What’s Cooking? M

Luke Selby’s cinnamon custard doughnuts

Luke Selby isn’t grandiose. He has reached the top of his profession with quiet confidence. Yet his small restaurant in London’s Chinatown is all about performance. At Evelyn’s Table, he and his two brothers cook British produce with Japanese techniques in a tiny kitchen, in front of a handful of guests.

It’s quite intimate, not to mention stressful, but the chef is calm. He and his two brothers have an almost telepathic working relationship, having worked together at two Michelinstarred restaurants: Raymond Blanc’s Manoir aux Quat’saisons and Hide Above.

“We move and flow together. We know what each other is thinking,” he says. “We all cope. And we have some nice moments together.”

The brothers grew up in a village near Brighton, where their Filipino mum would take them foraging in the wilds. It left them with a “love and respect for nature”. “We would pick blackberries and get mussels. It helped us understand where things come from,” he says.

Luke led his younger brothers into the trade. He’d been obsessed with cookbooks and food programmes for as long as he could remember. When he was 14, he got a job cooking breakfast at a local hotel. And then, at the age of 16, he entered a nationwide contest that would change his life.

The Rotary Young Chef Competition was judged by chef Raymond Blanc. Selby used ingredients bought from his local supermarket and served up ravioli of smoked haddock, roasted duck breast with blackberries and a dessert soufflé.

Although Selby didn’t win – the supermarket food wasn’t ideal – Blanc saw that his technique was perfect and invited the lad to Manoir aux Quat’saisons for work experience. He stayed for six years, as a sous chef.

Selby has learned from the best, but a scholarship from the famous Roux brothers led to his most formative experience, at a topclass restaurant in Japan. Inspired, he dreamed of having his own restaurant.

“I had in mind exactly what I wanted – really small covers, with highquality food made from the freshest produce,” he says. “The small setup brings a lot of authenticity.”

Try making Selby’s cinnamon custard doughnuts using the recipe on the opposite page.