Celebrity profile - Learning curves
An ambitious new London venture by Prue Leith can only benefit pub kitchens, says Susan Novak.
The Hoxton Apprentice is a very swish new restaurant. Very swish indeed. Neo-Gothic, high Victorian windows, cut-glass chandeliers, fashionable black furniture and floor-length crimson drapes. Any of the smart diners enjoying the Cambodian crab and prawn salad or honey and soy Gloucester Old Spot ribs could be forgiven for thinking they are lunching in the capital's latest designer eaterie following its celebrity launch. But that impression is belied by the fact that food doyenne Prue Leith has just popped out of the kitchen to ask what I think of the grilled club stack; that Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott performed the formal opening; and that a month earlier, most of the chefs had never cooked professionally - if at all. "Apprentice" is the clue.
The 100-seater restaurant is an ambitious social venture to get long-term unemployed, often homeless, people from the local community back into the workplace, teaching them skills that could lead to a wide range of jobs in the catering/hospitality sector. "The first thing is to make them employable again," says Prue. "Employers want people who turn up to work on time, correctly dressed, in the right frame of mind, and that, for some of them, is a huge leap." "We are teaching all practical skills and that's what the industry wants - they're sick to death of people coming in who learn everything on a computer and have no idea how to make a ham sandwich."
When the apprentices move on - the first dozen are due to leave any time now - they should be highly employable. Prue says they will be looking to the pub sector, with its staff-hungry gastro pubs, as well as to restaurants. "Pubs are going to be excellent for our trainees because we are not teaching them to walk around with one arm behind their back and a napkin over the other, but to bring out their own warm personalities," she says. And unlike Jamie Oliver's Fifteen outlet nearby, these trainees - aged from 18 to the mid-forties - are not just learning to be chefs. Their rigorous training programme is equally split between bar work, front-ofhouse and kitchen - the sort of flexible skills valued in the pub trade.
Publicans can back the scheme by not only offering jobs, but work experience placements to trainees during their courses and also by patronising the restaurant themselves, as all the profits are ploughed back into the centre. Prue, who had a brief public spat with Gordon Ramsay over staff motivation, is keen for these special new recruits to find employers who will help them blossom. "My attitude is, if you have our students, you treat them right and don't shout at them or abuse them," she says. Follow-up ongoing support is provided, and a mentoring system is built into the course itself. The restaurant works on a ratio of 70% professionals to 30% apprentices. In its first year, the Hoxton Apprentice expects to produce 48 graduates to NVQ2 standard. At that rate it would do little to dent the industry's escalating labour shortage. But this is only the first pilot project of what they hope will be many.
London Mayor Ken Livingstone would like to see 10 across the capital alone. This first Restaurant for Life - a partnership between charities Training for Life, Shoreditch Our Way and the Corporation of London, plus significant sponsorship from both the Whitbread and Compass groups - will spawn others in regeneration districts in cities across the UK. "If you had 20 of them you'd start to make a serious impact on the labour market," says Mike Dowding, former manager of River Café and still partner in the Oak gastropub in London's Westbourne Park Road. He began as a volunteer for the project and is now managing director of Restaurants for Life. "So far, Hoxton is going brilliantly - it has its good days and its bad days, but this is the restaurant trade, so no surprises there," he says.
Certainly, diners seemed to be enjoying the whole experience - from drinks outside in the sunshine to beautifully-presented food and service that was remarkably smooth for only week two of their "soft" opening. If I had to choose between waiting staff who seemed slightly timid for a gang who'd just been on work experience, and "Have a nice day" TGI Fridays, I know which I prefer. Kemi Oluwadare, 38, had only cooked for her four children, aged three to 10, before the Job Centre put her forward for one of the places. Despite the difficulties of fitting restaurant shifts alongside her family, she loves it and says she has much more confidence - especially from the "good customer, bad customer" role-play sessions that foster interpersonal skills.
"I've worked as a catering assistant preparing vegetables, but if you're a catering assistant you don't learn much, and one day I want to have my own restaurant," she says. "I applied because I wanted to learn to cook but we all have to do front-of-house and bar work as well, and it's good to get that experience." Fellow trainee Ian Paul, 36, had been unemployed for 18 months. He'd wanted to go into catering but found it hard to fit into a conventional college course. "In college it's just like jobs for the tutors, but here they teach us one-to-one. I think there should be more of this kind of training and maybe more people would want to come in," says Ian, who now wants to work on a cruise liner. The menu is devised by Prue, who says: "I thought I'd never set foot in a kitchen again," but seems to be revelling in it.
Awarded the OBE in 1989 for services to food and catering, she founded Leith's School of Food and Wine, had a Michelinstarred restaurant, has been in television series and written 12 cook books. But today she puts her formidable energy into training and management as chairman of six organisations, including Ashridge Management College and Forum for the Future. A trustee for Training for Life, she is a driving force behind Hoxton Apprentice. Dishes range from their signature Cambodian salad of crab, prawns, pomegranate seeds and coconut, through chunky salmon fishcakes with warm hollandaise to fresh mushroom ravioli with truffle oil and a plate of big, fat chips dusted with curry powder.
Prue designed them to give the apprentices what she calls flexible "assembly" skills in the basics - choosing fresh produce, finely chopping fruit and vegetables for salads, and attractive presentation on a plate. "We are not like Jamie - he's trying to turn out a really good gastronomic chef. We try to make people employable," she says. But the apprentices rather hijacked her concept by turning out to be so enthusiastic that they wanted to make everything themselves - right down to the pasta. They do it under the friendly eye of head chef Ben Carpenter, a Kiwi with 20 years' experience in the restaurant trade, and previously senior sous chef at the Conrad, Chelsea Harbour.
He only got his apprentices into the new kitchen two weeks before opening, and had spent three weeks simply concentrating on taking them through every dish on the menu. "It was quite hard. Some had worked in the industry but not in cooking as such," he says. "Attendance was the biggest problem at first - half an hour or an hour late, which would normally get them sacked." But now, with the restaurant and trainees buzzing, he feels confident. "I have had extreme satisfaction in the last two to three months and now know that in a month they will be going out into the workforce. "They're up to speed and could work in any kitchen. I think some could be great chefs."
The Hoxton Apprentice The Hoxton Apprentice is at 16 Hoxton Square, Shoreditch (near Old Street tube), open Tuesday to Sunday 11am-11pm, 020 7749 2828.
It is part of a larger Prospect Centre which will provide training and support facilities for local people, including business start-up accommodation, aiming to help 200 unemployed people a yea
