Will Murray isn’t sure about the toad in the hole. In the soft gleam of a prep kitchen, deep below St James’s in London, the chef-patron and co-founder of Fallow frowns at a pan of puffy bronzed batter and extruded sausages. “Do you think we need to do it again?” asks one of his chefs, Emma Taiwo, approaching the pass. “I think we need to do it again,” says Murray, striking an apologetic tone amid the waft of simmering gravy.
On the face of it, this level of perfectionism is not surprising – Murray and his fellow chef and co-founder Jack Croft both emerged from the fastidious, Michelin-starred environment of Heston Blumenthal’s Dinner. What is unexpected is that the people this dish is being made for will never actually taste it. Next to the worktop where Murray and Croft stand, a three-person production crew fiddles with iPhones, audio equipment and propped-up wearable cameras.
