The Bower House reopens in Shipston
The Bower House restaurant in Shipston reopens tonight (Thursday) with Australian duo, chef Paul Merrony and his partner Tracey Petersen, at the helm. Over coffee they tell Gill Sutherland about their plans to make the family-run restaurant an asset for everyone in the town
You’ve owned a couple of successful and critically acclaimed restaurants in London (La Giaconda in Soho and Shoe Shop in Kentish Town) how did your involvement with The Bower House come about?
Paul: We had a meeting with Andrew [Knight, the chairman of Times Newspapers and Bower House owner] when this was just a shell in February last year. We have been working for ourselves for a long time so we decided not to take it any further, but now through various quirks of fate we find ourselves here.
Tracey: We’ve always run restaurants ourselves and never been involved with anyone else, but this suits everybody – Andrew is bonkers busy and 77, and it was time for us to get out of London and regroup. So we’re renting a house in Shipston area, and really enjoying it.
You work as a dynamic duo – how did you first meet?
Tracey: We have always run restaurants together – Paul is the chef and I do front of house.
Paul: Yes she’s Batman to my Boy Wonder!
Tracey: We met at a restaurant in Sydney where I was a waitress and he was in the kitchen. Then I got married and he got married…
Paul: Then I got divorced, and she got divorced, as you do. We hooked up and here we are.
Tracey: We have two children between us – our son Oliver who is 12 and Paul’s daughter Imogen, 25, who lives in Australia.
What attracted you to the UK?
Paul: I came over here when I was 18 to do an apprenticeship; then did another three years in France [training with the Roux brothers] and I suppose I am a European cook as opposed to an Australian cook – so in a way it was a bit of a homecoming. It might be viewed as being crazy, upping sticks and moving halfway across the world… but you know you’re dead a long time. And it’s something I’d always wanted to do.
Tracey: We love the fact that Paul can get great produce here; in Australia you are very limited because you are so far away from the rest of the world.
What do you envisage for The Bower House – who do you want to attract and what will be on the menu?
Paul: It’s a work in progress. The vision for the place originally was that it was somewhere people would come to on a weekly basis: whether it’s a coffee on a Tuesday, a bite to eat with your girlfriends a few days later, then a meal with your partner or your family because you can’t be bothered cooking – that was Andrew’s original idea.
It’s accessible to all, whether popping in for a lazy brunch or dressing up on a Saturday night. It’s got to be a reflection of the neighbourhood. Yes, there are a lot of wealthy people in the area but we are in Shipston and we have got to appeal to a broad church of people. If we just did Michelin-type food then we would probably be dead in the water. People go to those sort of places to tick off the box. We need to be sympathetic to the community rather than being perceived as stuck up.
In terms of the menu we are not trying to reinvent the wheel or make people feel uncomfortable or for them to walk out of here going ‘oh that was weird’ or leave here starving – we want people to have had a good feed.
Tracey: Paul’s food is very honest and rustic. You put one of Paul’s meals in front of you and you go ‘oh I could cook that at home’ until you taste it and you go ‘actually no I couldn’t!’ It’s really quite special but not fussy at all.
Paul: We want to look at this place as an embellishment to the community. Cafés and shops set the tone of a place. We’ve only been here six weeks, but we know that Shipston, Stratford and the whole area has got every type of person you could imagine – we like to think that everyone will feel comfortable coming here.
Tracey: The menu will be quite large. I would say there are six or seven dishes that people can’t live without and they are as simple as a gratin, chicken liver paté, green bean salad – and they’ll always be a staple steak and chips.
Paul: I cook French-ish food and the perception is that it’s all cream and offal, fat duck and wobbling beef – but that’s just one side of French cooking, there are plenty of vegetarian dishes, for example.
Tell us about your approach to running a restaurant – how do you make sure you get it right?
Tracey: We are confident in our product and that’s what we find is the hardest thing about running a restaurant – that confidence without being show-offy.
Paul: You need to feel the place is in control. There’s nothing worse than walking through the door and there’s no staff – people need to feel comfortable when they walk in.
Tracey: It’s important in a restaurant to make sure the floor and the kitchen are in tune and I suppose that’s why Paul and I work so well together. My aim is to have every staff member working in this restaurant to have the same knowledge that I have on every single thing. It’s important that we’re all doing everything together; even the littlest person in the restaurant should know what’s going on – they shouldn’t have to say ‘oh I’ll go and get the manager…’ And Paul doesn’t call himself ‘chef’, it’s just Paul.
What are the challenges of working together?
Tracey: Huge challenges, but I don’t think Paul would be able to work without me…
Paul: It’s reassuring having Tracey there. We talk about stuff but it’s also osmotic.
What restaurants do you admire?
Tracey: The River Café [in Hammersmith, London] is pretty special.
Paul: I am a bit of a grub – I quite often go to café Bruno in London, it’s like the last greasy spoon in Soho, but I wouldn’t say it’s good!
Tracey: We like to travel, go to restaurants under the bridges, behind the alley – where there’s no menu kind of places. It’s about the spirit and delicious food and that’s how we like to present our food. It’s not a fussy big deal, just a lovely plate of food to enjoy.
Paul: I’m not a big Michelin sort of person, that’s just one arm of the restaurant business. A lot of people seem to chase that but there needs to be all sorts of restaurants. We went to El Bulli [the three-star Michelin restaurant in Spain] and it had silly sort of food, there were 40 courses, just stupid. It’s the classic thing to go and tick it off – they probably don’t have regulars, or there a regular is someone who pops in every five years. I’d rather have had a paella on the beach.
You’re opening the second week of September, how are you feeling about that?
Tracey: We want to be discreet – we don’t want to hype ourselves up.
Paul: Yeah we’re just going to open and do a good job. The worst thing we could do is come out saying we are going to do this, this and this and then don’t deliver – it’s important that we under promise and over deliver.
We won’t open up fully formed. There’s a lot of trial and error. I heard someone say the other day that they built their entire business on mistakes and that’s the same in the restaurant business. You try a dish and it doesn’t work so you vary it; you try afternoon teas and it doesn’t work so you come up with something else – it’s going to take a while for us to be fully formed but we’ll find it. n
The Bower House is open from Tuesday to Sunday lunchtime, from 8am to 9pm, serving breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner, or customers are welcome to go in for just a coffee or a drink. Starters range from £7.50 to £11.50; mains from £15; puddings range from £4.50 to £7.50. The lunch menu costs £18.50 for two courses and a glass of wine or three courses. For those wanting a light snack, various croques — Monsieur, Madame, d'Alsace and Florentine — are available in the afternoon from £5.50. See www.thebowerhouseshipston.com for more details or call 01608 663333
