Are bankers nice, honest, understanding people after all? Barclays say sorry!

The Castle at Taunton, my family’s business, has received an extraordinary letter from Barclays, our bankers of sixty and more years.

Suddenly, like a fairy godmother, Mr Patrick Moynihan, billing himself as “Head of Loan Operations”, writes to tell us that our account will be credited with a refund of £5,778.67. This happy windfall being the result of overcharged interest (PLUS 135%!) on a loan we took out with the bank in January 1991!

OK, so it’s taken them twenty-two years to spot what Mr Moynihan describes as “a charging anomaly” where the costs of our loan “were not correctly applied”!

Well, in this post-Bob Diamond era, I am not complaining. So, thank you very much indeed Barclays Bank! Nice people!

Kit Chapman, Proprietor, The Castle at Taunton

 

 

Margaret Thatcher inspired my life, my business and my writing

I was a young thirty-something when Mrs Thatcher came to power in 1979. Three years before, Louise and I had left London to join the family business in Taunton.

At that time, the country was an economic basket case while The Castle had plodded along as a respectable middle-of-the-road hotel in a West Country market town.

I was ambitious for the business. Most of all I wanted a decent restaurant to attract people to the hotel. A dangerous wish in the English provinces where serious dining rooms were often graveyards for ambitious restaurateurs.

For me and many like me, Margaret Thatcher was an inspiration. She instilled a spirit of self-belief and enterprise. She gave us the freedom to be brave. To be radical.

After the misery of the 1970s, this fresh outlook on life was invigorating. And it had a transforming effect on the hospitality industry. Unless you were French, British chefs were sneered at as kitchen skivvies. But as the Eighties progressed, they suddenly became media darlings. Mrs Thatcher’s sheer energy and conviction revived our country’s lost pride and restored Britain’s greatness in the eyes of the world. Foreign visitors to our shores also began to realize that you could eat well here!

At The Castle, we won a Michelin Star in 1984 and by 1989 I had published my first volume of Great British Chefs.  

Mrs T’s battles to win the day for Great Britain were global. Mine were rather more domestic! But her example lives with me and I mourn her passing with millions of my countrymen.

Kit Chapman, Proprietor of The Castle at Taunton and Author of My Archipelago

“Faites simple!” A famous dictum ignored by too many chefs

“Faites simple!” commanded the legendary chef, Auguste Escoffier.

These two immortal words are probably the most famous in the culinary lexicon. They are also the two words most ignored and abused by legions of young chefs today – cooks who care less about their customers, more about preening their egos.

There are a number fine pubs in the Somerset countryside run by convivial landlords offering menus which have won listings in the principal guide books. Among them, The Apple Tree Inn at West Pennard, near Glastonbury ranks high. Here Chef-Patron Lee Evans’s food embraces Escoffier’s mantra with deeply satisfying results – food for the soul as much as for the appetite. You step out of The Apple Tree Inn at peace with the world! Good food at its best, like good music, can be transforming.

I wish I could say the same about some of the other “gastro” pubs (dread phrase!) Louise & I have visited in recent weeks. I suspect the chefs in these places watch too much of BBC TWO’s Great British Menu where many of the confections assembled in aid of Comic Relief are fanciful to the point being inedible!

Over ambition, gastronomic whimsy and stunted palates have infected young wannabe chefs in their impatient dash for stardom. At one pub we went to the other day, I chose a spiced ox heart salad with onion and parsley which tore the roof off my mouth. One of a catalogue of horrors I have tasted in several well-regarded inns around here.

Give me Lee Evans’s menu anyday – a chef whose simplicity of approach results in inspired cooking.

Kit Chapman, Proprietor, The Castle at Taunton

The Spirits of George Perry-Smith and Elizabeth David are alive in Ashburton today!

The A38 linking Exeter to Plymouth is a super-expressway so fast that you bypass Ashburton in a blink.

Casual hearsay led us this small town on the southern fringes of Dartmoor National Park – more out of curiosity than in any high expectation. But moments after parking, we were charmed by the timelessness of the place.

In the town centre we discovered shops of real class and originality. Better still, the streets were mercifully innocent of big national brand names. No Boots. No WHS. No Next. No Pizza Express. No Burger King. No pound shops. Just a daisy chain of fabulous independents run by their passionate owners, all of them doing brisk trade on a chilly Saturday morning.

There are remarkable gems to be found in the antique shops and antiquarian booksellers’. The artisan baker had sold out by midday. Arts and crafts are the real thing. And Ashburton’s two delicatessens were so good we bought supper from them.

I should add that this is not a place for metro-fashionistas in search of the “cutting edge”! The watchword in this town is wholesomeness where values remain determinedly retro.

For me, of course, the greatest find of the day was its principal restaurant, Agaric (www.agaricrestaurant.co.uk), owned by Nick and Sophie Coiley whom I hadn’t seen for a decade or more.

Nick is a graduate of the Joyce Molyneux school of cooking. He was her top student when she ran the celebrated Carved Angel in Dartmouth. Joyce in turn, and now in her eighties, was the most distinguished disciple of George Perry-Smith, the patriarch of British chefs and the seed that finally flowered into Britain’s culinary renaissance. I guess this makes Nick Coiley George’s spiritual grandson in the kitchen! And it shows.

The significance and influence of George Perry-Smith and Bath’s Hole in the Wall, the restaurant he made famous in the 1950s, ’60s and early ’70s, should never be forgotten. Inspired by Elizabeth David, Britain’s greatest food writer, he transformed eating-out in this country and led the way for a new generation of gifted chefs. Sadly, too few young chefs these days have even heard of these two seminal luminaries. A fact I find kind of tragic – like not knowing who your mum and dad are.

Nick Coiley’s restaurant in Ashburton is as wholesome as the town – a wood burning stove in the centre of the room radiating a warmth of welcome. And his approach in the kitchen would certainly make George and Joyce proud. He bakes his own bread, cures meat and fish, makes his own pickles and preserves, ice creams and sorbets. And his menu is equally worthy of his great mentors.

To today’s ambitious young cooks, I say: Give the latest TV chef’s book a break and start reading Elizabeth David!

Kit Chapman, Proprietor, The Castle at Taunton & author of Great British Chefs (Vol.1 1989/Vol.2 1995)

The Curse of the Smartphone! The Joy of French L’Art de Vivre!

In the sixty-something years my family has run The Castle at Taunton, the world has changed with alarming speed. Today, for example, the instant society we inhabit has grafted the smartphone to our skins. These devices are so much a part of our anatomy that old-fashioned human interaction has become a devalued commodity. Families rarely eat together. People prefer to communicate electronically. And our obsession with “social media” is, in reality,  an anti-social phenomenon.

This February 14th, Louise and I celebrated a St Valentine’s dinner at Le Mas de Pierre, a heart-stoppingly romantic Relais & Chateaux hotel near Saint Paul de Vence in the South of France. At the table next to ours, a young couple spent the entire evening silently playing with their iPhones. They were not alone. So much for romance! Once, “society” meant real people engaging with other real people. Not any more!

Yet as human beings we still crave the society of real people. Hotels, restaurants, cafes and pubs are spaces created for us to enjoy the company of our fellows. And as innkeepers, our primary role is to behave as amiable hosts. Hospitality with a capital “H” for good hosting is what fuels a convivial society in our places. Or should be.

For us, Provence has always been a favourite haunt and over the past few days we have been enjoying the region’s hospitality. The French, like the Italians and other southern Europeans, are natural hosts. Wherever we have been, from restaurant managers and cafe owners to the youngest waiting staff, we have been greeted with charm and good humour. Good hosting is ingrained in their culture.

I wish I could say the same about the English! But, as a general rule, English front-of-house staff struggle with L’Art de Vivre. While our chefs continue to grow in number and stature, home-grown restaurant managers of merit are a rare breed. It has nothing to do with training. Natural charm is not something you can teach. Hospitality simply isn’t in an English waiter’s DNA.

At The Castle we have spent five months searching for a new Food & Beverage Manager. At last we have found our man. Of course, he’s not English! His name is Giancarlo.

Smartphones may have changed the world. The manner of the English waiter has changed little in sixty years!

Kit Chapman, Proprietor, The Castle at Taunton.

From Claridge’s to Torquay’s Grosvenor: Hotels as reality TV

It’s taken a while for programme makers to twig that hotels offer rich material for their “reality” television shows. Hotels are perfect locations for holding up a mirror at modern society. The best and worst of human behaviour, every foible, laid naked before an audience of millions.

The series on Claridge’s (BBC 2) and Torquay’s Grosvenor (The Hotel, Channel 4) may be one’s Beluga caviar to the other’s chip butty, but these two hotels share one fundamental attribute. Both attract a satisfied and often regular clientele, be it an elderly Texan billionaire and his wife in the case of Claridge’s or a Merseyside couple returning to the Grosvenor for their golden wedding anniversary. Horses for courses.

There are those who argue that the Channel 4 series unfairly casts our glorious industry in a poor light. I don’t agree. The Grosvenor may have its warts and weaknesses, but it appears to be giving its customers what they want. The hotel can hardly be blamed if the groom at a wedding party drops his trousers and passes out drunk! It did not interrupt the fun of the other guests.

Indeed, the only complaints came from a pair of hotel inspectors. But what do they know? These AA-types with their clipboards and box-ticking mentality have no sense of context. No real feel for hotels. One of them even insisted on harassing the poor events manager over a trivial matter when he was busy preparing for the wedding.

Kit Chapman, Proprietor of The Castle at Taunton.

The Incredible Hulk invades the Heart of Ancient Taunton

An Appeal to Taunton Deane Borough Council

Sometimes I despair of the town I love. The town I grew up in.

Our local authority has been telling us they have a vision for Taunton and, over the past months and years, these visionaries have been busy putting their schemes in place.

But there are moments when that vision evaporates into a crass and dumb failure of purpose and imagination.

Our Council has just spent millions converting a tired and scruffy Castle Green into the “cultural heart” of Taunton: a beautifully landscaped open space in a sensitive conservation area which guards the secrets of our ancient past  next door to the new and fabulous Museum of Somerset.

So what does Taunton Deane Borough Council lay on to give the town’s “cultural heart” its first outing? A fun fair no less! A grotesque assembly of plastic and metal graffiti crowned by a giant, purple Incredible Hulk set amidst twelve hundred years of the history we are so passionate to conserve.

Does the Council have a policy or a strategy for the events to be staged on this precious site? No it doesn’t. Or if it does, it’s a policy of “Anything goes”!

Sainted Councillors, it is time you raised your aspirations to match the “vision” you speak of so glibly.

There are a few determined people and institutions in this town who are trying to raise the bar. I have already mentioned the Museum of Somerset which has harnessed world class curating skills to create a remarkable local museum. Somerset County Cricket Club is transforming its Taunton ground to enable it to compete internationally. Inspirational personalities like Dr John Cole, founder of Amici, has introduced us to music and choral works of the highest professional quality. There are others.

Next on the Council’s agenda is the development of Taunton’s Firepool site. This is a terrific opportunity to pitch this great county town against its two heavyweight neighbours, Bristol and Exeter, by attracting a few top quality operators and national retailers.

Outfits like John Lewis and Waitrose might just help ease congestion on the M5 by stemming the flow of traffic out of Taunton to Cribbs Causeway!

Kit Chapman, Proprietor of The Castle at Taunton  

Kostas Vaxevanis, Champion of Freedom, Democracy and the Greek People.

A week ago, Mr Kostas Vaxevanis was an obscure editor of an obscure Greek magazine called Hot Doc. No one had heard of him.

Today he is a hero of the Greek people, and lovers of freedom and democracy.

This is the man who narrowly escaped a five-year prison term for publishing 2,059 names of rich Greeks who had tucked away a billion and more in Swiss bank accounts to evade paying tax in a country crippled by debt and on its knees. Thanks almost certainly to the outcry from a foreign and free press, an Athenian court acquitted him of breaching Greece’s privacy laws.

The scandal, of course, is that the Greek government knew all about these wealthy tax dodgers because Christine Lagarde had given them the list two years ago. But they kept it quiet, anxious to protect their political allies and fellow cronies.

That’s Greek politics and politicians. Meanwhile, ordinary Greeks go hungry and the soul of this wonderful nation festers in its own rottenness.

Kit Chapman, Half-Greek and Philhelene, Proprietor of The Castle at Taunton

Dumped by the Good Food Guide,The Castle at Taunton faces the winds of change

Three years ago, the BBC 2 series, Keep it in the Family, forced both senior and junior members of the Chapman family to start thinking seriously about the future of the hotel we owned.

Dominic, Michelin starred Chef at Paley Street’s Royal Oak, and Nicholas, a successful new media entrepreneur, were put through their paces at The Castle and forced to consider if they might be prepared to wrest the reins of the business from their parents. (I turned 65 this year).

Over a family lunch at the conclusion of the programme, Dominic announced that, while he was happy to sit on the family Board and advise on our food operation, running hotels simply wasn’t his bag. Nick, on the other hand, was enthusiastic about The Castle’s business potential and saw himself displacing me within three years.

Those years have now passed since when much has happened. Both our sons continue to serve as non-executive directors of The Castle, but both are also spreading their wings in their chosen fields. Meanwhile, I remain as Chairman until Nick is good and ready to take over.

This said, surrounded by a younger group of directors, the climate around the board table is fresher, breezier. Regime change is already blowing new energy into our thinking.

Eighteen months ago we closed our old restaurant. It had had its day. This year we appointed a new GM in Marc Mac Closkey and Dominic appointed a new head chef in Liam Finnegan, a young and gifted Irishman who shared Dom’s philosophy in the kitchen. And in July, we opened our new restaurant, Castle Bow Bar & Grill. The menu is Liam’s own but it is redolent of the manner of Paley Street’s Royal Oak – Scotch Egg, Lasagne of Wild Rabbit, Cambridge Burnt Cream.

With these changes, it was inevitable that the 2013 edition of the Good Food Guide would dump us! Although, very sweetly, the Editor still listed The Castle among the Guide’s “Longest-serving restaurants” – in our case 27 years!

We aim to be reinstated in 2014!

Kit Chapman, proprietor of The Castle at Taunton

Castle Bow Bar + Grill opens to the TripAdvisor Merry-Go-Round.

The paint on the front door of our new Castle Bow Bar & Grill hardly had time to dry and Liam Finnegan, our new Head Chef, had barely unpacked his kitchen knives when a small platoon of local restaurant critics filed their pieces for TripAdvisor.

First up was a saddo eager to twist the knife early. Transparently, someone with a history of antipathy towards us. Someone expressing “disappointment” with faux-pathos and an oh so generous rating of 2/5. We’re not bothered. We love TripAdvisor for all its quirks and warts.

The thing we have come to learn about TA is that it has democratized and amateurized (in the sense of instilling “love”) the habit of eating out in the English provinces.

Where once we feared the middle-class judgements of Michelin and the Good Food Guide, now we recoil at the raw and often harsh outpourings of the people who post their reviews on TripAdvisor.

The established guides remain important, but to a significant degree these books have been overtaken by the populist voice of this brash new authority. TripAdvisor makes us all sit up. It upsets us, deflates our sense of purpose. And, not infrequently, it also reassures us that we are getting it right.

If your restaurant is busy and you’re making a profit, you’ll be OK. If, occasionally, your pride is pricked, get over it and carry on cooking!

Kit Chapman, proprietor of The Castle at Taunton & author of My Archipelago