“To my knowledge, we are the only restaurant in the world right now doing a Sri Lankan tasting menu.” Today, Bon Appétit spends a day on the line with Chef Dom Fernando, founder of Paradise in London. Fernando left a career in accounting behind to open Paradise and is now reimagining traditional Sri Lankan cuisine with British influences, providing a one-of-a-kind tasting menu experience.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:01Sri Lankan food is probably best traditionally known as different sort of
00:05curries, pulses, dals, roti. At Paradise we aim to take this to the next level by
00:11elevating, progressing certain elements of our cuisine. To my knowledge we are the
00:15only restaurant right now in the world doing a Sri Lankan tasting menu. We opened
00:20and we had three national reviews, one after another, and we had a queue of 100
00:24people outside our door. As the chef and owner of Paradise, the emotion I really
00:29want to give guests, is that they leave the restaurant wanting to book a flight
00:33to Sri Lanka next.
00:41Hey guys, I'm Don Fernando. I'm the owner and chef here at Paradise in Soho in central London
00:46with a big bunch of pandan leaves that I bought fresh from Sri Lanka. Got a lot of
00:50prep to do today. It's going in. Morning Mama. So Mama here is my roti chef. He's one of
00:57the OG members here at Paradise. It's been with me since we opened. A lot of our food
01:02takes sort of colonial influences from the South Indians, the Malays, the Dutch and
01:06the Portuguese. So roti is something that definitely came to us from the South
01:10Indians. He's the guy when it comes to roti. All right, let's head down to the kitchen.
01:14Morning guys. We've got our team, a very small team. This is Pranath, who's my head chef. We're
01:28going to be prepping the kimbala bunis. Bunis for us in Sri Lanka is like a croissant, basically.
01:35Very similar to this. So we have it as part of sort of a tea time snack. It's a savoury take
01:41on a sweet dish and something that only we do. This dish is inspired by my dad's love of cheese
01:47toasties. He'd always have sort of cheese and mango chutney sandwiches, but done with the Sri
01:52Lankan slant of green chili custard. So first of all, we're going to start cutting up our croissants
01:57lengthways. What we do is we bake them and then we leave them to sort of go a little bit stale,
02:0224 to 48 hours. That's because when we make the custard and then when we set it, we want the croissants
02:08to be able to soak in as much of that savoury green chili custard as possible. We're going to pour
02:13in some whole milk first, some double cream as well. So we really want to achieve that consistency
02:19of a thick custard, which is why we use both milk and double cream as well as egg yolk. We're also
02:27going to add in some rocket chilies. They have a very distinct sort of heat and flavour and adding
02:32in a little bit of salt. We don't have the luxury of having an open plan kitchen because the restaurant
02:37is so small. It has its challenges, but it also has its blessings as well because you're so close
02:41to each other. You can see what's going on, especially when you're on the pass, you're almost
02:46like a conductor of service. There couldn't be any more than four of us here at one point in time.
02:51Five and a half years ago, I was in a corporate job. I used to be an accountant back in the day and
02:54spent many years in corporate as well, but always had a love of cooking. We sort of leave the custard for
03:00about sort of 10, 12 minutes before we add in our coconut milk powder and then we whisk everything up.
03:06We can't achieve the same effect as using coconut milk. It doesn't give us the same end texture.
03:11It gives it a much richer coconut flavour as well, which is what makes the bunis unique. So right now
03:17we're waiting for the custard to thicken up before we can pour it all over the croissants. In terms of
03:24research and development for our menu, I work very closely with Pranav. We think about nostalgic or
03:30childhood memories or dishes in Sri Lanka that we come across whenever we're travelling. We see the
03:35sort of traditional version of it and then we think, okay, how can we remodel a dish? How can we build
03:41in British ingredients? It takes us sort of up to a month. I'm in Sri Lanka right now every two weeks,
03:47just really looking at what new suppliers we can work with, what new ingredients as well. And I've
03:53learned so much over the last five years that I've spent going there thinking about how we can really
03:58refine and re-elevate Sri Lanka's cuisine on the world stage. We'll use all of these croissants now.
04:06We'll kind of flatten it. So similar to making a bread and butter pudding as you would do at home
04:11with bread, kind of flatten it to make sure you can get as many croissants as we can. We're trying
04:16to achieve as many layers as possible in the end product with the bunis. We're going to start to pour
04:21over the custard. It's going to soak into those stale croissants and get it evenly distributed. I'm
04:29just pressing everything down now to make sure we get it as flat as we can. He's just stabbing it
04:36right now. So he's letting all the custard just go right down into sort of the bottom layers.
04:41Will your dishwasher do? You've got to do everything when you have your own restaurant.
04:46So now we're just putting on the baking paper. We're weighting everything down so that it is going
04:53to bake evenly and it's going to make sure that we achieve a set height as well. Oh that's pretty
04:59heavy isn't it? Chef, mine needs to give me a hand with this. Perfect. All right so we're going to leave
05:05that to bake now for the next hour or so at 175 degrees centigrade and in the meantime we're going to
05:10start prepping for our next dish which is our lobster Kirihudi. This is our dry store right here.
05:17It's where we keep all of our spices that we bring from Sri Lanka. Really fresh Sri Lankan cardamon
05:23that we've got super dark green and color. Going to grab the cardamon and fenugreek. That's what we're
05:29going to use to make our Kirihudi. Kirihudi for us is a light coconut milk based gravy. So it's like a really
05:36smooth light curry that we generally have with white fish or with potatoes. It's meant to sort of
05:43contrast the spicier items that we eat. So the first thing what we're going to do is we're going to
05:48toast our spices. We've got some fresh Sri Lankan cinnamon that comes to us from Hikudur down on the
05:53south coast of Sri Lanka. We've got some cardamon in here as well and some fenugreek. To sort of bring
05:58out the flavor in all of the spices we toast them or roast them and then put them into our curries. My
06:05grandmother was the person that taught me how to cook first of all aged 18 before I went to university.
06:10She's like oh you know you need to uh you need to be able to cook and to extend Sri Lankan hospitality
06:16to all of your classmates. Definitely only for like six people. Six people maximum. Now we're going to
06:22cook our lobster. Our lobster comes to us from either Scotland or from the south coast of England. It's
06:28always native lobster. I'm going to crush it break everything down. So you've got lobster shells,
06:33a little bit of meat in here as well. We're allowing all the flavor of every part of the
06:39lobster that we've got to come out. Pretty tough bad boys these. This is Pranav's secret technique
06:45for breaking down lobster. We're just going to kind of break it into as many pieces as possible.
06:49See all the juices. It's going to give this curry super sort of lobster rich flavor. This is the fun part.
06:57Definitely fun. We want to minimize waste as much as possible. So using lobster shells is really
07:04important. We can bring out a lot of flavor. Now we're going to deglaze it by adding in some of our
07:10paradise Riesling. We make it specifically for paradise with a winery called Stafalterhof. It's one
07:17of the oldest wineries in the world. We actually pair it upstairs with our food. It goes with the Kiri
07:22Hoodie course and we also use it in our dishes as well. You can get that rich smell of the Riesling.
07:30It's starting to burn off all the alcohol. It smells great. It's time for us to now put in our lemongrass.
07:35Adding in some curry leaves. Probably the best in the world even if I say so myself. That's what
07:40honestly makes the difference in the Sri Lankan food. Our curry leaves they grow wildly like literally
07:46everywhere in people's gardens. They grow to be quite big as well in terms of size and then you can sort
07:52of just tear them open and you can smell how aromatic they are. They're just very very powerful.
07:57For me it smells like home and it adds like something specifically Sri Lankan into a dish.
08:02Then adding in that rumpe which is that pandan leaf we saw earlier. So pandan leaf is native to
08:09Sri Lanka and to some areas of Southeast Asia like Thailand and it adds just like amazing sort of light
08:16sort of vanilla aromatics into our food. Yesterday's bunch I just brought in my luggage actually.
08:22Generally we ship things via suppliers every single week but because I was coming back from Sri Lanka
08:28yesterday I brought it straight in fresh. Then we're adding in some chopped up green chili and some
08:33lime leaf as well. Gonna add in my aromats. All of our water that's gonna make our base stock. We're gonna let
08:41this boil for another 40 minutes or so to make a really rich stock base for our kiri hoodie. Then
08:45we're going to blend it and add in coconut milk and turmeric to finish off our curry. But in the
08:50meantime it's nearly one o'clock now so we're gonna go upstairs gonna have a look at how we're doing in
08:55terms of performance for this week. Managing the kitchen is one thing but looking at how the business
09:00performs is as important. So I'm going to go and look at how many covers were booked inside the
09:05restaurant. So we had 30 covers last night for example which shows us how profitable we could be. I'm also
09:10going to go into a separate system and look at how much we spent on our food and drink costs
09:15yesterday. It's going to help us to identify any changes that we need to make in the next few days
09:20where we're holding too much stock and then what I'll do is find the person that will place orders
09:25for the next few days. We moved from having an a la carte menu where we had wastage through to having
09:31a tasting menu and it's so much easier. We can forecast on the day and for the next few days in
09:37advance exactly what we'll need. It means that we're not spending money where we don't need to
09:42and that's critical in the food business where margins really are everything. We've just received
09:48a national review from David Ellis who's the restaurant critic at Standard. It's a fantastic
09:53review, I'm super chuffed with it, four out of five. So now we'll try and plan for that,
09:57we'll try and hopefully gather more pace when it comes to bookings. We're just going to open up
10:01one more slot at eight o'clock so that we can take an extra couple of covers. Live revenue management.
10:08I definitely don't miss the accounting stuff from back in the day but it definitely proved useful
10:14in terms of running my own business. This week is looking pretty strong, I'm done with performance,
10:19we're going to go downstairs and check in on my kitchen team and light the fire for service.
10:23Right now we haven't had our meat delivery in for the day so we are just going to give a quick call
10:35to our meat supplier. We never panic, you never panic in restaurants. Always got to have everything under
10:40control. He says. Hey Lyle it's Tom, when you get this message can you give me a call back just about
10:48our delivery. Thanks. All right, bye. We definitely need to have tough skin, there is no doubt about that.
10:53We will always get the meat today. We always run up against time, we've had deliveries in sort of
10:5810 minutes before service but we always manage to sort out a solution. It's like go time, it's show
11:04time, it's like turning up to the theatre etc. No matter what gets in your way you have to be ready,
11:10ready for action, ready for game time. So we're back in it, got some cinnamon wood and mango wood that we
11:15bring from Sri Lanka as well as some waste coconut husks. We'll make sure that we use all the coconut
11:20and we don't waste any at all. When we smoke it, they're just going to give everything a slightly
11:24different flavour. It's our fire starter. Oh, there we go. So now sparks start to fly, it's going to
11:29really start that barbecue. Generally in Sri Lanka, it's like native for us to cook on wood. There we go,
11:36it's starting to go. We cook our prawns on this grill and we also cook our sirloin steak. The sirloin
11:41steak we use ex-dairy steak. So ex-dairy cows, they're normally sort of eight or nine years old.
11:47We get them from just outside of London, they're retired dairy cows. So they're left out to pasture
11:52for like a number of years. So they build up the flavour through this and the meat tastes fantastic.
11:58And we roll it together, we then cut it and we grill it on the barbecue. So you can see the coconuts,
12:03the cinnamon wood and the mango wood all starting to light up. You're getting that aroma? Basically if we
12:09want to just let something sit or if we want to sort of slow cook it, we put it on the racks that are
12:14further up. Still keeps it warm, but it means it's not getting direct heat. And we're going to be
12:20prepping now for service time. We're setting up the pass right now, myself, Pranav and Yarek,
12:25setting up all our condiments, all our sauces, ready for when guests start to arrive with us.
12:29So we're in service for about four to five hours, depending on how busy we are in the restaurant.
12:33My job is going to be on the pass, but tonight that means expediting all the dishes,
12:38plating up and then serving them personally to our guests.
12:43All right guys, well it's nearly six o'clock, which means it's game time for us, service time.
12:47Thanks very much for following us around here at Paradise. Come check us out sometime.