Great British Menu finalist quits restaurant to fix-up Kensington club

 
Aiming high: Adam Simmonds has big plans for the capital
Rod Kitson27 May 2014

A Great British Menu finalist has quit his Michelin-starred kitchen to transform a members’ club in Kensington which is reopening this week.

Adam Simmonds, who made it through the South-East region of the BBC competition earlier this month, was head chef at Danesfield House in Buckinghamshire before taking the job at Dryland on Kensington High Street.

It is set to reopen as Pavilion on Friday. Simmonds, 43, said: “It’s a different thing and completely out of my comfort zone, as I held Michelin stars in two separate restaurants and four AA rosettes. It is very different, but sometimes it is good to do something different.”

The head chef does not expect to pick up a star for the brasserie-style food, which will see a breakfast menu, a deli counter and a charcuterie section, and admitted he won’t be at Pavilion in the long term.

“I’ve reached my time in my career where I want to achieve certain things,” he said. “Everything is a stepping stone. I make no bones about it, I want my own restaurant and that’s my long-term goal, I want one in London, and that’s why I left Danesfield House.”

But he added: “I am 100 per cent committed to Pavilion, as well as trying to pursue my own career.”

He plans to open his own restaurant in the capital in 2015, when he finds the right building.

“Hopefully I can achieve that next year, because it doesn’t happen overnight,” he said. “I have no idea of the name yet. Until I see it, and get the feel of it, I have no idea. London is definitely in the top five cities for food worldwide. There’s a lot of restaurants with various styles, so if you can pit your wits in London, why not?”

In the BBC’s Great British Menu Simmonds will compete with eight of the country’s top chefs to create a banquet at St Paul’s Cathedral for war veterans on the 70th anniversary of D-Day. He made it through in a tie with Tom Sellers, from Bermondsey restaurant, Story, and said: “The brief this year was phenomenal because of what it represented.

“These people were 19, 20 years old when they went to war, and they gave their lives for us. To be able to honour that in a small way, for people who are still around, I felt honoured to be part of it. For that I was very grateful.

“If you look at youngsters, people that age now, half of them don’t want to get off their arse and do some work.”

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