get emotionally attached. There's no excuse for it though that's just self-defeating it really is. I had a chef sit in my restaurant around the corner when I just got the star, we got it after 20 odd months and he was very unhappy and he was f’ing and blinding in the restaurant saying, “I don’t like my staff they’re all a bunch of idiots my life’s this, I hate this, I hate this, I said to myself, “I'm never going to end up like this,” so I have a clear exit strategy which is two years down the road from now when all the freeholds are paid off and then if nothing else it just liberates me to shut my restaurant for two more days or shutting it for four lots of two weeks rather than two lots of three weeks, or whatever, and it’s a liberation and then in that fact alone if you can see an end date then that again is inspiring and when the days are long and difficult you shrug your shoulders and say yeah that's cool because you can see there's a big light at the end of that tunnel Chefs have not always been, we can name a number of chefs who are phenomenal chefs but have not been the best businessmen. Well I mean it’s a tough game and we're extraordinarily busy at the moment we're full I think very nearly every night this week and then the function room as well on Friday and Saturday and full upstairs all bar one room and it’s extraordinary for us. Last question for you then if I may and I think I'm going to know the answer to this already but I'll ask it, what’s your favourite food season and why? I don't know really I love it all really because the seasons are relatively short aren’t they? Is it the next one then are you always looking for the next one? I think that's quite a good one or I love game and stuff and I love the winter with big ox cheek, daub or whatever with a big proper wine from the Rhone. But you then get to the end of the winter and you’re just dying for things to be sprouting up out of the ground. Exactly you’re looking forward to the peas, fevs, morels, asparagus, all that sort of lovely stuff and all the little shoots and stuff and the autumn’s great of course with the game and the apples and the red fruits in the summer, the peaches, sea bass, we're only 15 miles from the sea so we get all the hook and line stuff and the thing about money that makes me laugh why would you buy a big Dover sole for 18 quid a kilo when you can buy the slip sole for eight quid a kilo? What tastes better? And I think on that note thank you very much. It’s a pleasure.