30 | December 2014 | restaurant | bighospitality.co.uk

Words/Joe LutrarioPhotos (portraits)/John Carey

Photos (food)/Richard Haughton

Out in front: Mikael Jonsson and Hedone are recognised on a global scale

Mikael Jonsson

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“When we first opened we had two women that were offended by the amount of

marbling on our beef. There was really nothing else to do but ask them to leave”Uncompromising. Awkward. Opinionated. Brilliant.

Welcome to the world of Hedone’s Mikael Jonsson

Mikael Jonsson does not subscribe to the notion that the customer is always right. The gastronome-turned-chef has little time for the minority of

diners that don’t understand his approach. “it happens less frequently now but in the

beginning we struggled with customers that didn’t get what we were trying to do here. a.a. Gill (The Sunday Times restaurant critic) pulled in a lot of people that should never have come here. There was a lot of well-done lamb,” he says.

entirely self-taught, the former solicitor has been cooking professionally for just three years – his Chiswick restaurant Hedone opened in 2011 – but has already proved himself to be a formidable talent in the kitchen.

His unflinching attitude might be unpalatable

for some customers, but it’s precisely this aspect of his personality that’s got this unassuming west london restaurant noticed on both a national and global scale.

His refusal to compromise on the quality of his ingredients or to cut corners in the kitchen results in dishes of extraordinary clarity and originality. The cooking at Hedone is sophisticated – dauntingly so for some of the less enlightened customers – and is tricky to pigeonhole. Jonsson was born in sweden and there’s certainly a little edgy scandy minimalism detectable in his cooking, but his style owes as much or perhaps even more to France and some of his plates reference Japanese and italian cooking.

eating at Hedone is not cheap, but then neither are Jonsson’s ingredients. in fact, when you consider the pedigree of the produce on the

restaurant’s most competitively priced menu – four courses for £45 – it is excellent value.

Hedone won a Michelin star 14 months after opening – an impressive feat for a chef with decades of experience behind the stove, let alone an ‘amateur’ cook – and in many people’s view was overlooked for a second star in the tyre manufacturer’s guide this year.

Perhaps more importantly, Hedone is on the hit list of international chefs visiting the capital, often above restaurants with more stars and higher profile chefs. as such the restaurant now sits a little outside The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list at number 63.

While he has never been employed in a professional kitchen, Jonsson has been an expert on food, wine and cooking for some time. He co-founded the respected food and restaurant blog Gastroville.com in 2003 and has

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it was a very instructive few days for Harris and his team but there was little they could teach him because he already knew it all.

The pair are now good friends. There’s even a black and white photo of the beach huts that lie close to The sportsman in Hedone’s gents.

“i also spent a couple of days with David kinch (chef-patron at Manresa in los Gatos, California) but i’m not even sure if i wore whites. My experience in professional kitchens has been misreported in some publications,” says Jonsson, who is also keen to dispel the rumour that famed lille baker alex Croquet taught him how to make his bread.

“Croquet is a genius and a good friend of mine but i’m a self-taught baker and my bread recipe is my own. i’ve been developing it for years.”

Hedone now supplies its bread to a handful of london restaurants including Hibiscus and Wild Honey, and dozens more chefs and shops are desperate to get their hands on his sourdough – acknowledged by many as the best in the city. Jonsson is looking for another site nearby for the bread-making operation, which he hints might even have an eat-in element.

He recalls with great delight a diner telling him that the bread at Hibiscus was at least as good as his, if not better. “He suggested that i go and check it out. i didn’t say anything, i just smiled,” he says.

Hedone wouldn’t be possible without general manager aurelie Jean-Marie-Flore who has been part of the restaurant since before it opened.

Her warm, welcoming presence is a necessary foil for Jonsson’s well-documented lack of patience with less clued-up diners. as well as being a near constant presence in the dining room, she is also his principle organiser. Jonsson says he is extremely disorganised and finds it hard to stop working and needs someone to keep him in check.

Jonsson is not one for sick days. When he was

Canelé, coconut ice cream and exotic fruits

Avocado, pistachio and crabHedone’s current crop of dishes: Cevennes onion, sage, pear, sarawak pepper and lemon

Pigeon, beets and pickled radishes, offal and herb jus

experience has caused him to rethink some industry-standard practices. For example, scallops are opened and prepped to order rather than being shucked, sliced and held in reach-in fridges, while crabs are dispatched, cooked and picked during service to ensure maximum freshness.

“But what we’re doing here is not just about produce. That’s something else that has been misrepresented in the media. We pay a lot of attention to the cooking here and there are lots of complicated processes behind the dishes,” says Jonsson, who refuses to buy in anything pre-prepared and appears to hold a particular fondness for perfecting items – including bread and puff pastry – that other restaurants avoid making because they’re both a logistical headache and tricky to get right.

Making doughPrior to signing on Hedone’s lease, Jonsson spent a few days at The sportsman, the hugely respected kent gastropub run by stephen Harris, to get a taste of the professional kitchen.

He says he was “mainly in the way” but Harris’ version of events is rather different. apparently

I’m horrible to work with. I’m very disorganised but I’m a perfectionist

been eating in top-flight restaurants for decades. as a serial gourmand and occasional reviewer,

his generosity with his opinions have caused him to be politely ejected from several world-famous restaurants. now that he has his own, does he think twice before criticising?

“Well i now know what criticism feels like and it’s hard to take when you’ve worked very hard to produce something,” says Jonsson. “i do it a little less since opening Hedone but as a diner you have the right to complain if you’re not happy, especially if you’re spending large sums.”

if Jonsson got the backs up of other chefs and maître ds it’s likely because his comments – almost always relating to the provenance, quality or treatment of an exclusive ingredient – were rather too close to the bone.

Gastroville.com featured scholarly articles on luxury ingredients and the 47-year-old’s understanding of produce and cooking is nothing short of extraordinary. He is a walking encyclopaedia of sourcing expertise and could talk for hours about the finer points of sourcing the best Bresse pigeon or how best to store and prepare turbot.

The quietly-spoken chef isn’t keen on the term ingredient-led but the cooking at Hedone certainly relies on a calibre of ingredients rarely seen in other restaurants. “everyone talks about attention to sourcing. There is great produce and there is mind blowingly great produce. We take a number of steps to... ”

He breaks off and looks down at his hands. “look. This is a subject that i could talk about for a very long time if i really explained to you the lengths we go to secure the best and serve it in the best possible condition. i’m not saying there isn’t anyone else doing this, but we certainly do things that nobody else does.”

The treatment of certain ingredients once they enter Hedone’s kitchen is also different to other restaurants. Jonsson’s lack of professional

Mikael Jonsson

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badly injured by local thugs after (peacefully) confronting a pair of youths for urinating on his kitchen door, he was back in work early the next day with two hours’ sleep and 16 stitches. He rises before dawn to oversee the bread making and regularly works into the early hours of the morning getting Hedone set for the next day and putting in his orders.

in fact, his levels of involvement with the kitchen and the overall running of the restaurant are so extreme that Hedone can’t be open all through the week. “if we were it would not be possible, he’d make himself ill,” says Jean-Marie-Flore.

Hedone is closed sunday and Monday and is usually only open for lunch on Thursday and Friday. This approach also ensures the same team is present at all times with each member of staff working eight services a week.

Finding the AntidoteThis set-up has allowed Jonsson to embark on a second restaurant project. opened stealthily earlier this year, antidote has been well received and, last month, chalked up a glowing review from a.a. Gill, who also gave Hedone the maximum five stars when he reviewed it in 2011.

save a few one-off events, Jonsson doesn’t cook at the soho restaurant but spends Monday and Tuesday mornings working with head chef Chris Johns on dish development. it doesn’t sound like a barrel of laughs for the talented chef, whose CV includes l’enclume and Pied à Terre.

“He creates something, i eat it and i tell him what i want changed,” says Jonsson in his trademark matter of fact manner. “i say no to his ideas a lot, i don’t think it’s a very rewarding experience for him at times but i am learning to be more diplomatic. He’s a solid chef, though.”

Coming from Jonsson, that’s a more ringing

endorsement than it might otherwise sound. The food at antidote is ambitious but less so

than Hedone. The two kitchens share many suppliers and top-notch product is central to the approach, but antidote’s lower price point – the set lunch is a steal at £23 for three courses – means exclusive ingredients are less common.

“My main fear was that people would expect the same food as at Hedone,” he continues. “That’s not the case. it can’t be like that because i’d have to be here all the time.”

The level of control Jonsson exerts over his kitchen is unusually high. He almost never misses a service and admits that he finds it difficult to relinquish control to others.

“i’m horrible to work with. i’m very disorganised but i’m a perfectionist and i want to improve things all the time. The menu descriptions will be the same but they’ll be subtle changes. The way we do things is always changing.”

The menu at Hedone is in such a constant state of flux that when we start arranging the interview, Jonsson insists on commissioning a new batch of food photography. He can’t stand the thought of plates that aren’t current appearing in the magazine.

An obsessive teenagerBorn in olofström, Jonsson was borderline-obsessive about food from an early age. in his teens, he became infatuated with the wines of Burgundy and made regular pilgrimages to the area’s most vaunted vineyards and restaurants.

“i sometime went with my father but mostly i was on my own,” he recalls. “looking back it was an unusual thing for a teenager to do and the French winemakers and restaurateurs found it quite curious. But for the most part i think they enjoyed my company.”

as he entered his 20s, he became more and more interested in France’s temples of gastronomy. “i managed to go to alain Chapel (the legendary French chef that was one of the originators of nouvelle Cuisine) before he died and i spent a lot of time at lameloise (a three Michelin-star restaurant in Chagny, Burgundy). i spent every penny i had on eating.”

it was a wholly private obsession. “i didn’t write notes, i just wanted to eat. i’ve never been a box ticker of restaurants. i’ve always eaten for pleasure,” he says. “at Hedone, we meet a lot of people who are there to tick a box and to take photos. i watch how they behave and i can tell they’re not interested in eating.”

Jonsson wanted a career working with food but severe eczema and food allergies put him off. instead he embarked on a successful career as a corporate solicitor. This vocation involved some worldwide travel that allowed him to further indulge his taste for top-end restaurants.

about seven years ago, Jonsson finally overcame his allergies by switching to a largely Palaeolithic diet. avoiding processed foods had an incredibly positive effect on his health and opening a restaurant finally became a viable option. He looked in Paris where he had better connections in the restaurant world but eventually settled on west london.

“i’m often told by people i’m on the wrong

Isle of Mull scallop cooked in its shell, mushroom dashi, black trompette mushrooms

Venison, brassicas, black garlic vinaigrette, seaweed mustard

Liquid parmesan ravioli, smoked guanciale, mild horseradish foam, Roscoff onion consommé

Warm chocolate, vanilla ice cream and raspberry powder

At Hedone, we meet a lot of people who are there to tick a box and take pho-tos. They are not interested in eating

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Mikael Jonsson

end of the [Chiswick] High Road. To some extent they’re correct because we did struggle to attract locals at the start. luckily there were, and still are, many people willing to travel here for a meal,” says Jonsson, who was able to open Hedone on a tiny budget by taking on all aspects of design and project management himself.

Hedone’s low-key, informal look has come in for some stick – some describe it as cold and uncomfortable – but Jonsson was intent on stripping out the flummery that comes with many restaurants that serve serious food.

“i’ve eaten an obscene number of meals all over the world in famous fine-dining rooms.

The thing i like the least is all the superfluous stuff that comes with these places. The hyperventilating service, the intimidating surrounds… i can enjoy fantastic food served on cardboard. That’s why i rate The sportsman so highly. stephen is able to strip all of that out.”

Jonsson was touched by a.a. Gill’s [first] review, which said that Hedone was as much about what wasn’t there than what was and praised the restaurant for its lack of vanity.

The chef ’s hard-nosed attitude has led him to – quite understandably, it must be said – be accused of arrogance by some. But there is certainly a humble aspect to his character too. He’s more interested in pleasing his regulars – Robin Majumdar (brother of food writer simon Majumdar) has been in almost 200 times – than guides or critics. “i’m cooking for our returning customers and to see how good a cook i can become. if that gets us accolades, fine,” he says.

Furthermore, those that have experienced Jonsson’s criticism first-hand may be pleased to learn that he is as tough on himself as he is on others, perhaps even more so.

“i won’t regard what we do at Hedone now very highly in a year’s time. When i look back at the early days of Hedone i wince,” he says. “But slowly we’re reaching the point where i’m starting to be happy with some of the things we’re serving here. But i’m still learning.”

The rate of evolution at the restaurant is such that it will likely be a very different place in a few years’ time. He may be approaching 50 but this is only the beginning of the journey for Jonsson and Hedone.

I won’t regard what we do now very highly in a year’s time. When I look back at the early days I wince

Jonsson: “I’m starting to be happy with some of the things we’re serving here”

Golden brown: the low-key dining room