Star performers’ change of course

From today, restaurants and hotels can open for the first time since

March. But just how much of a challenge is that for Yorkshire’s Michelin-starred chefs? Ruby Kitchen and Catherine Scott report.

Main pictures by Simon Hulme and Bruce Rollinson.

the City in York and The Star in the Harbour were also due to open today, although his fourth, Mr P’s in York remains closed, as its small size means distancing safely won’t yet be possible.

“It is going to be a challenge but I am also excited, it is a bit like going back to when I started,” says Pern. “You have to think outside of the box, we will make it work and we are just thankful to get back in business.”

Over at the Michelin-starred Black Swan at Oldstead, Tommy Banks is taking a slightly different approach.

“I’m all good now,” he says, with a wry chuckle and a heavy emphasis on the last word. “At the very start of this, it was pretty bad.”

Banks, who also has a second restaurant Roots in York, was once Britain’s youngest Michelin-starred chef. Twice winner of the Great British Menu, he is no stranger to pressure.

He was “distraught” in those first few weeks of lockdown, he admits, as he closed the restaurants suddenly and worried about having to let staff go.

One scheme in the works for some time had been ready-mixed cocktail deliveries, so that was launched quickly, proving popular.

The biggest success, though, came in food boxes, which launched a couple of weeks later, delivering oven-ready meals to people’s doors.

It was a game-changer, proving so busy he was able to bring 25 staff back from furlough, and even as the restaurants prepare to reopen, it will stay on as a new arm to the business.

“I thought if we could make no redundancies, we would have come out of this well,” he says. “That’s what we’ve managed to do. It means we can be a business that succeeds.”

The restaurants won’t open immediately as there is work to be done. Spacious Roots in York will be first, on July 24, although sharing platters will be replaced by smaller tasting menus.

The Black Swan, which is undergoing planned refurbishment, will follow on August 13, its three dining rooms offering some reprieve in allowing for social distancing.

“I’m not someone who can sit still,” says Banks. “We are flying to start opening, it feels almost like two new restaurants.”

In South Dalton, at the former coaching inn the Pipe and Glass, Michelin-starred chef James Mackenzie says it has been a “rollercoaster” few months. Alone in the kitchen, he has been preparing meals to take away. There is a great irony, he says, when there are usually 14 chefs running a steady stream of service. “The support has been there,” he says. “People have been saying ‘thank you to the team’, I don’t think they realised it was just me.

“Some of the chefs will be laughing at me doing all the washing up. It’s as needs must. It’s a family business, it’s up to us to make it work.”

The Pipe and Glass will not open today, but on Thursday as staff undergo training. There will be a reduced menu, extra hand-washing and sanitising stations.

It will not be as busy, concedes Mackenzie. It can’t be, with fewer covers, no parties, and people spending less on alcohol. “It’s a fine balance,” he says. “Everything is a minefield. It’s been slowly less nuts all the way through. Now it’s full steam ahead to get open. The reality has hit.

“It’s going to be a learning curve. We can put everything in place, but it’s not finite. It’s about learning to curve with it, and adapting.”

There is a challenge in fine dining, in such a strange set of circumstances, he adds: “Staff can’t stop to chat. It’s totally odd, to what we are as hospitality people.”

Yorkshire’s most recent Michelin-starred restaurant, The Angel at Hetton, will reopen on July 17 having undergone a ‘‘reincarnation’’, with chef Michael Wignall, having spent the time refurbishing the building, which dates back to the 15th century in parts.

There are new bathrooms to ensure greater space, with everything from taps to hand-dryers now, ‘‘no touch’’, new bedrooms, and work under way in one of its three restaurants.

“We were going to do it anyway, this has made us think about it a bit more,” he says.

“It’s a bit of a no man’s land. No one knows what will happen, we’ve seen how much it’s changed just in the last few months. We can only prepare for the guidelines we have.”

Staff are undergoing training, tables are being spread out to ensure social distancing, and personal thermometers are being issued to all staff.

Wignall was in Hong Kong at a private event in February when the virus first emerged, and could see what was coming in terms of closures.

He is “surprised”, he adds, that the order has been given to open as early as today.

“We’re fortunate in Yorkshire we only rely on about 24 to 26 per cent travellers from abroad,” he says. “London is going to have a difficult time. Hopefully everybody will pull through. There will be people that fall aside. We just have to think strong.

“We can’t turn back time, what’s happened has happened. We’ve just got to make the most of it, and look forward.”

Peter Mitchell is one of the handful of people in Britain who hasn’t used lockdown to clear out a cupboard or two. He hasn’t even picked up a duster and with the floors covered in boxes, files and the occasional 1930s aeroplane seat, if he owns a vacuum it hasn’t seen much use. “Oh lord, it’s chaos,” says the 77 year old. “You know, I did think I might use this time to have a sort through, but well other things got in the way. I do sometimes wonder how I can live like this, but then I have for almost 50 years, so I suspect it’s not going to change now.”

The ‘other things’ which distracted Mitchell from his domestic duties include the publication of a new photographic book and it’s one which is a tribute to one man’s talent for hoarding. The images were rescued from the ‘used file folder’ by Mitchell’s agent, who insisted that there was value in the photographs which had been discarded, along with 500 others, years before.

Taken during the 1970s and 80s when Leeds’s traditional back-to-backs and red-brick terrace streets were being replaced by modern housing developments and out-of-town shopping centres, together they capture a time before the arrival of drive-through McDonald’s.

These are streets which look bare without a full washing line strung from one side to another and where piles of rubble from some recently demolished property became temporary playgrounds for a generation of children raised on a diet of fish fingers and Angel Delight.

“At that time it felt like the whole of Leeds was being bashed down,” says Mitchell, who came to Leeds in the 1970s to visit friends and never left. “Entire streets were suddenly vulnerable and I suppose I saw it as my job to capture them before they went. This collection also has the feel of a city which hasn’t yet woken up. There are very few people on them, there’s a lack of a human presence.”

Mitchell has always had a frugal approach to his craft. While some photographers take dozens of shots of the same image, he only ever shoots a handful and only the best makes it to the printers. He can’t remember exactly why each of the photographs in the new Early Sunday Morning collection originally ended up on the reject pile, but he admits that had it not been for his agent and fellow photographer John Myers, who edited the book, they would have remained there.

“This is very much a traditional photobook,” he says, sounding not unlike a child forced to wear his Sunday best against his will. “It’s all beautifully laid out, there’s no text and there’s lots of blank pages to emphasise its sophistication.

“Left to my own devices I tend to go for something a little more quirky, but what this whole process taught me is that sometimes it can be good to have an alien eye cast over your work. It forces you to look closely at images you might have dismissed. It made me notice a cat sitting on a wall or a dog at the edge of the frame that I hadn’t seen before.”

There is some lovely detail here, like the children watching on as two firefighters inspect a burnt out row of shops, the window display of a wallpaper shop doing its best to sell dreams of ideal homes next to its boarded-up neighbour and the image of Maureen Fashions – the ’s dropped off before Mitchell arrived – whose clothing range appeared to extend to no more than a basket of hand me downs.

“When looking at images of the past there is always a danger of misplaced nostalgia,” he says “I’m not Rod Stewart romanticising about growing up in a back-to-back, but I did feel compelled to take these pictures before these places disappeared forever.

“Some people describe my photographic style as ‘painterly’. This is my portrait of Leeds, but I’m sure that similar images could have been taken of any other town and city.”

Perhaps, but even aside from the red-brick streets and the advertisements for Tetley beer and Burton’s tailors there is something unashamedly northern about Mitchell’s work.

“I’d been living in London and what I loved about Leeds is that you could walk everywhere,” he says. “And as a photographer there seemed to be something new and interesting around every corner.”