This month’s Featured Chef…
David Everitt-Matthias
Chef/Patron, Le Champignon Sauvage
David Everitt-Matthias - Chef/Patron of Le Champignon Sauvage
David, thank you very much for taking the time to meet us today. It is a privilege to come to the Champignon Sauvage; I’ve never been here before. Let’s start by talking a little bit about your early career. . . I read that you worked at the Inn on the Park?
Yes, I started there in 1978 and that was my first job. On the day that I got the interview there I also had the papers through for the Army Catering Corps.
OK, so do you come from London?
Yes, I’m Wandsworth born and bred. So I had a choice, I was standing outside the Head Chefs Office – a guy called Jean Michel Bonin and he was discussing with his Sous Chef as to whether they needed anymore Apprentices. Anyway they offered me the job and I was there for 5 years. And Jean Michel Bonin was my first experience of a “BIG” Chef that could instil great fear in people!
I guess, it was a very traditionally run kitchen?
Yes, it was a Partie system – quite military in the way it was run.
Was that a good thing?
I think so, it taught me discipline. And through the discipline it taught me speed as well as organisation. Jean Michel Bonin was there for 3 years while I was there and during that time he finally thought I was OK and started promoting me. It took him about a year to start talking to me – he’d finally say something other than “YOU!” (laughter) and I think it was only because one night all of the veg chefs went out on a Stag Night and they all phoned in sick the next day – I was the only one left picking spinach and prepping potatoes, so he put me straight on the service and because I had the “intelligence” to watch how it was done, he said I’d done a good job on this particular service and that is when he started talking to me. So, I was there for 5 years and they sent me to Tante Claire on a Stagé for a month and that really changed my whole outlook on everything. Before I had been used to working with luxuries at the Four Seasons and there was Koffmann doing tripe with certain things and pigs trotters etc. And it also showed me restaurant style rather than hotel style.
