Steve Hampton has taken some of Britain’s best loved dishes and given them a sophisticated edge as William Leece discovers
THEY are the much-loved memories of childhood. Comfort foods, even, dishes like corned beef hash, perhaps with baked beans, a pan of Scouse, rhubarb and custard.
Except in Steve Hampton’s hands they come out a little bit different. A quail’s egg with the corned beef perhaps, or the rhubarb and custard as a mousse.
He is the head chef at Circo, at the Albert Dock, in Liverpool. It’s billed as bar, restaurant and freak show, but, while there may be a twist in the tail when it comes to planning the menu, there’s nothing freakish about the food on offer. Well, not too much, anyway.
“In here, I do modern international,” says Steve over a refreshingly conventional cup of morning coffee. “I like to play with classical dishes and modernise them into my own little dish, to twist them round and elaborate on the flavours.”
Steve is a native Liverpudlian who trained in the city and has spent most of his working life here, too.
Like many a professional chef, he caught the bug at an early age. “It’s something I was always interested in as a kid,” he recalls. “From being about eight, I’d always do my own breakfast, and make my tea when I got home from school.
“I’d always cook for the family. Nothing great, but I always wanted to do it.”
Small wonder that, no sooner had Steve left Archbishop Beck school, in Aintree, he was straight into catering college in Liverpool, and after just six months there he was snapped up into his first job, a commis chef at the Adelphi hotel.
A stint with Liverpool Football Club’s hospitality operation at Anfield followed, and then it was off to the much-missed Bechers Brook, in Hope Street, then one of Liverpool’s finest, with two rosettes.
After a short spell in Canada, he returned to the UK to spend several years with Rob Gutmann’s Korova group of restaurants and bars, and has stayed on at Circo after Korova sold off some of its operations last year. He also helped Natasha Hamilton set up her restaurant, Hamilton’s, in the Metquarter – “more as a consultant, really,” he says.
The change in ownership and the relaunch of Circo earlier this year has worked to Steve’s advantage, as new owners Gary and Jason McNeil. have taken a hands-off approach to the kitchen side of the operation.
“It makes a change, because a lot of restaurateurs I’ve found in my past are frustrated chefs who want a hand in everything.