This article was also published in the Financial Times.
As maître chef des cuisines at The Savoy Hotel for over 20 years, Anton Edelmann was not only the bearer of one of the longest and most respected titles in any kitchen but also in charge of 90 chefs with whom collectively he was responsible for over 2,000 meals a day.
Today, he is a partner in Anton’s, a restaurant with eight chefs and room for only 90 customers, which opened earlier this year down a narrow country lane close to Bishops Stortford, only a mile or so from the M11, which divides Hertfordshire from Essex.
Anton’s is part of the ongoing redevelopment of Great Hallingbury Manor currently being undertaken by Edelmann’s partners, Ludo and Jan Marcelo. A 30-bedroom hotel, based on a 1960s building designed to resemble a Tudor mansion, is due to open at the end of May. As the hotel lies directly under the flight path from Stansted airport 10 minutes drive away, it is impossible not to be aware of the noise or how commercially beneficial this proximity may prove to be.
Initially, Edelmann’s successive roles seem to have little in common. One kitchen was vast, the current one is small. One was steeped in tradition while the current one is modern. One was in the centre of London while today Edelmann is receiving deliveries from numerous local farmers at his kitchen’s back door. And The Savoy once stood for everything that was formal in British society while Edelmann is convinced that if his new project is to succeed it must be the very opposite. As he looked out from the restaurant on to the registered bird sanctuary where ducks, geese and swans were sunning themselves, Edelmann commented, “If we are to succeed here we must never be too formal.”
I had been waiting for Anton’s to open because I have long admired Edelmann not just as a chef but also as someone who has trained so many young chefs. He once told me how from the very first meeting with the senior members of Blackstone, the venture capitalist company who took over The Savoy in the late 1990s, he knew that his days at the hotel were numbered.
“It was explained very simply. Their exit strategy was to double their money on the purchase price in five years although because of 9/11 it took them slightly longer than this. I wasn’t quite sure how this could be achieved at the same time as running this great hotel to the same high standards I had inherited but I soon saw their very different perspective on things. And I have to say the way in which they saw money where no-one else had was very impressive. It just wasn’t for me.”
The measures which eventually forced Edelmann to leave included taking over a pantry on the first floor which had been used to prepare over 200 room service breakfasts because it could then be converted into two extra, revenue producing bedrooms; the imposition of a cover charge on all room service meals; and the diktat that there would be only limited investment in the kitchens. The Savoy is now closed for refurbishment until 2009 when it will be operated by the Fairmont company.
“Perhaps I could have lived with all this,” Edelmann explained, “but then came two further measures. The first was that I had to cut my food cost from 32 per cent of sales to 22 per cent to improve profitability and then they decided to merge Banqueting and the Private Dining departments. What was particular about the The Savoy is that it had so many regular customers for theses events, over 70% came back year after year for a particular lunch or dinner so that this could only be achieved by either rewriting the menus, reducing the portions or significantly increasing the menu prices. Then I knew it was the time to go.”
As Edelmann took me round the small prep kitchen in the basement in his new restaurant, where there is also a chef’s table for eight, the memory I have of watching him in his office at The Savoy surveying a vast floor of busy chefs seems very distant. But at 55 he still looks fit and well despite having to bring his marathon running career to an end last year because of what he claims are ‘ageing calves’. But the row of large copper pans hanging over the stoves is a striking sign that although the size and location of his kitchens may have changed, his commitment to quality has not.
“What I hope to do here is to make the restaurant the centre of the East Anglian food revolution. There are a lot of quality-conscious, small and medium-sized farmers round here as well as in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk and we are beginning to work with places like Wicks Manor for their pork and Hatfield Heath for their venison,” he explained, “and I want to work with even more.”
Certainly, Anton’s menu, layout and pricing structure are very different from those Edelmann has been involved with in the past. For example, the current price for the three course lunch menu at £17.50 is less than the price of individual dishes from his Savoy days. Travel and a healthy appetite have also induced him to offer his first courses either individually or for the table to share because, as he quipped, “Whenever I go out to eat I always seem to like the look of what others have ordered far more than my own choice.”
We began by sharing four starters: seared scallops with parsnip purée; roasted red peppers stuffed with goats’ cheese, basil and anchovies; mackerel sautéed with pickled vegetables; and slices of Bayonne ham wrapped around celeriac remoulade. But it was in the main courses and desserts that Edelmann’s experience and that of his Head Chef Martin Nisbet, who had been a Banqueting Sous-Chef at The Savoy, really showed. A gleaming fillet of braised halibut with Jersey royal potatoes; a braised shoulder of lamb with onion purée and Savoy cabbage and two different cuts of venison served with wild garlic and herb spätzle, the herb dumplings that are a speciality of Edelmann’s southern Germany; and rhubarb with a baked, caramelised vanilla custard.
When I mentioned that the spätzle was a dish I would always associate with him, Edelmann replied that he had learnt it initially from his mother, who, even at the age of 86, still cooks them every day for her husband at their home in Munich. But he was particularly pleased with these because the eggs he was now buying from the local farmer gave them a deep yellow hue.
As we said goodbye in a car park full of builders’ materials I wished Edelmann good luck in a venture that obviously still has a considerable way to go and in which he is only a minority partner. He smiled and replied, “I think we’ll be all right. The most important thing we have to remember is that we must never be too greedy.”
Anton’s Restaurant, Great Hallingbury Manor, Great Hallingbury, Bishops Stortford, CM22 7TJ. 01279-506475. Closed Saturday lunch and Sunday evening.