James Lowe: My career in Five Dishes
The chef comes clean on the challenges of running his touchstone restaurant Lyle’s for ten years, the state of play for London’s dining scene, how an award can boost profitability, and the five dishes that made him the culinary powerhouse that he is
Published: Tuesday 10th December 2024
James Lowe arrives at the table, his blue denim shirt rolled up, kitchen scars on his forearms like a fleshy palimpsest, and a big plastic mixing cup rattling with iced coffee. During our photoshoot, he’d had a nightmare with the plumbing. It had exploded, there was water everywhere…
“The Bear is real!” he exclaims, when I mention that it sounds like something that would happen in the television series. Over the next hour, he chats about the everyday difficulties that come with being a chef-patron but also how that struggle often pays off with results: the establishment of a community and the spark of creativity.
His restaurant, Lyle’s, is celebrating its tenth year of operation. “All of the accolades – winning a Michelin star, placing on the World’s 50 Best, they didn’t mean as much to me as making it ten years. That was all that I wanted to do when we opened Lyle’s in 2014. Make it ten years on a 20-year lease.” Lowe’s journey as a chef is well-documented. He was a late starter. Having aspired to train as a pilot, he took to the kitchens at the age of 23, when he ate at Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck and Fergus Henderson’s St John in the same week. He was inspired by the creativity evidenced in both restaurants at the time. “With the current climate in the industry, I don’t think that those kinds of restaurants could flourish in London today. There’s an expectation of immediate profitability. St John wasn’t always iconic. It took years as a slow-burn restaurant to get to where it is today.” Lowe noticed that the restaurants he most admired were run by owner-operators. He began working at The Wapping Project as a waiter, then did stints at La Trompette, The Fat Duck, The River Café, and as head chef at St John Bread and Wine, as well as starting a chef collective called The Young Turks. It became his goal to open his own “common-sense” restaurant before the age of 30 and make it the type of place that people felt they had to visit when in London.
He had no doubt in his mind that London needed a restaurant like Lyle’s, and that the concept behind it was a valid one: excellent food and wine underpinned by responsibly sourced produce from small farms and fishermen, served in a comfortable setting by nice people. “Just doing the basics…” he says.
The next 18 months were difficult. When Michelin awarded Lyle’s a star in 2016, “it took a restaurant that was losing money for 18 months and let us break even. We had a 25% boost in covers in the next month.” Since then, he’s weathered a pandemic, opened (and closed) other restaurants, and created spaces where chefs can discover and explore their own styles. “There’s not much turnover here,” he notes. “So when we change things up with new menus or guest series, it can be challenging for the staff. But great things often come out of it.”
When asked whether he’ll be doing the same thing in ten years, Lowe hedges, “I’m not sure. I spend half of the week in Brighton with my young daughter. I eat differently. Saturday lunch is my favourite service of the week. Friends, family, casual, with the natural light – I absolutely love it.” Here, he chats through the five dishes that helped shape his career.
Raw beef & oyster
St John Bread and Wine
"This dish makes me think about what British food means to me, a question I considered a lot when I was head chef at St John Bread and Wine. I was thinking about what I would do with my own food in the future within the St John framework. When I first started supper clubs, one of the first dishes that really resonated was a raw beef and oyster dish. Normally, a tartare has tonnes of dressings on it and by the end, you can taste capers and vinegar and mustard but no beef. I made a point of serving it simply, slightly warm, with aged beef, oil, and salt. The addition of oysters harks back to traditional British cooking, like the beef and oyster pie. Oysters were abundant, and they were put into meat pies and braises to bulk them out. It’s a cheap seasoning, and the salt is a flavour enhancer. Similarly, I love anchovies and garum with meat. Now I do it with thinly sliced, pared-back beef, fermented mushroom oil, and oysters used in an emulsion, as well as the physical pieces in the shell. I love that this dish has been evolving for 14 years."
Lyle's salad
Lyle's
"Shoreditch was very different when Lyle’s first opened, and dinner was a hard sell because people didn’t come to this neighbourhood to eat. I wanted local businesses and workers to come in for casual, light lunches. It was really important to me that we’d always have a salad on, and it inspired my hunt for great producers and small growers. In Britain, a salad is often relegated to side status or hidden at the bottom of the menu. I love places like Chez Panisse in California, where a salad is a legit dish. Our salad changes throughout the year, but the basics remain an interesting mix of leaves, mustards, sorrel, croutons and a nice cheese. When we had Alice Waters from Chez Panisse come in, she told me that she had so much respect for the Lyle’s salad. I was like, 'Oh my God!'"
Peas & Old Ford salad
St John Bread and Wine
"Everybody has a story about peas from Lyle’s because I quite rigorously quality-control them. I am obsessed. This was the first dish I ever put on the menu at St John. One of the rules that we were taught there was that you can’t include cheese in a salad. And I wanted to know… why not? In Spain, you’ll find manchego with peas. In the South of France, you’ll often find goat’s cheese in a salad. So I put it in anyway, with raw peas and lovage. Then, one of my all-time favourite farmers, Mary Holbrook, made this aged goat’s cheese in an alpine style. So I just put the salad together, and everyone was like, ‘Woah!’ And then Fergus tried it. He loved it."
Grilled mussels
Lyle's
"I always wanted to have grilled shellfish featured on the menu at lunchtime. The mussels were lightly inspired by the swimmer crabs at Asador Etxebarri in the Basque region of Spain. They cook them high above the coals and baste them constantly with butter, then cover them in a mess of flowers, so you end up licking your fingers to get all of the flavour and keep your clothes clean. We do it with a thick sauce made from our homemade butter and reduced apple cider, grilling mussels and then dousing them with fennel and pollen. It works because both our mussels and butter are so good, and the fire and smoke are picked up on the outside of the shells."
Brown butter cakes
Lyle's
"We just really love these – they’re so versatile. It’s a gluten-free recipe, which always gets bakers excited because people always come back for something that’s delicious and gluten-free. It’s very simple, cooked to order, and always served warm. It smells amazing when it comes out of the oven. In the early days of my career, I remember going to a French restaurant where they were like, ‘here is your choice of eight different flavoured madeleines’. People get so used to being impressed or obsessed with more complicated things that it’s nice to be able to dial it back and be like, ‘Why is this so good?’ It’s because it isn’t overcomplicated, and we just baked it now."
