Hattersley-born chef Iain Thomas is a pretty big deal. You might well have tried his food - either at Ancoats’ gastro-pub, Edinburgh Castle, or back in the day at Establishment on King Street - the building that is now home to Italian restaurant Rosso.
It was here that he met chef David Aspin - who had trained alongside Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay - and the pair ended up working together at a string of acclaimed Scottish restaurants, including Paul Kitching’s 21212 in Edinburgh.
His name might also ring a bell if you’ve dined at The Alan, a boutique hotel on the edge of Manchester’s Chinatown. Last year, Iain’s food won over acclaimed food critic Jay Rayner, who described the chef’s cooking as “truly delightful”, and his menu of “diverting dishes” as ” “admirably tight”.
But, following the glowing review, and despite being at the peak of his career, the chef, who has been working in kitchens since he was 16, decided to step back. What the hotel wanted didn’t quite align with Iain’s vision for a restaurant.
Fast forward to today, and the chef has teamed up with the hotel’s former head of sales and marketing, David O’Connor, to create ‘Our Place', a culinary concept for ‘the least, the last and the lost’. The menus are refined and carefully considered, the dishes burst with flavour and provenance, and the restaurant, well, that doesn’t quite exist yet.
“The challenge that we’re finding is to be a good chef or salesperson, you need experience and qualifications, which we both have, but to own a business you need money, which we don’t have at the moment,” laughs David, as we sit down to discuss the venture in one of their partner venues, Open Kitchen Café & Bar at the People’s History Museum.
Describing themselves as a ‘homeless restaurant’, Our Place is best described as a roaming supper club, which pops up at venues - from cafes and bistros to wine bars and taprooms - across the region.
The idea took root in Iain’s mind during lockdown, when without furlough to fall back on, the chef found a new sense of purpose - and a small income - growing produce on his allotment at community growing hub Hattersley Projects in Hyde. It was during this time that he really began to think about how he could be more sustainable as a chef.
“During lockdown I got into gardening and at the allotment I turned a lot of produce into chutneys and preserves, and people around where I live would buy hampers,” explains Iain. “I think it was then that I realised how hard it is to be an artisan or a small business.
“I’ve spoken to a lot of suppliers and businesses, like Michael from Cinderwood Market Garden, and basically we need to create co-operatives within the food community, so we’re more sustainable and less wasteful. So, for example, he doesn’t sell mushrooms but Polyspore in Altrincham do, and while they may not have cucumbers, another local supplier could plug that gap, and so on.”
Joining forces with David, who admits he has had to do a lot of learning around sustainability, the pair set about launching a series of supper clubs, which would support these types of local suppliers and producers, as well as micro-businesses, and co-operatives, and use produce from community gardens like Hattersley, but also Platt Fields Market Garden.
As David explains: “Iain educated me a lot on the sustainability side. I was used to working with big bulk things, catering for big 500-plus weddings in previous hotel roles. I’ve had to learn a lot, and I recognise I was part of the problem.”
As well as working with Cinderwood and Polyspore, Iain has been having conversations with Littlewoods butchers and the Crafty Cheeseman, amongst others, to ensure what arrives on diners’ plates is seasonal, sustainable and local. From starters through to desserts, dishes are a testament to this thoughtful sourcing, and of course, Iain’s excellent cooking.
At a Burns Night supper club earlier this year, homemade bread rolls slathered in butter by the Crafty Cheeseman - made using whey left over in the cheesemaking process - kicked things off, before a thick and creamy Scottish soup known as Cullen Skink, and a twist on haggis, neeps and tatties, showed off Iain’s culinary flair.
“We made our own haggis for that night” Iain says proudly. “I don’t think anywhere else in Manchester can say that they do the same.”
Menus for their other supper clubs, held at venues including Track brewery’s taproom, Kerb wine bar and Stockport bakery Yellowhammer will vary depending on what is available from suppliers and growers, but diners can expect dishes like Polyspore mushrooms with pearl barley and Yorkshire pecorino in a nod to one of Iain’s Italian suppliers, based in Inverness, and Littlewoods’ beef rump with onions, ox tongue and small chips known as chipettes, which the chef explains were the result of a ingenious accident.
“When I was working for Paul Kitching - God rest his soul - he went absolutely crazy when someone made the chips too small. He was telling them off and I cockily said, ‘chef why don’t you call them chipettes’, and he liked that and they went on the menu, so that’s a little ode to him."
There will also be Iain’s lamb fat cabbage, which went down a storm at The Alan, plus an amazing riff on suet pudding, and an elevated rhubarb and custard dessert using rhubarb from the chef’s allotment.
The supper clubs will also build on David's previous work at The Alan, bringing local creatives to the fore. Their aim is to spotlight emerging creatives, whether they're a musician, painter or spoken word artist, and give them a platform at the supper clubs.
Furthering their socially conscious mantra, they’ve also partnered with Only A Pavement Away, and are giving £5 from each event to the homeless charity. In the long term, and once they have a brick-and-mortar offering, they are looking to employ those experiencing homelessness.
As David says: “People that are homeless are not just the person you see outside the coffee shop, it could someone who has recently left the army and has nowhere to go, or someone escaping domestic violence - lots of different people from different backgrounds have first-hand experience of it.
"When we open we want to employ people who are homeless and match them with people from the industry so we can train people up so they can have a viable career in hospitality.
"It would be really nice to have Our Place as a restaurant, train someone up, and two or three years later they go on to be the head sommelier in the new Stock Exchange hotel restaurant. We're trying to show people that you can run a business with profit for purpose at its heart."
Our Place's next supper clubs take place on Saturday, March 18 at Yellowhammer in Stockport.
Read more:
