Phil champions home cooking
Last updated at 15:55, Thursday, 02 October 2008
HAVING grown up in Tynedale and learned the basics of his trade in some of the district’s top restaurants, it seems there’s just no place like home for chef Phil Hall.
After working his way up the ladder to become head chef at Matfen Hall Hotel, the bright lights and “big smoke” of London don’t seem to have any appeal.
Clearly passionate about food, he champions local produce and speaks highly of what Northumberland has to offer, using the county’s fresh produce in his own kitchen wherever possible.
Having grown up in Haltwhistle, where his parents still live, he holds the early training he received in his home town as a teenager with high regard.
However, al-though his enthusiasm for his work shines through today, Phil admits he wasn’t immediately drawn to his chosen career path.
“If I’m honest, I wanted to be Indiana Jones. I really was into the whole archaeology thing when I was much younger,” Phil (34) said with a laugh.
But the former Haltwhistle First and South Tynedale Middle School pupil soon grew out of his historical obsession.
“I wasn’t particularly good at anything at school. I did all right in the end but wouldn’t say that I enjoyed lessons. I hated maths and English and was banned from home economics.
“I was a bit of a joker and let’s just say I ended up using eggs and flour for all the wrong reasons,” Phil admitted.
But it was as he progressed through Hexham’s Queen Elizabeth High School that Phil began to realise where his talent lay, and his grounding in the school’s well-known restaurant, The Charter, started off his culinary journey.
He completed a number of City and Guilds qualifications while at the school in basic skills such as pastry, which gave him the grounding necessary to go on to study at college.
He explained: “I went to Northumberland College and did a BTEC in hospitality and supervisory management, which was the natural next step for me. I still didn’t know much else about what I wanted to do with my life other than that I liked cooking.”
Monkwearmouth College in Sunderland was the next stop for the budding chef and this time it was to do a HND in hotel management.
Phil said: “It was a good opportunity to do the course at that time because it was being leased from Birmingham University, which was one of the main places for that kind of study.
“All the time I was at college I was working at the Milecastle Inn in Haltwhistle in my spare time, and that was where I was really able to try out what I was learning and get more of a chance to be hands-on.”
But before he ever gained full-time employment in catering, Phil decided to try working on the other side of hospitality first.
“I did front of house stuff at the Copthorne Hotel in Newcastle and also at Lumley Castle for a little while. In both places I generally did a bit of everything from portering to waiting on at functions,” Phil explained.
“I really enjoyed the camaraderie that I’d had at the Milecastle Inn. Everyone just mucked in together and got the job done. It’s always been a popular place and won pub of the year in the early 1990s.”
But by the time Phil had reached his early 20s, the draw of working in a big city had become too great to ignore and he decided to try it out.
He took a job at London’s Tower Thistle Hotel as kitchen staff and describes his experience as a “culture shock”.
“London was nothing like I’d ever experienced. There were five kitchens which not only fed goodness knows how many guests each day but also had to serve about 1,100 staff.
“It was a culture shock, without a doubt, and although it was a good laugh, it didn’t take me long to realise I’d had enough.
“Some people rave about working in the Big Smoke but I was actually quite homesick and missed the general friendliness and the way people are in the North-East.”
Despite the experience being short, Phil admits it taught him a lot, not least how to work under huge pressure.
He said: “Not only did working in London teach me how to organise myself, but it taught me how to organise other people. And that came in useful for working at Lauder Grange.”
Lauder Grange Country House Hotel was in business for just 18 months before it went into liquidation late in 1999.
But during that short time the restaurant fast gained a reputation for its food and regularly served 120 covers for Sunday lunch.
Luckily the turn of the millennium brought with it a tremendous new opportunity for Phil.
He explained: “I applied for the position of chef de partie at Matfen Hall and started work on January 31, 2000. It’s strange the things like that which you remember.”
From there, at what seems like lightning speed, Phil rose through the ranks to sous chef, senior sous chef and head chef by 2002.
Since then Phil, who is now married to Fiona and has a two-year-old daughter Jessica, has gradually implemented improvements and changes into the kitchen which have been rolled out into the double AA rosette winning Library and Print Room restaurant, Conservatory Bar and Keepers Lodge.
Phil, who lives in Stocksfield with his family, said: “The kitchen is slightly bigger and better equipped now and I have intro-duced a separate pastry section.
“We change the menu frequently to suit what we have coming in and whatever is in season, and we will always try to buy local wherever possible.”
While freshly prepared local game such as pigeon and venison are common-place on the menu, Phil is not afraid to try something a bit different.
In fact when Ridley’s Fish and Game, which has premises in Acomb, contacted Phil to say it had taken delivery of grey squirrel, he was only to happy to take some off their hands.
“We did go for it with the squirrel and had it on the menu as a starter for a while in a terrine. It’s all about trying the unknown and giving things a try to keep the customers coming back and further the business.”
First published at 13:37, Thursday, 02 October 2008
Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk
