The Chef at London’s Most Controversial Restaurant Goes on the Record

They want to feel rich, even if they aren't?

Yeah. And however, then you get the train drivers, the people working working-class jobs who are unionized, who've got good wages, who are coming in going, “I don't know what fuss is about. I've just took the day off. It's my birthday, and I'm out for a good day out. Get me a nice bottle of wine and gallons of food, and Chartreuse afterwards.”

That post where you said that any member of the organized working class can have a meal here really seemed to piss people off.

The reason I said that was because people were saying, “So it's only for rich people, this restaurant?” I just wanted to make that point. But the people that were riled up were exactly who I was talking about before, the downwardly mobile middle class. Like, “How dare you? So a train driver has more money than me?”

They were pissed off ostensibly on behalf of a certain kind of working class person, but what was actually pissing them off is that they thought you were calling them poor?

Yeah. But also I was, in their words, judging them for having not joined the trade union, saying, “If you're poor it's your fault because you haven't joined the trade union. You should have joined a union, and then you would have some money.” A bit of me is saying, “That's fucking true. It is your fault. Join a fucking union.”

The lads who've joined unions and who've organized on behalf of workers, and who can afford to come for lunch, I'm extremely, extremely happy to have them. They get treated well because they fucking put in the graft on behalf of the working class. People who just looked out for themselves and still can't afford to have lunch, fuck them.

That was one live wire. Then the other was saying, essentially, “If you're not going to come in here and order properly, order drinks, then it's not worth it to have you in.” I just wonder, after all of the controversy, if you still feel good saying that, or if you feel like you would've said it in a different way, or…

No. I still stand by it because it's just the truth. Generally speaking, if you don't order a proper meal and you don't drink, it's not really worth opening for you. Okay. In a month like January, we might have a table free. If that person comes in and says, “I see you've got a table free. Can I have a bowl of soup and a glass of water?” Obviously I'll give them a bowl of soup and a glass of water.

But to book a table in advance, like a week or two in advance, and because it's such a small room, it's mostly booked up, and there's friends of mine phoning in, there's restaurateurs, and they're going, “Can I get a table?” and I'm going, “I'm really sorry, but I don't have any tables,” and somebody just comes in and has a bowl of soup and a glass of water, I'm like, “Are you fucking having a laugh?”