Kitchens have not lost their shine for John Burton-Race even after a culinary career lasting more than 40 years.
It’s a profession, a vocation even, that’s taken him all over the world and made him one of the UK’s best-known chefs, earning him two Michelin stars and opening the door to several high profile TV series.
Currently John can be found in the Cotswolds working as the executive head chef at The Nook On Five, Cheltenham’s only rooftop restaurant, and says the view from his kitchen is among the things that get him up in the morning.
‘I was attracted to this job due to its unique location up on the fifth floor looking out over Regency buildings and beyond: I love watching the sun coming up in the morning,’ he says while taking a break during a busy lunchtime service.
He’s also pleased to be back in an area he describes as ‘the garden of England’, with access to the freshest fruit and vegetables and quality meat and game – and to be working alongside his 21-year-old son, Pip.
John Burton-Race (Image: Supplied)
John got to know the Cotswolds early in his career, working for Raymond Blanc at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons in Great Milton and going on to Le Petit Blanc in Oxford, where he won his first Michelin star. His mother lived at Shipston-on-Stour for several years too.
‘I absolutely adore the Cotswolds. I spent nine years living in Summertown and used to love watching the polo at Kirtlington Park.
‘The produce here is second to none: the important thing is that if you stick to buying food that’s in season, you’re buying ingredients when they’re at their best and their cheapest.
‘We all have to be careful when buying meat that we can be sure that it’s British, reared on our grass and in our climate. I advise people to buy from their local butchers, who can usually tell their customers about the breed of livestock and even the farm where it was raised.’
John credits his interest in food to a childhood spent travelling around the world and being exposed to a wealth of flavours as a result of his stepfather’s work with the United Nations, but describes himself as ‘a bit of a black sheep’ in terms of his family’s view of his choice of career.
Bar at The Nook On Five (Image: Supplied)
‘One of my sisters is a surgeon, one a consultant doctor, then there’s me: I regard being a chef as a vocation. I used to have rows with my sisters about this but I would say it took me at least the time it took their training to get there, and I have to work when everyone else is off.
‘As a teenager I loved art and music, and when my stepfather asked what I was going to do, I jumped on cooking.
‘At 17 I jacked in my A-levels and went to France. Because I was English, the French gave me hell, asking: “What did I know about cooking?” I got myself a very minor position working in two different restaurants in Paris working 15 hours a day. On my day off I took a course with Gaston Lenôtre (legendary pastry chef) learning about bread-making and patisserie.’
John went on to restaurants such as Quaglino’s, Hotel Meurice in London, Chewton Glen in Hampshire and La Sorbonne in Oxford before going to work for Raymond Blanc. Subsequently he opened his own restaurant, L’Ortolan in Berkshire, and went on to secure two Michelin stars, an achievement he repeated at John Burton Race Restaurant at the Landmark Hotel in 2000.
Inside The Nook On Five (Image: Supplied)
Here his customers included the television producer Steve Smith, who was friends with Pat Llewellyn, the woman credited with discovering Jamie Oliver. She heard about John’s planned sabbatical in France in 2002 and this led to the Channel 4 TV show French Leave, which saw him embrace a slower pace of life and rediscover his love of cooking. This was later followed by Return of the Chef which documented when he opened The New Angel in Dartmouth in 2004. In 2007 he appeared on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! and, unsurprisingly, cooked for the other contestants.
Since then John has run other successful restaurants in London and Devon and worked as a private chef and consultant in such far-flung places as Vietnam, Mauritius, the Maldives and Barbados as well as on 40-suite cruise ships.
He’s even found time to write a book on growing and cooking food with Pip called Homegrown Father & Son, which emerged from their experiences during lockdown.
‘I’m very proud of Pip,’ he confides. ‘He’s been cooking since he was knee-high to a grasshopper; he was going to have a career in rugby and had joined the Exeter Chiefs Academy, but was injured. I have been everywhere doing consultancy and private work and he’s come with me.’
John is well known for his love of France and still manages to cross the Channel a few times a year.
He believes the UK’s restaurant industry has come a long way over the past decade but still much to learn from the French approach, including the way it trains young people. ‘Normally I go to France three times a year and that’s where I feel so at home. It’s a different attitude to food and wine in France; here in the UK the eating-out experience is generally about the décor first, the service and then the food. Why don’t catering colleges here have a scheme to send their best students to hotels and restaurants in the Cotswolds after they’ve finished their training, like they do in France? That way students have something to work towards at the beginning of their course, and they stay in the Cotswolds.’
Another initiative from across the Channel are the co-operatives specialising in specific products, such as cherries and melons, for which fair prices are negotiated and any surpluses shared with local people through farmers’ markets.
Back to The Nook On Five, and John is conscious that the restaurant is full and the kitchen is having to cope without him.
Orkney scallop, cauliflower veloute, Champagne butter and caviar (Image: Supplied)
He’s delighted that his arrival at the restaurant a year ago has led to a 30 per cent increase in business, so much so that a sister branch in London is being planned, with two sites currently shortlisted.
‘Usually it’s the other way around: something starts in London and spreads elsewhere,’ he observes. ‘We’ve achieved a great deal but I want to achieve more here.’
John has worked hard to build a kitchen team that shares his ambition ‘to do more and better’ and his influence can be seen in the menus, which offer ‘the very best of modern British dining using only the finest, fresh produce from the best butchers, fishmongers, grocers, creameries, distilleries and vineyards’.
Typical dishes include classics such as loin of venison, celeriac purée, roasted celeriac and pear and port gel, and Orkney scallop, cauliflower veloute, champagne butter and caviar, and he takes great delight in using his arsenal of cooking techniques to create sensational dishes using less expensive cuts of meat to ensure there are dishes for all budgets. There are also vegetarian and gluten-free options.
John’s understandably pleased by the progress of The Nook On Five but says he regards himself as the kitchen ‘dogsbody’.
‘If it needs doing in the kitchen, I do it,’ he says with a glint in his eye.
‘I still work 65 to 70 hours a week. Like everything in life, cooking has its ups and downs, and commercially it’s very difficult to make a living in hospitality.
‘The bottom line is that it’s been good to me and I am still loving it and would encourage anybody to be a chef.
‘I’m probably one of those old duffers who would probably drop dead at the stove – so many chefs deteriorate when they stop.’.
thenookcheltenham.co.uk