The Kingham Plough, Kingham, Oxfordshire
08.07.09
Slim, shy and well-spoken, Emily Watkins certainly doesn’t fit the traditional chef stereotype. In another life, it would be easier to imagine her in a Thomas Hardy or Jane Austen novel rather than working in the bear pit that is the professional kitchen.
All the more extraordinary is the fact that Emily has cooked her way to the top in such a short time.
By the age of 25 she was the sous chef at Heston Blumenthal’s three Michelin star restaurant The Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, and now, three years later, she has just opened her first solo venture - a drop dead gorgeous dining pub in the Cotswolds.
A former Bristol University student who studied business and economic politics, Dorset-born Emily didn’t really think about cooking as a career until after she finished her studies.
She left her office job in London after just six months to move to Italy with the grand notion that she would become a chef, despite the fact she’d never worked in a kitchen before.
“Everybody kept saying ‘don’t do it’,” she laughs. “I jacked in my job and got on a plane to Italy with a list of all the restaurants I wanted to work in even though I didn’t speak the language and had no CV. When I got there I realised it wasn’t the smartest thing I’d ever done.”
Emily eventually got a job in a top restaurant in Florence, where she rapidly worked her way up to the position of sous chef in a brigade of 18 Italian men.
By 2002, Emily started to get itchy feet and wanted to return to England. She’d heard about Heston Blumenthal’s restaurant and was interested in his scientific approach to cooking.
“As I hadn’t worked anywhere else, I thought I had no chance, but on the day I phoned they said they were actually looking for somebody. They said I had to go over for a trial within hours so I got a flight the next day.
“My mum met me at the airport and drove me to The Fat Duck, I did the trial and they offered me the job. I couldn’t believe my ears. I had to go back to Italy to tell them I was leaving in a week.”
Emily spent two years at The Fat Duck, during which time it was named as the best restaurant in the world in Restaurant magazine. By the end of her time there, she had risen to the position of sous chef.
“It was an amazing time and Heston was an excellent boss. He was very encouraging and always wanted us to have input into the menus, come up with ideas and test things out.
“We were never less than 50 covers for lunch and 50 covers for dinner and most people were ordering the 21-course tasting menu so you’d be churning out up to 2,000 plates a day. It was hard work.”
When a medical problem forced her to leave The Fat Duck, Emily had to think about the next stage in her career.
“I didn’t want to leave at all but I had a problem with my hip and the doctors said I had to have an operation or rest for six months and I didn’t want surgery. I was loving it and I’d just been promoted to sous chef so it was very disappointing but at the same time I was in so much pain, I had no choice.”
After a spell working as a private chef, she teamed up with her old university friend Adam Dorrien-Smith to buy The Kingham Plough, a quintessentially English pub in the Oxfordshire village of Kingham - once voted by Country Life as ‘England’s favourite village’.
The pub, which also has seven bedrooms for guests, couldn’t be more perfectly situated as it backs on to the Daylesford Estate, which supplies much of the produce for Emily’s kitchen. A passionate advocate of using local producers, 80% of her suppliers are located within a 10-mile radius of the pub, including Blur bassist and Cotswold farmer Alex James, who supplies the pub with his cheeses.
And then there’s the brilliant producer of quails’ eggs Emily found by chance when she was driving around the area.
“There was a sign outside this house saying ‘quails eggs for sale’. I stopped to buy some and they were unbelievably delicious so I called the number and said can I speak to Ted, thinking it would be some old guy in his 70s. This 12-year-old boy answered. I couldn’t believe it. He looks after his quails beautifully but he’s quite a ruthless businessman and won’t budge on prices!”
The Kingham Plough, Kingham, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, OX7 6YD. Tel: 01608 658327
www.thekinghamplough.co.uk
