Village Raw - ISSUE 1

VILLAGE RAW
Born in Australia, Chris Honor’s journey as a chef has seen him working in Europe,
South East Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. He has worked at some of the world’s
most luxurious hotels, including the Burj Al Arab in Dubai, Dharmawangsa in Jakarta,
Mena House in Cairo, and The Dorchester in London, where he managed a team of 120.
Wanting a change of lifestyle, Chris quit his executive chef role and, alongside his
wife, Bibi, opened Chriskitch in Muswell Hill in February 2013. He tells Village Raw
about the importance of harmony in life and food.
Photos by Dan Bridge.
AN UNDERTONE OF HARMONY
Burnt sausages
My mother was the worst cook in the world. Tragic - absolute
shocking. She burned everything and if it wasn’t burned it was
undercooked. I remember being 13 to 14 years old - she would
cook dinner and we wouldn’t eat the dinner because it would
be a burnt lamb chop or burnt sausage. I’d throw it away and
start cooking myself and I really enjoyed it, so from an early age
I started to enjoy that gratification. My grandma was an amazing
cook and I’d love to say I was bouncing on her knee while she
was cooking but it’s not that romantic. I was forced to cook.
Lemonade
My father used to make lemonade. As a kid I’d love it - super
sweet, just gorgeous. On a summer’s day you couldn’t get anything
better. It’s amazing how food takes you back to your childhood
and even now I make lemonade [to prove the point Chris
wanders off and returns with a jug brimming with chilled super
sweet lemonade – as far as we can tell it’s not on the menu].
Opening Chriskitch
We opened in the middle of a recession, and when everyone was
trying to keep money in their pockets we were trying to get them
in to spend it. The location is off the high street, we’re quite
some distance away, so to get people motivated to come to us
was a tough thing. But underlining that we really believed that if
we did great food and offered a great environment and offered
something people could embrace as their own we thought there
would be success - we were banking on that. We had people
come in when we opened on the first day. I remember a lady who
came in during the afternoon said: “You’re crazy to open here –
I’m going to give you six months – I wish you the best.”
The work
A lot of people think owning a café is very romantic but what
people don’t see is the work that goes before 9am and the work
that comes after 5pm. We try to make everything fresh every
day so we start very early, sometimes four, sometimes five.
There might be a little bit of shopping in the market and then
it’s just baking in the morning - so cakes, breads, little pastries.
Then we make salads, start prepping, start plating, breakfast,
lunch, then break down, clean down, we shut then we deep clean
the floors, the tables, the kitchen, then the ordering - and in
between that I might do the school run or school pickup. How
dynamic Bibi is in terms of what she does and how much she
does is incredible. Running the house, looking after the kids, doing
their social schedules, looking after me, making sure there’s
food - she does four shifts a week and pretty much runs the
business side of Chriskitch – that’s pretty impressive.
Changing menus
We don’t have much storage space so we buy every day. We
buy from local markets and supermarkets. For fruit and veg our
menu is based on the season, so it’s what’s available at its peak,
at its prime, for us to use. Today I found beautiful red peppers so
I bought two boxes. Our salads change every day.
Roots food
If you go to a Michelin star restaurant one plate of food might
have 30 steps to it and it looks beautiful and it’s gorgeous but
it’s also very processed; it’s gone through different stages of
handling, it’s gone through different types of cooking - it’s removed
from its natural state. Our food has taken three or four
steps but still looks beautiful, it’s a lot more relaxed, a lot looser,
18
19