THE JOY OF A GOOD STOVE
JEFF GALVIN
WE FOLLOW THE GALVIN BROTHERS AS THEY COUNT DOWN TO THE OPENING OF THEIR NEW CITY RESTAURANT
A GOOD STOVE is the heart of any restaurant, so you just have to make sure it’s right. Which is why for our new restaurant my brother Chris and I have designed our own, which was made in the workshops of Maestro Bonnet, stove-maker extraordinaire, in a little village near Lyon in France.
It’s like the Ferrari of stoves, and it took months to build, as many of the components are crafted by hand. We were very proud to see it being given a good polish.
It was quite another experience seeing it delivered, at 6.30AM one morning last month. The whole team was waiting to herald its arrival and Chris’s wife Sara was on hand with the camera to capture the moment when the great two tonne structure was crane-lifted off the lorry. As Chris said, she treated it like a Vogue fashion shoot.
Somewhat apprehensively, we watch as our £90k stove is hoisted into the air with a team of 20 (very strong) men in position to guide it onto the trolley and then wheel it some 450 yards into the restaurant and install it – making sure that it is facing the right way for the gas supply, of course.
Chris and I stand back and admire and although it’s now littered with fingerprints after all the manhandling, it’s still a marvellous piece of equipment and one that we both hope to rattle the pots on for many years to come.
We have waited a long time to own such a stove and so it feels a bit like Christmas when we also take delivery of our wood-fired oven from America, as recommended to us by the chef Wolfgang Puck. This takes pride of place in the Cafe de Luxe, the 80-seater pavement cafe and bar, which adjoins the main restaurant La Chapelle. It looks good and it needs to because this oven will be seen by diners in the cafe. We plan to cook a variety of wood fired meats, breads and fish on this or as the Italians say, “cotto a legna” (cooking on wood). You wait years for the stove of your dreams and two come at once.