Espresso - Jackson Boxer - Why Chefs Are NOT RockStars

0:04I read somewhere that you said, I thought it was a really interesting piece about how kind of chefs have supplanted rock and roll stars and that you said like, you know, there's

0:15Jackson Boxer:So just to be clear, I was resisting this idea. I mean, I feel, you know, for that, you know, ever since the days of Marco, there's been this desire to project onto professional cooks a romantic iconography of, you know, the Byronic kind of flame, you know, that kind of youthful vigor that burns too brightly until it expires. And, you know, and the rock star, they're kind of, you know, whether that's, you know, the, and I feel, I feel this is kind of pernicious. I feel that this is misguided. I feel it's completely sensible. Culture needs these figures. It needs these scapegoats. It needs these beautiful young people to reflect the burning authentic passions of youth that we can feel stimulated by, feel attracted to, feel drawn to, but also ultimately, you know, see, find kind of, you know, in seeing them burn themselves out, find also a kind of a salutary social lesson that encourages kind of conformity.

1:20Jackson Boxer:And I think that this is very misguided. I think that first of all, chefs have more than enough on their plate without worrying about being rock stars. I think also, you know, the fact is, if we want rock stars, we should allow rock stars to exist. You know, the fact is, when I was growing up in London, every single pub had a room where you could gig in the back. Every, you know, London was full of squats where a group of young people could live and very cheaply and jam every day and work in pubs and gigging bars. And, you know, there were 10 ,000 bands for every good one that made a success. But nevertheless, it was a thriving ecosystem of, you know, rock and roll.

2:00Jackson Boxer:That simply doesn't exist anymore. Big cities like London and New York can no longer produce rock and roll bands. That's what I was trying to, the thread I was trying to pull out is why do you, I think, with a vacuum of less amazing bands. We've obliterated the room for culture. We've obliterated the room for culture and therefore we're now thrashing around for anyone else that we can project this need. And you think chefs have come in? Chefs are there. We're there. Okay, with you, yes. Yeah, you know, it's like we still exist. So we've become the, you know, we're filling that hole at the moment.

2:29Jackson Boxer:But it's something I resist. It's something I resist and it's something that I think reflects poorly upon us. I don't think we should need our young people to destroy themselves in order for us to feel good about ourselves. And, you know, I, you know, I resist the idea of the chef as artist. You know, I think the romantic idea of the artist as a creative genius is completely misapplied to chefs. Kitchens are teams. Kitchens are an organic unit of different individuals who come together to create something much greater than they could create on their own. You know, I, when I opened Brunswick House, it was tiny.

3:03Jackson Boxer:It was 10 seats. It was that counter there. And it didn't look like this. It wasn't a bar. This was a big shed full of Lascaux antiques. It was full of bathtubs that they were repainting and chandeliers they were rewiring before they went into their showroom next door. And I had this corner here and I had an old secondhand coffee machine. I had a fridge from Argos. I had one induction hob and I had a semi-functional blue seal turbo fan oven, which I bought secondhand. And I was the only member of staff, essentially. I mean, you know, I did all the cooking. I had, you know, a couple of people who'd come and help make coffees.

3:33Jackson Boxer:But, you know, essentially it was me on my own. And that lasted for a period of 18 months. And it was wonderful. It was exhilarating. I was 23, 24. You know, I felt so charged by what I was doing. It didn't matter that no one ever came. You know, in commercial terms, it was a disaster for the first year or so. What sort of stuff were you cooking at that point? Mostly sandwiches. Mostly sandwiches. Again, this is going to sound completely absurd. Of course no one came. The star item was a bone marrow sandwich. Sounds delicious. It was absolutely delicious. It was whipped bone marrow, seasoned with horseradish, spread on toasted focaccia with a very, very punchy watercress salad and pickled walnuts.

4:15Jackson Boxer:And it was absolutely delicious. The office workers of Vauxhall could not have been more baffled by the idea as a concept or as a reality. There was a very good kind of essentially a meatloaf sandwich made of a very good French style terrine with cornichons and mustard. there was a very good aubergine terrine that we made a pressed aubergine that was kind of dressed with a kind of crispy chili oil kind of central chinese style crispy chili oil it was it was a really fun creative menu of sandwiches that probably actually looks like quite a lot of what gets served in all of the the very fashionable sandwich bars that london sees now but at the time you know our competition was pret and tesco's next door and we couldn't compete with either of those on price or accessibility so i was just trying to be interesting i think we're probably a bit too interesting for Vauxhall in those times.

5:01Jackson Boxer:But the big change that happened for Brunswick House was we found that the building used to be a working men's club and still had a kind of elapsed alcohol license, which Lambeth very graciously pretty much waved through when we applied for it to be recommissioned. And so suddenly we had a reason to start opening the evenings. And Vauxhall may not have been a hugely thriving area during the day, but there were a lot of people living around here a lot of people living near enough to want to come and eat and drink in the evening i only knew how to make one drink which was a negroni um so that's all the only cocktail we did um and i didn't really know how you price these things so we put it on for five pounds uh it turns out that doing a five pound negroni was certainly more compelling for people than a meat uh than a bone marrow sandwich and we were very very full very quickly as a result um and and you know then the menu evolved slightly and i was doing things like you know we you know, terrine and toast, uh, grilled sardines, um, merguez sausage and lentils, very, very simple plates.

6:00Jackson Boxer:Um, kind of slightly in the style of St. John bread and wine. I feel like that was a place that I had a huge amount of kind of, uh, I remember, I think it was probably still when James Lowe was the head chef there, but you know, I was really, really captivated by that place. Um, uh, but I was on my own. Um, and I think spending that long period working on my and feeling the great exhilaration of doing it unaccompanied, but also fundamentally the loneliness and the boredom of doing it on my own. I have that like. And the limitations, you know, there were so many things I just couldn't cook that I wanted to cook because I only had two hands.

6:34Jackson Boxer:And so ever since then, you know, I've had a very, very deep appreciation that, yeah, sure, you can be one sole individual. But, yeah, there's so little you can do as one person and there's so much you can do as a team. and so this idea that chefs are these unique creative visionaries kind of leading a team of acolytes for me yeah i'm sure there are some cases was that's true i've never eaten in a restaurant which i found wholly rewarding which subscribes to that but you know it is necessary you know it's evidently the case that there are some places that operate on that principle however that's not my ethos you know my vision is that it's a team of a collegiate team of individuals all at different skill levels all at different parts of their career but all of whom are similarly committed to producing a shared vision of what they think delicious food is and all collectively investing in that to create a really beautiful experience for their diners.

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