After more than 30 years as leader of the gastronomic pack in the West Country, Michael Caines has made his London debut as a chef-restaurateur this week at the Stafford hotel in St James’s.
The new venture brings a flavour of his native region, with the menu name-checking fish and seafood from Brixham in Devon and Newlyn Bay in Cornwall along with Herefordshire beef from Stokes Marsh farm in Wiltshire.
Michael said ahead of the opening: “This new restaurant is a celebration of British seasonal produce, and I can’t wait to share our vision with guests in the heart of St James’s.”
Born in Exeter, Michael worked as a teenage trainee at the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane before moving on to Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons. He achieved fame at Gidleigh Park on the edge of Dartmoor, where he ran the kitchen for more than 20 years from 1994 before leaving to open his own luxury hotel/restaurant, Lympstone Manor near Exmouth. Lympstone is a perennial presence in the higher reaches of the Harden’s 100 list of the UK’s best restaurants, sitting at number 23 this year with “cooking of the highest quality, championing everything in the region… a masterclass in how to use top ingredients“.
Michael Caines at The Stafford takes over the space vacated earlier this year by the Game Bird, which was run for the past four years by another out-of-town star chef, Lisa Goodwin-Allen of Northcote in Lancashire. Lisa already has her next London project lined up: a ‘modern British brasserie’ called Rosi which launches at the Beaumont hotel in Mayfair on October 1, with a menu of “reimagined classics” including seasonal pies, a lamb suet putting, chicken Kyiv and desserts such as a ‘Mayfair Millionaire Tart’ and ‘flamed seasonal sponge with custard’.
Lisa has brought executive head chef Jozef Rogulski with her from The Game Bird to run Rosi on a day-to-day basis. And in a neat symmetry, Simon Ulph – a former head chef under Lisa at Northcote – has been appointed executive head chef of Michael Caines at The Stafford.
