All features of Cocochine it's about indulging in peace. Caviar adds several dishes, the tables are comfortably spaced and the walls are decorated with a rotating selection of emerging art. Hamiltons gallery. The Mayfair restaurant, which opened last fall in a former town house on Bruton Place, is a joint venture between chef Larry Jayasekara and Hamiltons owner Tim Jefferies, and embraces Jayasekara's thoughtful approach to hospitality.
“It's about taking care of the guests, cooking with love and heart and respecting the ingredients,” Jayasekara tells the Observer, speaking from the stunning private dining room on the upper level, which features three Warhol paintings. “Hospitality means opening your home to friends and family. You cook for days, then the first thing you serve [when they arrive] it is water. I don't want to have a champagne trolley in the restaurant, because that shouldn't be the first thing on offer. I want to give guests a glass of water and let them come in, relax and unwind.”
Jayasekara met Jeffery while working as executive chef at Gordon Ramsay's Petrus in Belgravia. Jefferies returned several times to the restaurant, trying to convince Jayasekara to host a few private meals, and the chef finally agreed. Afterwards, Jeffries asked Jayasekara what he wanted to do to move his career forward. Jayasekara said he wants to open his own restaurant.
“He didn't say anything,” Jayasekara recalled. “We spent some time. And he said, 'I know a lot of people, and I can get a group of people together to help, and I can put in the creativity, and we can create something really special together.' It started so easily.”
Designing and building the Cocochine was not that straightforward. The team began the renovation of the four-story townhouse in 2020, soon realizing that they would have to completely redo the foundation and structure of the building. There was a lot to consider, including how much energy was needed for the restaurant and how to build a custom kitchen, complete with a chef's counter, on the second floor. Then, Covid-19 hit, and it was hard to find construction workers and materials.
In the end, it took three years for the restaurant to come together. Small details, such as leather-wrapped mantels on the stairs and a carved marble drinks station, were important to Jayasekara, who was also able to create a custom chef's kitchen. On the ground level, guests can enjoy a state-of-the-art bar stocked with over 1,500 bottles, and there is cozy seating for pre-dinner drinks. When you order a steak, the server brings a box of custom knives with different colored handles to choose from.
“We've always wanted to make it a place where it's about the level of craftsmanship and the quality of the ingredients together, so it's not just a plate of food,” Jayasekara said. “It's a whole experience. Everything here is custom made to fit. Everything is like a jigsaw. Everything should be compatible. Everything has to be the way we wanted it: flowers, water, steak knives, plates, tiles, curtains.”
The food is also not good. Many of the ingredients come from Rowler Farm Estate in Northamptonshire, where the restaurant has exclusive access. The salad, for example, contains more than a dozen vegetables and herbs from the farm, and several proteins, including pork, travel 60 kilometers from the area to Cocochine. Other ingredients, such as fish, are carefully sourced in Scotland.
Jayasekara spends one day a week at the farm, which he feels is essential to his process as a chef focused on seasonality and quality. He also draws ingredients and flavors from his travels, as well as his upbringing in Sri Lanka. Each dish emphasizes decadence in an understated, elegant way, exemplified by a modest starter of Japanese otoro, roasted foie gras and golden Oscietra caviar.
“We are not doing anything you are not used to,” explained Jayasekara. “I want the menu, when you open it, to have it [things like] scallops, crab, lobster, mushrooms, caviar. I've always dreamed of having a menu in a restaurant where you can't choose just one dish. If you're looking for individual meals, you're in the right place. Hopefully, we do that, and we make it focus on two or three ingredients rather than 15. [in each dish].”
Jayasekara's obsession with quality is best understood through the menu's standout dessert: Tahiti vanilla ice cream, served with jaggery caramel. It may be the most memorable ice cream you'll ever taste, because Jayasekara insists that the quality of the vanilla bean is very high.
First, the chef adds 15 vanilla pods to each liter of crème anglaise, a significant amount of vanilla beans. He says: “It was right. “But I wanted the vanilla seeds to come out on the palate. It's not vanilla essence or vanilla powder or anything. So I said, 'Let's put 20.' And now we make half a kilo of fresh Tahitian vanilla with one liter of crème anglaise. That's 50 percent vanilla. And believe it or not, since we opened, the best-selling dessert is vanilla ice cream.”
Growing up in Sri Lanka, Jayasekara never imagined owning his own restaurant in Mayfair, where he could explore the limits of vanilla bean ice cream. He had never seen cauliflower, caviar or scallops before he moved to London twenty years ago. His life at home was simple: surfing, grilling fish and eating rotis. He admits that his life now is “a great privilege,” but it took Jayasekara years of hard work and sacrifice to get to this point in his career. He started in London cleaning bins, then moved on to chopping vegetables in a Thai restaurant, and eventually went to cookery school.
“Learning to cook was about having a job, first of all,” said Jayasekara. “I couldn't cook. I had never cooked before. He gave me a different passport. It changed me from a little boy diving into an anus about the size of a scallop or what vegetables taste like. It's a crazy journey. I used to wake up in the morning 20 years ago and think how many waves were coming in.”
Jayasekara worked his way up at prestigious restaurants such as Waterside Inn, Michel Bras and Le Manoir aux Quat'Saison, before becoming executive chef at Petrus, specializing in fine French cuisine. Despite Ramsay's name, Jayasekara says the celebrity chef never yelled at him in the kitchen.
“It was a great experience,” he says. “He was hoping to run for Petrus, and I have a lot of respect for Gordon. He knows exactly what the market needs and what the menu should look like. Trusting someone like him to run one of his best restaurants; it was a privilege. I learned a lot about running a restaurant, rather than just cooking.”
Most importantly, Jayasekara learned the essentials of being a leader. According to Jayasekara, you need three things to be successful as you climb the ladder: preparation, communication and organization. He says: “When those three things come together, you have full knowledge.” “As a single man, there is nothing you can do. You don't win the Champions League like Cristiano Ronaldo, do you?”
That, for Jayasekara, defines success as a chef—not Michelin stars or rave reviews. It's as much about having a loyal team as it is about having a restaurant with full tables and returning guests, all coming back again and again for the aforementioned vanilla ice cream.
He says: “Any honor presented to any restaurant is a reward for the way you work, the quality you work at, the hospitality in the restaurant and how good the team is.” “It's always a great compliment to the team and the business. That praise is appreciated in our work. But the real success is the returning guest. Signature dishes are created by the guests, not the chef. You eat something and tell five of your friends, and suddenly something becomes a chef's signature dish. That, as I see it, is success in the restaurant.”
