For anyone who still misses their fix of James Martin on the television of a weekend morning — and to judge from the slump in viewers for Saturday Kitchen in the year since he quit the show, there must be many — help is at hand.
Pull up a chair at the Kitchen, the casual restaurant in the grounds of Chewton Glen country house hotel, between the New Forest and the south coast, and several times a month you may get a glimpse of the man himself through the vast plate-glass doors that divide the dining area from his slick new cookery school.
Of course, the hottest ticket is for a place on the other side of the glass, at one of the 12 workstations in the school itself, and for this you need exceptionally fast fingers. When the first few dates were published online they sold out in 90 seconds. “I know, it’s madness,” says 45-year-old Martin, whose head hasn’t been so turned by fame that he doesn’t feel a hint of embarrassment. “We’ve realised the key is not to give all the dates now for the next six months, but to drip-feed them. Yesterday, for example, I had a couple of other jobs cancel on me so I thought I might as well offer up those days at the school as well.”
If you are one of the lucky few, you have a choice between a morning or afternoon session during which Martin will guide you through a simple menu, poulet au vinaigre followed by chocolate eclairs, say, before you all sit down to eat the fruits of your labour. “I can tell within 30 minutes if they’ll be up to that or not,” he says, “and I’ve got a good brigade in the restaurant kitchen who can help them out if there’s a risk they might go hungry.” The cost is £350 a person.
In the evening it’s less hands-on, but just as interactive as a maximum of 12 guests sit around the horseshoe bar and Martin prepares five or six courses, each matched with a glass of wine, for £500.
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So far, he says, his classes have been a 50:50 mix of hotel guests and locals. “People come to see you, yes, but they also come to learn,” he says. “It’s a place for foodies who want to take in the kind of tips that chefs take for granted.
“The last lesson I did, we had four people who produced phenomenal cakes, using spray guns and everything. They had far better skills than I have.”
That’s some admission from a former pastry chef. His signature dish is a classic lemon tart, but so far that’s off the menu in his classes. “I think it’s the hardest dessert to do because to make it properly requires total concentration. If any part of the two-hour journey goes slightly wrong it is ruined, so I think I’ll stick to choux pastry for now. Besides,” he adds with a grin, “I’m worried about lemon juice spraying all over my brand-new ovens.”
I can see why he would worry. No expense has been spared in fitting out the school, in what used to be the hotel manager’s cottage. There’s no sharing equipment here; space-age Gaggenau induction hobs are set into Corian worktops above self-closing ovens. Even the stainless steel mixing bowls cost £65 a set.
“It’s not cheffy kit, it’s just the best kit,” Martin says. “The pans are good, the mixers are good. I tried 15 types of spatula and picked the one I know works the best. It took half an hour to choose, and that’s just one spatula. Over 20 years of doing demos in cookery schools you get to learn what works and what doesn’t.”
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For Martin the return to Chewton Glen is like coming home. He was second pastry chef at the hotel 23 years ago. “I applied to several places and Chewton Glen was the only one that got back to me, so I went for the interview and couldn’t afford to come back, so I was going to have to stay whether I got the job or not.”
He stayed for two years, helping the hotel restaurant to get its Michelin star back, before moving on to lead the kitchen at Hotel du Vin in Winchester. It was while he was working there that he was spotted by a television producer and his second career as the “cooking woman’s crush” was born.
It’s not surprising he was itching to come back. Chewton Glen is the most beguiling of hotels. Set in 130 acres of parkland and just a smugglers’ path away from the beach, it’s the kind of hotel where the well-heeled go when they want to be “off duty”, often retreating to the hotel’s famed treehouse suites a short buggy ride from the main building.
You can walk the length of the driveway to the Kitchen restaurant and cookery school by the hotel’s northern entrance in about ten minutes, but the chances are you’ll be offered a lift by passing staff, who outnumber the guests by two to one. The building has been rebuilt to Martin’s specification, with tables spilling out on to the flagstone courtyard, in the shade of espaliered lime trees.
For the days when Martin is not in the school he has roped in a roster of celebrity pals to give one-off classes — “Pierre Koffmann, Tom Kerridge, José Pizarro, all people I’ve worked for over the years” — but the day-to-day teaching is done by Rob Cottam, who worked with Martin on the P&O cruise ship Britannia.
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Classes take in all the usual mix of casual and formal entertaining, bread-making and chocolate extravaganzas, plus some more unusual artisanal topics such as cheese-making and pickling. His classes may not command the celebrity price tag, but he shares his boss’s line in good-humoured, informative banter — and just wait until you taste his chocolate cake recipe.
Need to know
Tony Turnbull was a guest of Chewton Glen (01425 282212, chewtonglen.com), where rooms start at £325 and cookery classes are from £85 for a half day (or £350 for a full day with James Martin)
