PITCH PERFECT

Music? I can’t live without it. Nor, it seems, can many of the world’s best chefs. Last year I met Massimo Bottura, the acclaimed Italian chef best known for his three-Michelin-star restaurant Osteria Francescana in Modena, and his wife Lara Gilmore, who were in London  to promote their book Slow Food Fast Cars. The title could also include art ­– their restaurant Casa Maria Luigia houses works by Tracey Emin, Joseph Beuys and Damien Hirst, amongst others – but Bottura is also an avid vinyl collector.

“I’ve just bought a collection of original 1950s jazz records,” he tells me. “How many do I have altogether? Oh, 20,000 or more…” Then an assistant is hastily dispatched to the Rolling Stones shop on Carnaby Street to secure a store-exclusive copy of the band’s new album Hackney Diamonds, on red vinyl.

It’s surely no surprise that a chef should display such an obsessive attention to detail. It’s what they do: in sourcing the ingredients and preparing them, when choosing lighting or furniture for their restaurants, even in how they tweak the nose of the industry. But many shibboleths are dissipating, not least when it comes to how music is used – or how a chef is judged. In Pixar’s 2007 film Ratatouille, the absurdly self-regarding restaurant critic is called Anton Ego, imperiously voiced by the late Peter O’Toole (though apparently modeled on former Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti).

It’s very amusing, yet this evocation of stuffy old-school fine dining is a thing of the past, says two-Michelin-starred chef Tom Kerridge. “That’s a completely false perception. A great restaurant is about the vibe, the space, the energy and the food. The Michelin Guide is very good at understanding this. Things have definitely changed.”

Music, insists Kerridge, is fundamental to that. Some kitchens work in absolute silence, or as near to it as a working kitchen can get. But these places aren’t monasteries. “I’ve always been a big fan of music, because it brings a vibrancy. They’re difficult enough places to exist in without having some form of external encouragement,” Kerridge explains. Playlists are popular now, he adds, but his personal preference is to have the radio on. “When I was a younger chef, it didn’t matter so much, I just wanted ‘noise on’ for energy. But when you’re a business owner it’s important to know what’s going on. You’re affected by political decisions and global situations.”

Interestingly, when it comes to the music played in his restaurants – he has seven dotted around the UK – Kerridge adopts different strategies. At the Butcher’s Tap and Grills in Chelsea and Marlow (“boozers, community based pubs done really, really well”) a service called Music Concierge works with the team to devise a playlist that takes account of how the day evolves. Tuesday night, says Kerridge, is different to Saturday, although the connecting tissue is that there’s nothing worse than a silent restaurant.

At The Coach in Marlow, where customers sit at the counter and interact with the chefs from the open kitchen, there’s always music. Whereas with its more homely atmosphere, guests at the nearby Hand and Flowers will likely be listening to a mellow radio station which switches to a playlist at lunchtime, overseen by the pub’s longstanding chief barman, Anthony (Fro) Peart. The music is actually part of the duty of care Kerridge has to his staff; if it’s the same old thing on repeat, they might soon find themselves going through the motions. And that’s bad for business.

Meanwhile the flagship Kerridge’s Bar & Grill in Westminster is a big dining room with high ceilings, entertaining up to 160 on a Saturday night. “It’s a big, loud immersive space, so we’ll play 1990s indie, some soul, house… Nothing nightclubby but it’s a London restaurant, it’s in a hotel, when it’s packed it’s got a great vibe, so the playlist there has to reflect and maintain that energy,” says Kerridge. “I like the volume high in that space, so people have to speak a bit louder than normal.”

He also points to Ynyshir, in a refurbished country house south of Snowdonia National Park in Wales, UK, as an example of how far old orthodoxies are being pushed. As well as earning two Michelin stars and a global reputation, it has banished the specter of background “muzak” by employing a full-time DJ, Jacob Kelly. “My kids, food and music, I love them all, though not in that order,” head chef Gareth Ward tells me. “When I talked about opening my own restaurant, I always made a joke about having a full time DJ, playing vinyl because it’s so special.”

Yynshir’s food is ingredient-led, flavor-driven, fat-fuelled and meat-obsessed, says Ward. It is respectful of classic technique while pretty much ignoring it, and is a beautifully uncompromising experience that reflects the personality of its chef. Which very much includes the music.

“I’m currently sitting in Jacob Kelly’s front room surrounded by 10,000 records,” Ward says. “I had a little Rega turntable at first, before buying some Technics 1210s off a delivery guy I’d got talking to. Then I advertised for a full-time DJ and was fortunate to find Jacob, who’s taken it to a whole new level. I feel very lucky to get to watch and listen to this guy do his thing every night. It matches completely the way the restaurant and the business works. But the music’s not for the customers, it’s for me. If anyone asks us to turn it down, I say it’s for the guys in the team. They need a beat to work to, and Jacob keeps them moving.”

Kelly, a 30-year veteran of the music industry, splits his set into three sections. The Prelude features Latin, Jazz, reggae, hip hop, and a bit of disco. “For the main service period it’s three hours of deep house, about 118 or 119 bpm to start with, then it goes on a journey – as much as I dislike that word – through house, maybe into a bit of techno,” he explains. “Above 124 bpm the music becomes something else. That’s a 3am kind of vibe. I want the gear change to be a breath, not an anxiety attack. The final hour is a bit more familiar, a flashback – Prince, Madonna, to round it all off. From a musical perspective you’ve gone somewhere from
start to finish, just as you’ve been somewhere with the food.”

That, of course, remains the primary reason for making the trek to mid-Wales. Ward has a digital display in his kitchen that shows the age of the current batch of Welsh-reared wagyu beef, but the mixing decks aren’t too far away. “If you’re coming to work, and you’re here 16 or 17 hours a day, you’ve got to love it – it’s a passion,” he says. “We have one menu, and we put our own music on. We don’t follow any rules at Ynyshir. Things are changing, there are unique restaurants opening, and we are one of them. I say, please yourself and hopefully everyone else will be happy. Have a plan and stick to it. Do it your way.”

Bringing it back to the US, sommelier Sarina Garibović and her musician partner Sam Cassidy’s new venture, Small Hours in Minneapolis, is imagined as an intimate “hi-fi” wine bar, focused on the pleasures music brings to the experience of wine.

“The playlist at Small Hours focuses on full sides of albums. I think this is the best way to enjoy an album – as the artist intended,” says Cassidy. “We plan to mix up genres quite a bit, and nothing is really off limits here. We may bounce from an ambient record to an R&B title to a krautrock compilation. Whatever feels right in the moment and sounds good on the system.”

Cassidy is pulling from his extensive record collection which he’s been working on for close to two decades. “Our aim is to use both music and wine to foster a welcoming space where we urge guests to stay curious, both about what they are drinking, and what they are listening to.”