Tom Sellers: “We have an opportunity to create something for the next generation of hotel guests”

At the new Dovetale restaurant at 1 Hotel Mayfair you’ll find Apollo 11 and Apollo 13 circulating the dining room. Rather than moon-bound spacecraft, however, they are two modern knickerbocker glory trollies, so named because they have been designed by Seymourpowell, a company that worked on commercial spaceline Virgin Galactic (and also designed The Fat Duck’s sweet trolley). Led by Tom Sellers, the restaurant is exploring new frontiers of its own – but through the medium of ice cream, fruit sauces and sprinkles.

Contained in the trolleys are some eight flavours of ice cream, including chocolate, raspberry ripple, mint choc chip, mango, and a birthday cake option made from madeira cake and hundreds and thousands. Diners can order from a menu of four sundaes or create their own from a selection of ‘bits and bobs’ such as cinder toffee and fudge pieces and ‘toppings’ including candied pecan crumb and popping candy. They will be served with a flourish in bespoke sundae glasses chilled by a blast of CO₂ to ensure they reach the customer at the perfect temperature.

For Sellers, who is also behind two-Michelin starred Restaurant Story in Bermondsey and the more recently launched Story Cellar in Covent Garden, the trolleys are a statement, and in more ways than one. Firstly, they are a nod to 1 Hotel’s US owners, the dish thought to be named after The Knickerbocker Hotel in New York. “A lot of people think it’s a British dessert - I did,” he admits. “With 1 Hotel being a US brand, I thought it would be a nice touch.”

More significantly is the nostalgic element, both in the dessert itself and its mode of transport. Dovetale is about classic dishes that have stood the test of time, and few are as recognisable as the knickerbocker glory.

“There’s a reason trolley service has been around for the past 100 years because ultimately its opulent, you get to interact with the guests, it feels more personable and – even more importantly – it’s fun,” Sellers continues. “It’s very nostalgic. Who doesn’t like an ice cream sundae?”

A dream team

Sellers and I are sat at a comfy booth table in Dovetale a few weeks before it opens its doors. For his new project he has assembled a dream team of chefs that have accompanied him for our interview. They are Dovetale and 1 Hotel Mayfair executive chef Tom Anglesea who, having worked with Thomas Keller at Per Se and with Nuno Mendes at Chiltern Firehouse, most recently led the kitchen at Hackney’s The Laughing Heart​​, and Dovetale head chef Chase Lovecky, the American chef best known on these shores for his gone-too-soon restaurant Two Lights.​​ Completing the foursome is Dovetale’s executive pastry chef Andrew Blas who, between 2012 and 2015, led a team of 23 pastry chefs at London’s Hotel Café Royal and was more recently executive chef at the Capital Club in Dubai.

The first thing that is apparent is the youthful nature of the team, with Sellers, Lovecky and Anglesea all in their mid thirties. For such a big new project in a prominent part of Mayfair it seems somewhat unusual.

“I feel old,” counters Sellers with a smile when I put this to him. “I’ve been cooking 20 years, from the age of 15 at Tom Aikens. Story is a decade old. Age is just a number. These guys may seem young, but they have so much experience. It’s their time now.”

Moreover, the team is reflective of the 1 brand as a whole. “The hierarchy from the GM downwards is very young. We have an enthusiastic, forward-thinking team. There’s a different feel to this group of people.”

When Sellers was assembling his team, Anglesea was an obvious choice, the pair having worked together at Per Se with Keller. “I knew Tom would have the same standards and know the culture I want to create here,” he says.

"I said to the owners, if you give me everything
I ask for I’ll never give you an excuse"

“Anyone who has worked for Thomas [Keller] knows he has a very specific mentoring style and a way of looking after his team and the philosophy that he builds. I’ve not been shy before about saying how much of an impact that had on my career and how proud I am that that legacy continues.”

It was an opportunity Anglesea leapt at. “Covid took the wind out of everyone’s sails. We were all working in smaller individual privately-funded restaurants and they took the hit,” he says. “A lot of talent today is being driven towards Mayfair because you have the support system and people who can afford to spend money on eating out. I had been waiting in the wings for an opportunity such as this.”

“Rarely in your career do you get to open a hotel that will be there in 20, 30, 50 years’ time. It’s like being part of the team that opened The Ritz.”

Lovecky, who after the closure of Two Lights cooked at Clapton restaurant and wine bar P Franco for a while before moving to Luxembourg to work at a one-star restaurant, also didn’t need asking twice. “In Luxembourg I had a reintroduction into fine dining and it’s something I realised I love doing,” says the Maine-born chef. “I spoke to Tom about the opportunity to come back to London and said yes. It was like a second chance.”

Blas’ experience at Hotel Café Royal also made him an obvious choice to head Dovetale’s pastry programme. At the time he got the call he was cooking on a cruise liner but returned to London in February to take up the post and start developing dishes.

“Every chef brings something different to the table,” says Sellers. “They’ve worked with different people, but ultimately underneath we speak the same language, which is very important. There are not many chefs that have had that level of training and due diligence to put them in a position such as this. I feel very fortunate to have them around me.”

The hotel restaurant model

The opening of Dovetale comes at a busy time for Sellers, with his flagship restaurant currently undergoing a massive refurbishment that will create a whole new floor and a bar area and the recent launch of his rotisserie restaurant Story Cellar that had been delayed by Covid. Conversations about taking on a restaurant with the hotel group had been ongoing for the past six years but the eventual timing of its opening proved propitious.

“With Story celebrating its 10th year​​ it felt very much like I was entering the next chapter of my career. I felt drawn towards this location and 1 as a brand and hotel,” says Sellers.

Both launches dovetailed (see what he did there?) with the nine-month closure of Story, which freed him up physically and creatively first to open Story Cellar ​​and now Dovetale.

“Dovetale is my vision, my brand my name, I created it – hence the ‘tale’ which is a slight nod to Story and that direction,” he says of the project. “The hotel obviously plays a huge role; they fund it and have certain priorities. I have to be considerate of their brand and for things to be aligned and feel cohesive in terms of a level of opulence, but it’s my vision.”

He is under no illusions about the size of the task ahead. Dovetale is a 109-cover restaurant with a large outdoor courtyard that is a central feature of the 181-room hotel. He will oversee a brigade of 45 chefs with a front of house team double this. As well as lunch and dinner, Sellers and his team will oversee breakfast at the hotel and room service.

“The chef/hotel collaboration is not as glamorous as they sound and can be very challenging. In the last five years in London alone just look at how many of them haven’t worked - and that’s not because the hotel is bad, or the chef is bad but it’s a tricky thing to manage and get right.”

His decision to do breakfast was, in typical Sellers manner, to have full control over all variables. While breakfast service is often unpopular with chefs, the idea of handing over in any of the hotel’s F&B options to someone else was even more unpalatable.

“The body of work quadruples but we feel we have an opportunity to show that we can create something for the next generation of hotel guests. A lot of people avoid [breakfast] because they are scared of it. If you’d asked me five years ago to create an egg menu for breakfast, I’d have said no but here we are making our own boxed cereals. Instead of being scared of it I thought ‘fuck it, let’s embrace it’. I said to the owners, if you give me everything I ask for I’ll never give you an excuse. They’ve kept their side of the bargain, now it’s time for us to keep ours.”

Classic food reimagined

Dishes on the breakfast menu include an apricot and fennel pollen danish; toasted banana and walnut bread with tahini caramel; brown butter pain perdu with roasted peach and crème crue as well as house made granola and labneh and avocado on toast, with poached egg, seeds and yoghurt with the option of adding black truffle or Oscietra caviar. Everything has been planned to the last detail, including the crockery, with a version of the basket plate made famous on these shores by being served by Marco Pierre White at Harvey’s for Dovetale’s full English.

Moving beyond breakfast and Dovetale’s focus is on reimagined modern - and in particular European - cooking and Mayfair classics. Dishes include carpaccio of English wagyu ‘Harry’s Bar’ with hot mustard, chives and beef fat chips; dover sole Veronique with cauliflower, grapes and tarragon; black truffle and potato agnolotti; and chicken minestrone with chicken boudin, morels and broth. From the grill section there’s a 1kg grain-fed Black Angus T-bone to share alongside turbot tranche meunière; an English wagyu denver steak; and a rose veal chop.

“I kind of disappeared for a while, it all got a bit
much for me mentally and physically"

“There is a huge amount of classical cooking and celebrated cooking that has stood the test of time, whether that be turbot with beurre blanc, a souffle, or trolley service with the knickerbocker glory, which is a dessert of the ages that I don’t think has been done in recent times to the level we are going to try and execute it at. It’s our way of celebrating the history of that food and cooking something that is progressive but also completely respects where it comes from. That a really hard thing to do.”.

The Grand Marnier soufflé (pictured below) is a case in point with Blas saying it took 10 weeks of relentless souffle making to perfect. “The amount of R&D that went into the soufflé was incredible. I’ve been making soufflés for 25 years, but this stretched me.” The work centred on how much alcohol the soufflé could contain but still work, with Blas saying he took it to the very edge. Will diners notice? “Maybe not. But it would nice to think some chefs will recognise the work that has gone into it.”

Writing a new chapter

What of Sellers himself? With Story Cellar and Dovetale opening within a few months of each other this feels like the writing of a second chapter for the chef who has spent much of the past decade perfecting his Bermondsey restaurant – save for the opening of Restaurant Ours in Kensington back in 2016 and a stint as executive chef at the Lickfold Inn in West Sussex. Does he agree?

“I kind of disappeared for a while, it all got a bit much for me mentally and physically,” he says of the past few years. “I’m opening essentially three restaurants in a year with Story reopening as 3.0. It’s kind of unavoidable that it would happen again, but it has taken me this long to be ready for it - and for what lies ahead.”

This time round Sellers seems different to our previous meetings. He may still be the incredibly driven perfectionist as ever, but he cuts a more relaxed – dare I say even confident – figure than his more doggedly determined persona of the past.

“I’ve always suppressed success naturally as a person and I don’t want that to be the next 10 years,” he admits. “Resilience has played a big part for me, and I have a huge work ethic, but it would be nice to celebrate success with talent like this because they deliver it and work as hard if not harder than me at times.”

That sentiment appears to be mutual. “One of the great things about Tom is his relentless pursuit of quality in everything, and that transfers down to us,” says Anglesea of his boss.

“We get to wear the best chef uniforms; we’ve designed some of the best plate ware -everything is meticulously thought out. We have an on-site butcher and fishmonger and are training people like we were trained 10 years ago. The intention is to retain people and have longevity with whatever we do. It’s very rare you get the opportunity to have those tools.

“One of Tom’s greatest assets is trust – he hires correctly, and he trusts in the people around him to get on and do their jobs,” he continues. “This is really important if you want to grow.”

Blas agrees on this point. “He may be more of a restaurateur now, but it doesn’t feel like that from my side. He is still foremost a chef and driving me to be a better chef.”

A different style of hotel restaurant

While Dovetale is aiming at a high standard, Sellers insists it isn’t fine dining. Instead, he describes it as feeling more freer and “less contrived” than other hotel restaurants. “Because of where we are and the demographic it will demand a certain level of service but the energy through the food, the playlist, and the age of the team will make this space. It won’t feel like your conventional hotel in London that has a more historic feel – that’s exciting.”

Its scale means it also isn’t mimicking the approach taken at Story. With this in mind, will he be more relaxed and enjoy it a bit more?

“The focus will be the same, it has to be in order to continue at the top level. That is also reflective of Cellar. I opened a counter dining wine-led restaurant, and everyone thought it would be like a kind of bistro and then they came and saw my vision and that it is still very focused on high quality, and it will be the same here. This new generation of diners has never been more savvy, or more educated about food. They are hyper critical. If you cheat the game, you always come up short.”

“I know what my potential is as a chef, a man, restaurateur,
and my job is to make sure I reach that"

That said, he says he has learned to be more present, something which he admits wasn’t always the case in the early days of Story. “You have to take each day as it comes. It’s OK having this long-term vision and goal, you need that, but if you’d asked me 10 years ago what I want I’d have said to be a three-star chef, it’s all I’ve ever focused on.

“But you have to be present. That goal may have not changed for me but day-to-day I work very differently now. I make sure I’m more present about what I do and why I’m doing it and that’s hard for me. I’m always thinking ahead and how to get there.”

Story 3.0

Story will reopen later this year following its overhaul. Dubbed 3.0 because the restaurant, located on the site of the former public toilets, has already undergone one big revamp​​ in the decade since it launched, the restaurant remains at the centre of Sellers’ world.

Restaurant Story in its first incarnation was awarded a Michelin star, and 2.0 was justly rewarded a second star in the 2021 guide. Could 3.0 continue the trajectory?

The reason for the latest evolution of Story is summed up by Sellers in one simple word – progress. “I’ve worked hard on getting the planning to build the new floor. I felt there was more of a story to tell and that the journey could be better for the guests. I want Story to feel like my lifetime’s work and it needs to have constant progress and to come back better than we left it. It’s been there 10 years and I want it to be there for another 10 and another 10 after that.

Would he describe himself as a restless person? “What do you think?” he asks, before confirming my suspicions that he is. “Yes of course I am. I genuinely believe that your only responsibility to yourself is to reach your potential, and only you can decide what that is.

“I believe I know what my potential is as a chef, a man, a restaurateur, and my job is to make sure I reach that - if that’s two stars and one restaurant or three stars and 10 restaurants the journey will take me where it’s meant to go.

“Wherever I end up I’ll know that I gave 100% of myself to it and be proud of that.”