He’s the maverick with a mullet and a Michelin star and features in Masterchef’s most bonkers episode yet, arming finalists with balloons and hairdryers to make edible eggshells and “ash”.
So it’s not surprising that dishes such as barbecued prawn brains and baked potato custard have earned the Yorkshire restaurateur Michael O’Hare a reputation as the Heston from Eston.
However, as the government prepares to overhaul tipping practices, O’Hare, whose Leeds restaurant The Man Behind The Curtain is booked up until next year, has his own suggestion: “Don’t ban service charges; ban photographing food on your phone.”
It drives him mad, he says, when, on being presented with courses such as smoked mackerel parfait dusted with chocolate-roasted coffee powder, the first thing his diners pick up is not a fork but an iPhone.
“Put your phone away! You should be eating, and drinking and making merry. Enjoy yourself. I find it really, really weird. It’s like me wanting to take pictures of my girlfriend during sex.”
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He stops himself, and laughs: “I’m not saying my food’s as good as sex, but you don’t have to take pictures of everything you enjoy. You could just enjoy it. I want [customers] to have a great night with their friends or partner and not have a single photo to show for it.”
His message: “Everyone on social media is not having a better time than you, because you are at a restaurant —and they’re on social media.”
Another bugbear is customers “tagging” pictures of his food on Twitter and Facebook. “I don’t mind if people want a picture of me, after the meal — that’s nice and humbling — but don’t post a picture of food and tag it. I already know what it looks like. You wouldn’t take pictures of art in a gallery.”
He adds that at the end of the day: “It’s only ever food. It’s only ever something edible.”
It is a surprising stance, perhaps, for a man who makes food that demands to be noticed. The actress Greta Scacchi described a signature dish involving dehydrated squid ink as “fairytale food. Something for a wicked queen”.
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One of the many baffled viewers remarked on Twitter that it looked more like “an ashtray of doubt”. Whatever you do, don’t call it “wacky”. O’Hare, 34, a former winner of The Great British Menu, said: “Wacky or quirky. Urgh. To me, those words mean a children’s entertainer in a bow-tie.” What do you call it? “I prefer ‘visually intriguing’.”
The son of a welder and a florist, O’Hare took an alternative route into cooking. As a teenager in Teesside, he got into ballet — “I had some of the best days of my life at dance school” — and later dropped out of an aerospace engineering course at university.
In his mid-twenties, he left work as a chef to study for a pilot’s licence — “I loved Top Gun” — but eventually returned to the kitchen and won a Michelin star within a year of opening his first restaurant.
His second restaurant, The Man Who Fell To Earth — his own take on Parisian classical dining — will open in Manchester next year. “It’s going to stink of class and glamour.”
He opposes the proposed ban on so-called discretionary service charges, the 10 to 15 per cent automatically added to restaurant bills, arguing that as long as the money is distributed fairly among employees it remains the best way to skewer any embarrassing after-dinner fumbling for cash.
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The ban is one of a number of options being considered by ministers in a bid to end unfair tipping practices after several restaurant chains — Pizza Express, Strada, Zizzi, Ask Italian and Giraffe — were accused of keeping all or part of the service charges rather than passing the money on to staff.
“It would cause an absolute nightmare,” he said, for diners, staff and restaurants such as his, where a 10 per cent discretionary charge is pooled and distributed among employees.
“Why should smaller restaurants suffer because of the corporate greed of those chains? When you’ve got higher bills over £100, when 90 per cent of people are paying with card, it becomes awkward as many people don’t have cash for tips and that becomes even more embarrassing. What about big group tables of over £700? What happens then?
“Everyone benefits [from automatic service charges]. It’s a lot better than leaving £20 on the table for someone to put in their pocket. What about the guy cleaning the toilets? He is doing the worst job in the building, and gets no thanks, while the girl who comes in for a shift at 6pm is getting all the praise by 6.30pm. A ban is a backward step.”
The chef, who offers a 12-course tasting menu for £75, said that gourmet dining had become more accessible than people realised.
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“Unlike high-end fashion or high-end art, anyone on the minimum wage can still afford high-end food,” he said. “You wouldn’t get Stella McCartney to design your wedding dress, or buy a piece of art by Damien Hirst, but you can still go to Noma and eat the best food in the world. Isn’t that a wonderful thing?”
Signature dish
Cod, squid ink powder, crispy potato, scorched gem lettuce and gold shoots
Hand massaged octopus, amalfi lemon, caper and parsley
Rib of beef, with an ajo blanco sauce, smoked bread cinders, anchovies, a souvide egg yolk and edible egg shells
Raw langoustine, marinated in honey and lavender, pata negra, grated frozen apple
Iberian milk-fed lamb, juice of gordal olive, seville orange, ras-el-hanout
Milk chocolate violet ice cream, potato and vanilla custard, salt and vinegar rice, beetroot vinegar
