Ashley Palmer-Watts

You know, you think you know everything at 25.

Reality is, 20 years later, you know a lot more.

I think it's about understanding how things work and where mistakes can happen, where gaps are that allow those mistakes to happen and fix in the root cause.

So reducing down mistakes gives you greater consistency.

So when I am building recipes around a dish, you want to put as much measurable control in there as possible.

Clear, simple, step-by-step approach.

You know, no information is stupid, really, because you don't want to assume that people know something that you don't make clear to them in the first place.

And then it's about, you know, for example, all the beef that we have.

We have a room probably a bit bigger than this stage where all the beef is aged downstairs.

We have a grill in one of the dining rooms called the grill room.

And we burn oak and beech in a massive kiln.

It runs at 800, 900 degrees.

We knock the wood down into embers and then we lift them onto the ember beds and we cook at different heights and temperatures.

And so you can cook the whole way, you know, if you wanted a medium steak or a medium, you know...

beef chop you could do that the whole way but it would be a much more gentle process slower because you've got to allow that heat to transfer in we've set it up slightly differently we we cook very quickly and quite hot so that we create the crust we create the sear then it goes on to the next person which is in the kitchen and they control medium medium well medium rare rare and they look after it from there because

To do that for this many covers all the way on the grill would be impossible.

You would need a grill five times the size.

Yeah, I mean, it is a challenge.

I mean, it went up quite a lot over the last couple of years.

It doesn't come down.