Chef Jacob’s ‘dine at home’ meals passing the taste test
THREE-COURSE FINE-DINING EXPERIENCE SERVED UP BY KITCHEN FACTORY MAESTRO PROVING A HIT – AND AT ONLY £20-A-HEAD
IT’S a tough time for hospitality with venues closed since November, but one restaurant is still getting rave reviews.
The Factory Kitchen in Ilkeston has devised a ‘Dine at Home’ menu where food lovers collect everything they need, already made, for a top quality three-course meal.
All they simply have to do is warm through and plate up themselves.
‘Delicious,’ ‘amazing,’ ‘fantastic’ and ‘generous portions’ are some of the plaudits left by customers on review sites for dishes such as flat iron of beef with fondant potato and green peppercorn sauce. As well as salmon accompanied by sticky black rice and lobster and crab sauce. And at £20 a head it is an absolute steal.
Head chef Jacob Robinson is the mastermind behind the menus, bringing a wealth of experience from stints in the kitchens of celebrity Michelin-starred chefs Marcus Wareing and Richard Corrigan in London.
And the capital’s loss is Ilkeston’s gain, with Jacob and his kitchen team now creating a sell-out 60 takeaway meals each Friday and Saturday, rocketing to 114 on Valentine’s weekend.
The 26-year-old said: “The response straight away was fantastic.
“We have had some people order every single menu from November. We are obviously doing something right for people to keep coming back. I think the main thing was trying to make it affordable.
“You see these big chefs doing it for £50 and £60+ a person and it’s just not what people are going to pay round here, so when I’m writing the menus it’s about making it affordable and approachable for normal people.”
Before the pandemic Jacob spent the majority of his day serving up brunches at the restaurant in Mundy Street and a small plates set menu Thursday to Saturday evenings, having joined the kitchen just months earlier in November 2019.
He was furloughed during the first lockdown in March 2020. It was Jacob’s identical twin brother Thomas, an accountant, who suggested a meal kit diners could finish off at home when the second lockdown was imposed, closing the restaurant again after the brief summer reopening.
Turning out restaurant-standard food as a meal kit for customers to collect has certainly proved a challenge. “It takes way longer than you think,” Jacob said.
“Every single individual element has got to be packaged and labelled separately, whereas in the kitchen you portion it as you need it as it goes out into the restaurant. It’s completely different.
“The instructions are probably my biggest headache, getting those right as I know people are going to really trust me and take it extremely literally and want to do it right so they follow every word and that worries me the most, but so far so good.”
The menus have gone from changing monthly, to fortnightly and the current menu has three different options for each starter, main course and dessert.
Enticing diners at the moment are dishes of smoked salmon fishcake, porchetta with Savoy cabbage and smoked bacon and kaffir lime and coconut rice pudding mousse with caramelised pineapple and vanilla.
It’s not just a treat for meat eaters, with vegetarian and vegan dishes of fregola sarda pastas with tahini and preserved lemon dressing, carrot tarte tatin and rhubarb and apple crumble.
After his chef training at the Roundhouse, Derby College, he worked at the Dovecote restaurant at Morley Hayes Golf Club near Ilkeston before gravitating towards the Big Smoke.
Working at Marcus Wareing’s two Michelin-starred restaurant was an eye opener. “It was very tough. The environment changes you as a person and a chef. It’s so intense and really full-on. It makes you way more alert and focused,” he said.
He further honed his skills over two years at Corrigan’s Mayfair, the restaurant of acclaimed Irish chef Richard Corrigan, a veteran judge on BBC’S culinary competition for professionals, Great British Menu.
When Jacob returned to Derbyshire with his girlfriend, who had been studying at the Royal Veterinary College in London, he went back to work as a sous chef at Morley Hayes for three years.
During that time he was invited to be a guest chef at the Factory Kitchen, and wowed owners Kev and Jane Pierrepont so much that they went on to appoint him as head chef.
“I am still learning what I like,” said Jacob, who added his cooking doesn’t reflect one particular style.
“We have some big plans to push the restaurant forward immediately from when we reopen so that is in the short to medium term, long term who knows really?
“Every chef wants their own place, but in the meantime I’m very lucky Kev and Jane are giving me the freedom. It’s the perfect place for me at the moment in terms of the location and how well we all work together.”