It has been years in the making but the big day has finally arrived for Nottingham's MasterChef: The Professionals winner Laurence Henry. The 2018 champion had been dreaming of opening his own restaurant since leaving his job as a sous chef at two Michelin-starred Restaurant Sat Bains.
Cleaver & Wake opens on Wednesday evening (October 19) and for the chef being in the kitchen is his "happy place" after staring at architect's plans and sitting in meetings. The path didn't exactly pan out how he first imagined.
He'd got his sights set on an existing restaurant that had gone on the market in the city. At the same time he was approached about a potential second venue at the new Island Quarter development.
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"Covid scrapped my plans," he said, as the pandemic put paid to his takeover proposal. However, in a way it did him a favour leading to the role of chef patron at his own purpose-built fine dining restaurant Cleaver & Wake, along with Binks Yard, the recently opened all-day dining, drinking and entertainment venue next to the canal, off London Road.
The striking Victorian-style building is part of a wider £1bn regeneration scheme, which includes an 18-storey hotel and hundreds of flats at the former Boots Island site, a wasteland for many years. Laurence, from Mapperley, said: "I remember walking the derelict site trying to envisage what the future plans were and I was a bit unsure at first as it was just a patch of dirty grass next to the canal. As soon as I saw the plans for the rest of the Island Quarter I thought 'I want to be a part of this'. It's just been a really exciting thing to be part of and see grow.
"It's been stressful but it's been really, really exciting overall. We've got lots of bookings, I'm just hoping it's well received. It's exciting finally to have a place where there are no rules, we can just tweak as we please and change dishes as and when.
"I had complete freedom to design the kitchen and worked on the restaurant with interior designers, I still had input but they did such a fantastic job. Even with regards to the building, we were sat in an office four years ago looking at floor plans, layouts, moving walls, moving doors, looking at the flow of the building, so I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to do the whole thing from the ground up. It's not something you get to do every day."
"It's taken such a lot to get here - it's almost the end of that chapter and the beginning of a new one. I'm really excited for service later. This is all I wanted. There have been fantastic opportunities one after another though," added Laurence, who after MasterChef cooked for visitors to Nottinghamshire Hospice, ran home delivery service Quarantine Kitchen during lockdown, had a chicken wings and bao buns pop-up at No. 8 Deli in West Bridgford, and teamed up with the award-winning Snobby Butcher in Sherwood to serve high-end burgers.
Cleaver & Wake is stylish, elegant and, although modern, there's a definite leaning towards the architecture of a bygone age. Most of the tables in the 80-seater restaurant overlook the theatre of the open kitchen where at 10am on Wednesday around a dozen chefs were already beavering away ready for delivering a fine dining experience to the evening's guests.
The bar for before and after dinner drinks has a further 40 seats inside and, for the warmer months, 20 on a terrace. The bar menu includes cured plates of meat and fish and oysters. There are also some interesting spirits and cocktails. Rewilding comes with vodka, Douglas fir sherbet, nettles, Birch spirit, verde chilli, Timur pepper and Madre zezcal, while Dandelion's description is beeswax, vodka, Italicus , dandelion tea meade and Nixta.
There's three Modern British menus to savour, each using the very best seasonal ingredients from producers across the British Isles. As the opening date was pushed back again and again, Laurence rewrote the menu three times, starting with spring, then summer and finally success with autumn/winter vibes.
Diners can look forward to lobster, turbot, beef short-rib and a Boston chop for two. Then there's the winning pork loin with nashi pear which Laurence presented to the MasterChef judges in the final. Veggie options include maitake mushroom and autumn squash agnolotti
Starters include sea trout ceviche, oxtail and hollandaise, and Orkney scallop. The dessert section has a dish that's particularly close to his heart. Grandpa's Coffee Ice Cream, with luxurious Kahlua coffee ice cream, chocolate coffee crumb and pecan tuille is a tribute to his grandfather Donald Henry and happy childhood memories of summer holidays and after-school visits.
Laurence said: "There is nothing I would love more than my grandpa to come to the restaurant and see it but unfortunately he passed away a few years ago. Growing up he'd always give us ice cream. His favourite was coffee ice cream and Haagen-Dazs Pralines & Cream so I wanted to have a little nod to him as a dessert that's never going to come off the menu. He always used to pour a little shot of milk over it. Food is memories and that's such as poignant memory for me."
Opening a high-end restaurant in the midst of a cost of living crisis comes with obvious anxieties when the price of a main course is around £24 to £36. Charges reflect the rocketing cost of ingredients, energy bills and labour but Laurence said they've done their best to make it accessible, especially the lunchtime menu.
"The price of fish is extortionate so naturally there's going to be a few items that are slightly higher. I've gone down the route of doing a little bit more fish and seafood because it's something I really love to cook and it's something not a lot of people do in Nottingham.
"Turbot is going to be slightly more expensive. We are trying to do it so we have a good really balance - it's not just all truffle and caviar."
The restaurant will be open for lunch and dinner Wednesday to Saturday, offering a set lunchtime menu of two courses for £35 and three for £45. Starters include duck liver parfait and heritage carrot with dukkha, mains of sirloin steak, roast halibut and pearl barley risotto, and desserts of chocolate delice and Bramley apple pie.
The Sunday lunch menu will change each week but examples are pork belly, beef wellington and mushroom pithivier. One-off tasting menus for special occasions such as Valentine's Day will be introduced further down the line.
Encouraged to apply for MasterChef by his mum Allison and sister Lily, Laurence said: "It's something I'm glad I did and will always remember but after four years I'm so excited to have other things that's I've been working towards and I'd rather start looking towards the future now."
The Cleaver & Wake kitchen has around dozen chefs, with the best part of 30 across the whole business. "It's great in this current climate. Going into this that was my biggest concern getting people and getting the right people and this one thing that's pleasantly surprised me. We get the opportunity to work with some really fantastic chefs. I'm genuinely really proud of them," he said.
General manager David Trovao, a Portuguese native, moved from Oxford to Nottingham for the appointment. "I fell in love with the building, with the ethos of the project and with the city. I grew up being a fan of Robin Hood - he was my hero. I wanted to dress up as him, it's true, and suddenly I have the chance to come and work in this beautiful city.
"I have known about the project since the early days and I think it's something that will change the city forever. I think this is the beginning of something very, very special."
Having sampled all the dishes his top recommendations are the sea trout ceviche to start. The main, "a difficult one, there are so many", is the pork loin and belly and for dessert, chocolate delice. "Very rich but if you combine with one of our amazing dessert wines, it's the perfect end to your meal."
He said the restaurant will have a relaxed vibe, steering away from pretentiousness. "I am trying to create a very friendly service around this amazing food to complement the food. We want this to be an experience from the moment you walk through the door but a very friendly and relaxed approach."
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