The tasting menu at Behind, a contemporary seafood restaurant in London’s hip Hackney neighborhood, modifications virtually daily. It’s why chef Andy Beynon doesn’t submit the 10-course tasting menu on-line. It’s additionally why quite a lot of diners return to the 18-seat restaurant time and again—since you’ll by no means eat the very same meal there twice.
“We tweak it on a regular basis,” Beynon says, talking to Observer in mid-January. “For instance, tomorrow we’re doing a Mylor prawn dish as a result of they’ve simply come into season. There are particular dishes we will adapt relying on the accessible seafood, however there are some dishes we utterly change and that we develop by way of the week to placed on the menu the following week.”
Beynon opened Behind, his first restaurant, in October 2020. Lower than three weeks later, the eatery earned its first Michelin star. It was a transformative second for the chef and the restaurant’s success.
“I’d by no means owned a restaurant earlier than, and I used to be completely fucked for cash,” he remembers. “I used to be borrowing and begging left, proper and heart. However as a result of we gained the star, we turned completely rammed. After which I didn’t have to fret an excessive amount of. So I don’t actually know what it will be prefer to personal a restaurant with out one.”
Earlier than Behind, Beynon labored in a slew of high-end British institutions, together with Phil Howard’s The Sq., Claude Bosi’s Hibiscus and Matt Weedon’s Lords of the Manor. Changing into a chef wasn’t a lifelong dream—he initially imagined himself as a hairdresser—however rising up in Hertfordshire, he at all times most popular cooking reveals like Prepared, Regular, Cook dinner to youngsters’s reveals. He took a job as a dishwasher at 16 whereas nonetheless at school, and shortly turned interested in the creativity behind cooking.
“After I began cooking, I fell in love with it,” Beynon says. “However it wasn’t actually seen as a profession. Lots of people round me had been like, ‘You certain you wish to do that?’ They wouldn’t perceive that the high-end stage of cooking is actually critical. That’s altering—working within the kitchen is a extremely good profession—however that was the case after I began cooking.”
Beynon has at all times had massive aspirations, and his try-hard perspective translated properly to the culinary world. “I like making an attempt to push myself and be the very best in sports activities,” he says. “And I feel with cooking, that pushed me as properly. So I needed to work in the very best eating places.”
He began in direction of the highest. Beynon’s first cooking job, at age 17, was at The Ledbury in London, which had simply gained its first Michelin star. “That was fairly a shock to the system, working there after I was so younger,” he says. “I didn’t know something.” He moved on to J. Sheekey, an establishment identified for its seafood. Later, at Hibiscus, Beynon actually started envisioning his first restaurant.
“I used to be enthusiastic about my restaurant eternally, however I didn’t have the abilities of really understanding how a restaurant ran,” he says. “I at all times knew I needed to do it. However I feel an enormous a part of the chef’s desk idea [came from] when I labored with Claude Bosi, and he had a chef’s desk in Hibiscus. It was very chef and customer-led.”
He rapidly realized how a lot he beloved speaking to prospects and cooking in entrance of them. “You get extra of an adrenaline kick, as an alternative of being in a basement or a dingy kitchen the place you’re informed by some French waiter if desk 4 beloved it or not,” Beynon says. “You possibly can truly be sincere and converse to individuals.”
Beynon knew he needed to open his restaurant in Hackney, an space he loves. The precise design emerged from the area he discovered close to London Fields. He knew it must be an open idea with the kitchen in full view of all of the visitors, and he needed a curved countertop for the seating. Behind serves lunch and dinner with just one seating per meal—all visitors sit and obtain their programs on the identical time. It helps to create each camaraderie and a chance for everybody to see what the cooks are doing as they do it.
The eating expertise at Behind is buzzy and convivial. After I went in December, dinner felt each like a meal and a present. Every part the cooks do is seen to diners, who’re seated round a semicircular counter. There’s an island within the heart in order that the dish preparation is on show. Diners chat amongst themselves and with the cooks, one thing that doesn’t at all times occur in positive eating. It additionally affords Beynon and his group the chance to know how individuals really feel in regards to the ever-changing menu objects.
“It helps a lot as a result of I’ve so many regulars who’re sincere and upfront about what’s occurring,” Beynon says. “I’ll discuss new dishes I placed on fairly overtly with a few of my prospects. You possibly can actually gauge from individuals’s reactions what they give thought to the meals.”
Behind is dedicated to seafood, although Beynon is open to together with different substances on the menu. He’s at all times most popular creating dishes with seafood, notably at eating places which can be tasting menu-led. “It’s actually mild, actually recent, and it’s one thing individuals don’t at all times get at residence or know tips on how to cook dinner,” he says. “Fish is recent daily, and you may be so artistic with seafood. You might be playful, just like the prawns on toast dish I do, and actually experiment.”
Beynon is consistently swapping out his dishes, however a number of have caught round, together with his uncommon tackle Chinese language restaurant traditional prawn toast. It’s so well-liked that he has saved it on the menu for the previous six months. “That dish simply retains evolving and evolving,” he says. “We use a extremely good prawn, so we simply serve a prawn and the top meat, and that’s it. We used to serve it within the shell. So quite a lot of dishes I’ve saved on, however adapt so that you don’t truly know what the unique dish was initially.”
The plates have spectacular vary. Some draw inspiration from flavors and cultures all over the world—Beynon lately visited Malaysia and introduced again many substances and spices—and others focus extra on highlighting the fish.
Beynon will not be curious about following developments. For him, what makes meals thrilling is considering outdoors the field and doing one thing uncommon. “It’s additionally about making an attempt to maintain issues thrilling for me,” he says. “And with seafood, you might be artistic in several methods. You might be artistic with the way in which you narrow fish. However it’s additionally about including attention-grabbing spice flavors. We’re going to do a curry-style butter sauce with the Mylor prawns. That’s the place the following stage with Michelin and making an attempt to get two stars actually comes into play.”
Many of the fish served at Behind comes from U.Ok. waters, though some seafood is imported from Morocco and Sicily. Beynon loves to spotlight grey mullet, an underrated fish that lives on seafood. He incorporates smoked kippers, one other British favourite, and he has thought of making an attempt out a jellied eel dish. “We undergo 5 kilos of smoked kippers per week,” Beynon says. “So in the event you add it up since we’ve been open, I have to be one of many lead patrons of kippers in London. I like the thought of preserving traditions alive.”
As a youthful chef, Beynon remembers considering it will be finest to maintain including substances to a dish. However he now realizes that it’s extra skillful to pare issues down and permit the primary ingredient to shine. He at the moment incorporates the smoked kippers right into a scallop dish, permitting the kippers to enhance the Cornwall-caught scallop.
“We don’t season the scallop,” he says. “We serve it the place the scallop is kind of opaque, fairly undercooked, and it’s actually candy and creamy. So whenever you put that sauce on, you get a lot salt and smoky taste, and you may nonetheless style the scallop. The mix is unimaginable. However in the event you put a standard quantity of salt on a scallop, it might damage the dish since you wouldn’t be capable to style the scallop. We attempt to be actually intelligent about it.”
Beynon isn’t shy about admitting that Behind is at the moment working in direction of a second Michelin star. He’s as formidable as ever (a lot so, in truth, that he’s boxing his former boss Jason Atherton for charity in March). He’s within the technique of opening a cocktail bar at the back of Behind, which he plans to name Behind Behind, and he has a lot of concepts for brand spanking new dishes. That second star might not come as rapidly as the primary, however Beynon is aware of it takes time to develop a restaurant, notably one with a imaginative and prescient like his.
“I really feel like we’re there,” he says. “For me, two-star stage is giving one thing totally different to your diners. I’m doing what I feel is finest, and preserving issues artistic, and preserving a superb group round me. I’m somebody who’s in, all or nothing. If I’m not curious about one thing, I don’t waste my vitality on it. I’ve realized with getting older that it’s finest to order your vitality so that you might be formidable with the issues that matter most, just like the restaurant.” It’s clear he’s placing that vitality in the correct route.
