WORK • Wednesday Routine
CHRIS SHAW • head chef • Toklas
Neighbourhood you work in: Temple
Neighbourhood you live in: Stepney
It’s Wednesday morning. What’s the scene at your workplace?
Every day is busy at Toklas, but Wednesday and Thursday are particularly hectic, with huge food deliveries arriving in the morning. There tends to be fish from the South Coast, scallops from Scotland and vegetables from all over the country. Our menu is ingredient-driven, so our supply chain is incredibly important to us. It’s a bit chaotic but it’s a professional environment to be a part of, with a kitchen full of very driven individuals, who make even the early morning starts good fun.
What’s on the agenda for today?
As soon as we arrive, we sit for breakfast and discuss the current menu, along with any changes and upcoming events. The events calendar is pretty jam-packed, with private parties, restaurant takeovers and gallery dinners. Catching up with everyone also means I get a chance to understand how busy each section is so I know where to focus my time. Wednesday is also tasting day – one of my favourite days, where we get to present new dishes to the founders, Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp [of Frieze]. We all try the dishes and share ideas and thoughts on what we like or what needs to change.
Any restaurant plans today, tonight, this weekend?
Dalla, Polentina and Leo’s are at the top of my list to try soon. I’ve been following Mitchell Damota’s cooking for a long time and Dalla’s interiors (by Spazio Leone) look super slick. As for Polentina, I’m not in that area of London often but Sophia Massarella cooks these amazing-looking regional Italian dishes, lots of them very traditional and ancient, or things I haven’t heard of. She’s preserving the cooking culture of Italian nonnas and also educating Londoners about these almost-forgotten dishes.
How about a little leisure or culture?
I’m a big football fan and of course also enjoy eating and drinking out when I have time. I love discovering new restaurants and seeing what other chefs are up to. We’re spoiled for choice in London, so I’ve always got a big list of things to try. I went to the We Out Here Festival in the summer. It’s curated by Gilles Peterson, four days of music in Dorset, with such great energy. They work closely with Ed Wilson from Brawn to bring together music and food at the part of the festival called Brownswood.
Any weekend getaways?
My wife and I are going to San Sebastián for a weekend – bring on the cheesecake. La Viña is the place to go – you can sit at the bar and have pintxos, but most people are there for the Basque cheesecake. It’s the sort of place that normalises eating cheesecake for breakfast, lunch and dinner, or even popping in to eat it twice a day. I’ll do my best to bring one back for my team.
What was your last great holiday?
Mallorca. My wife has family there, so we spend a lot of time there and I’m continuously impressed by the food. It speaks to me because there’s so much amazing seafood available at our fingertips, and you also get those bold Mediterranean flavours that I love to cook with at Toklas. One of our favourite hidden gems is La Parada de Mar, an amazing-value-for-money seafood restaurant, sort of a cross between a fishmonger and a café. There’s no menu, but you pick all your freshly caught dishes and eat them by weight.
What’s a recent big-ticket purchase you love?
I love my Blenheim Forge chef’s knife.