Feline Fine Dining Group

Blog

  • The Perfect Sauce Is a Lie

    I have spent 41 years searching for the perfect sauce, and I can report that it does not exist. Every sauce is a compromise between butter, acid and fear. The mother sauces are not mothers but landladies, and they always want more.

    My bechamel breaks when I am nervous. My hollandaise curdles in thunder. My jus, so beautiful on Sundays, sulks by Wednesday. Still, I make them, each day, with a whisk and a faint sense of doom. A sauce is a promise, and the best chefs are the ones who break it gracefully, in front of a full dining room, with a flourish and a smile.

  • Merch Drop: The Chef’s Apron Is Back

    The Beau Pawsworth Signature Apron has returned, in a limited run of 600. It is made of heavy indigo canvas, with an embroidered tuna on the chest and a pocket large enough for a spatula or a very small grudge.

    Every apron is signed on the inside hem by the chef himself, or at least stepped on by him. Proceeds go to the Feline Fine Dining Apprentice Fund, which sends young cooks to Lyon, Kyoto and the walk in freezer. We also offer matching oven mitts, a mug that reads ‘Yes Chef’ in three languages and a tea towel with my face on it, which I have been told is ‘unsettling.’

  • Le Saumon: The Birth of a Dining Room

    Le Saumon opened in 2018 with a single ambition: to serve salmon in a way that made people forgive their past. We chose a space on Harbour Street, painted the walls the colour of low tide and installed a chandelier made of 400 cutlery forks.

    Our opening night had 84 reservations and a power cut at 7:45. We served the tasting menu by candlelight, and guests described it as ‘intimate, hungry and slightly flammable.’ The salmon, cured in beetroot and gin, was the star. Since then we have served 142,000 guests, lost three chandeliers and received a letter from a pigeon who wished to apply for a position.

  • A Defence of the Foam

    The foam has been mocked for a decade. Critics sneer at the airy spoonful, calling it a bath on a plate. I say they have misunderstood. Foam is simply a sauce that has learned to float.

    At Le Saumon, our signature foam is made of smoked salmon stock and lecithin, whipped to the density of a thought. It costs us 6 treats a portion and delights about 80 percent of guests. The other 20 percent are asked, politely, to eat it anyway. I once threw a food critic out for calling my foam ‘spit.’ The incident was reported in the press and was, I will admit, excellent for business.

  • Dawn at the Fish Market

    I rise at 4 a.m. to visit the Harbour Fish Market, a cavern of silver, salt and shouting. A man named Morty, who has sold me mackerel since 1996, nods once as I enter. This is our entire friendship. It is perfect.

    I touch every fish. I press, I sniff, I look into its eye. The eye should be clear, like a good conscience. I reject 60 percent of what I see. By 6 a.m. I have chosen four crates of sea bass, two of sardines and one very large turbot, who looked at me with such dignity that I paid his price without argument. He will be the star of tonight’s menu.

  • The Rise and Fall of the Teapot Restaurant

    It was 2016, and I had an idea: a restaurant shaped like a giant teapot. The spout would be the entrance. The lid would be the skylight. The handle, I reasoned, would be a bar.

    It cost 410,000 treats to build and opened to a flurry of excitement. On the first night, a table of eight cats got stuck in the spout. On the second, it rained, and the lid leaked. By the end of the month, the critics had named it ‘the saddest vessel in the district.’ I closed it after 91 days. The teapot still stands, now a pet hotel. I have never forgiven myself, nor the lid.

  • Recipe: Tuna Tartare with Grandmother’s Regret

    Start with 300 grams of the finest tuna, hand diced into cubes the size of a thoughtful sigh. Combine with a teaspoon of capers, a half shallot, a squeeze of lemon and a dash of the olive oil you have been saving for a good funeral.

    Mould it into a tower with a ring, top it with a quail yolk and a leaf of chervil, and serve it on a chilled plate while looking slightly wounded. The ‘regret’ is the part where you realise how little you have left. It can be made in 20 minutes and consumed in 40 seconds. It costs 38 treats a portion at the trattoria, and every last one is worth it.

  • On Crying in Walk In Freezers

    Every chef has a freezer. Mine is a 4 metre by 3 metre cube, set to minus 18, with a single stool and a shelf for contemplation. I have wept there for the loss of a perfect hollandaise, a lost mentor and a dropped crème brûlée.

    The cold is a comfort. The silence is a gift. The only disturbance is the faint, humming conversation of 80 kilos of frozen mackerel. Sometimes, if I listen closely, I swear they are saying ‘there, there.’ I have a rule that no chef shall be disturbed in the freezer for less than ten minutes. It has saved three marriages and one very fine fricassée.

  • Trattoria Whisker: A Love Letter in Linguine

    In 2014, I opened a small trattoria on Maple Row with eleven tables, a wood fired oven and a mural of a dignified tomato. I called it Trattoria Whisker. The first night, we served 31 covers and I wept in the larder.

    The menu was short: linguine with clams, a fish of the day, a tiramisu that I still dream about. The reviewer from the Hollow Oak Gazette called it ‘a revelation, but with too much garlic.’ I framed the review and hung it by the bathroom. Today the trattoria seats 64 and serves 190 on a Saturday, but the tomato mural remains. It is the only part of the place that has never asked for a raise.

  • Letter to a Young Chef

    Dear young chef, you will burn your paws. You will drop the stock. You will be shouted at by someone with larger whiskers and fewer manners. All of this is good. All of this is the school.

    But let me give you three things I wish I had known. One: salt early, salt late, salt never in the middle. Two: a clean station is a quiet mind, and a quiet mind makes a better sauce. Three: when you are finally given your own restaurant, do not call it something clever. Call it your name, and then give it away. I wish someone had told me this before I opened the one that was shaped like a teapot.