Jean Paul Aubin-Parvu meets founder of The Icecreamists Matt O’Connor – ice cream evangelist, peerless publicity maker and the man who wants to do for frozen desserts “what the Sex Pistols did for music”
Do you really eat, sleep and breathe ice cream?
I’ve never slept with an ice cream in my life – I’m a married man. I’m an entrepreneur by day, provocateur by night, and a huge ice cream aficionado. The Icecreamists are here to liberate the world one lick at a time, baby.
Viel Richardson meets Peter Gordon, the culinary genius behind Kopapa – the new restaurant that brings the many flavours of the world to Seven Dials then fuses them together, with exquisite results
“I pass through the Seven Dials area all the time and have always thought that it had a really special atmosphere,” says Michael McGrath, co-owner and manager of Kopapa – a new restaurant about to open on Monmouth Street. “It is very hard to put an exact description on it. With the trees and the roundabout it feels to me a little bit French. It also has with a really good collection of restaurants and shops. I have always felt the area is really special. In my mind it has its own identity.”
That good collection of restaurants will, as of this winter, have a very special addition to its ranks. With Michael taking care of things front of house, the culinary force behind the new restaurant is his partner Peter Gordon. Born in New Zealand, Peter has long been established as the chef who raised fusion food from a reputation he once likened to that of reality TV to a recognised style of cuisine found on the high end menus of hotels and restaurants around the world. It is Peter’s singular take on global cuisine that will take centre stage at Kopapa.
Amy Laughinghouse cuts some old fashioned rug at The Waldorf Hilton’s tango tea
A silver-haired bandleader in a white coat and black bow tie croons into a microphone as women in towering heels and men in wingtips whirl across a marble dance floor. Other elegantly attired couples are clustered around gold linen-draped tables, sipping bubbly from champagne flutes or nibbling on finger sandwiches and delicate pastries, furtively checking their reflections in mirrored alcoves framed by ornate plaster columns.
It could be a scene from Mad Men, but in fact, it’s a 21st Century Tango Tea, one of the most original and popular takes on London’s irrepressible tea culture. This event—held every two months at The Waldorf Hilton hotel, an Edwardian grande dame near the thriving theater district—offers a hearty side of ballroom and Latin dancing along with the obligatory tea and scones.
While I love to dance, my limited moves, honed to the likes of Wham! and Modern English, don’t exactly translate to the foxtrot and the cha-cha. And although my husband Scott is perfectly competent in the side-to-side shuffle, he hasn’t attempted anything more ambitious since my parents, who misguidedly envisioned us waltzing at our wedding reception, arranged a lesson for the morning after his stag do. With Scott’s head still spinning one way and his feet attempting to spin the other, it was not what you would call a resounding success. (In the end, we cut the rug as a newly married couple by swaying spasmodically to More Than Words, a power-ballad by the 90s hair band Extreme, much to my parents’ everlasting disappointment).
The men behind Dishoom, the St Martin’s Courtyard restaurant that brings a taste of traditional Bombay cafe culture to Covent Garden, talk about combining the flavours of Persia, India and England in a unique blend
For many people, the traditional British transport cafe conjures up happy thoughts of fried breakfasts, sweet tea and a friendly, if occasionally boisterous, atmosphere. According to Shamil Thakrar, one of the founders of Dishoom, the Bombay cafe has a similar emotional resonance with its devotees. And just like the genuine transport cafe, the old fashioned Bombay cafe is in seemingly terminal decline.
“These cafes peaked in the 50s and 60s,” says Shamil Thakrar. “Everyone in Bombay has their favourite. People have enormous affection for them. The customers know the people who run them, and generations of a family will go to the same cafe. They were far more than just places to eat. Everyone that you speak to in Bombay has the one that they used to go to. They will instantly recall its unique, communal atmosphere. The ethos was very democratic – they were places for everyone, the prices weren’t too high. It was a place where people would meet. We want to recreate that feel here in Dishoom. Covent Garden has that sense of people coming and going, people visiting. It’s a great place to meet, so it felt the right kind of spirit for us.”
Jamie Oliver is coming to St Martin’s Courtyard this summer, a bread roll’s throw from the site of his first tentative steps into the world of professional cooking, to open a branch of Jamie’s Italian. His talks to CGJ about Italian food, working with his mentor and why Jamie’s Indian isn’t on the agenda…
The last time Jamie Oliver had a job in Covent Garden it was as a lowly teenage novice, learning his trade as a pastry chef at Antonio Carluccio‘s much-loved Neal Street Restaurant, working the kind of hours that even a junior doctor would baulk at. Now Jamie’s back in town, but this time his role is a rather different one – as the towering one-man brand behind the expanding Jamie’s Italian restaurant empire.
The first branch of Jamie’s Italian opened in Oxford in 2008, welcomed by long queues, critical acclaim and, more surprisingly, not a single TV spin-off. The idea was a simple one – take the kind of simple, pared-down, flavour-packed Italian cooking that made Jamie famous in the first place, and offer it for affordable prices in the kind of informal, convivial atmosphere you’d associate with this most bubbly and unpretentious of chefs. This summer the chain, which has burgeoned over the past two years, is set to open a branch in the exciting new St Martin’s Courtyard development, alongside four other new restaurants and a whole host of boutique retailers.
When the restaurant opens in June, it won’t only be Jamie who finds himself taking a walk down memory lane. Key to the success of the chain has been the involvement of the Basildon boy’s long-time mentor Gennaro Contaldo, the charismatic Italian who worked as Carluccio’s head chef at Neal Street and who took the hyperactive young pastry chef under his wing. The two have remained close ever since, and their shared commitment to bringing high quality, authentic Italian food to the high street means that their return to Covent Garden – older, wiser and in Jamie’s case about a million times more famous – will be a welcome one.
