Blog
A day in the life of… Craig James, Executive Chef
Ever wondered what it is like to be part of the team and Wallace & Co? Each month we will give you an insight into one of our team member’s day. This month, it is the turn of our Executive Chef Craig. Craig started working in kitchens some 20 years ago. With bags of experience and enthusiasm, he is responsible for designing and delivering our delicious food.
8am – it’s time for a quick bike ride from home to the restaurant. On the journey I always have a quick look around to see what other restaurants are doing. You never know what will inspire me to create a delicious dish.
8.30am – quick brief with my team. Lewis, our breakfast chef, has already been busy preparing our breakfast, but just need to check our high quality is there.
9.00am – deliveries are fast coming in. Every delivery is checked for quality by me. Occasionally, Vernon will surprise us with adding some new exciting produce onto our daily delivery from the farm. – I love this, as it gives me a opportunity to have a quick play around and try and get a new dish on for lunch.
9.30am – Breakfast is in full swing! Bacon is been grilled, delicious tomatoes and field mushrooms are been baked, and our free-range eggs are getting scrambled. Whilst Lewis is serving those delicious breakfasts, I gather the team together to start preparing our lunch – Quiches go in the oven, salads are getting prepped from the fantastic produce Vernon delivered to us early in the morning, roast beef is roasting in the oven.
10am – Quick meeting with Kedar, our pastry chef. Have a quick tasting session of the beautiful cakes he has made for us today.
10.30am – Menu meeting time. Meet up with Dan, our manager, to discuss menus for the day. Our menus rarely stay the same, so it’s important to keep on top. Any new dishes are prepared, so Dan can present to his team. Every new dish we cook at Wallace and Co is presented to the whole team. It is important for them to know what they are selling, and also gives me a great opportunity to get some valuable feedback.
11am – time for a quick coffee and a catch up on emails.
11.30am – The counter is set up ready for lunch. Just complete a quick check to make sure it is looks fantastic.
12.00pm – Lunch service begins! Our salads are continuously getting prepped to ensure we give our customers the freshest food we can get, more batches of quiches go in the oven, as well as cooking a few of our hot lunch range – beer battered haddock and chips, Cumberland sausage with mash and gravy to name a few.
3pm – Lunch is almost over, now its time to get ready for our dinner. Our £15 for 2 Courses offer is going well with the locals, so I need to make sure we have plenty of food for our evening guests. Quick brief with my guys to ensure they all know exactly what they are doing.
4pm – Meeting with Gregg to discuss our future menu dishes. I am getting very excited as today we are looking at our Christmas Menu. Of course, Turkey is a must so I get Jamie, our butcher to send in a couple of samples for us to try. Watch this space, as our Christmas Menu will soon be launched!
6pm – Dinner service starts! One of my biggest enjoyments in my role is doing a full on dinner service. Starters are flying out of our counter, chicken liver pate, poached salmon with picked cucumber, crayfish cocktails. Our customers don’t take long to eat them so they must be delicious. I’m getting ready their main courses down stairs, grilled rib eye steaks, crisp duck legs, roasted chicken, and of course loads of seasonal veg!
10pm – Dinner service is done! And what a service it was! Served over 90 people tonight in two hours, great stuff! Quick call around of our suppliers to let them know what we need for tomorrow. Quick clean down of the kitchen (I hate this part!), and then off to the pub with my team for a quick beer followed by bed! Got to get a good night sleep, ready to do it all again tomorrow!
Tags: A day in the life, Craig James
More men please
Gregg is well up for playing Cupid at our singles night on Tuesday 27th July. The age group is 36-50 and the cost of the night is £50, for a splendid three course summer menu with prosecco to start, then goat’s cheese, beetroot and rocket salad, followed by poached salmon with summer veg and hollandaise sauce and a summer berry jelly with vanilla ice cream to finish. We’re pretty much up to quota on girls, but do need some more men. Where are you? You can’t all be hitched. We’ll be having a bit of foodie fun by turning everyone into an ingredient and seeing which table of four combine to make the tastiest dish. Does that make sense to you? Probably not, but it will be fun we promise.
If you are interested in attending please email Bethan who is organising it – bethanjones@gmail.com.
Tags: singles night
New lunch menu
It’s been a busy week or so, with the highlight being our second Evening with Gregg. Great night again – honest. It’s not just us who’s saying that – see the review from putneysw15.com.
On the menu front, we’ve been doing our evening offer for three weeks now – £15 for two courses and £18 for three – and we’ve also had a lunch menu re-vamp with the aim of putting the salads centre stage. The produce we’re getting at the moment really is fantastic, with the broad beans, tomatoes, salad leaf and peas vying for centre stage as asparagus takes a bow. You can see the new menu in our menu section (above). We’re offering a main and two salads for £8.50 and a main and three salads for £10.50. The salads will be changing regularly. We’re also doing hot dishes from the kitchen at a flat £9.50. People seem to like it – come and check it out and let us know what you think.
Tags: evening with Gregg, lunch
Evening with Gregg 2
Following the success of our last event we are doing another Evening with Gregg on Tuesday 22nd June. Gregg will host it, introducing every course as well as doing a Q&A on Masterchef and doing his best to say to hello to everyone. Full details are available from www.frenzie-deals.co.uk where you can also purchase tickets, which are priced at £30 each.
Hope to see you there.
Halcyon days
At long last, it looks as though we may be emerging from this elongated period of hibernation to which we had all become more than comfortably accustomed. However warm, cosy, safe it might have been, it is undoubtedly correct to say that we are all in need of, and more than ready for, a change. Bleary-eyed but oh so eager for the awakening, the possibilities of a transfigured landscape to look out onto, and the subsequent exciting and new flavour and taste sensations are steadily becoming more of a vivid reality rather than a slumberous dream.
At this time of year, developments are witnessed in rapid succession. For those who are dedicated to the cause of British produce, this is their time to shine. The fleeting, undulating nature of some of the sporadic produce that we have from the farm commands inspiration and innovation whilst demanding fast-acting, savvy and adaptable techniques. Just the way it should it be…nature speaks, we listen, and reply accordingly.
Our asparagus spears continue their uprising, along with maintaining their poll position in the spotlight on many a plate across London. Our tomato varieties persist in causing lingering, evocative reactions to their aroma, beauty and sublime flavour. In addition, we are now entering the rose-tinted domain of the berry season. Plump, voluptuous and sweet, with running-down-your-arm juiciness, our strawberries are guiding us, shining like a lighthouse, towards summer. What’s more, their aromatic and fragrant counterparts, raspberries, have also graced us with their delicately redolent essence.
Whether it be an element of relative novelty, or sensations that have the ability to take us back to those halcyon days it’s certainly going to be a delectably fun few months…
Tags: Asparagus, raspberries, strawberries, tomatoes
Spring produce tasting
What a fantastic evening we had celebrating the best of the spring produce. It was a sell out and more importantly it was great fun. We tasted loads of food, managed to hold a bit of a quiz in the middle and consumed a fair amount of wine along the way. It kind of had the feeling of being at a wedding, we will certainly be looking to host more events like this. Watch this space.
Tags: Evening with Gregg; Gregg Wallace; tomatoes; asparagus; strawberries, Gregg; Evening with Gregg; spring produce
An Evening with Gregg
We hosted our first Evening with Gregg at Wallace & Co last night. It was a celebration of the finest spring produce from Secretts Farm: asparagus with hollandaise and an asparagus tart to start with, then a selection of different tomato varieties with some gazpacho, followed by corn fed baby chicken in a broth with peas, broad beans, baby turnips and cornish early potatoes and finished with strawberries and a strawberry pannacotta. Gregg introduced each course, did a Q&A on Masterchef and generally charged around like he owns the place – which of course he does, so fair enough. Craig the chef did a great job with the food and from the reactions we had on the night (and in the Twitterverse) it looks like an excellent evening was enjoyed by all. I’ve posted some pictures here: www.flickr.com/photos/46676971@N08/sets/72157624045018650/show/.
We’re looking forward to doing another one soon, so sign up to our email newsletter if you want to be the first to know.
Tags: Evening with Gregg; Gregg Wallace; tomatoes; asparagus; strawberries
Nick Clegg and Colin Firth
I don’t have the Colin Firth picture so you’ll have to make do with Gregg instead, but we were all over the papers yesterday as Colin Firth has declared his support for the Lib Dems and came in to Wallace & Co for a coffee with Nick Clegg on Monday. This was the coverage in The Telegraph – http://tinyurl.com/3yooqao and Daily Mail – http://tiny.cc/kqudz (we love this picture). Nick lives locally and has been in a few times with his family. When Nick came in the last time (on Good Friday – pre the first election debate, when I took the picture above) he walked straight past me and Gregg without us recognising him, then came over and introduced himself charmingly and self-effacingly - ’Hello, I’m Nick Clegg (pause) – leader of the LibDems’. It’s amazing how much has changed in such a short time. Nick, we definitely know who you are now. So will we be voting for you? Actually I will, but that shouldn’t be taken as an official Wallace & Co endorsement. I’m not sure which way Gregg is leaning.
Tags: Nick Clegg; Colin Firth
New booths
It’s all change in the front section at Wallace & Co with the addition of our new booth seating. We can’t work out why we didn’t do it in the first place and we’re thinking of adding some more in the lower restaurant area too. They are super comfy and the upholstery has changed the acoustics as well and calmed the whole area down a bit. The perfect place to while away an afternoon…
Tags: Booths; design
Cranachan
Great, asparagus is on the menu, I’m now looking forward to broad beans, Jerseys and raspberries, may have to convince chef to put on a cranachan. Cranachan is right up there alongside rhubarb crumble as my all time fave pud. Actually as a passionate Englishman it hurts me to say the best raspberries in the world are from Scotland, contrary to popular belief raspberries do not like red hot summers. If you look closely at a raspberry you will see it has many fine white hairs, that’s how it gets its name, raspy, meaning hairy.
That’s your biology lesson over, enjoy the café, enjoy the food, enjoy the sunshine.