Michael Caines checks in at The Stafford
Legendary chef Michael Caines is taking on his next big project – and returning to London after decades away. He speaks to Carys Sharkey
Michael Caines last worked in London when he was just a teenager. Now aged 56, he’s one the UK’s most recognised chefs, – and he’s back in the capital. This time, it’s his name on the door. I meet Caines at The Stafford Hotel, where his first foray into London dining opened at the end of September. The grandeur of the Mayfair setting – all pastel wallpaper and wedge-thick tablecloths – suits Caines down to the ground. He has come straight from lunch service but wears impeccably starched chef whites. The intensity of a new opening has clearly taken its toll, but after downing a double espresso, he brims with a frantic excitement for the project.
“I haven’t had a day off in three weeks. It’s been hard work, but I’ve enjoyed it, don’t get me wrong. Everything aches. But that just reminds me that I’m not a young kid anymore. But in the kitchen, it’s been infectious. We’ve seen the energy.”
A partnership between The Stafford and Caines feels like a natural fit for a chef whose career has centred on the meeting between fine dining and hotels. After his stint in London in the late 80s, Caines trained under Raymond Blanc – his biggest influence and still close friend – at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in Oxfordshire. His time at Le Manoir deeply impressed on Caines the magic between bed and board. After working for legendary chefs Bernard Loiseau and Joel Robuchon in France, Caines moved back to his native Exeter to work as head chef at Gidleigh Park, before opening his dream hotel and restaurant: Lympstone Manor, a grand country house and vineyard on the Exe Estuary. The art of eating well and staying well has shaped Caines as both chef and businessman.
“There would be no Lympstone Manor if that 19-year-old kid hadn’t walked into the Quat’Saisons. And then I suddenly realised that if a restaurant is three or four dimensional, hotels are 10, 15 dimensions. And in that regard, you’re not just going there for the food, you’re going for a holistic experience.”
His reverence for Blanc is absolute, but talking to Caines about his career feels a bit like flipping through a rolodex, a who’s who of chefs that shaped modern British dining. Yet Caines’ decision not to return to London was always a conscious one: “The temptation is, of course, in those days to stick around London… I didn’t want to go back to London and go to another three [Michelin] star because everyone was doing the same thing”.
Over three-decades later, Caines has decided now is the right time to go back to London. Michael Caines at The Stafford, which is taking over the space previously occupied by Lisa Goodwin-Allen’s The Game Bird, is opening at a difficult time for the industry. Soaring costs and crushing debt have led to what Caines brands a “perfect storm” for the sector. Caines points to Claude Bosi’s iconic Bibendum, which closed just a few days before we met. He goes on to argue that hotels act as a “safe haven” when independent restaurants are being battered by economic headwinds. In fact, he predicts that as long as things stay the same, more chefs will be looking to hotels as a vehicle to showcase their cooking.
Caines knows that to showcase his own cooking in London, his restaurant at The Stafford needs to stand on its own as a destination, and somewhere the hotel guests actually want to eat.
“What you realise, in London, in certain places, certainly around Piccadilly, Mayfair and St.James, there is a client base right on the doorstep that is either going to tune into you and become a part of what you offer because you make yourself attractive or not.”
Part of that appeal is balancing tastes – having classics like beef Wellington and Dover sole sit side by side with his own signature tasting menu, dishes rooted in French cookery that showcase British produce and are not afraid to gesture at Japan. Caines talks passionately about preserving the history of the place while pushing the restaurant forward into culinary relevance. Walking from Green Park to The Stafford you pass The Ritz, where head chef John Williams has achieved just that – with the restaurant named the best in the UK this year. Caines speaks warmly of The Ritz as the standard bearer of opulence, and although he says it’s still years too early to mention the two hotel restaurants in the same breath, the ambition is clearly there.
“We’re not putting any expectations on anything other than to just produce a really good experience for our guests. And then all good restaurants over time will build reputation with kudos and potentially awards.”
Caines is all encompassing to the point of obsession about luxury – how it feels, smells and tastes. His cooking, after years of being honed in triple-Michelin star establishments, is very much haute cuisine, which he refers to as France’s greatest export: “turning dining into an art form”. But he also wants his restaurant to showcase the best qualities of London as a melting pot of cultures and cuisines.
“What we’re trying to do here at The Stafford is embrace this amazing British larder and then celebrate that through the seasons with a changing menu, and from London’s cultural reality is a really eclectic mix of ideas. Ultimately with food there are no rights or wrongs, it’s either good or bad”.
As we come to the end of our chat, Caines says he is heading back to Devon to check in on Lympstone Manor. But his mind is already back at The Stafford thinking about new menus as the game season gets underway. He speaks highly of executive chef Simon Ulph and the team in the kitchen, likening his role as a conductor in orchestra, everyone has a place and everyone has a part, whether that’s running the entire operation or “waiting to play your important note on the triangle”. So as Caines opens a new London chapter, The Stafford will be hoping for a symphony.