Health

Cliveden, Taplow, Berkshire, SL6 0JF

The von Essen chain of hotels recently invited Michelin-starred chef Chris Horridge to take over the two main restaurants at their  elegant and prestidgious hotel, Clivedon in Berkshire.

Self-confessed perfectionist, Chris gained his first Michelin star just after his 35th birthday at The Bath Priory.

Chris is also one of the rare chefs to have spent five years at Raymond Blanc’s famed Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons Restaurant in Oxford.

“I went in at the bottom and went to the top,” he said. “I stayed longer than any other chef.”

He was discreet about aiming for another Michelin but, after admiring and tasting his creations, I’m not surprised that his ‘Michelin Club’ chums are gunning for him.

Initially, their advice was, ‘Find your own cuisine. Dispense with cooking books. Start with a pencil and piece of paper. Ask, ‘what’s out there?’ This sent him “back to nutrition, especially herbs and plants.”

One of his early experimental dishes was fresh pigeon, barley, blackberries on a roof tile. “I impressed myself with that,” Chris said. He admits to being very self-critical.

“From there, it was back to herbs and flowers.” He has been talking with a professor in the field of herbs and plants, i.e. dill and fennel for digestion, and is rather taken with a pro-biotic drink full of phyto-chemicals (chemical compounds such as beta-carotene) to start meals.

His interest in food that can help people who are ill comes from the time his mother had Cancer. He had been a chef in the air force, based in Germany. This was when he began researching nutritional food. Early in the nineties, he become ill and put himself on a diet – one high in nutritional value. He followed that diet and eventually got the ‘all clear’.

Chris sometimes works “up to 23 hours a day” at Cliveden, where he closely nurtures the food preparation and cooking in the small, intimate Waldo Restaurant as well as “overseeing fine dining in The Terrace Dining Room,” with its stunning views over the formal gardens towards Windsor Castle; both dining room and gardens virtually unchanged since its last private owners, the Astors lived here.

He joked about “taking off Mondays,” now that he has his feet under the table. His artistic flair and adventurous spirit certainly showed in the menus my sister and I tried out.

Rather reluctantly, she agreed to try the ‘with’ (normal) tasting menu while I had the ‘without’ menu – ‘no fat, flour or sugar; food that gluten-intolerant people can eat’.

On the side, Chris liaises with a nutrition research group – different faculties from four separate universities are involved in this work.

“The inaugural meeting was about two weeks ago,” he said, during our meeting over coffee in Cliveden’s library on the ground floor.

“One project is researching diet for post-operative stress.” How well different ingredients can be absorbed by the digestive system is one facet of this research.

So you thought carrot cake was healthy?

“Carrot cake,” he noted without a change of expression, “is 25% ‘block’ – butter, flour, sugar, carrot.” One of his healthy desserts is “Crème Brûlée without the butter or sugar.”

He noted: “50% of people are lactose intolerant,” and went on to observe that “healthy food can be more interesting (than it usually is).” He spends 2 ½ hours a day on research in the kitchen at Cliveden.

Asked about the Tasting Menu, he said, “It’s weighted so you don’t overdo it. No gluten, no sugar, no dairy.”

I got the idea. He is “constantly experimenting with foodstuffs, i.e. parfait with chicken livers but no butter.” I was to taste something akin to this the following week.

See Waldo’s review here

Click here for Waldo’s tasting menu

Travel review on Cliveden here