Chef Chris Marshall at the Panoramic restaurant _320
Emma Pinch talks to Panoramic’s chef about creating a menu with a difference
HE ALREADY cooks at one of the highest altitude restaurants in Britain – now Panoramic chef Chris Marshall is seeing his food hitting the heady heights too.
Panoramic, which sits on the 34th floor of Liverpool’s West Tower, has been voted 26th best restaurant in the UK in Restaurant Magazine. Judged by industry peers, critics and the public, they beat off the likes of Gordon Ramsey’s Claridges (33), celebrity haunt Hakkason (69) and Jamie Oliver’s 15 (71).
And just last week it was packed with popstars and music execs in town for the MTV awards including Kanye West and Estelle.
When the restaurant opened in February, Chris, chef director, wanted to create a menu on a par with the best of London’s modern British restaurants, and play with gastronomic trends.
Getting the clientele to match their spirit of adventurousness wasn’t plain sailing for the river-view restaurant.
Early dishes included lamb rump with sweetbreads, Dublin Bay prawns with slow cooked pork belly, ears and trotters, beef sirloin with bone marrow, scallops with black pudding and skate wings with chicken wings.
“It’s been a struggle but we thought, once people do try something a little different maybe they will be converted,” says Chris, 35, who lives in Warrington.
“In our first menus we experimented with cuts of meat and we’ve learned a few lessons. Maybe it wasn’t the right time to use pigs ears, but we still try to be a little bit different. It seems to be working slowly. We know we’re in a totally different market to London and we are very well aware we have to cook for the customer not ourselves.”
Some or part of the dishes found fans, which was encouraging for Chris and his 11-strong kitchen team.
“Skate wings go with chicken, whether it’s chicken mousse or anything,” he contends, “and that was our little take on it. Some people couldn’t get enough of it, others found it wasn’t for them. A lot of people weren’t keen on sweetbreads but they found the lamb itself fantastic.”
Now the trendy nuances are subtler, like his indulgent version of meat and potatoes. They’ll offer “spumas” between courses – sauce injected with gas to create foams – to edge clients towards new tastes. The lunchtime menu is still experimental and changes every Monday.
The beef fillet on the bone is served with truffle potatoes, fois gras, girelle and trompette mushrooms, in a red wine and beef stock sauce. The beef is cooked vacuum-sealed at 52C inside a bag injected with high density foam. Cooking in a pan briefly brings the temperature up to 54C to come out medium rare.
“I don’t know anywhere else that serves beef on the bone. With the fois gras it’s a very rich combination and that’s been very, very popular.” Mutton, long out of culinary favour, also sells well.
“We also do a bavette of flank steak, which is very popular in the US. It’s cooked for 24 hours at 54C so it’s pink right the way through.”
State-of-the-art kitchen equipment also brings scope for quirky touches. They can’t use gas up in the tower. Instead they have magnetised induction hobs, which boil a pan of water in 28 seconds.
“We use some different bits of equipment, like dehydrators to make powders out of scallops for example to put into the pasta, so the pasta tastes of scallops.”
Chris never imagined working in Liverpool.
“The city is progressing very quickly. We like to keep constantly evolving. We have a lot of talented young lads who work in the kitchen and if we don’t carry on teaching them they’ll go elsewhere.”
Originally from Speke, Chris returned to Liverpool after working in Jersey and London.
He dreamed of playing for Everton as a boy, but on discovering his talent for cooking capitalised on it, training at Halton College.
He learned most, he says, under Ian Morgan and Gary Rhodes in Manchester.
“Attention to detail and consistency” he nods. “If you are going to dice veg to one quarter of an inch, dice it to a quarter of an inch, not all different kinds of sizes.”
Working 400ft up presents unique challenges – particularly to someone with vertigo.
“We have to compete against the dazzling views,” he says. “It’s a challenge; dishes have to be eye-catching and constantly evolving. It’s hard work but we are trying, and it’s vindication when we get an award like this.
“I’m still not keen on the height, but I’ve got more used to it. l don’t get too close to the glass and I don’t look down.
“I’ve never worked at this height before; not in metres anyway.”
