Every week, our Money team interviews top chefs from around the UK, hearing about their cheap food hacks, views on the industry and more.
Today, they speak to Roger Pizey, head pastry chef at Fortnum and Mason…
A supermarket takeaway dessert I love is… Tesco’s finest meringue nests. I suppose in themselves they’re not really a takeaway dessert, but sometimes I whip something up quickly at home, a DIY Eton mess of sorts. If you add a few punnets of English raspberries and a tub of thick double cream to your shop, you can add a tiny bit of vanilla, break up the meringue and crush the raspberries. Voila!
For a cheap meal out I love…Volare in Bounds Green. It’s a pizza restaurant run by two Spanish sisters inspired by the love and passion of their Neapolitan great-grandfather, who opened his own pizzeria in Argentina in the 1920s. I would order the Prima Vera, which costs £14.95, so you can’t really go wrong there. Fior di latte mozzarella, wild rocket and some Bresaola on a tomato base – none of that white pizza nonsense!
There’s nothing worse than bringing a nice bottle with you to a dinner party… and then the hosts keep it for another occasion.
It’s really tough at the moment… There are lots of restaurants that are going to go under – especially with the rise in national insurance and minimum wage going up, as well as the new tronc system (changes to how tips are handled). The cost of ingredients has also wildly gone up. The quality of staff we have is not as good as it used to be, and from Brexit we lost lots of talent. But I feel optimistic about the 17-year-olds and the younger generation who seem to have a bit of zest and have a real interest in working hard, which is refreshing.
The toughest moment of my career was… When I started at Le Gavroche it was a three-star Michelin restaurant. Albert Roux was still at the helm, and there’s no doubting it was a military operation. If you didn’t shave, you were given a razor. If you were in dirty whites, you were sent home. It would be so busy at Christmas time that you’d have to sleep in the restaurant sometimes – that certainly can’t happen anymore.
The country that makes the best desserts is… Japan is definitely up there. We’ve come on leaps and bounds in the UK, especially with the rise of international influences in our cuisine, and we’ve always had a global perspective on food with so many diverse cultures and nationalities living in the UK. We’ve taken on the French, who I think have been sitting on their laurels recently, and now we’re outshining them!
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People’s appetite for sugar is changing… When I started out, Frederic Bau was a big influence. He’s really changed the mindsets of pastry chefs recently, by recreating his classics – but with less fat and sugar. It’s something we can’t ignore, but people’s appetites for sugar is changing – his philosophy was to create the same mouth feel, textures and flavours but with 30% less sugar.
The best place to eat outside of the UK… One year in Spain, I did the Camino de Santiago walk for 30km and for some reason the only thing I wanted to eat was a Chinese meal. When I finished the walk, I went looking for my Chinese meal and instead stumbled across all these amazing local restaurants and was totally blown away. Eating hake and beans, beautiful octopus, fresh seafood, it was glorious.
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One less common ingredient that I couldn’t live without is… Fresh Madagascan vanilla from Zazou Emporium. It’s the crown jewels of what we do in pastry. It’s just stunning, you can put it in anything – you can even add it to your coffee. It just gives everything this lift and sparkle that’s very subtle, but you can’t go without it. Good quality stuff and fresh too – that’s where it’s at.
One Fortnum and Mason item I think it’s worth splashing out for… is the black garlic and miso paste from our new range on the third floor of the shop. We have a beautiful new range of infused oils, sauces and nut pastes, which are full of umami flavour and depth, not to mention our shiny new branding too, which looks pretty sharpish. If I’m using it at home, I might deglaze my pan from cooking a pork chop with some wine and the paste to make a good sauce, or it actually goes incredibly well with vanilla ice cream.
