Michelin-starred chef Glynn Purnell talks to Richard McComb about achieving culinary excellence, fame – and spag bol
If it’s generally not a good idea to tell a chef he is second best, it’s an even worse idea to tell Glynn Purnell, the darling of Birmingham gastronomy, that he comes up short.
Purnell possesses, and is skilled at using, several very sharp knives and keeps in shape by kicking seven bells out of opponents at a martial arts centre. If he gets knocked down, he gets up again. He’s like the Terminator, with a stainless steel mouli.
Fortunately, there is precious little to criticise in the Brummie’s food, either in technique, taste or the realisation of his highly personalised vision.
But this food superhero does have a chink in his armour – and it’s spaghetti bolognese. Superman has kryptonite; Purnell’s got spag bol.
The chef’s long-term partner Kerry is better at the classic dish than Purnell, or at least she is according to the cook’s toughest critics, his two children. He might have a Michelin star and a national media profile fostered by fine food and appearances on TV cookery shows. But Oliver Purnell, who is four and a half, and one-and-a-half-year-old sister Esmé, like mummy’s cuisine better than daddy’s.
“Funnily enough, they prefer their mum’s cooking,” says Purnell with a wry smile. “The last time their mum cooked for me was about eight years ago and she burnt the spaghetti bolognese. She ain’t cooked for me since. We’ve still got the pan in a cupboard. Kept it as a memento.”
He and Kerry staged their own version of Ready, Steady, Cook to see whose food the nippers preferred. “I made a spaghetti bolognese and she made a spaghetti bolognese. I put a little pancetta in mine, some rosemary. But Kerry just did it with chopped tomatoes, some onion and mince. And they preferred hers.”
“That’s outrageous,” I suggest.
“Yeah, but at the end of the day, I did charge them £42.50. Maybe that was the problem,” adds Purnell.
He and Kerry have been together for 13 years although he first “went out” with her at school, when he was 10. Purnell hasn’t popped the question. “The thing is, I’ve got a Jack Russell, a cat, a restaurant, a house, two kids and I’m just not ready for commitment. You’ve got to make sure they are the right one. You can’t do it on a whim.”
It’s the first time I have sat down for a chat with the chef for a year. During the intervening period, there have been phone calls and exchanges of texts, not all of them hostile. But it’s far easier to get a measure of a man, or a woman, in the flesh; and what strikes me immediately is that Purnell has mellowed. He is still buzzing, the eyes flitting around his restaurant as staff prepare for service.
But there is a calmness, too. And dare I say it, a new maturity?
The coffee habit has been kicked. Purnell, now 35, sips herbal tea these days, which may explain his more relaxed demeanour. These things are relative, however. “When I come into the building, I still reckon I am the youngest person in here,” he says. “I am the one who is bouncing off the walls. The staff come in and say, ‘Oh, Chef, I’m tired.’ And I turn round and say, ‘I’ve been tired since 1991, the day I decided to become a chef.”
Purnell’s opened in July 2007 in a terracotta building in Cornwall Street, on the borders of Birmingham’s Square Mile. I ask the chef what significant changes have occurred since then and he hits the nail on the head:
“I have dramatically grown up. I have had another child. I employ nearly 20 staff now. I have had to be slightly more sensible ... if anybody could call me sensible. Anyone who knows me will go ‘F*** off. He’s the least sensible person I know.’ But in my eyes I have become a lot more thorough. Instead of just throwing dishes on the menu, I am having to stand back and make sure every new dish coming on at Purnell’s is as good as the dish we are taking off.
“At Jessica’s [his former haunt in Edgbaston], I might have taken a dish off and the new dish might have left the hot plate three or four times before it clicked. Now it has to click from the day I put it on. People are booking now three months in advance for a Saturday night. I could put a dish on and it doesn’t work and someone has waited three months for that. That ain’t good enough.”
Purnell says that earlier inconsistencies – and there were some – have been eradicated. The approach is highly professional, in words as well as deeds.
“Now quality and consistency go hand in hand. Whether it is lunch at 12.30pm on a Tuesday or dinner at 8.30pm on a Saturday, it has to be the same,” he says.
“Over the past 18 months, there has been a massive improvement. The food is completely consistent. We are using things like water baths [for cooking]. Now every piece of lamb is cooked at 62C for an amount of time and every single lamb is exactly the same. I still cook very passionately and cook the way I want to cook but I am using certain modern techniques to make sure the food is consistent with the enthusiasm and the passion.
“Sometimes you need a bit of technology to organise yourself.”
By way of example, Purnell explains the methodology behind a ballotine of mackerel: “It is set with protein glue. You half cure the mackerel, dust it with the glue, poach that at a really low temperate then cool it down, so it is a perfect circle. There is a slight rainbow colour in the flesh. It looks raw but it isn’t. Now every slice is exactly the same. That’s what I have been striving to do. You want to strive for perfection.”
The kitchen brigade has increased in number from five to seven. Staff are a huge drain on profits but Purnell believes the extra two pairs of hands have helped iron out the pressures created by the peaks and troughs of service.
“The last two-and-a-half years have been difficult,” he says. “But I wouldn’t change any of it, from the staff that have come and gone, to the arguments to the flying pans to the people walking out on me. I wouldn’t change that because that makes it the place it is, from the rough start we had to the smooth flowing restaurant it is now.”
He adds, as perhaps he wouldn’t have done in the past: “I have still got some staff with me who were here from the start.” They include sous chef Simon Szymanski and restaurant manager Jean-Benoit Burloux (“Customers love him – male or female”). Both were with Purnell at Jessica’s, where he won a Michelin star at 29. He won a star at Purnell’s in 2009, retaining it this year. So is Chelmsley Wood’s most famous chef hungry for a second?
“I’ve only had a star here for a year, so I’m a relatively new star. But if we keep pushing forward in the next three, five years ... ” he says.
“I’d love to be the first restaurant in Birmingham to get two Michelin stars and push on and get three. It’s the Roger Federer syndrome. You can’t wake up and just be happy with what you’ve got. You’re never going to be able to keep what you’ve got if you settle for it. You’ve always got to be pushing on.
“A second star? I don’t know how to get a second star. To be honest, I don’t know how to get one star. It just happens.
“Michelin are normally right. If they give it to you, I think you deserve it.”
Is it just the food or is it the service, the ambiance, that catches the inspectors’ eyes?
“I think it is all about what goes on the plate for two stars. I’m not 100 per cent sure, but that is the feeling I get. Maintain the quality of what you buy. Be stringent. If there is a slight bruise on an apple then you bounce it straight off the veg man’s forehead. You can never take your foot off the gas and you have got to have it pressed to the floor to get two stars. You are only one step away from the ultimate then.”
The “ultimate” being three stars, an accolade attained by only four restaurants in Great Britain and Ireland. It’s fantasy cooking, but I ask Purnell if Brum could one day get a three-star entry in the gourmands’ Bible.
“If I’m still knocking around, yeah. You’ve always got to aim for the maximum. If it doesn’t happen and in 20 years time I am still here with one star then I can look myself in the mirror and say, ‘At least I had a go.’
“It’s not something you go around saying you are trying to do. You just stay in your kitchen and do it.”
There is no doubt Purnell’s selective appearances on BBC cookery shows have helped to raise the profile of his restaurant. Last weekend, he was on Saturday Kitchen. Presenter James Martin told the show’s five million viewers that if they hadn’t visited Glynn Purnell’s restaurant they really should. You can’t buy that sort of publicity.
Purnell will also be appearing in the Midland heats of the hugely popular Great British Menu alongside Will Holland, head chef at La Becasse in Shropshire. A previous double winner of the competition, Purnell will be working in an advisory role this time round.
“The TV work is a big thing and it puts you out there,” he reflects. TV means you get noticed. Everywhere. “You walk round the supermarket and you think, ‘What’s that bloke looking at? What’s he looking at?’ Then ‘He’s coming over! He’s coming over!’ And he says, ‘Are you Glynn Purnell?’
“It’s nice. Strangers bound up to you and talk to you as if they have known you all their life. I’m always myself, whether I’m in the kitchen, out on the streets, or on the television. I enjoy myself and that’s it. On the TV, they talk about your past, present and future and then everybody puts the jigsaw together and thinks ‘I feel like I know the bloke,’ which is really nice.
“At first, it was difficult to have people running up to you in the street, but now I love it. I’ll stand and chat for five or ten minutes. I was in the supermarket the other day and I was looking for a chicken. This bloke’s stood next to me and I’m looking at the chickens and I said to him, ‘You all right?’ And he says, ‘I’m just waiting to see which one you chose and I’ll have the same one.’”
Purnell’s rise is seemingly unstoppable. Last year, he featured in two heavyweight cookery books. In Coco, he was nominated by a panel of global chef gods, including Alain Ducasse and Gordon Ramsay, as one of the future stars of international cuisine. In Yes, Chef!, some of his recipes were highlighted among the signature work of 20 celebrated British chefs, Purnell rubbing shoulders with Michael Caines, Marcus Wareing and Jason Atherton.
This year, says Purnell, is all about “consolidation and building the team”. Everything is being geared towards elevating the food.
And making sure Oliver gets to school on time.
“Getting my son ready for school is harder than running a kitchen,” admits Purnell. “I can control a 22-year-old hormonal chef de partie but trying to control a four-and-a-half-year-old, and get him to put on his red jumper for school, is a nightmare.”
