Amber Francis: “Great British Menu taught me to trust my palate”

How did the opportunity at Maene​ come about?​
I had been in my last role [head chef at Zebra Riding Club at Birch in Hertfordshire] for a year or so and was looking for my next challenge. I’m always trying to push myself in order to learn more and develop. And then I was contacted by someone working with Nick [Gilkinson, owner of Maene] who told me about the position and that it could suit me and my style. So, we met, and the rest is history.

What was the brief?​
Nick was after something fresh and British-focused in terms of the provenance of our ingredients. When I describe Maene to people, though, I don’t call it a British restaurant. There’s a lot of Mediterranean influences in the cooking, but we’re inspired by the producers and suppliers that we have in the UK. To me that epitomises it. We’re using mozzarella and Stracciatella, but it’s from a London-based company making Italian cheeses. We grow such amazing produce and have such amazing artisans here that it would be a shame not to highlight them.

Tell us about the menu development​
I wasn’t able to do much work until we were on site, so a lot of it is down to instinct and what I’ve learnt over the years of being a chef. A lot of the flavour combinations came from trust in the ingredients and in me knowing what goes together deliciously. For example, we have a dessert of sea buckthorn sorbet with smoked rapeseed oil and 70% chocolate. It sounds challenging and it wasn’t something I’d done before or tested, but it made sense to me. The acidity of the sea buckthorn was perfect for a sorbet and combining that with the richness and creaminess of the dark chocolate and the smoke of the rapeseed oil balanced it all out together.

Maene has a big dining space [able to hold around 75 covers], but a relatively small kitchen area. How have you made that work?​
It’s been a fun challenge. I worked with Nick to get the equipment in the space and decide where everything would go. We have the smallest charcoal grill you can buy, but that was something I really wanted so we could cook the meat and fish over it. It has been challenging, but it’s also been a real team-bonding exercise. And that’s strengthened us. It makes you really think and evaluate things as a whole, in order to make the space work.

Has the size of the kitchen restricted your creativity at all?​
All menus are reflective of the circumstances they’re created under. I don’t find it restricts what I see for Maene, instead it directs my creative flow so that I can really make a mark on the space.

You started your career as an apprentice chef at The Ritz. How has that experience informed your cooking style?​
The Ritz taught me in a way few other places in the UK can. It gave me a really solid grounding in knowledge of cooking and classical technique, which I hold very close to my heart. Now, though, my style is more influenced by being produce led. Sometimes, using classical French techniques can do too much to an ingredient, but you can only learn how to bring out the flavour of something properly by understanding those methods. For example, we cook turnips glacé at Maene, which is a traditional technique, but here we do it with rapeseed oil rather than butter. You still get that glaze and finish, but this approach also means it’s suitable for people with different dietary requirements.

Recently you made your debut appearance on Great British Menu​. How was that?​
It was a fantastic experience. It was a hard slog to get there in terms of practising the dishes, but once you’re in that environment it’s a wonderful thing. I wouldn’t say it’s given me huge confidence, but what it has told me is that I can trust my palate. One of biggest criticisms I got was that my food was really good restaurant food, but couldn’t fit with the banquet. I’m a restaurant chef and so for people to enjoy my food like that is a massive complement and it was something I took away with me that gave me a boost to trust myself and trust the process.

You’re only 27, but you’ve already achieved so much. With recruitment remaining a huge challenge, what can restaurants do to attract more young people into the industry?​
There’s so many sides to it. Covid hit the sector really hard because the young professionals passionate about the industry saw it fall to its knees and couldn’t get the experience they needed in the workplace. And it’s going to take a while to recover from that. Since Covid, though, we are seeing an influx of passionate and excited young people. But what’s really interesting is that I’ve worked with a number of people that are not young in terms of age but are young chefs. They are people that have had careers before and had a chance to reflect during the pandemic on what they wanted to do and that’s given them the drive to follow their passion for food and make a career out of it. Those people are coming into the industry and they want to learn, and it’s really refreshing to see. It’s not just about getting young people through, although that is important; it’s about people from all walks of life discovering that a career in the food industry is fulfilling, valid and an exciting place to be.