catering for all tastes on the roof

“Ah yes, the lobster bisque,” says the Bridlington born chef, who has just returned to his home county as executive chef at D&D London’s two restaurants in the Trinity development after a 15-year absence.

“Growing up where I did, how could you not be known for your seafood? That dish dates back to the days when I was working in the Savoy Grill. Every so often we’d try to take it off the menu, but the customers always demanded it back.

“In the end I held my hands up and admitted defeat. It’s pretty much travelled with me everywhere with me ever since. To me it’s the ultimate comfort food.”

Lee’s culinary career began in the late 1990s when as a teenager he began washing dishes at Bridlington’s Rags restaurant. In those early days, even when he graduated to making the starters, being in a kitchen was just a way to earn a bit of extra pocket money and it was only when he went back to school after his GCSEs that he began to wonder whether his part-time job might turn into career.

“Until then I’d never thought about catering as a career. I went back to school to start my A-levels, but about three months in I realised that wasn’t for me. I missed being in the kitchen.”

Lee did the rounds of all of his home town’s main restaurants, but there soon came a point when he had experienced pretty much all Bridlington had to offer. Initially he headed a few miles south to Hazlewood Castle on the outskirts of Leeds. After a fairly major restoration project, the former Catholic retreat centre was just establishing itself as a luxury hotel and it was there Lee’s appetite to make it to the top of his business was really whetted.

“Every chef I worked with talked about London and I knew that was where I had to go,” he says. “I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do, but I knew if I didn’t go I would live to regret it.”

Years of hard work followed at the end of which Lee was crowned head chef at Gordon Ramsay’s Savoy Grill. It was more than just a place of work. The hotel and restaurant is one of the oldest in London and when it closed in Christmas 2007 for a multi-million pound facelift, Lee turned down an offer to spend five weeks cooking for Victoria and David Beckham in Los Angeles to ensure he was there for the final service.

Staying in London, Lee went onto to work at D&D’s Le Pont De La Tour near Tower Bridge and then seized the opportunity to travel abroad.

While the inevitably long hours he worked, meant he didn’t get to see an awful lot of Dubai, Singapore and Paris, the experience meant that when he finally decided to come back home, he had more than earned his stripes.

“It just felt like the right time to return to Britain,” he says.

“The chance to be executive chef of two brand new restaurants doesn’t come along very often. I’d had a great time working with D&D in London and the fact that their latest venture was right on my doorstep in Yorkshire was too good to be true.”

While Lee may spend his days rustling up quail cannelloni and scallops with broad bean risotto, like most chefs his own diet over the past few months has been pretty basic.

“Four Weetabix, that’s pretty much what I’ve been surviving on,” he says.