‘A signature dish is a blessing and a curse’

There are, of course, exceptions to this unwritten rule. These are the “undroppables”: the enduring signature creations that, for one reason or another, restaurateurs feel they need to include years or even decades after their creation. Here, six chefs talk about virality, repetition, and the past, present and future of the famous dish they just can’t quit.

The co-founder and chef-owner of Rita’s, London, has been serving its hot-bean devilled eggs since the early 2010s. The heat and umami in the dish comes from doubanjiang – the Chinese fermented chilli bean paste

The thing about any signature dish is that it’s a blessing and a curse. If it’s of a certain standard then it’s a signifier of what you do; but with the advent of social media, it can also be a real pain in the arse. We had a tear-and-share garlic bread that we had to take off the menu because people were making a two-hour reservation, ordering just this £6 dish, taking a photo of it, then leaving without eating it. It was very, very strange.

The hot-bean devilled egg is something I developed with Andrew Clarke [fellow chef and early Rita’s collaborator] in 2013. I’d just moved back from living in New York and April Bloomfield’s devilled eggs [at the Spotted Pig] were definitely an instigator – the devilled egg is kitsch and inoffensive but there’s a complexity to its flavour and history. Ours is so simple. It was very much like, doubanjiang is delicious, it has the right mouthfeel, and if we put it together with an egg I think it will be even more delicious. After the first mouthful it was very much: “Well, everyone is going to want one of those.”

We’ve cooked it in New York, Paris and Cologne – it’s almost like our little logo. When we had Bodega Rita’s [a spin-off deli counter in King’s Cross] there was an obsessive who had the sandwich version of it nearly every day. There’s a couple who have been coming to Rita’s since 2014 and the woman has two devilled eggs every time she comes. That’s been our only real interaction for more than a decade. There’s an enjoyment and subtle joy to that. Why would I want to change that by taking the dish off the menu?

Rita’s, 49 Lexington Street, London W1; ritasdining.com

Deep-fried Horlicks bao – a combination of ice-cream sandwich, malted milk and deep-fried yin si juan (Taiwanese bread roll) – was co-created by the Bao group co-founder and chef-owner in 2013 in its pop-up days

When we were first thinking about a dessert, a long time ago, we knew we wanted to do a deep-fried bao. It’s quite common in Taiwanese fried chicken shops to fry bao either in the same oil as the chicken for a savoury dish, or in clean oil and drizzled in condensed milk for something creamy and sweet. Ice-cream in a bao is just not a thing in Taiwan. But though Shing and Wai Ting [Erchen’s co-founders, respectively her husband and sister-in-law] grew up in Nottingham and I grew up in Taiwan, we both have this united, fond memory of creamy, malty drinks like Horlicks. It’s like the taste of a safe, worry-free childhood.

I’d say we sell about 35,000 a year and we use about three tonnes of Horlicks ice-cream. We’ve been testing our own pure malt but it never quite has the same creaminess or nostalgia so we’ve just kind of stayed with Horlicks. No one from Horlicks has actually ever got in touch, but hopefully they will now.

Our menu is fairly concise, but I used to be quite stubborn about keeping dishes on there. At Bao Noodle Shop [the group’s Shoreditch restaurant] there was a blanched spinach with tofu cream on, because blanched vegetables are such a classic in Taiwanese noodle shops. But then you need to have lived and breathed Taiwan to actually know that. It stayed on for a very, very long time until there came a day when we were looking through sales and I realised it was time to let it go. We’ve had other desserts – there’s a vegan chocolate ice-cream inside a bao and a new battered “bao-nut” – but nothing matches the Horlicks. Ten years later, it’s still so loaded with memories; it’s just never occurred to us that we could take it off the menu.

baolondon.com

The duck liver muesli has been a regular at Restaurant Sat Bains in Nottingham since the early 2010s. A flash-frozen parfait, its textures and fruit are reminiscent of breakfast cereal

Years ago, about 2011, we used to have a classic foie gras parfait on the menu – basically a custard that we’d cook in a bain-marie, then blend into the silkiest foie gras you’ve ever tasted. We had eight guests at the chef’s table, I was at the pass, and I looked at John Freeman [Restaurant Sat Bains’s head chef] and his face was white. The custard had got too warm and split, so we could bring it back to life with some whisking and warm water, but it would never set. The plates were already laid out. In the end, we threw it into liquid nitrogen, whisked it again, and ended up with these incredible clusters, or clouds, of foie gras. It completely blew everyone away and we were a bit like, “What have we just come up with?”

Today, it’s this fine granita of duck or chicken liver parfait, apricot puree, french bean salad, pickled cranberries and a toasted granola with little shards of chicken skin. It’s really cold, fresh, fatty and sharp – three or four surprising mouthfuls to move you to the next phase of the meal. It’s been on the menu for nearly 15 years. It’s a reminder that allowing failure into your [creative] repertoire is the best thing you can ever do. There’s no seasonality to it, so it just sits there year after year, laughing at us all. It was a massive mistake that’s become a signature.

It may come off the menu one day; I’ll never say never, and there will be times when I want to put an extra dish on and it’s just in the way. But I think people want to see skill, something they cannot do at home. And the muesli is the perfect example. You’re not going to get five litres of liquid nitrogen delivered to your house to make some frozen paté, are you?

Restaurant Sat Bains, Lenton Lane, Nottingham NG7; restaurantsatbains.com

The chef-owner of Opheem, Birmingham, created his aloo tuk pink fir potato in 2020. The crunchy potatoes, laced with chutney, have been a favourite ever since

Towards the end of the first Covid lockdown in 2020, I was asked by a magazine to create a dish [for a competition] that would go well with champagne. Rather than making it easy for myself with oysters or caviar, I thought, “Why don’t I see what I can do with a potato?” Doing something based on aloo tuk – an Indian street food dish which is a deep-fried potato fritter with a sweet mango chutney – had been on the back burner for a while. So it was crunchy potato croutons, sweetness and chilli heat, with the sourness of tamarind, fresh chives and a fatty richness from a potato espuma.

It won the competition, so we put it on the menu in the summer for about four months. I cooked it on MasterChef: The Professionals [Islam was a mentor on a December 2020 episode], people started posting about it online, then we took it off and had a bit of a backlash. It’s probably the only backlash we’ve had since Opheem opened – it was flattering, but I did think, “That’s quite an emotional response for a potato.” We lengthened the menu and added more courses so I didn’t feel I was being stifled. We change the potato seasonally, whether it’s pink firs or jerseys when they come in. But now, come rain or shine, it’ll be on the menu and I’ve come to terms with that. Opheem is all about taking flavours and emotions people have experienced when it comes to Indian food and presenting them in a completely different way. So, as a dish, it probably signifies the restaurant and its place in people’s hearts. But we do laugh and joke about it. I never thought that my career would be defined by a potato, but do you know what? I’m OK with it.

Opheem, 65 Summer Row, Birmingham B3; opheem.com

The co-founder and chef-owner of the Plimsoll, London, first served his dexter cheeseburger in 2019. It is one of the few mainstays on the eclectic menu at the Finsbury Park pub

We actually opened with just a chicken burger at the Compton Arms [the north London pub residency that was a precursor to the Plimsoll] so that was why we had the brioche buns and pickles in. On the weekend, me and my old business partner Jamie [Allan] would be there together and we’d just make stuff for ourselves to eat. So we grilled some mince, used the brioche, some pickles and some onions, and threw a burger on the menu. A few weeks later we had our first review, and I was working on my own, toasting buns using a griddle that only had space to cook two burgers at a time.

Once we moved to the Plimsoll we had Spanish content creators turning up with cameras; [Swedish rapper] Yung Lean came for a burger. It was pretty bonkers. We don’t actually know what goes on on TikTok or whatever, but we can look out over the pass, see the crowd change, and think, “We’re going to be making a lot of cheeseburgers tonight.” I think the secret might be the onions and using a lot of them – it resonates with childhood and what places like McDonald’s once were.

We do between 900 and 1,000 of them a week and I still love it, though I’m not the one who has to cook 300 of them in a night. It has kind of assimilated itself into our kitchen as a stepping stone in our hierarchy. People progress from cold snacks and salads to cooking burgers. It doesn’t teach technical ability, although there is technique to it, but about how much of being a chef is repetitive. If you can’t find enjoyment in that, maybe it’s not the job for you.

People who are perhaps more sensible businessmen than me say we should open a burger place. But, personally, I wouldn’t want to work in a burger bar. We employ cooks or people who want to learn to be cooks. We’ll never take the cheeseburger off. But just because something is good, I don’t think you have to cynically capitalise on it.

The Plimsoll, 52 St Thomas's Rd, London N4; @the.plimsoll