Elliott Grover, Cut at 45 Park Lane

0:13Hello and welcome to the Monocle Weekly. I'm Laura Kramer. This week I speak to a culinary visionary Elliot Grover. As the executive chef at Wolfgang Puck's Cut at 45 Park Lane, Elliot was alongside Wolfgang at the Academy Awards, cooking for the stars two Oscars in a row. He stopped by Midori House with a platter of steaks in tow to talk about the restaurant's recent accolades, his impressive career, and their sparkling summer pop-up. Elliot began by telling me about the start of his journey.

0:52From the very start, I remember being in Cornwall with my family, sat around on the sofa, and I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I was around 13 years old. And I was never sort of very academic, but I was always quite good in the kitchen, even at 13. And we were watching TV, and it was like some kind of documentary about the Queen, and it was about how she loved to go to the Ivy. And I thought, all right, I want to work at the Ivy. so I actually went upstairs logged into the internet when the old wifi took about half an hour to connect and I applied to work at the Ivy and about three weeks later Mark Hicks had personally emailed me back saying please come for a trial at Le Caprice because obviously that was Caprice Holdings and here I am now I'd worked at Caprice Holdings until I was 24 years old and worked around many of their restaurants so Le Caprice, Scott's Mayfair which has got to be some of the best seafood in England.

1:50So that was a bit of the journey. This is incredible because the last time we spoke, this is something that you do very well. Thank you. Thank you. Among the cooking, you put yourself forward for things. Yeah. And when we spoke about you cooking at the Oscars, how that came about is you said to Wolfgang Puck, hi, I'd like to cook at the Oscars with you. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I mean, the general manager at 45 Park Lane, he said it's sometimes better to get in trouble for trying something than for not trying it. So that's Lee Kelly. He's been a good inspiration as well for me in recent years.

2:27But Wolfgang, I remember the first year I just sort of said, can I go as a joke? Next thing I know, my flights are booked to L.A. and he picked me up, which was amazing. And then the second year I sort of just invited myself, which was great. And I know for a fact you're going to be invited next year. I'm going to invite myself I'm sure they won't mind yeah I'm sure I'll be there I'm here again well how did you get to 45 Park Lane though after after that journey at the Ivy and that group so I'd left there and then I did a short year which was a very great year at the Ned so I ran a few outlets there and that was where I'd started to cook at a grill so they did Lutchen's grill there.

3:08So they did some of the most beautiful dry aged English beef, American beef there. And I was still running the brasserie, which was Millie's. So I sort of had a little bit of attention on there. But it was it felt diluted. So I spent a year there. And then I'd gone to duck and waffle and sushi samba, which was a big challenge because it was very high volume, sort of 1000 covers a day open every day of the year. And I did two years there through COVID, they looked after me, it was a good time but I really wanted to go back to my roots and go back to what I love doing which was about the product and really delivering the absolute best so no other better place to go than 45 Park Lane with Wolfgang.

3:52It's incredible because I've had the immense honor of dining there and trying the food and the wine and a lot of wine. I remember. And the champagne. Great times. It is incredible. It's such elevated food. And I think, you know, one of the aspects that really adds to it too is the hospitality. Everybody there was on point. How important is that? Because, you know, we've spoken before about how that's changing a little bit, but it is so crucial there. Tell me about that aspect. I mean for me when I'd first got there and whenever you have an experience of a restaurant you walk in and you get your three course menu you sit down get your glass of wine and then you eat your food and you go and then there's the other trajectory of that sort of you go in you get a disco you have that amazing experience but it's still not personable and I think it's about finding the balance of having the most beautifully cooked food the best service and then that interaction that personable aspect so all of the chefs they'll come to the table they'll talk to you and then it opens conversation for more interesting things for the guests where is that steak from how did the pastry chef make that bread you know all the small details and I think that connection is what brings people back to cut and 45 part lane well you brought up steak let's talk about steak because listeners won't be able to sadly see this but we do have three beautiful cuts of steak right here.

5:22We have another steak that's been cooked. It's a sirloin and then also a hot dog, which I will get to in a little bit. Tell us about the meat in front of us. So these are three of the most beautiful British steaks. So we've got the dry aged sirloin. These are all from H.G. Walter. We know the farmers, we know what they do, and they are the best at it in my in my view so we've got a beautiful dry aged sirloin as you can see it's like really ruby red and you've got a really nice layer of fat on the top not too much and you've got a beautiful bit of marbling sort of just glistening through that red and then you've got a uk ribeye which is again dry aged when you get these pieces of beef in they're almost sort of four foot long even six foot sometimes and they come encased in this black crust so when you get us beef it doesn't have this black crust what we do in the uk and we do it really really well and at hg walter they do it they dry age it in himalayan salt in these chambers and they get this big black crust and what we do when we get the product it comes in this in this wrapped in this peach paper and we unwrap it like a little gift and you can just get this waft of like this sort of fresh grass and it's from this dry aging and that is what gives it that tenderness and that unique flavor.

6:42I mean, even if I was walking around on a Waitrose or Tesco's or wherever it may be you shop, if you are seeing now a lot of places they do dry aged. When you open up in supermarkets, you open up a packet of meat, sometimes it can be quite wet. But if you look for the dry age, it is dry and it cooks better, there's less liquid inside it. So when we get these large cuts in, we trim off that crust. And then you just have this bright red Ruby looking at you. And it's just an absolute pleasure to cook so that's the ribeye and then another special steak we have which you only get around three or four of these on each cow is a fillet on the bone so it's quite hard to get this on the bone so normally when you cook a fillet it shrinks but where we've got it on the bone it's sort of like a little triangle here that stops the meat from shrinking so that also gives you more flavor and yeah that's three of the best steaks i think and they look brilliant the colour is incredible now there is some big news around the steak and the restaurant tell me about that because congratulations are in order yeah I mean we've just won the UK's best steak restaurant which is quite unbelievable because I mean when I'd started two years ago we weren't even in the top 100 so I mean the team the team I will say that have just been so consistently good I mean what a dream yeah best in the UK and top 10 in the world so fantastic when this happens when you think about the little 13 year old who heard about the queen going to the ivy and was so inspired to take this journey and now the restaurant that you are the executive chef at is getting these accolades that are so hard to get and especially that it happened in your tenure there.

8:31What does that mean to you? I mean, it means the world. And I always keep myself grounded and surround myself around people that keep me grounded and say, no, it's not quite right. And we always push to be better. I mean, the head chef, Ibrahim, leader, GM, and, you know, we always look at how we can be better. Even though we got the best in the UK, we got 10th in the world. Now we want to be number one in the world and best in the UK. And even if we have that, if we think like that we might even raise one space and it's still something to celebrate give a little bit of insight into how you actually compete for this how did it all happen i so world's best steak restaurants i'd not heard of until around 2017 and i knew they were around and they're becoming bigger and bigger each year um but the thing the really really tricky thing is you never know when they're coming in.

9:26You don't know. So that is the thing with the consistency. The only information I was ever told is that they come in a few times, as would Michelin. They'll check the product and they'll check that against criteria, I assume. You are going in blind every day. So even today for lunch, we might have them come in and we don't know who they are. So it really is a credit to the team that we got number one. That's really, I was just going to ask you what you think made it number one, but you think it's the team. It's the team and not just the team, obviously, it's the product, the farmers that are growing this amazing product.

10:01And then we take it and we handle it with care and love. And from that, we give the guests beautiful food. You know, if you cook with love, you give love. And it is delicious. Like I said, we do have a cooked steak here that I definitely had a few bites of before we started. I couldn't help myself. We could have waited. Now, there is something very exciting happening this summer at the restaurant as well. And this is what I said about the hot dog that is here. And there's a lot happening. It looks like a slaw situation. Yes. Several sauces. Bacon on top. Yeah. Crispy bacon. This is one of the classic Bubble Dogs hot dogs from the amazing James and Sandia from Kitchen Table, who I'm good friends with.

10:45This is one of the originals. This is the 4th of July. so you've got a beautiful homemade brioche made by our pastry chefs this morning a franconian hot dog which is free-range pork and then we've got some coleslaw and crispy bacon and then a bit of spicy barbecue sauce on top but honestly one bite of that the flavors you get the sweet the sour the pork the sweet buttery brioche it is heaven it's gonna taste like freedom to the americans out there i think myself included now this is part of a wider thing that you're doing right it's the pop-up yes bubble dog pop-up tell me about that so bubble dogs we have a an outside area just outside the hotel which is a terrace normally we do cut outside this is now bubble dogs and we're doing it from july till the 29th of september it's from midday until 9 p.m and we have a beautiful selection of hot dogs and some gourmet hot dogs and then we have some growers champagne, which is really bespoke individual wineries.

11:51And they produce the most unbelievable champagne. Honestly, it's unbelievable. We had a glass, didn't we? Yes, we did. So that is the bubble aspect of the dog part of it. There is, it's interesting. I mean, I think I know why I like the mixture of something like a champagne with a hot dog. I actually interviewed a champagne grower back in Rome. And she said some of her favorite things to pair champagne with are things you wouldn't expect like french fries and tacos because everybody thinks caviar when they think champagne or something really elevated but actually i think the acidity of it works so well with something fatty tell me about why yeah i think you're absolutely right and i think that gives the fun element to that concept i mean champagne really does go with anything you can have it with anything but i think as you said when you've got something heavy and then you've got something light and fresh and citrusy that can sort of cut through that heaviness yeah it's perfect champagne does really go well with hot dogs and fast food so yeah how did the collaboration come around come along then when i think about how that it sort of happens so quickly within three weeks so originally i've got a good relationship with james and sandia as does lee originally we were going to do a hot dog pop-up in the bar for one day for the 4th of July.

13:12So we were going to do this pop up. And then all of a sudden, we were planning this, this pop up. And then we said, Why are we doing it for one day? Why don't we just do it for a few months outside? And then three weeks later, with immense planning and about 600 hot dogs consumed, we did bubble dogs. Yeah, it's incredible. What else then can we look forward to aside from this summer pop-up what do you have working on down the line there is a few bits that we are working on i think the biggest thing now would be sort of slowly looking to the oscars for next year i need to speak to wolfgang get the official invitation of course but that would be tell him or yeah i'll just tell him that would probably be the next thing and then it would go on to what we'd be cooking but the very early stages now but you know the planning would be him coming into place soon i'm seeing him next week yeah just sort of festive a lot of the stuff now we're really looking on consistency of cut and taking that to the next level i mean sushi can asaka as well one there one michelin star so keep driving the consistency of the hotel and yeah who knows there might be a few surprises along the way but yeah and what is it like working with wolfgang how often does he get to come because he's very busy man he's got many restaurants yeah I mean Wolfgang has so many restaurants I mean I see him probably once every 12 weeks I feel like I see him every day he'll video call me it could be one in the morning anyway Elliot what are you doing and I say I'm in bed he goes wake up go and cook for your mum what are you talking about he's just he's such a lovely I couldn't have dreamt of someone better to look up to and he's one amazing chef his technique and his touch is something that is unmatchable he really is one of the greats and how do you work together on when you introduce new dishes when you revamp the menu what's that process like the process at the start is incredibly tricky and it takes a long time to get the trust I mean I've cooked for him around three times and he if he knows he knows and then you're fine I think there has been issues elsewhere in the company where if you're not quite right then you know there's a lot more process to change in the menu but he'll always like nurture and look after them to make sure that they do get there with me I mean I always cook and like before anything gets to Wolfgang we'll taste it as a team anyway but touchwood so far we've not really had any pushback from Wolfgang so I think he's very happy with what we're doing but I mean the one thing you've got to remember is we have the most amazing produce in the UK the seafood the beef the vegetables so yeah thanks to the farmers oh I love that and finally if somebody's to come at cut and you had to suggest off the top of your head a starter main and a dessert what are Elliot's current favorites straight away for me it would be the scallops in the half shell roasted with garlic and chili butter they are absolutely beautiful they come in the half shell simple you let the ingredients talk for themselves if I was going for steak I would do the fillet English fillet on the bone you know we cook it over the japanese charcoal slowly once it's got that really sort of blackened crust which a lot of people will say it's burnt they need to come and try the steak before they make that comment please thank you we put it onto the top shelf and then we just slowly let that cook over the flame and you get that really beautiful charred flavor yeah so that would be my second choice yeah for dessert chocolate souffle with creme fraiche and chocolate ice cream.

17:01All right, fine. Yeah, it is. You're going to have to come back. I'm going to have to come. Yeah. Now, tell me, because Wolfgang has a bit of a thing with cars that's quite important. Yes, he does. Tell me about that. He absolutely loves Aston Martin F1. So he signed a deal, I believe it was last year now, just over a year ago. And his menu will be in a lot of the places where the paddock passes. So he'll cook for Lawrence and Lance and Fernando Alonso, all these wonderful people and we did Silverstone last year and I had the honor of going there and cooking and it was so unbelievable I remember we had the paddock and they set up this huge barbecue outside um it was just unbelievable and I was cooking for some of the drivers Fernando and Lance yeah it was amazing and I'll be going this year as well at Silverstone so it should be fun given that you have cooked for all the a-listers yeah at two oscars now silverstone everything happening have you ever been starstruck by somebody where you actually got nervous about the food that was going to go out and if so who do you know what the person is the gm of 45 part lane that i get scared to cook for that's you know that's still number one if i'm honest even wolfgang you know but no no one in particular i sort of try and treat everybody the same and I don't really get nervous cooking.

18:26I love cooking. And if you don't like it, everyone's got a personal preference so we can always adapt to their needs.

18:40That was Elliot Grover, the executive chef at Cut. If you're in London, stop by 45 Park Lane in Mayfair to experience a bubble dog or to try the award-winning steaks. That's it for me. The show was edited by Flynn Simons. I am Laura Kramer. Goodbye and thank you for listening.