Gabriel Waterhouse – Food for Thought

Tucked down a side street off Regent’s Canal in Bethnal Green lies an unassuming warehouse with a double-height ceiling, low-hanging lights and a “borderless” kitchen that flows seamlessly through the space. Bundles of dried flowers punctuate the room and terracotta ceramics thaw the otherwise cold-steel building. One could easily mistake this for a Scandi-inspired showroom, but this is something far more memorable.

This is home to The Water House Project — a hybrid restaurant that coalesces the atmosphere of a supper club with fine dining to pioneer a concept of “social fine dining.” Through a nine-course (or six-course) tasting menu and accompanying wines, the chef-patron Gabriel Waterhouse steers his diners on an odyssey through modern British cuisine.

Gabriel Waterhouse grew up alongside three brothers in rural Northumberland, where his neighbours were a cohort of local farmers. Mealtimes in the Waterhouse household tended to focus on vegetable-heavy meals, such as slow-cooked stews and ratatouilles. “The only occasional times we would have meat is if there was a shoot on,” the softly-spoken Waterhouse says. “The farmers would leave us a brace of pheasants, and we would make a roast out of those. But for me, vegetables have always been more interesting and versatile, and I’ve always found it strange to base a meal around a protein rather than working the other way around.”

Waterhouse went on to study Philosophy at the University of Liverpool. In his spare time, he worked at a French bistro in Hexham and gained a taste of the world of restaurateuring. After completing his degree, Waterhouse worked as a cook under the eye of Herbert Berger. Eventually, he went on to work at the Michelin-starred restaurant Galvin La Chappelle, where he operated in a high-intensity kitchen for the first time. “Looking back,” he reflects, “I learnt how to be a good cook with Herbert and a good chef with Galvin. Those skills of being ultra-precise, fast-paced, and knowing how to run a service properly were important for me to know. At first, it was tricky, but you just got to hammer on through with it.”

After a year-and-a-half, Waterhouse began to think more about experimenting with his own style of cuisine. “I’d always felt that, if I was going to go into this line of work, my dream was to have my own place,” he says, “it can be tough work in a restaurant, so why not work for yourself?”

Waterhouse then pivoted from full-time to part-time and began hosting supper clubs from his flat on Bethnal Green on Friday and Saturday evenings. “Luckily, I didn’t get too stuck in other chefs’ way of cooking as I had only worked in two places, so I felt I had a lot more flexibility to experiment.”

“Although my first few menus at the supper clubs were so heavy and all my guests couldn’t finish! I remember serving a ham hock terrine, a risotto, some lamb dish but looking back, the portions were all wrong, and I wouldn’t consider that my style now, but it was just all part of the process.”

The Water House Project had always been an idea of Gabriel’s, and he is proud to have let it evolve and bloom slowly over the years, from a humble supper club to a fully-fledged restaurant. “That’s why I wanted to use the word ‘project’ as we are always evolving and changing,” he says.

The Water House Project opened in 2015 with a focus on bridging the gap between fine dining elegance and the convivial atmosphere of at-home dining. The pièce de résistance of the Project has to be the borderless kitchen and long communal tables, where Waterhouse and his fleet ebb and flow between the tables to serve the food and pour the wine in what feels like a communal ritual.

 “We wanted the restaurant to be mindful and thoughtful,” says Waterhouse. “We worked with Hi-Spec design to create the feel of an open space where everything was on the same level. The industrial feel can be cold and impersonal, and there’s no real personality, but we decided to harness the big windows, and furniture to reflect a warmer, earthier feel.”

Like the interiors of The Water House Project, Gabriel’s approach to his menu is premised on simplicity and is vegetable-led with Nordic influences (although Waterhouse cites Northumberland as his bigger influence). My guest and I had perfectly timed our trip to The Water House Project, where the sky was impeccably blue, and the furniture, flowers and diners were drenched in the springtime sunshine. We christened the meal with a cocktail — a choice between a vodka martini or sparkling wine — before we were whisked away on a tour of several vineyards of small-scale and low-intervention wine producers from the Loire Valley in France to Catalunya in Spain.

We were here to try the spring six-course lunch menu, which began with a couple of snacks, including glazed hot-cross buns with spiced shredded lamb and sweet potato parcelled up inside and a pair of butterfly-like cylinders of lobster, kaffir lime and a light sweetcorn mousse.

Of all the courses, the showstopper had to be the St Austell mussels with preserved lemon and fermented artichoke — a moan-worthy mouthful of the sea which made us want to head for Cornwall and go foraging for an extra bite. Other highlights were the palette-cleanser of buttermilk, bay, fennel and grape and the following dessert of smoked ricotta, encased in a chocolate circle imprinted with the Waterhouse logo and bejewelled with homemade granola. Together, the six courses made for a novel exploration of seasonality and provenance through dishes — and drink — that paid homage to their roots. We almost booked the nine-course dinner there and then.

“The main thing I want to achieve at The Water House Project is skilful flavour combination,” says Waterhouse. “I find it disappointing when I eat something, and the flavours don’t work. With a tasting menu, you have the chance to be curious and playful with flavour. Take the mussels, for example. With a dish like that, you want it to have all the essence of the ingredients and make them more palatable. So I used the sweetness of the lemon, so it isn’t just salt and sea, and then the artichoke brings a fermented complexity. It’s all a balancing act.”

While most chefs say they gain inspiration for their menus through working ingredient-first, interestingly, Waterhouse is plate-first. “I visited a ceramicist in Gloucestershire the other day, and I was saying to him that the plate informs a lot of the food I want to cook,” he says. “I think I work by visualising the look of a dish I want to achieve. I think it is quite an unusual way to do things but I see the plate as a canvas.”

For Gabriel Waterhouse’s last ever supper he picks Moules marinière for a starter, a main course of braised lamb shoulder and the Delia Smith recipe of hot chocolate fondant with rum inside for dessert. To drink, earl grey tea.

“I want people to leave the Water House Project feeling calm and that they’ve had a special experience,” concludes Waterhouse. “That they feel mindful about what they’ve had and sort of centred. That’s how I always want to feel after a meal, that it has opened my senses to the environment around me.”

Gabriel Waterhouse’s recipe for Mussels with fermented Jerusalem artichokes, preserved lemon, mussel broth and chive oil (serves 2)

Some of the preparations in this recipe will give you a larger quantity than you need for this dish but can be kept in the fridge and used again over a period of weeks and months. The dish is best served with sourdough to mop up the broth.

Ingredients

For the fermented artichokes – At least 2 weeks in advance.
If you choose not to ferment – you can finely dice an artichoke on the day

1kg Jerusalem artichokes (finely sliced) 1 ltr water
20g salt

For the preserved lemon

6 thick-skinned lemons 1ltr water 35g salt
1kg sugar
750ml water

2 cloves garlic 3 bay leaves 1/2 vanilla pod 3 star anise

To cook the mussels

1 kg mussels (we use St. Austell’s which come from Cornwall or Shetland from Scotland) 1 shallot (sliced)
2 tbsp fennel seeds
3 star anise

2 bay leaves
1 crushed garlic clove 2 sprigs thyme
1 glug of olive oil 175ml white wine

For the mussel broth

Stock from mussels (passed through sieve) 150ml double cream
Juice of 1 lemon
50ml preserved lemon stock (from above recipe) 4g salt

For the chive oil

1 bunch of chives (20g) 100ml olive oil

Method

Fermented artichokes

Scrub the artichokes clean then finely slice them to 5mm thickness. Sterilise a kilner jar by first removing the rubber seal then heating it in the oven at 160 °C for 10 minutes.

Mix 20g table salt with 1 ltr of water until dissolved. Remove the jar from the oven and once cool place the sliced artichokes inside. Pour the salt water over the top and place a section of parchment or clingfilm inside the jar, covering the artichokes.

Submerge them under the water using a small weight such as a stone or baking beads wrapped in clingfilm. Seal the jar and store in a cool place.

Over the coming days and weeks, gently open and close the jar to “burp” it. This will allow the carbon dioxide gas to escape as the fermentation process takes place. When the jar stops ‘burping’ the artichokes are ready.

Preserved lemons

Cut the top and bottoms of the lemons and portion into 6 wedges. Place the lemons into a pan with the water and salt and bring to a simmer for 1 hour until tender – it’s worth cutting a piece of the lemon skin and tasting it for the right texture, it should be tender and easy to bite without being mushy.

Pass the lemons through a colander to drain the water, then return them to the same pan adding the sugar, water, garlic cloves, bay leaves, vanilla pod and star anise. Bring to a simmer once more, remove from the heat and leave to cool at room temperature.

Store the lemons with their cooking liquid in sealed containers or Kilner jars in the fridge. These can be kept for up to 6 months.

Chive oil

In a jug blender, blend the chives and oil for 5 minutes until the oil begins to steam. Set a piece of j-cloth / muslin cloth or tea towel over a sieve and pass the oil through, collecting the
oil in a container below.

Mussels

Clean the mussels by running them under cold water for 5 minutes, removing any large bits of seaweed with your hands, and then drain them through a colander.

Over a gentle heat, heat the olive oil sweating the shallot, fennel seeds, star anise, garlic and thyme for several minutes until soft. Turn up the heat adding the white wine and bring to the boil. Drop the mussels into the pan and place a sealed lid on top, give the pan a quick shake and cook for 3-4 minutes. The mussels are cooked once opened fully.

Remove the lid and using your hands separate the mussels from their shells, you can discard the shells. Pass the stock through a fine sieve into a saucepan, return the mussel flesh into the stock pan and cover with the cream, preserved lemon cooking liquid, lemon juice and salt. Finely dice a handful of fermented/raw artichokes and 4 preserved lemon skins and add to the pan.

To Serve

Gently reheat the mussels in the broth until warmed through, checking the seasoning with salt and lemon juice. Add a few spoonfuls of chive oil to the pan “splitting” the cream. Spoon the mussels into your bowl by pouring over the remaining stock and spooning over a little more chive oil.