David Gledhill
Self-taught chef David Gledhill, from the White Rabbit, Todmorden, talks to Amanda Wragg.
The White Rabbit is a remarkable place; a tiny fine dining restaurant in a workaday market town. Huddersfield-born David and his wife Robyn have owned and run the restaurant since 2015. They entered the Waitrose Good Food Guide with a very respectable score of 3 in their first year and have maintained it ever since.
David is a self-taught chef who started out in Huddersfield restaurants and then went travelling in Australia. Back in the UK he met Robyn when they both were working as chefs at the Design House in Halifax. They got married and decided to take the leap and open their own restaurant.
In the beginning they offered an a la carte menu; today it’s a tasting menu – five courses or eight – which showcases their extraordinary skills and imagination. It changes every month and is matched with the offer of a wine flight; in five years they’ve never repeated a menu.
Can you remember the first dish you ever cooked – and was it a success? I think it was trying to make a hollandaise – turns out it’s not something you could just wing as a teenage chef! It was an oily terrible mess.
Who is your inspiration in the kitchen and why? Inspiration for me is from everywhere rather than one thing or one chef. Meals I eat, ingredients I taste, seasonality and trends play a big part and also Robyn is a big personal influence on me as we do push each other to be better and constantly bounce ideas off each other.
What was the first cookbook you ever owned? It was Gordon Ramsay’s 3 Star Chef. I was blown away by the precision and at the time had never eaten anything like the book’s contents or dined anywhere at that level. It definitely broadened my horizons.
Which is your favourite cookbook now? It’s a tough question as I love books from many chefs and different cuisines, but I think Larousse Gastronomique as it is my most useful.
If you organised a dinner party, which three people would you invite and why? I’ll go with these three – Quentin Tarantino, Bob Dylan and Stephen King – all chosen because they’re genius storytellers.
When it comes to food, do you have any guilty pleasures? I don’t think there are such things as guilty pleasures with food. Food is freedom and everything has its time and place so if you need a Pot Noodle after a long day that’s OK. Oh, I may have just admitted something there.
If you were stranded on a desert island, what’s the one ingredient you couldn’t do without and why? Butter, definitely. It would improve anything I can forage on the island.
Which piece of kitchen kit couldn’t you do without? Just a basic good knife. If you have one decent knife you can turn the blade to anything and make it work.
It’s your last supper. What’s it to be? A dozen oysters to start, steak frites and Bernaise sauce, then dark chocolate torte with salted caramel ice cream – all with wines of course. I’m thinking, Champagne, Gamay and a good Irish whiskey with my dessert.
What are you doing during lockdown? As a family guy, I’m busy all the time with the kids. Robyn and I take it in turn cooking each day and we’re doing wine reviews for social media. I am still writing dishes and menus as the inspiration comes. I’ve turned my hand to making my own cheese and learning Spanish, which has been really interesting.