You may have seen that we have teamed up with our friends at 34 Bloomsbury for Christmas to create awesome events to celebrate the festivities. We sat down with Head Chef Steve to gather his thoughts and to find out where the food inspiration for our Christmas menus started.

Q – When did the planning start?

We sat down in late July when it was 35 degrees outside to bring our thoughts together around Christmas – in the hospitality world that is when Christmas starts for us. It feels very strange arranging tasting days with cranberry and stuffing when we should be firing up the BBQ!

Q – Tell us more, where did the menu inspiration come from?

We wanted to create “our version” of Christmas, we didn’t want to simply suggest the traditional turkey and xmas pudding. We all sat with a coffee in one hand and a pen in the other to write down our own personal memories of Christmas, given we are all chefs they were mostly around food. You would be on the right lines if you thought “not eating bounties in the celebrations” & “the brandy not flaming properly over the xmas pudding”.

From there we took those concepts and expanded on them until we got to the menus, they are playful takes on festive food concepts.

Q – What is your favorite dish?

For me, it is all about “the purple one” we wanted to take Quality Street and make it into a restaurant dessert. You will find it on our fine dining menus and out of all the creative things we have done this year I am more proud of that.