36| August 2014 | restaurant| bighospitality.co.uk

International scope:
the Aussie chef has
global ambitions
36 | August 2014 | restaurant | bighospitality.co.uk
Scott Hallsworth
Ex-Nobu and
Wabi chef Scott
Hallsworth’s
star is in the
ascendancy,
with two
packed London
restaurants,
a link-up with
Mandarin
Oriental and
a further
deal with a
nightclub
impresario
Words/Joe Lutrario
heerfully flying the Aussie
flag, sartorially speaking, at
least, with cargo shorts and
a manga T-shirt on a rainy
London morning, it’s hard
to believe Scott Hallsworth
has just stepped off a
red-eye flight from Turkey.
It turns out that he can’t quite believe it
either. Last night he opened a Japanese
restaurant at the new Mandarin Oriental Hotel
in Bodrum. A few hours later he’s sitting in the
dining room at Kurobuta – his premium-casual
Japanese restaurant close to Marble Arch tube
– sipping a flat white.
All things considered, he looks remarkably
with it, although he does seem a little relieved to
be back in London. The Bodrum project was far
from being an easy birth – rather a prolonged
labour with no epidural.
“I’ve opened Japanese restaurants in many
different countries, but I’d have to say Turkey
has been one of the more difficult locations. I’d
draw parallels with Ghana, which is by some
margin the most bizarre place I’ve done a
restaurant. It’s a brand new resort and I think in
general the staff struggled to get their heads
around the fact that we’re serving an
internationally-minded crowd. There are lots of
rich Russians there.”
Hallsworth has garnered considerable
experience of a moneyed, international
clientele, having held senior chef roles at
influential top-end Japanese restaurant group
Nobu through the early and mid-noughties. His
current brace of London restaurants – there is
another Kurobuta on Chelsea’s King’s Road – are
more democratic in approach.
Both serve the same menu of small plates.
The food is essentially Japanese (see Guilty
pleasures, p39) but some dishes have a western
twist. Hallsworth has taken the majority of his
stylistic cues for Kurobuta from the Japanese
izakaya. Though often likened to a British pub
– it translates as ‘the roof with alcohol’ – it’s
perhaps best thought of as a boozy, accessible
restaurant with an emphasis on snack food.
“Bastardised dishes are common – I suppose
you could describe the cooking as fusion. They
tend to offer burgers, pasta, fried noodles
– whatever, really. Some are big on Korean
flavours: there’s a lot of kimchi around,” says
Hallsworth, who did most of his izakaya
research in Tokyo.
The menu categories and food at the Bodrum
restaurant are similar to the two existing
Kurobuta restaurants but the setting and look of
the space are far more high-end. Hallsworth’s
former employer, Nobuyuki ‘Nobu’ Matsuhisa,
was rumoured to be involved in the project but
apparently pulled out at the last minute, leaving
the Kurobuta team with an immaculate
no-expense-spared kitchen, replete with a
dedicated cold room for fish prep.
Working with a big hotel group carries
specific challenges – not least, navigating the
thicket of red tape that complex internal policies
can create. “They have some systems that make
simple things complicated – particularly
purchasing. Coupled with lack of availability of
some ingredients, it makes things tricky. The
only way we’ve made it work is to bring in
suitcases of ingredients from the UK,” he says.
The name of Hallsworth’s restaurant group
was another source of friction. Kurobuta means
‘black pig’ in Japanese – not a great fit for a
Muslim country. After a couple more of
Kurobuta’s understated
décor belies its
bold food offering
theworlds50best.com | restaurant | August 2014 | 37
Chopsticking it to the man:
Japanese dude food
Hallsworth’s suggestions were knocked back,
the hotel settled on Kurochan, which roughly –
and rather oddly – translates as ‘black friend’.
The styling of the logo and associated design
elements are the same as Kurobuta to reinforce
the Turkey outpost’s association with the
London restaurants. “There’s not much in this
project for us, financially speaking. It’s been a
total headache and there are plenty of things
that we could be doing in London,” says
Hallsworth with an openness that will become a
hallmark of our conversation.
It’s clear the 39-year-old has an appetite for
global expansion, and that the deal with
Mandarin Oriental is a low-risk and lowinvestment means of building the group’s profile
within the international scene. The prestigious
hotel group has a huge global PR machine and is
in the midst of a major expansion drive that
could see the chef open other restaurants, with
an upcoming hotel in Bali mooted as a
possibility.
Hallsworth has certainly racked up some air
miles over his career. The chef started out in
hotels, catching the Asian cooking bug at
Australia’s Hayman Island Resort and latterly at
38 | August 2014 | restaurant | bighospitality.co.uk
the same company’s locations in Singapore and
Taiwan. In the late 1990s he launched a number
of pan-Asian restaurants, including Restaurant
Goophy in Chamonix, France, and Senses in
Toronto, Canada.
He first arrived on these shores in 2001
because of the tough reputation of the British
kitchen. “I was up for a bit of an ass-kicking,” he
smiles. “At that time you were never going to be
taken seriously if you hadn’t done your time in
London. Everyone was reading Marco Pierre
White’s White Heat [1990]. I was like: ‘Look at the
state of that guy, I want to be him!’”.
y
Some of m were
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But a Ramsay-grade rollicking was not
forthcoming, and Hallsworth found himself in
the comparatively serene kitchens of Nobu.
“It wasn’t quite the level of discipline I was
expecting – in fact to be honest it was pretty
slack. Although Nobu certainly had his moments
when he was there,” he says.
Over the next six years, he moved through the
ranks from chef de partie to head chef, and in
2007 was hand-picked by Nobu to launch Nobu
Melbourne. In 2010, he left the company to set
up Wabi in Horsham, which turned out to be
one of the chef ’s few career mis-steps.
“I teamed up with the wrong people and made
some bad decisions,” he says. “I’ve learnt a lot
about this business through their – and my own
– mistakes.” Hallsworth and his team – many of
whom were poached from the capital’s best
Japanese restaurants – created a top-flight
restaurant with prices comparable to Nobu and
Roka. It was very good indeed, but there was just
one problem: it was in a quiet West Sussex town.
Cracks were already starting to show when in
2012 Wabi opened a second, much larger site in
Holborn. The restaurant’s basement location in
a part of London not known for its high-end
Scott HAllsworth
Kurobuta’s junk-food Japan approach
makes for big-hitting dishes
Billed as ‘junk-food Japan’, the cooking at
Kurobuta is about bold flavours: Japanese
food with the contrast dialled-up, if you like.
“After Wabi I didn’t want to create a Nobu
clone, so I guess we just let our hair down a
bit. We want to do good food but don’t take
ourselves too seriously. I eat fries at
McDonalds – sometimes you need to give in
to trashy food,” says Scott Hallsworth.
Kurobuta’s menu diligently takes in most
junk-food categories including fries, which
are sprinkled with chilli flakes and served
with an acidic yuzu-based sauce; burgers,
slathered in umami mayonnaise and
deep-fried onions; and a take on pizza that
sees raw tuna piled on to a disc of deep-fried
tortilla and spiked with red onions, green
chilles and a truffle ponzu dressing.
Even the sushi has been given the trashfood treatment. The salmon nigiri comes
Punchy: pork-belly buns in
peanut and sweet soy sauce
with a small dollop of béarnaise sauce (don’t
knock it until you’ve tried it), while Kurobuta’s
scallop sushi also features fresh ginger and
black beans.
“High-end Japanese food can be clean and
quite clinical but the people there love umami.
That certainly explains the popularity of
Italian food in Japan – they can’t get enough of
it,” says Hallsworth. “When we develop dishes
we look to ramp up the umami content and
generally make them more impactful.
Whether Japanese or western, people just
seem to get it.”
The dish-development process at the
restaurants is ad-hoc. “I have a back catalogue
of dishes from my career that I’m always
tweaking. I scribble down a lot of ideas and we
often muck about with new dishes in the
kitchen after service. I also develop some
things at home. We used to do a really popular
quinoa and shitake risotto, based on a dish I
used to make for my family,” he says.
There’s certainly a dude-food element at
Kurobuta, but Hallsworth’s populist
approach is underscored by some
sophisticated techniques.
The restaurant’s famed hirata-style pork
buns are a case in point. “Momofuku [US
chef David Chang’s influential restaurant
group] made it famous but it’s not difficult to
see the appeal. It’s a very satisfying dish to
eat, and you could certainly make
comparisons to a burger or sandwich,” says
Hallsworth, who experimented with
numerous pork-belly cooking techniques
before finding out about a technique used at
a more western-oriented kitchen that sees
the meat vacuum-packed with stock, and
cooked very slowly in a combi-oven on a
high steam setting. He has adapted the
method to imbue an eastern flavour, bagging
his pork belly in a punchy dashi with lots of
ginger and kombu. After cooking and
cooling the meat is coloured on a barbecue.
“It just works perfectly. It breaks the meat
down without drying it out and the slow
cooking process ensures the connective
tissue gets broken down into gelatine,” says
Hallsworth. “The added bonus is that the
technique de-skills the dish a little, as
preparation is easy and the meat is precooked before finishing: this takes the
guesswork out of it and means someone less
experienced can run the section.”
The pork belly is served in steamed buns
slathered in peanut and sweet soy sauce.
“This sort of cooking doesn’t really rely on
Japanese chefs, although I have a few. You
do need people who are interested and
understand the ingredients. We’re constantly
standardising and simplifying as that’s the
only way we’ll roll out successfully.”
Kurobuta’s tea-smoked lamb further
highlights the kitchen’s strong grasp of
technique. The meat is marinated in salt,
garlic, onion, chilli and coriander before
being smoked over a mix of rice, green tea
and apple chips. The dish is served on slats of
cedar wood, which are also smoked prior to
serving. “We serve it with spicy Korean miso,
which isn’t really a thing but sounds and
tastes great. It’s just Japanese white miso
paste mixed with gochujang [Korean hot
pepper paste], vinegar and a slug of sake.”
theworlds50best.com | restaurant | August 2014 | 39
Scott HAllsworth
restaurants proved a hindrance, as did
unusually high wage bills and operational costs.
Less than a year later Wabi Holborn was placed
into administration, owing creditors an
extraordinary £2.96m.
Quite a blip, but just two years later
Hallsworth is running two high-grossing London
restaurants – both consistently packed with
average spend per head reaching £60, higher
than the forecast £45 – and looks set to expand
the Kurobuta brand significantly and take on
other projects.
Kurobuta started life as a pop-up on Chelsea’s
King’s Road in late 2013, but the location has
since become a permanent fixture. A joint
venture with former Nobu and The Ritz finance
man Andrew Stafford, the restaurant was an
instant hit with the King’s Road set, not least the
cast of Made in Chelsea.
Off Edgware Road, the Kendal Street branch
was actually supposed to come first, but an
investor going AWOL threw a spanner in the
works. “The good news is that he ended up
writing it off and essentially giving us £250,000,”
recalls Hallsworth with an understandably wide
grin. Left with a half-finished restaurant,
Hallsworth found a new investor in high-profile
South African restaurateur and hotelier Paul
Kovensky, and the doors at Kurobuta Marble
Arch opened in June this year.
Future Kurobutas will be a joint venture
between Hallsworth, Stafford and Kovensky, and
they’re likely to come sooner rather than later.
“It’s a scalable concept for sure – I’m very open
about that. Lots of agents are coming out of the
woodwork and offering us terrible sites, but Paul
has a great property guy who has identified
developments in Soho and Shoreditch that
we’re seriously considering,” says Hallsworth.
The management team is also eyeing several
overseas projects – the most likely being a
restaurant in Tel Aviv. “It’s a great party city and
if it wasn’t so hairy over there we would have
done it already. I think it may be on the cards for
next year,” he says.
Top shelf: Kurobuta’s
impressive back bar
Hallsworth is clearly enjoying this rapid
transition from chef to restaurateur.
“I love being a chef, but I’ve done it for 23
years and I’m ready for something else –
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although I’ll never leave the kitchen completely.”
His next project is a collaboration with Piers
Adam, owner of posh London nightclubs Mahiki
and Whisky Mist and co-owner of The Punch
Raw talent: Kurobuta’s
pimped sushi
Takikomi: a hearty
Japanese rice dish
40 | August 2014 | restaurant | bighospitality.co.uk
Bowl with Guy Ritchie. “Piers was best man at
Guy’s wedding; his address book is mega. The
launch is going to be in London Fashion Week
[mid-next month] as the crowd we’re going to be
attracting are all on their holidays at this time of
year,” says Hallsworth.
Ramusake will open in what was once the
Brompton Club in South Kensington, a favourite
late-night drinking spot for young royals and
their entourages. The venue is essentially a
late-night version of Kurobuta, with an emphasis
on Japanese-inspired cocktails using sake and
rum, the latter referencing the spirits focus of
Mahiki.
The menu will be broadly similar to Kurobuta
with a few new dishes added to create a point of
difference, some of which might have a more
high-end feel. Food will be served from 6pm
until as late as 4am.
Hallsworth admits he knows little of the world
that he is about to enter, but feels confident that
this young, moneyed crowd will be receptive,
and perhaps even become regulars at Kurobuta.
Both of his restaurants are well-positioned –
geographically speaking, at least – to attract
such a privileged troupe.
“This sort of establishment and good food
don’t go hand-in-hand, but that isn’t a reason for
not giving it a go. Everybody is a foodie now, so
there’s no reason to sell poor quality food,
especially in a venue where there’s a lot of cash
flying around. Eating good food late is big in
New York, but has never really taken off here,
apart from in a few London places. We also hope
to attract chefs who get hungry after work.”
Hallsworth’s succesful translation of the
izakaya format at Kurobuta for a UK audience
makes success in South Ken look likely, although
whether sweaty post-service chefs and plastered
aristocrats mix as readily as the cocktails
remains to be seen.