The former Kitty Fisher’s and Cora Pearl chef has returned to his former stomping ground of the southwest to launch Beckford Canteen.
In early 2017 George Barson was named head chef of Kitty Fisher’s, a bustling restaurant in Mayfair’s Shepherd Market named after the famous British courtesan and where, in his words, “oil tycoons come in and throw £50 notes around just to get more bread”. Six years on and his latest project couldn’t be more contrasting, with the chef having swapped the Big Smoke for the more tranquil setting of Bath and Beckford Canteen.
For Barson, who also launched Kitty Fisher’s sister restaurant Cora Pearl in Covent Garden, the move is a homecoming of sorts that sees him return to the southwest in a chef role for the first time since leaving River Cottage in Devon to cook in the capital. Joining forces with the Beckford Group, which operates upmarket food-led pubs in Wiltshire and Somerset, Barson now leads the kitchen at the 40-cover Beckford Canteen, which opened its doors at the start of the year.
Despite the move 100 miles west and the obvious change of pace in Bath’s restaurant scene not everything is so different, says Barson, wearing a headband that has become a trademark feature of his look (I can’t recall seeing an image of him without one). His new kitchen isn’t vastly bigger than that of his previous Mayfair and Covent Garden places of work, and his unfussy cooking style remains unchanged in his new setting.
As with everywhere else, staffing a kitchen hasn’t been without its challenges, nor has managing spiralling food costs on the menu. Even the clientele - with the possible exception of oil tycoons - is not as different as he thought it would be.
“We do a smoked eel dish similar to what we did at Kitty Fisher’s, which I thought people down here might not get,” he says. “But it’s our most popular starter. You’ve got to cook for your clientele, and find what dishes work and what don’t, but so far people have been open minded. Everybody seems to be willing to try something a bit different and are quite excited for something new. I’ve moved from a city to another city, so it feels fairly similar.”
Back in the West Country
Barson’s involvement with the Beckford Group is primarily down to timing. He first met Charlie Luxton, one of the group’s founders, a couple of years ago between lockdowns and the two of them decided to keep in touch. Barson then took on a job at Wild By Tart in 2021 but on starting a family and needing a bigger house, as well as wanting a change of scene, he took the decision to head back west. “Charlie told me he was working on this new project in Bath, and it just slotted together. It was a new restaurant [on the site of conveyor belt restaurant Yen Sushi] and it was nice to be part of something I could be a bit more involved in from the ground up. It was not established and there was no historical food offer there so I could make it my own.”
Make it his own he has. Beckford Group’s vision of creating a canteen style restaurant chimed with Barson’s own ingredient-led style of cooking. “My nod to a canteen is to let the food speak for itself. I’m not buying a £50 plate and putting one scallop on it; this is simple food with simple plating on white plates. It’s not too showy.”
The menu at Beckford Canteen is tight, with a 4/4/4 offer that also includes a handful of snacks such as bread from nearby Landrace restaurant bakery; rarebit with pickled onions; and sardines on toast. These are followed by starters of the aforementioned smoked eel, served with leeks and egg yolk, alongside beetroot with goat’s curd and walnut; and ham hock and jowl terrine, and mains such as monkfish with cauliflower and curried butter; confit pork belly with pumpkin and quince; and venison, celeriac, pear and spruce tips. The occasional special is offered “to keep the standard up” but simplicity is key here, he insists.
"As a chef you tend to make things harder than you need to do"
“The menu is concise because the kitchen is not big enough for anything else. If you have a massive menu with 20 components for each dish you are putting your team under pressure - and probably since lockdown kitchens have become more volatile. A lot of customers are obsessed with relentless choice, but that approach means you have to give up on quality, unless you have 20 chefs.
“It’s nice to make the prep manageable, so we can have breakfast together and a family meal and not be too stressed. A pleasant working environment is really important to me.”
The wording on the menu is also deliberately brief. “Dish descriptions are more simple than they actually are because I quite like to undersell it rather than oversell it,” Barson says of his dish descriptions. “It is fun for us to use some techniques and keep things exciting – as a chef you tend to make things harder than you need to do – but customers just want something tasty. They want to know they are going to get venison and celeriac and if they are interested, they can ask what the other ingredients are. Some chefs can run away with things and say they confit an egg for 64 degrees for two hours, but it’s still an egg.”
That said, Barson hasn’t entirely shied away from a bit of experimentation, such as with his dessert of chocolate, Jerusalem artichoke and caramelised milk, with a ‘Horlicks salt’ as he describes it. “Yes, there’s artichoke in it but it’s still unmistakeably chocolately, and salty and malty and people seem to get that. Once people trust that the food is good then maybe the odd curve ball will go on the menu.”
Recruitment and retention
The team at Beckford Canteen is relatively small, with Barson running a kitchen brigade of five to six chefs. Serendipity has played its part in his ability to find staff. A chef with whom Barson worked at his time at Nuno Mendes’ Viajante a decade ago lives nearby and was convinced to don his whites to help. “He’s been a godsend. He is temporary but has fallen back in love with cooking again and is currently holding down snacks, starters, and pastry. It might not be quite as temporary as he thinks,” adds Barson, with a laugh.
Another friend, this time with whom he worked at Wild by Tart, has also been helping out. The actor, who was doing stunt training for the new series of Alex Rider in Bristol, offered his services in the evening. “Suddenly, I had all these people who had worked at a good level helping me, which was pretty lucky.”
As for all of the rest of his team, front and back, Barson is determined to create a nurturing environment. “Work is work but I want it to be fun. I don’t want people to be nervous because that makes me nervous and then we’re all going down together.
"I try to make a really nice working environment. A lot of chefs say that, but it turns out to be rubbish; they say they really look after their staff but do the opposite. I’m not going to be able to do it without my team. It will be hard and not every service will be the most pleasant experience of your life, but we’ll have a laugh and a beer at the end of service, take a breath and say, ‘that was exciting’”.
This approach is born from experience. Barson’s first chef roles in London after quitting Devon were not happy ones, with him describing working six doubles a week in unhealthy conditions. “Moving from the River Cottage, which was very lovely and relaxed and where I was riding around on a quad bike getting nasturtium flowers, to central London and getting screamed at for 80 hours a week was fairly unpleasant,” he recalls, with notable litotes.
His first taste of a Michelin starred kitchen he enjoyed was at Viajante. “I walked in and had never seen food like it in my life - the flavours and techniques were amazing. It had the most diverse team from all over the world. At one point I was one of only two British guys in the kitchen, which was super fun because coming from a small town you don’t get to mix with that many people from different cultures. I’d have staff meals of things I’d never eaten before.”
Making a mark in Mayfair and Covent Garden
He also reflects affectionately on his time at Kitty Fisher’s and later at Cora Pearl. “At Kitty Fisher’s customers would walk into the kitchen with a glass of wine and talk to you during service. It was a tiny kitchen with five of us in it and all the white wine was stored in the fridge there, so any time a bottle of wine was ordered the whole kitchen needed to move around to make space for the waiters.”
The diminutive kitchen might have put Barson off taking the job, had he had the foresight to check before signing on the dotted line. “I took the job without seeing the kitchen, I don’t know why,” he admits. “On my first day they invited me in for food, I saw the kitchen and I thought I’d made the biggest mistake and how on earth was I going to cook here? But I came to love it. It was almost like being on a boat, you had everything to hand. You got into this amazing rhythm, and I was lucky to have a team that stayed with me for the duration.”
At Cora Pearl, which opened in 2018, Barson had better fortune back of house with the luxury of designing his own kitchen as well as creating a menu from scratch. “Doing Cora Pearl was more exciting. Kitty Fisher’s was very well established before I got there, Tomos Parry [now at Brat] had made a name for himself and his style of food. I felt that I put my own stamp on it, but everybody knew Kitty Fisher’s already.”
Being stretched between the two restaurants eventually took its toll, with Barson wanting to funnel all that energy into just one place. Then lockdown happened and when things opened up, he joined Wild by Tart as its head chef. While a worthwhile experience, it wasn’t a role that suited him. “It was not really my thing. We were cooking food from all over the world, which is not true to how I like to cook.”
"Before moving from London, I was offered some ludicrous salaries - life-changing money. I’d probably have a really nice Audi, but I wouldn’t be happy"
By contrast, Beckford Canteen is exactly how Barson likes to cook, and he even hopes to rekindle some of his River Cottage days - customers permitting. “I’m hoping that some people will have allotments and will maybe swap nasturtium flowers for a free meal and things like that. It might be a bit idealistic but as a chef I really hope I have that kind of relationship with people.”
He acknowledges that, despite Bath’s proximity to Cornwall and many suppliers, it is surprisingly difficult to lay his hand on all the ingredients he wants - “everything bypasses us and whizzes up the road to London”. As a result, he is working with a community farm in Bristol and says more farms will supply the restaurant in the spring once they can fit it into their growing schedule.
The supplier he’s most proud of, however, is Meadowland Smokery in Colyton, which supplies the restaurant’s smoked eel. “It is 500 metres from my mum’s house, so it is something dear to me. “There’s not much stuff they do in Colyton, so it’s special.”
Feeling at home
Back in the West Country Barson certainly looks at home. Is this it for him now, or does he foresee a time when he will be lured back to the capital?
“I turn 40 this year and I can’t really imagine going back there. I’m settled here now. Before moving from London, I was offered some ludicrous salaries - life-changing money, but it’s not for me. I’d never cook again. I’d be in the kitchen with a clipboard and have an office. I’d probably have a really nice Audi, but I wouldn’t be happy.
“As a chef I like to cook. There is a certain amount of admin that comes as you get more senior, but I like to be on the line. If I could I’d be chef de partie – come in to work with no pressure other than do my section, cook some nice food and go home. There would be no dealing with things such as staff problems and holiday cover, which is the hard thing that comes with being a head chef.”
This overwhelming desire to cook means that, unlike many chefs of his age, Barson has muted ambitions about having his own place. “I’ve always thought I would like to do it and have full control over everything - the food, the interior, the service, but that comes with a lot of financial pressure. [Beckford Canteen] is close to that. Is has all the fun bits of owning restaurant without the pressure.
“As Covid has shown, you don’t know what lies ahead. Here I can cook tasty food without worrying if my mortgage was on the line.”
That said, never say never. “Maybe one day,” he adds with a glint in his eye. “I’ve always wanted to do a pub with rooms, it has always been my dream. But in the meantime, I’m excited to be making a mark on the Bath food scene.”
