Chef’s Table: Tom Booton talks British cuisine and his comfort favourites

Tom Booton knows a thing or two about cooking. He has been the youngest chef in most kitchens he’s walked into. Raised in Essex, he is now the youngest head chef in the history of The Dorchester hotel. He has achieved more in 30 years than most of his peers achieve in a lifetime. And since 2019, he has been the head chef of The Grill by Tom Booton at The Dorchester Hotel.

Tom is redefining modern British dining one bite at a time, so it was only natural that we catch up with him for the new instalment of our Chef’s Table series. Here, Tom Booton chats about his incredible career, his chef heroes and the foods that he holds close to his heart.

You head up The Grill at The Dorchester. What sets your menu apart?
I think what sets us apart from the other places is our staff members. I am really big on letting everyone express who they are. I don’t want to have a restaurant full of robots. I want to have people with their own characters, their own way of doing things. And I think that really translates to the customer experience as well. We’re all about making connections.

How would you describe your style as a chef? What do you want your guests to experience?
I guess for me, well, I’m still fairly youngish, so the style kind of changes. But I think in the past four years, I’ve really wanted to do more of what I want to eat when I go out. So we have an amazing snack menu here at the restaurant. You can come in, have a few little snacks, have a starter to share and then have a rib eye to share or have a whole fish cooked on the bone. So it’s all about beautiful produce cooked simply and then plated with a lot of love and care.You are the youngest head chef in The Dorchester’s history. Where did your passion for cooking come from?
I kind of fell into it by accident. When I was 15, I got sent for work experience at a really lovely little local restaurant. Then I did a ski season, and when I came back, one of my sous chefs said, ‘If you wanna take it to the next level, you need to move to London.’ So I moved to London in 2012, and I’ve been lucky enough here to work with some amazing people. I’ve been cooking now for 16 years full time in a professional kitchen and I’ve had the privilege of working with some amazing chefs in my career. It’s a beautiful industry, and it’s great to see how everyone really goes in their unique, different lanes. The passion is just about putting a smile on people’s faces. That sums hospitality up for me — making someone have a good time.

What is it like to have your own name above the door at the hotel — again, being the first chef to ever receive this honour in the hotel’s history?
It kind of just happened naturally. It wasn’t something I or the hotel aimed for. It was just like…I want to stay here, they want to keep me, so let’s make it concrete. Our whole thing was to be the first modern British grill in London, and then we went, how do we take it to the next level? It’s about identifying the name and my character to come across to the guest.What advice would you give to young chefs who want to get into cooking — especially at a fine dining level?
I guess maybe don’t start at fine dining level. Just come and start with me. Even though our food is of a very high level, I’ve really tried to not make the restaurant fine dining. I want it to be really approachable and accessible to people. I want them to come in and just have a great time. But I’d say go and work with a chef who you really admire and absorb so much of them. You should just be learning and learning. And you have to do a minimum of two years in any restaurant I believe to actually truly get down to the foundations of the restaurant. It’s about really making connections. Some of my best mates are the people I’ve worked with. Stick at it. It is a tough career, it is hard work — I’m still always tired (laughs). 

Away from the restaurant, what is your ultimate personal comfort food or favourite dish?
To be honest, it’s not very often I cook at home. My partner, Rachel, she’s a better cook than me at home. But our comfort food would be Sunday night after I finish a busy Sunday service here, and we get Indian takeaway, and we’re so happy with that. My partner’s from Singapore, so she has a very good palate, and obviously she loves Chinese and Malaysian food, So we have a lot of Asian food in our house.

So what would be something you make that isn’t takeaway?
Well, if it is summer, we have a little garden and I was lucky enough to get a big green egg in there. So I’ve got a little barbecue in there, and I was cooking a lot over the summer. We were having barbecues, and some of the team members and my friends were coming over and just getting a nice meat selection from H G. Walter. It was just very nice.Why is this a comfort food to you? Do you have any special memories associated with the dish?
An Indian takeaway on a Sunday night reminds me of sitting in front of the TV and catching up on Gogglebox with Rachel and our little dog. So that’s got a nice, nostalgic twang to it. Then the barbecue…maybe because it is the one thing you do when you get together in the summer. It’s the communal aspect of it. 

What do you like to make at the barbeque?
I like doing salads and my favourite thing to do — and we used to do it in the restaurant here during the summer — is our coleslaw. We cook all the vegetables dirty. So you actually cook it on the charcoal itself. You get really good premium charcoal, cook the food on top of the charcoal, and then you kind of peel it back and chop it up. I would do red onions, carrots, hispi cabbage or white cabbage. There were a few times I was mixing butternut squash through it as well. I cook them on charcoal and mash them up. I was making that into a coleslaw, and my friends thought it was amazing — they couldn’t believe it.

Do you have any tips for our readers attempting to recreate this dish?
I think the most important thing is getting good charcoal and using good firelighters instead of using that spray — the one you can taste — and don’t cook things too hot. When my dad’s cooking a sausage on a barbecue he just absolutely roasts it and makes it black as hell. It’s all about temperature and heat, and doing it slowly, not rushing it. And if you go on the big green egg website, I’ve got loads of recipes on there, including videos, for people to hopefully emulate.And finally, who are some of your chef heroes?
I’m very close with Pierre Koffmann, and he’s an absolute legend. Jason Atherton — I think he’s amazing for what he’s done and what he’s doing at the moment. If you look at all the stuff he’s opening and his entrepreneurship, it’s just amazing. And a final one would be Eugénie Brazier. She was the first female chef to win a Michelin star in the world. I’ve got copies of her book, La Mere Brazier, at home. It’s quite hard to get your hands on it, but she’s just like that really unknown chef and I look at her book quite a lot when I’m looking at new recipes and it always shocks my mind because we literally cook the same food, just plated a little bit differently. I always look at her book and give it to the young chefs in the kitchen to have a flip through, and they always say the same thing. That book at home has a big space on the shelf.

To know more about Chef’s Table and Tom Booton’s guilty pleasures, subscribe to our weekly newsletter, the Tempus Edit, here. And read other interviews in our Chef’s Table series here.