To say my stage experience was a wonderful experience would not do it justice. Spending two months at Restaurant Moor Hall in Ormskirk, England was eye-opening, and with the original manor house dating back to 1582, history and locality are woven into the very fabric of the stage experience.
I chose Moor Hall primarily due to the philosophy of the restaurant and the ethos it practices. As Chef Mark puts on the menu, “We start with sourcing from the back door outwards”. The majority of the products showcased on the menu are sourced from the British Isles: oysters from Ireland that are 7 years old, duck from Devon that is aged for 3+ weeks, Lake District beef aged for 80 days, Cornish brown crab, wild mushrooms and hand dived scallops from Scotland, etc. I decided to go into the stage with as few preconceived notions as I could about what I would be doing and asking as many questions as I could think of.
Walking in the door to the kitchen on my first day I was greeted with respect and kindness from everyone. Everyone was incredibly cordial to one another; it created a true sense of teamwork.
I started off with more simple jobs like scrubbing carrots, basic knife cuts, picking herbs and viola petals, then expanded further into assisting with charcuterie production, breaking down proteins, and assisting with stocks and sauces. I was entrusted with more as the weeks went by — everyone was very gracious and allowed me to spend time with all the sections to learn as much as I could.
When it came to service, I started on plating the final snack that was served in the kitchen before guests were seated to begin their plated courses. To say it was a meticulous endeavor to build this snack would be an understatement. To start, it was a spiralized potato that was first poached in hot water, then wound into a small basket, and finally fried. Piped into this potato basket was a brandade of smoked eel, then some black garlic purée was piped into the middle of the brandade, followed by pickled shallots and chives on top. Finally, the brandade was covered with viola flowers. Each petal had to be sticking out slightly so that, rather than looking ‘smooshed,’ it had a ‘lively’ appearance. After being inspected by the chefs, it was placed on a skewer at the pass, and the waiter, after they finished the kitchen tour, surprised the guests with it.
Any time there was a spare moment between making these, I offered assistance to anyone with plating their course or finalizing garnishes for hot dishes. All final garnishes were kept in small grow boxes so they were picked at their freshest and not packed away in a box to wilt. Chef Mark placed emphasis on growing micro greens and picking them as needed so that every station had their own respective herbs or greens to pick only when the dish was fired for the table.
As time went on, they had me plating the first dish once guests sat down. This consisted of aged Bluefin tuna from Cornwall, dressed in a soy dressing with citrus oil. In the bottom of the bowl was a nasturtium purée seasoned with horseradish and lime juice, with tuna placed on top to hide the green purée. Once the guest was in the kitchen, the dish would be finished with a tomato ponzu dressing, purple radish, and finely chiffonaded and fried kombu basket.
Everything that was prepped or plated was inspected by a sous chef or head chef. All stocks, sauces, knife cuts, purées, vegetable prep (i.e., anything that was made by the cooks) had to be checked off prior to service. I found this to be a big factor in how Moor Hall was able to keep its standards consistent. It was also a first for me to see this kind of standard enacted in a kitchen. After about three to four weeks, one of the sous chefs offered me the chance to assist him with butchering a half pig and turning it into various charcuterie items. This experience was one of my biggest takeaways as I previously had not had a lot of opportunity to work with charcuterie making. Learning how to best approach breaking down the various muscles, to curing, grinding, mixing, aging, etc. was incredibly insightful. We made Coppas, Lonza, Peppered leg, and 2 varieties of salumi (black pepper and fennel-garlic).
Shortly after that I was entrusted with helping the rotation of the ducks for dry aging. The process of getting them hanged whole, breaking the ducks down to the crown, cleaning the insides, stuffing them with hay, and properly rotating the oldest ducks out was another important skill I will take with me down the road. I also learned the challenges of maintaining a good dry aging fridge, which is very important if one is to attempt this in their own kitchen someday.
Another big task I was entrusted with was helping make Christmas Puddings sold by the restaurant for the holidays — from assembling the laundry list of ingredients, to mixing, to filling the containers and steaming them off for 3 hours. It was a day long task just to fill the containers themselves with all the pudding mix before cooking them off.
Some of the skills that I refined at Moor Hall included consistency in my knife skills along with regularly working with tweezers. Time management was also another skill that I continued to hone during my time there. For example, given the fact that all the fridges were in a separate building about 250 yards away from the main kitchen, having all your items needed for projects in one trip a single was paramount to succeeding every day. This was quite an adjustment for me as I have never worked in a kitchen that required this much walking to and from the fridges to grab products for the day.
It was also amazing to see how the menu changed from summer to autumn. For example, during the summer there was a Cornish lobster tail served with tomato, bone marrow, and a green tomato sauce. For the fall, it was replaced with hand-dived scallops, fermented grains mixed in with chicken jus, cauliflower cooked in brown butter, and black truffle shaved table side. Another example of the menu change was the transition of the garnish on the duck main course. For the summer, it was girolle mushrooms and yellow beans glazed in marigold butter, fava beans, and salad burnett. The fall garnish was forest mushrooms tossed in a celery root escabeche, beet puree, kale cooked in a ham cream, roasted baby beets, and elderberry gel.
The Ment’or organization has been invaluable in helping me secure this stage and allowing me the opportunity to spend two months at Moor Hall. The lessons, work ethic, and approach to both creating a dish and its accompanying guest experience have been invaluable. I now realize after my years of professional cooking that it is not only having a good menu that makes a restaurant great — it is just as important to consider the guest experience. To consider the experience of the restaurant from the moment that a guest walks through the door to their departure is as vital to how the menu is created. One of my career goals is to have a restaurant with a farm or large garden to source from. Moor Hall is exactly that kind of place. My time there made me see that it is possible to achieve my goals someday and boosted my confidence and belief in my culinary skills.
