Consultant chef has novel ideas for new restaurant
Rowley Leigh’s work as a chef and a food writer plays a big part in designing his menus
Consultant chef Rowley Leigh, who is working with Swire Group to set up new restaurant The Continental in Pacific Place, might have been a novelist if he had worked harder at it. Becoming an acclaimed chef almost seems like an afterthought.
After leaving Cambridge University, he says, "I came to London and worked on a novel. But I didn't work very hard on it." Leigh has nonetheless managed an output of two million words of food writing, and his descriptions can leave one feeling hungry. Here he is describing starters at The Continental:
"Chicken in a goat's cheese mousse. It has a umami quality and is very light. There's a new scallop dish with a chestnut puree and shiso leaf. It will be a big fat grilled scallop with a sweet lemon confit on top of that, to make it salt, sweet and savoury. The shiso rounds it off."
Even after two decades Leigh says his stories are invariably two days late, provoking much displeasure from his editors. Cooking wasn't a predictable career path. After university, he took a succession of uninspiring jobs including a stint as a farmer.
Then one day in the 1970s, Leigh saw an advertisement for a grill chef at a nearby restaurant. "I liked cooking so I thought, 'Why not?'" That led to a position at the Joe Allen restaurant, in London's theatre district, where he found "the adrenaline of restaurant service really gave me a thrill".
After two years at the New York-style brasserie, Leigh went to work for the Roux brothers, French chefs and restaurateurs who were raising Britain's awareness of good food.