The winner of our Young Chef of the Year Award does not do doubt. Dan Smith always knew that the professional kitchen was where he needed to be, from the moment he set foot in one aged 15. “I just loved being part of a team. It was about process.” Asked what he likes most about being a chef, he says simply, “Everything.” Everything? “I love being able to take a humble vegetable and turn it in to something amazing. Food is emotional. It’s powerful.”
Today, aged just 24, he is sous chef at Isaac McHale’s multi-award-winning Clove Club, inside the former Shoreditch Town Hall. Regularly he runs service. Among the team working for him is April Lily Partridge, who won the OFM Young Chef Award in 2014, and who nominated Smith for this year’s title. “I met him on the first day of my stage here,” she says, recalling the work experience she did at the Clove Club over a year ago. “He was clearly such a talent. You could see that he could do any section in the kitchen and make it look effortless.”
Indeed. Through a lunch of complex but forceful dishes he works the pass in the open kitchen, with huge economy of movement and poise. There’s a tiny crab tart under a spiced hollandaise flavoured with the brown meat and the best buttermilk fried chicken; there’s flamed mackerel, there’s roast duck, and, alongside it, a consommé of the bird with a 100-year-old Madeira in its depths. “When he’s on the pass,” Partridge says, “he’s so smooth.”
Some cooks look flustered and wrung out after service. When Smith sits down to talk he looks relaxed and at ease. This restaurant and this level of responsibility is clearly right for him. “I’ve always felt a little older than my years,” he says. Plus, he’s already been in the business for eight years. Aged 15, he worked in a local restaurant in his home town of St Albans. At 16, he left school for the full-time course at Westminster Kingsway College, but worked nights in another local restaurant “for beer money”. He cites his mother as a massive influence. “She didn’t just do the same old dishes every night. There was something different on the table every night.” Plus his parents were able to indulge his interests. He celebrated his 17th birthday with a trip to the Fat Duck. For his 18th it was back to Bray and the Waterside Inn.
After a working trip around Australia with his chef girlfriend, whom he met at Westminster, Smith returned to London for a brief stint working with Jason Atherton. He arrived at the Clove Club three years ago, six months into its life. “I’ve pretty much grown up with this restaurant,” he says. “It’s ingredient-driven. The food is complex but the place is informal.” And it’s big on skills: they don’t just make their own bread. They cure their own meats, butcher their own animals, churn their own butter and temper their own chocolate.
For his part, McHale says that he realised his young employee was the real thing during a trip to cook in Mexico City. “He was just on it. Frankly, he could have done the whole event without me being there.” And so to the inevitable question. What’s the plan? “I want my own place,” Smith says. “A similar style of food to this but more of a pub setting. I’d like to be as close to self-sufficient as possible, growing our own ingredients.” As to employees, he’s not going to have a problem. “I’ve already told him I’ll come and work with him,” says Partridge with a grin. That’s a serious recommendation from one OFM Young Chef of the Year to another.
