Chef Gabriel Waterhouse on the meditative nature of cooking and evolving his home supper club into restaurant The Water House Project in Hackney, east London
That was the thought process behind the restaurant’s design: situated within the industrial dining area is a kitchen that looks more like something you’d find in a contemporary home than in a restaurant; and in front of his guests, Gabriel and his chefs cook and serve the food in an approach he calls “social fine dining”. It’s a beautiful space, embellished with a natural installation created by his wife, Patricia Wakaimba, that changes seasonally, like his menu. Here, as he shares a recipe for mussels, Gabriel tells us of the parallels between his supper club and restaurant, the mindfulness of cooking and why he finds beauty in simple things.
“Where I grew up – in rural Northumberland – is very beautiful, and both my parents have a real sense of beauty. My dad actually built our house. It was by a river and was completely derelict, so my dad restored it over 20 years. We were put to work as children, laying concrete, that sort of thing.
“I think their sense of beauty translates to the food I make. It’s a simple beauty, which is something I learned to appreciate from them. Obviously, beauty is completely subjective, but some people think it takes an awful lot to create something beautiful – I think you can get pure beauty in simplicity.
“I don’t have a romantic home cooking story. People nearby would shoot wild pheasants and hang them by the doors. I became a vegetarian for a period when I was younger because I was saddened by the killing of the pheasants.
“Growing up, it was my mum, my dad and my three brothers. We’d always assemble for a meal, so it was quite intense. My mum or dad would do the cooking after getting home from work; we’d always lay the table. There was a lot of conversation – good and bad. I have a lot of memories of eating together at the table. My mum would make lots of vegetable stews, slow-cooked stuff like ratatouilles.
“My interest in cooking grew as I got older. I went to university to study philosophy – I enjoyed it, but I felt like I really wanted, and needed, to do something with my hands as opposed to my brain. I was working in a kitchen at a local French restaurant, and it was active and hectic – and that felt good. Obviously, there’s a lot of thought in the kitchen, but it’s a different kind of thinking. It’s about being present and mindful of what you’re doing. I do think I’m happiest when I’m cooking, and I don’t have to think about anything else.
“Weirdly, it took me a long time to feel like I was able to call myself a chef. I think you need to feel like you’ve really got there. I started as a chef when I was 21 and I was in kitchens where there were 15 and 16-year-olds – and they were better than me when I was starting. I had a lot to learn.
“I started The Water House Project about five years ago from my flat in Bethnal Green. In between working in restaurants, I would host supper clubs for 12 people two nights a week. I’d do a different tasting menu that would change every month. It was nice to do something for myself – and the more I put in, the more I got back.
“People would come into my home, and I would ask them to take their shoes off at the door, and that put everyone on the same level. When you’re inviting people into your house and there’s lots of strangers, there can be moments of awkwardness, so you need to be assured towards people and make them feel comfortable. I think that was a good skill to learn.
“When I started, I was cooking stuff that I had learned in different restaurants, replicating what other people were doing, but trying to do my own spin. But the longer it went on, the more I started developing my own style of food.
“Having the restaurant is different from hosting at home but we’ve tried to retain as much of that atmosphere as possible, where you feel that intimacy and the relaxed vibe, so it doesn’t feel just like a restaurant. There are a lot of parallels between the supper club and what we do here. Everything’s really open – it’s why the kitchen is in the restaurant. In traditional kitchens, you hide at the back. Here, you’re seeing everything, and we, the chefs, serve the food as well – we introduce it to the tables.
“To keep the feeling of the supper club, we wanted the kitchen to be domestic-looking. We teamed up with a company called Hi-Spec Design, who focus on domestic kitchens rather than commercial ones – and we needed the best of both.
“I really like the raw interior. I felt like we didn’t need to do a lot to the space. Pretty much all the design was informed by me and my wife, Trish. She made the plant installation. It’s nice to work in a place that feels beautiful.”
Gabriel’s recipe for mussels with Jerusalem artichokes, preserved lemon and chive oil
“The mussels I’m cooking come from Cornwall and they are beautiful – I think they’re the very best you can get in the country. Mussels are a really nice product to cook, they are very ethical and super tasty. This recipe is easy to replicate at home; it’s like a moules marinièrs, but the preserved lemon and artichoke give it a nice, tangy flavour. Some of the preparations in this recipe will give you a larger quantity than you need for this dish but can be kept in the fridge and used again over a period of weeks and months. The dish is best served with sourdough to mop up the broth.”
For the mussels
1kg mussels
1kg finely sliced Jerusalem artichokes
1 sliced shallot
2 tbsp fennel seeds
3 pods star anise
2 bay leaves
1 crushed garlic clove
2 sprigs thyme
1 glug of olive oil
175ml white wine
For the mussel broth
Stock from mussels (passed through a sieve)
150ml double cream
Juice of 1 lemon
50ml preserved lemon stock
4g salt
For the chive oil
20g bunch of chives
100ml olive oil
To make the chive oil, place the chives and oil in a jug blender for five minutes and blend until the oil begins to steam. Set a piece of J-cloth or a tea towel over a sieve and pass the oil through, collecting it in a container below.
Clean the mussels by running them under cold water for five minutes, removing any large bits of seaweed with your hands, then drain them through a colander. Over a gentle heat, heat the olive oil and sweat the shallot, fennel seeds, star anise, garlic and thyme for several minutes until soft. Turn up the heat, add the white wine and bring to a boil. Drop the mussels into the pan and place a sealed lid on top, give the pan a quick shake and cook for 3-4 minutes. The mussels are cooked once their shells are fully opened. Discard any mussels that haven’t opened.
Remove the lid and separate the mussels from their shells using your hands – you can discard the shells. Pass the stock through a fine sieve into a saucepan, return the mussel flesh into the stock pan and cover with the cream, the preserved lemon, lemon juice and salt. Finely dice a handful of raw artichokes and four preserved lemon skins and add to the pan.
To serve, gently reheat the mussels in the broth until warmed through, checking the seasoning with salt and lemon juice. Add a few spoonfuls of chive oil to the pan, ‘splitting’ the cream. Spoon the mussels into your bowl by pouring over the remaining stock and spooning over a little more chive oil.
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