Elystan Street was never supposed to be Phil Howard’s flagship restaurant. Launched in 2016, just a few months after the chef moved on from The Square after 25 years behind the stove, it had originally been intended to be run day-to-day by another chef. That appointment didn’t work out, leaving the rather weary Howard no option but to step in at the last minute.
“I didn’t think about trying to find someone else. You either have the right person to hand, or you don’t,” Howard recalls. “I knew I wanted to cook again, but it all happened a lot quicker than expected.”
Howard is in a reflective mood. The restaurant that will probably be his swansong is turning 10, he has recently turned 60 and both his children are getting married later this summer. It’s clear from the way he talks about it that the launch of Elystan Street feels relatively recent in his mind - he has now been cooking and running restaurants for 40 years - but he can’t quite believe it is already marking its first decade.
Located about five minutes’ walk north of Chelsea’s King’s Road, Elystan Street saw Howard once again team up with restaurateur Rebecca Mascarenhas, with whom he had launched Kensington’s Kitchen W8 in 2009.
I don’t like that drawn-out, chef-obsessed style of eating. When you get older you just want simple things done really well
The corner site was not without baggage. It had proved difficult for agents to shift, having previously been home to Tom Aikens’ ill-fated restaurant, and had sat empty for the best part of two years. But Howard and Mascarenhas had a good feeling about the handsome and well-proportioned corner site, seeing the fact that a big-name restaurant had recently traded there as a positive rather than a negative.
“To attract people to a restaurant you need to know who those people are. That was very much the case with Elystan Street. We know this part of West London well and could see that it was perfectly placed for the kind of restaurant Rebecca and I wanted to do.”
Everyone needs good neighbours
The business plan was broadly similar to Kitchen W8: an unpretentious but high-quality neighbourhood restaurant. Elystan Street may have become Howard’s baby by accident, but it did not take long for him to warm to the project.
“The prospect of doing something much more accessible really excited me,” he says. “There were a lot of reasons why I sold The Square, but the main one was that I’d fallen out of love with fancy Mayfair cooking. I’d had enough of fucking about with ingredients in order to make people happy.”
The menu was - and still is - aligned with contemporary eating habits. While most guests opt for a three-course meal, the offer is deliberately flexible, with plenty of vegetarian and gluten-free options.
Prices are restrained given the setting, Howard’s pedigree and his continued insistence on the very best ingredients. A lunch and early evening three-course set menu is priced at £45, while the à la carte will, in most cases, come in at well under £100 for three courses.
Elystan Street did not launch with a tasting menu, but Howard bowed to pressure about a year in with a six-dish selection he describes as a “stroll through the menu”.
“Each dish is big enough to actually taste and enjoy,” he says. “I don’t particularly like tasting menus. I don’t like that drawn-out, chef-obsessed style of eating. When you get older you just want simple things done really well. Everyone gets there in the end.”
The offer remains stripped back: a few canapés and some excellent bread, but little in the way of bells and whistles. Michelin recognition was never a goal, yet Elystan Street won a star within a year of opening with its unshowy yet masterful modern European cooking.
There were a lot of reasons why The Square closed, but the main one was that I’d fallen out of love with fancy Mayfair cooking. I’d had enough of fucking about with ingredients in order to make people happy
Is he bothered about having one?
“The truth is, if you run a restaurant to a certain standard there are some guides that acknowledge that. If one star is good, consistent cooking with great ingredients, we certainly tick that box.”
The approach has remained broadly consistent over the past decade - in fact if anything, it has become looser.
“If I was going to open another restaurant with my name above the door, which I’m not, I’d make it simpler still.”
Ten years in to Elystan Street, Howard appears more comfortable in his own skin than at any other point in his career. While his days aren’t relaxed by most people’s standards – they often start with a 20-mile bike ride around Richmond Park before a shift in the kitchen – the pace is certainly less intense than it was at The Square.
The improved work-life balance is simply a product of age. Howards still extracts a lot of joy from his craft but takes a more relaxed approach than he did in his younger years.
“I like being in the kitchen. That can mean anything - from chopping chives to breaking down chickens. I’m just another cog. I’m here more for menu changes, and I spend time on the pass because it gives you a good sense of what’s going on. It’s hard, but I still enjoy cooking as much as I ever did. If I’m honest, though, my fuse is shorter when it comes to the external frustrations. Restaurants are high-maintenance things no matter what you do. Every day you walk in and something’s broken or blocked or hasn’t been delivered or isn’t good enough.”
Howard still writes all the menus - and beautifully so - striking just the right balance between clarity and restraint, a dying art.
One of London’s all-time greats
Yet for all Elystan Street’s success, Howard remains synonymous with another restaurant entirely - The Square, which he co-owned with Nigel Platts-Martin. The Bruton Street restaurant held two Michelin stars for 18 years and was a defining fixture of the London dining scene until Howard sold it on in 2016 (it closed for good a few years later). It is spoken of with a hushed reverence reserved for a select few places.
Its notoriously demanding kitchen became a crucible for some of the UK’s most notable chefs, including Brett Graham, Adam Byatt, Gary Foulkes, Neil Borthwick, Jan Ostle and Aaron Potter.
Howard is not entirely sure what made it such a proving ground but believes it may relate to his own relationship with food. “There are a lot of very good craftsmen out there, but many aren’t passionate eaters. They often have a slightly neurotic relationship with food, and that can be an issue. I love cooking, but I also understand what makes a dish enjoyable to eat. I guess that rubs off on people.”
Where did that come from?
“It certainly wasn’t Marco or the Roux Brothers - though that’s not to say they didn’t teach me important lessons,” he muses. “Possibly Simon Hopkinson.”
Howard’s way
Howard’s influence extends beyond those who worked in his kitchen. For many cooks, it was transmitted through a pair of books that became industry bibles. Published by Absolute Press, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, in 2012 The Square Cookbook was originally intended as a single volume but was split into Savoury and Sweet due to its scope. Unusually for the era, the recipes were rigorously tested and directly reflected dishes served at The Square.
The base recipes - things like chicken stock, scallop mousse, crème pâtissière - are particularly revered.
“They are respected by many in the industry, which is a lovely thing,” he says. “I put a ridiculous amount of work into them. At the time, a lot of chefs were releasing books where the recipes hadn’t necessarily been tested. There wasn’t really anything else like it.”
He also went to unusual lengths to document technique.
“In a lot of books people say things like ‘bone out a 1.6kg chicken’. That’s not much help. It’s painstaking to provide full written instructions and photos, but that’s what I did.”
The books sold well, eventually went out of print, and began commanding high prices on the secondary market. Last year, Howard released a limited reprint that quickly sold out. Copies of the original books still fetch well over £100 on eBay.
Exploring all corners of the restaurant business
Since the closure of The Square, Howard has diversified significantly. Alongside Elystan Street and Kitchen W8, he is behind the Fulham bakery Little Sourdough Kitchen and Notto, a three-site London pasta concept born from a lockdown delivery project that saw fresh pasta - and the viscous starchy water needed to cook it properly - delivered to people’s doors.
He may not be the obvious candidate for a casual dining venture, but, as he notes, pasta has long been central to his cooking.
“I don’t think I’ve ever written a menu that doesn’t include pasta in some form. If you’re in the business of delivering pleasure through food, it’s a pretty good place to start.”
These days I take a lot of satisfaction from giving people pleasure with food while also running a good business
Notto - in which his son Ali is also involved - is performing solidly, though each site is currently facing operational challenges that are restricting trade.
Despite those short-term issues, Howard sounds more positive about trading conditions than many operators. Business at his two restaurants with Mascarenhas is uneven, but her formidable financial discipline keeps things on track. Their relatively modest scale and carefully chosen, slightly off-pitch locations also help. But it still requires hard work.
“We don’t sit back and wait for people to walk through the door. We invest heavily in things like digital marketing.”
The pair run a tight ship. “It helps that we’re older. When you’re younger, you tend to be less disciplined on GP because you want to show the world what you can do. These days I take a lot of satisfaction from giving people pleasure with food while also running a good business.”
That philosophy is perhaps most clearly expressed in Elystan Street’s especially good value set lunch and early evening menu, which is used to drive covers early in the year and during the summer when regulars are away. Costing as little as £25 for three courses, it offers one of the lowest entry points to Michelin-starred dining in the UK.
The kitchen’s considerable skill is applied to more economical ingredients, often requiring extra care to maximise their potential, though Howard must ensure that any savings are not offset by increased labour costs.
While margins are tighter than on the regular menu, the offer remains viable. In these very tough times, that this level of cooking can be delivered at a price comparable to a chain restaurant is something to be celebrated.
“At that price you could be eating some real crap served by miserable people who don’t give a shit,” Howard says. “If we had a queue out the door every day, we probably wouldn’t put it on, but menus like this open the restaurant to new audiences. And besides, having a busy restaurant is a lovely thing.”