The Times Magazine 27JP Then, 35, is the founder of Slerp, an
ecommerce platform which provides an
ordering and payment system for restaurants,
hotels and delis including the Connaught,
Claridge’s, Gymkhana and Hawksmoor. He’s
convinced that now restaurants have seen the
potential, there will be no going back.
Slerp has grown by “more than 1,000 per
cent” since March, he says, “but it isn’t a Covid
Band-Aid. It launched before the pandemic.”
It has also made it easier for chefs to create
a buzz. The names to drop now aren’t just
Clare Smyth and Hélène Darroze, with their
Michelin stars and large brigades, but smaller
outfits such as Room Service, run by 37-year-
old Will Courtney-Hatcher in southwest
London, or Danny Jack, who creates five-
course tasting menus from a hired kitchen in
Brixton. Instagram has made them into
lockdown heroes.
Just try getting hold of one of Willy’s
Pies. Will Lewis, a former St John and Brat
chef, posts the menu for his next batch of
250 meat and vegetarian pies on Instagram
every Sunday at midday, and by 12.15 everyone
is piling in on social media to complain that
they’ve missed out. Again!
“It’s pretty nuts,” says the 28-year-old chef,
who works through the night on Mondays and
Tuesdays to deliver his sought-after pies to
customers across London on Wednesdays and
Thursdays. “The first week, back in March,
I wondered how long it would last but through
Instagram word spread fast,” Lewis says from
his kitchen in Leyton.
His £12 oxtail and pickled walnut pie,
complete with a wedge of bone marrow
poking out of the crust, arrives without
ceremony in a tin foil tray with a paper lid,
but it is a thing of beauty and emerges from
the oven a beautiful burnished gold.
“It’s important that you don’t overcomplicate
things,” he says. “On Instagram, too, I try
to make it as casual as possible, not to be
pretentious and cheffy. That connection with
your customers is massive and it makes youfeel you are a part of something – and at a
time when everyone feels so isolated, I think
that is really nice.”
That’s what George Williams puts his
success down to as well. The 25-year-old east
Londoner was working at River Cafe when he
was furloughed in the first lockdown, so he set
up @fedbygeorge, supplying family and friends
with free bags of treats such as sourdough,
chocolate cookies and fresh pasta with a simple
sauce. “It all felt a bit apocalyptic, so it seemed
like a good way of directing my energy,” he
says. His girlfriend, Olivia, did the calligraphy
on the bags, which made them highly
instagrammable, and he got a flurry of requests.
Then someone asked if he could make
50 bags for the doctors at his local hospital- so he put up a crowdfunder page, hoping
to raise £750 to cover his costs, but within
24 hours had £2,000.
So he moved to a professional kitchen and
now makes 100 bags a week, still donating a
bag for every one he sells to the NHS, and
giving profits to the charity Hospitality Action.
At first he was taking orders for his £45
bags via direct messaging on Instagram. “It
became a nightmare getting 100 messages a
day, saying, ‘Can I have some cookies, but I’m
gluten-free and my dog’s vegan,’ or whatever.”
Now, he’s back at River Cafe two days a
week, and putting four days into @fedbygeorge.
“I couldn’t have done it without Instagram.
With other social platforms, such as Snapchat
or TikTok, there’s no permanence to it. It’s
‘Here’s a video, see you later.’ But I’ve been
able to build a visual profile over almost a
year, so if someone hears about me they can
look me up and scroll through my year, see
my story. It creates the whole picture of what
I’m about.”
And the picture of what I’m about is on the
opening page. It involves me once again eating
food prepared by the world’s finest chefs. And
for that, I’ll even do the washing-up. n
Core at Home, corebyclaresmyth.com;
Hélène À La Maison, the-connaught.co.ukThe duck course requires
three timers, with grapes and
herbs to delicately place
À La Maison by Hélène Darroze
at the Connaught, £195 for two.
Above right: Hélène Darroze