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Every week, our Money team interviews top chefs from around the UK, hearing about their cheap food hacks, views on the industry and more.
Today, they speak to Roger Pizey, head pastry chef at Fortnum and Mason…
A supermarket takeaway dessert I love is… Tesco’s finest meringue nests. I suppose in themselves they’re not really a takeaway dessert, but sometimes I whip something up quickly at home, a DIY Eton mess of sorts. If you add a few punnets of English raspberries and a tub of thick double cream to your shop, you can add a tiny bit of vanilla, break up the meringue and crush the raspberries. Voila!
For a cheap meal out I love…Volare in Bounds Green. It’s a pizza restaurant run by two Spanish sisters inspired by the love and passion of their Neapolitan great-grandfather, who opened his own pizzeria in Argentina in the 1920s. I would order the Prima Vera, which costs £14.95, so you can’t really go wrong there. Fior di latte mozzarella, wild rocket and some Bresaola on a tomato base – none of that white pizza nonsense!
There’s nothing worse than bringing a nice bottle with you to a dinner party… and then the hosts keep it for another occasion.
It’s really tough at the moment… There are lots of restaurants that are going to go under – especially with the rise in national insurance and minimum wage going up, as well as the new tronc system (changes to how tips are handled). The cost of ingredients has also wildly gone up. The quality of staff we have is not as good as it used to be, and from Brexit we lost lots of talent. But I feel optimistic about the 17-year-olds and the younger generation who seem to have a bit of zest and have a real interest in working hard, which is refreshing.
The toughest moment of my career was… When I started at Le Gavroche it was a three-star Michelin restaurant. Albert Roux was still at the helm, and there’s no doubting it was a military operation. If you didn’t shave, you were given a razor. If you were in…
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