Food File: Tara Hofman
Food Magazine, December 2010
Pop-up restaurants are sweeping the country, and chef Tara Hofman is riding the wave. Her business, Tara’s Table, takes the restaurant experience into people’s own homes. Tara talked to Monica Shaw about private parties and stepping over the family dog.
What inspired you to leave the restaurant kitchen and start your own business?
I wanted to work for myself. In a busy restaurant, little things can sometimes seem like splitting hairs, but I’m very particular and customers appreciate the effort that goes into the details. I learned what I know from working with brilliant chefs at Quartier Vert, The Primrose Café and Babington House, and it’s great to put those skills to use in my own business. Also, the buck stops with me so there’s no one else to blame if anything goes awry. I like that.
How does this compare to working in restaurants?
In a restaurant, you don’t usually meet the people you cook for. But when I cater for a dinner party in someone’s home, you own the whole process and get to know people. I always talk to customers before the event, show them sample menus, talk about their likes and dislikes, and then tailor things to suit them. And, I can put more love into it because all my attention is on those dishes and those guests – I can even throw in a few surprises because I know what they like. In a restaurant, that isn’t usually possible.
What’s it like working in other people’s kitchens?
It certainly prompts a lot of unexpected challenges, like getting around the dog and finding somewhere to attach the pasta machine.
Lots of chefs are setting up their own businesses – what sets you apart?
I keep things small and personal, sometimes as small as one-on-one cooking lessons, which I love doing. I used to work in the wine trade and my husband still does, so I’m able to source great wine. Plus, I keep things fresh and constantly changing because no two experiences are ever the same. Flexibility is key in this business so I always keep an open mind.
Your business is pretty new.
They say an Englishman’s home is his castle and it’s true, so private dinner parties are catching on. Many people don’t want the hassle of going out for what might be a disappointing experience. It’s early days but I’ve had a lot of interest, especially coming up to Christmas. Cookery lessons are popular Christmas presents. And canapés are massively popular for Christmas parties, though I’ve had to turn down some requests to host parties on Christmas Day – I have my
own party to worry about!
Future plans for Tara’s Table?
Restaurants will always have their place, but people are changing the way they eat – they want variety. Pop-up restaurants are great because they offer diners a different experience. They’re also a good use of space, ingredients and resources. But as much as I love private parties, I still love the buzz of a busy restaurant, so maybe I’ll take Tara’s Table “out” every so often. Watch this space!
Bite-sized
Early food memories?
Wolfing down a huge plate of spaghetti bolognese when I was six or seven years old in an Italian restaurant while the waiters laughed at me. It’s is still one of my favourite foods.
Wednesday evening fail-safe dish?
Spaghetti carbonara. I always have pasta in the house, and eggs, bacon and parmesan in the fridge.
What would you happily never eat again?
Laverbread: I’ve tried to like it but it’s just not happening.
Tara’s Table
Tel. 0117 9621770 Mob. 07740 683149
http://www.tarastable.co.uk
Food feature: Tara’s Table
Bristol Evening Post, Wednesday 14th April 2010
Tara Hofman has worked in the best restaurants in California, London and Bristol. Now she’s taking her expertise and cooking for people in their own kitchens. Mark Taylor meets her to find out more
Tara Hofman is the latest Bristol chef to move away from the cut and thrust of restaurants to cook the same high quality food for people in their own homes.
Her newly launched business, Tara’s Table, offers a private catering service and caters for everything from canapés to three-course dinner party menus.
Hofman has cooked in a number of high profile restaurants, in Bristol and London.
She worked at Quartier Vert on Whiteladies Road and then The Primrose Café in Clifton Village. She has also gained valuable experience in some of her favourite restaurants including The River Café and Moro in London and Chez Panisse in California.
A chef who is passionate about local produce and seasonality, Hofman admits that one of the reasons she has decided to go it alone after years of working in restaurants is because so few places in the city share her cooking philosophy.
“It’s very difficult,” she muses, over coffee in a Clifton bar. “I’m a very seasonal chef and it’s hard to find restaurants doing really seasonal food.
“I refuse to put tomatoes on the menu in the winter, for example, and I won’t use asparagus imported from Kenya in January when I can wait for the English asparagus to appear in April. A lot of places don’t understand that.”
Hofman has devised seasonal menus as an example of the dishes she cooks.
Her summer repertoire, for example, features dishes such as watermelon and feta salad with sumac dressing; crab mayonnaise with a cucumber salad; poached salmon, samphire and new potatoes with mint; duck breast with pommes Anna, rainbow chard and pickled peaches and vanilla crème brulée with raspberries.
The way Tara’s Table works is simple. Hofman visits the prospective customer in their home to discuss the menu and their requirements and to have a look at the kitchen. Once the menu has been decided, Tara will source all the ingredients for the day of the dinner party, arrive at the house a few hours earlier to prepare it and cook for the guests as she would in a restaurant.
Although Hofman’s idea is to take restaurant-quality food into people’s homes, it’s also aimed at people who don’t have time to cook.
As well as cooking dinner parties, she will also supply ready-made food for people’s fridges and freezers so they can reheat the dishes themselves.
She is also offering cookery lessons for small groups in people’s homes.
“You might not want to go out or you might have young kids but still want a really great meal so why not get a chef to come to your home?”
Although Hofman’s cooking style is essentially Mediterranean, she’s also happy to cook other dishes if that’s what people want, as long as it sticks to her seasonal philosophy.
“If somebody wanted me to do a Thai evening, then I would, but I wouldn’t be happy cooking asparagus in January. I want it to be as seasonal as I can because it’s a better way of cooking and the produce is fresher when it’s sourced locally in its right season.
“As well as cooking for dinner parties, I’m also happy to make ‘one pot wonders’ like lamb tagine or coq au vin for 10 people so people can serve it to their friends and it looks like they cooked it themselves.
“A lot of people have big houses and beautiful kitchens but they don’t really use them apart from the microwave.”
Because of her work in restaurants, Hofman has built up a good network of suppliers but she is also using more and more local companies including Henleaze Road butchers. She’s even growing her own herbs in the garden of her Westbury-on-Trym home.
“I’m not trying to undercut restaurants, I’m just trying to sell it as a really good experience. It won’t be that much cheaper than going to a restaurant, but it takes the stress out of cooking. The cost will vary but I think the average cost for a dinner party will be about £35 per person.”
One of Hofman’s unique selling points is the fact that she can also supply excellent wines to accompany the meals.
Her husband, Peter, has been in the wine trade for 40 years and the list he has created for Tara’s Table features interesting wines from small producers.
“The wine list is a nice mixture of bottles from different countries and they are wines you won’t find in the supermarket.
“Peter’s speciality is German wine, which has had a bad press over the years but there are some fantastic German wines out there now and many are low in alcohol which is attractive to a lot of people.
“We will also offer wine tastings and canapés in people’s homes. As a chef and a wine merchant, people have been saying we are the dream team for years but we’ve never had an opportunity to work together so this is very exciting, too.”
Hofman recently worked for three months at exclusive members-only hotel Babington House in Somerset. A hotel known for its celebrity customers, she says it was a very interesting experience and one that resulted in her meeting a very famous guest.
“There’s an open kitchen at Babington House and the idea is for people to walk around and use it like they would their own home.
“One of the guests came up to the kitchen and asked to speak to the chef because he wanted a sandwich to take away with him.
“I looked up and it was Paul McCartney, which was very strange, very surreal.”
So won’t she miss working in restaurants?
“It’s still quite hard for female chefs in restaurants, both physically hard because of the conditions and long hours – sometimes 16-hour shifts without a break – but also because some male chefs still treat you like an idiot, which is very sad.
“I love working in restaurants but I want a change, a bit of freedom to cook what I want.”
Good Food Guide
Bristol Evening Post, Thursday 28th August 2008
More Bristol restaurants than ever before are listed in the pages of this year’s Good Food Guide. Mark Taylor finds out more about the reasons for the city’s culinary success story.
A record number of Bristol restaurants have made it into the new edition of the Good Food Guide 2009.
Now in its 57th year, the Good Food Guide is widely regarded as the most respected restaurant guide due to the fact that all inspections are anonymous and every reviewed meal is paid for by the guide.
The Good Food Guide also relies on feedback from its readers, which means it covers a wide geographic spread and ensures the book includes the best new openings around the country.
This year’s guide features 11 restaurants from Bristol and a handful of places within a short drive of the city.
The only new entry for Bristol is the Primrose Cafe and Bistro in Clifton, which appears in the guide for the first time.
Although the cafe has been run by Patrick Glennie-Smith for a number of years, chef Tara Hofman took over the kitchen earlier this year and introduced a new evening menu, which has proved very popular.
Tara previously worked at Quartier Vert in Bristol, but also worked at London’s fashionable River Cafe restaurant.
She cooks seasonal Mediterranean food using predominantly local and organic ingredients, and her current menu includes rare roast Moroccan spiced pigeon breast, cous cous and yoghurt with allspice; grilled sardine fillets, linguine, parsley, garlic, lemon and extra virgin olive oil; and Devonshire duck breast, pommes Anna, rainbow chard and pickled peaches.
The guide isn’t published until September 8 and Tara didn’t know she was in it until Crackerjack contacted her.
She was genuinely stunned that her cooking had been recognised in the book only a few months after taking over at the Primrose Cafe.
“I’ve always wanted to be in the Good Food Guide,” she said. It has always been one of my ambitions.
“As a chef, it means a lot because, of all the guides, it represents the general public’s opinion as much as inspectors.
“It’s more objective than a lot of guides and it’s a respected publication among chefs.”
Hofman, who cites local chefs Barny Haughton and Stephen Markwick among her inspirations, writes her menus depending on what’s in season. Her menu changes every week.
“It’s the only way to cook,” she says. “My philosophy is that it’s got to taste great but also look good.
“I’m always trying to push myself and make each dish better, but if you use really good ingredients it should look and taste amazing.
“My personal aim is to get people who hadn’t thought of coming to the Primrose in the evening before to see what we’re doing now.
“This recognition in the Good Food Guide should help to put us on the map.”