Philippe Vandewalle, head chef at London’s Ritz Club Casino, talks to Jenny Southan
1.30pm Officially my working day starts at 4pm, but I usually arrive at about 1.30pm-2pm to catch up on paperwork and emails. I am in Tuesday to Saturday – Sundays I dedicate to my family, and on Mondays I work on my motorbikes.
The morning chef makes me a snack and a double espresso, and I start work on creating menus and assessing costs. My office is in the kitchen, and I spend about four or five hours a week talking to suppliers. Sometimes they might come in with samples for me to try – I like to taste and smell them before committing. I don’t cook much any more because I have a chef in each section who does that, and you need someone to check every dish before it goes out. I have 14 chefs in my team – seven or eight on duty a night – and there are 31 kitchen staff in total.
We always have to remember we are in a casino. Philosophy number one is that we are not like normal restaurants where you take what is on the menu – we cook whatever the customer wants. We change the menu twice a year, in May and September, and each chef works on his own speciality cuisine. Over five weeks, we cook, sample and photograph all the dishes, and perfect the recipes and presentation. We then get all staff to try the new dishes so they will be able to explain to the customers what they are like.
5pm The chefs start arriving, and we decide on the specials of the day – a soup, a starter and a main, and something we want to push, such as veal chops. I check the fridges and make sure the dates are correct on the produce, and see if anything needs to be used up or replenished.
6.30pm The chefs who have proposed the dishes of the day make a sample for the head waiter and I to taste. If they can’t make the dish in 30 minutes, I don’t want it. Sometimes we also give any early customers and the PR manager on duty a taste – I listen to the feedback and fine-tune the dishes if necessary.
At 7.30pm all the kitchen staff try to have a dinner break together – one chef will stay in the kitchen to cook for the rest of us.
7.45pm The customers start coming in around now until about 11pm. The role of the head chef is to stay on the pass, which is where all the dishes are placed before they go out. I call out the orders and dress every plate – it’s a lot of work. Sometimes the chefs give me more food than I can handle and someone has to come and help.
Only 40 per cent of the orders we get are from the menu. Customers are inspired by what they read on there – if they see fillet of sole, they may ask for a variation. But then we will get an order for something completely different. Sometimes I have to say no, but it’s rare. It’s the classics that win, like beef fillet with Roquefort sauce – we don’t put them on the menu because we know people will ask for them anyway.
Some requests are difficult to achieve – I might be asked for an Iranian dish I don’t know how to cook, in which case I will go down to Edgware Road and learn how to do it at an Iranian restaurant so I can make it the next time. We have had some odd requests – for bird’s nest soup, for example, or turducken, a turkey stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a baby chicken.
The most expensive bills are easily in the thousands – the priciest for a single person was about £600. He had a soup for £70, followed by fresh linguine with white truffle – he demanded to grate his own and, of course, he used the whole lot. It costs about £6,000 for 1kg. After that, he had roast Kobe beef. And at the end, he didn’t even pay. About 80 per cent of our customers get a free meal – everybody is graded as they are all members of the club.
11.30pm It’s normally time for me to go home, although every day is different – you might get a guy coming in at 10.30pm with a complex order, and then I have to work until 1am. The diversity of the menu makes it complicated – we probably list 20 Lebanese dishes, 20-30 Chinese, 20-30 Thai, 12 Indian and 20 French, and we only serve about 40 customers a day. But overall I think we succeed.
Next issue: bar manager at London’s Dukes hotel
