Sally Abé on new restaurant The Pem: ‘I want people to stay for hours, drink espresso martinis and eat Black Forest gateau’

Sally Abé talks tells David Ellis about life after the Harwood Arms, why empowering women in hospitality drives her and her enduring love for classic recipes
Fixer: making people feel good at work is a priority for Sally Abé
The Pem

Sally Abé is laughing. Sally Abé is quite often laughing; this is her default. The chef – now consultant chef at politicians’ hangout, the Conrad London St. James – seems to be having a very good time of things. “It suddenly feels real now,” she says, looking around her new dining room, “We want it have that feeling, that fun one.

“It’s going to be lively. You know, if people want to dance, they can.”

Will there be space to dance? “Well… maybe on the tables.” There’s that giggle.

A month ago, when news came that she was to overhaul the hotel’s pub, the Blue Boar, food press and Abé’s fans alike began excitedly chattering: after life steering the world’s only Michelin-starred pub, the Harwood Arms, anticipation for a follow up – the Harwood Mk 2? – began to bubble over.

“It wasn’t daunting to go, but it was very sad,” Abé says of her leaving, “I’d been there such a long time and I loved working there. But it just sort of came to its natural end and I wanted to do something… the next level up, I suppose.”

If skipping up a level from a star feels a grand ambition, it’s one Abé has realised. Besides a new freedom at the Conrad – “the whole menu was mine at the Harwood, but Brett [Graham, co-owner of the pub] had this rule: no chips, no chocolate, no pies. But, like, here, I can use really excellent caviar, which would have been weird at the Harwood…” – the chef has more than a singular Barbour-scented dining room to look after. Besides the Blue Boar, at the Conrad she’s also overseeing a bar, an afternoon tea service and, most excitingly, this new restaurant. News dropped of it last week: it will be called the Pem and open on July 1.

This, you sense, is what really drew her to the hotel. Named for suffragette Emily Wilding Davison – Pem was a family nickname, and the hotel has long amped up its locational ties to powerful women (there is, for instance, a blue plaque hanging for Stella Isaacs, the first woman to take a seat in the House of Lords) – Abé joins the likes of Asma Khan in leading a female-first team.

“It's come together so nicely because kind of my ethos in life is empowering women, empowering women in hospitality,” she says. It’s a line but one she backs up: her general manager is Emma Underwood, well loved for her time at Darby’s; her head chef is Laetizia Keating, once of two star Whatley Manor; and wine has been done by VinaLupa sommelier Emily Harman. “I run kitchens very differently to how they’ve traditionally been run. It's very much a culture of respect, of loyalty. I don’t get upset and shout and scream, I just fix problems.”

Dream team: (l-r) head chef Laetizia Keating, Sally Abé and manager Emma Underwood
The Pem

Abé seems quietly confident of a culture change, where screaming chefs and 100-week hours begin to perish as restaurateurs find it harder to call the shots.

“Now we’re in this crazy staffing crisis, I think it’s a bit of a catalyst. I think the next year is going to be really, really hard but for me, the only way we can draw people into the industry and make it attractive is by being sure that they they're treated like human beings, and that they want to come to work and they feel proud to come to work.”

If a happy team means a happy restaurant, no surprise Abé is looking after them. The Pem will seat 70, and the chef says she wants it to be a good-time restaurant, albeit one marked by its elegant, subtle cooking. “I think it'lI think be a nice place to…. to party, really, to have a great time. You’ll head down, eat some great food, drink some nice wine. It’s not going to be stuffy, waiters in white gloves; I want it to be friendly, where you want to come and sink into one of the banquettes and just stay there three hours, then linger afterwards and drink espresso martinis and eat Black Forest gateau.”

Ah. The infamous Seventies pudding. Is that Abé’s idea of a good time? As it turns out, yes. Free from the Harwood’s rules – no pies or chocolate, sure, but also “things like lobster and scallops, that I could never justify putting on there, can be on here” – Abé is sticking purely to personal favourites: “I would never put something on the menu that I didn't absolutely love.

“There’s tried and tested flavours, and for me – it’s not that there’s no point making new flavour combinations – but it’s like: just don’t f*** with the classics, right?”

The Pem

If this sounds a little safe, Abé may be underselling her claret-coloured restaurant. The two dishes she serves during our interview – one a native lobster salad studded with the traffic lights of red, yellow and green heritage tomatoes, the other two ribbons of bacon half hidden beneath an unmade jigsaw of morels (“We’re going to call it knife n’ fork bacon,” she says, “because Laetizia says this bacon so good it definitely deserves a knife and fork”) – are both delicious, the cooking on a serious level. For all of Abé’s jollity, there is clearly a considered, measured mind thinking things through on her à la carte-only menu. She says Keating has driven them both to up their game, as the two have dissimilar culinary backgrounds.

Besides, she adds, a soft spot for Black Forest gateau doesn’t mean a love for all things Seventies; “I’ve got a lot of really, really old cookbooks – it’s nice to read through them for a flicker of inspiration. But I mean, some of it’s a bit weird – you know, grouse with bananas.”

There will be no grouse and bananas at Pem. They’re gunning for it to be an experience, but not that kind of experience. “It’s not going to be somewhere you’d come for a quick casual lunch,” says Abé, “And that’s not just because to start with we won’t open for lunch…”

I run kitchens very differently to how they’ve traditionally been run. It's very much a culture of respect, of loyalty

That doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be deadly pricey – the team figure around £80-a-head, although that’s without drinks – but it’ll be high-end, even if it’s about a good time. “I don’t cook for Michelin, I cook because this is nice food. If it comes, that’s a nice thing, but I’m not chasing it. I think that’s a bit... arrogant.”

A private dining room is somewhere the chef expects to end up being pleasingly spectacular. “We want this to be quite glam and jazzy and elegant, and we want to do wine dinners and that kind of stuff, fill it with roses and candelabras and make it quite fun.”

Later, Abé mentions her upcoming afternoon tea, launching later in September “because there’s quiiiite a lot going on”, and her new green-marble fronted bar. She says she’ll be doing a bit of everything – starting off each day in the kitchen, showing her face in the restaurant, checking in on all the teams. There must be a lot of pressure, I say, especially with your name over the door.

“Yeeesssss…” comes a high-pitched reply, that lilts into laughter. There’s that giggle again, this time dancing with nerves. But I suspect Abé’s got this, even when that pressure stacks up. After all, as she says – she may not scream and shout, but she does fix problems.

The Pem will open July 1 at 22-28 Broadway, SW1H 0BH, thepemrestaurant.com

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