GABRIEL WATERHOUSE, THE WATERHOUSE PROJECT

IN THE KITCHEN: GABRIEL WATERHOUSE, THE WATERHOUSE PROJECT

Based in Bethnal Green, The Water House Project is a modern British tasting menu experience that really sings. Chef Gabriel Waterhouse opened The Water House Project with his wife, Patricia in Autumn 2021, blending fine dining elegance with a relaxed, comfortable atmosphere – in this location, it shows. The menu is centred on local, seasonal ingredients used at the optimum time, with the tasting menu fittingly changing every 3 months.

Paul: How long have you been in this location?

Gabriel: I’ve been here for just over three years now; I opened it with my wife a few years ago.

PM: Was that born from the supper clubs you used to do?

GW: Yeah, so I’d been working in professional kitchens before then, and then started doing the supper clubs and kept evolving it and here we are.

PM: It’s a big room.

GW: It feels bigger than it is, with all that space up there.

PM: The negative space is so great.

GW: It’s so important I think. If the ceiling was lower it would feel much more claustrophobic.

PM: It’s interesting though, with a ceiling height like that you’d expect the acoustics to be affected.

GW: People do say it’s good in here!

PM: You’d expect the noise to carry, but it’s got a lovely feel to it.

GW: People have said “You must have done a lot of work with the acoustics?”, but not really, we just moved in! We’ve just been lucky. And there are a lot of hard surfaces as well, so it is interesting it’s not echoing.

PM: And it’s not like you’ve got a lot of textiles in here to soften things either, yet it’s got a really warm feel. The flowers must have helped then!

GW: It does help when you’ve got people in. Bodies absorb sound I think, so it feels very different when it’s busy .

PM: Does your wife work in the kitchen with you?

GW: No, she runs the Front of House – she’s a great model too though!

PM: Funnily enough, our brand grew organically through the lockdown period when we shot our first imagery, unable to shoot in studios we instead went to friends and family, friends of friends, and shot people on their doorstep. Because everyone was inside together, people asked “Can my wife / girlfriend do it too?” and we always said “Yeah of course!” …     it’s now almost a 50:50 split on people that are buying our clothes, it’s organically gone in that direction which is so lovely.

GW: That’s so interesting. And why is it you’re focusing on restaurants and chefs now?

PM: We feel that your process ,the way that you procure your ingredients – there’s a strong alignment with how we work and the small artisan producers we choose to partner with. We just see it as quite an aligned process with chefs, they’re very considered in what they use and how they present it…also, our son is a writer in the food industry and our daughter has produced a couple of her own cookbooks, so we’re quite a food-centric family.

GW: Oh cool, what are the books?

PM: ‘The Little Book Of Lunch’ and ‘The Cornershop Cookbook’ – which was a really good idea because it was creating great meals, but just using your local corner shop, so ingredients available to everyone.

For the campaign, it’s a nice switch to go inside rather than being outside on doorsteps! This time we’re in the kitchen with the restaurateurs. Great to show the clothes being worn, in action, as they’re intended and with such interesting stories. Alongside the great cooking, it’s the care that goes into the work that feels aligned as well, every detail counts. And like with ours, every little detail, right down to the buttons, it’s all been painstakingly sourced by us.

GW: (Points to button) Is this horn??

PM: No, it’s Trocas shell. The shells are a natural waste product from the food industry, so once they’re shucked, historically these would have just been disposed of . The front is like a dark Mother of Pearl uniform finish, but we rotate them and use the back as it shows the natural colourings – something a little imperfect, but with that each and every one is different.

GW: I really like the stitch of the ‘M’.

PM: Thanks – that’s the only visible branding on our jackets . When we started discussing this ‘M’ idea with our button maker in Nottingham they said “Oh no, we can’t do that, you’d need… Oh wait! We do have an old machine somewhere that might do it…” they found the machinery that had not been used for 20+ years, so it came out of retirement. It’s a 36 button alignment, cannot go any smaller because it would affect the structure of the shell, so this button will always be a feature for us. Like when you go into kitchens, you have to do the simple things well, it’s all about longevity and we see such a similarity there.

GW: And also with simplicity there’s no hiding, which is a good thing.

PM: It is, so long as you’re doing it right! It’s a car crash if it’s not.

GW: Yeah! Absolutely, it’s pretty embarrassing doing simple things wrongly.

PM: The devils in the detail, simple or not it has to be executed correctly.

PM: So, with all your produce, how much is sourced locally?

GW: Quite a lot of it. I mean, we do a lot of foraging as well, especially over the spring and summer.

PM: Where do you go for that?

GW: Just parks, I literally came back from the canal and… I can show you if you want??

PM: Oh wow! You got all that today??

GW: Yeah, that’s what I was doing before this. So, Nasturtium flowers and leaves – like, loads of people buy this stuff but you can find them everywhere. These are garlic capers…

PM: They are amazing! Where do you get those??

GW: We found them at the weekend actually, but they’ve held really well and we’re going to salt them and then brine them. And this is what you get left over from wild garlic, and you get the flower and then once the flower is done this is what you’re left with. But they’ve got a great flavour to them. We salt them to take a bit of the punch away.

PM: But I can imagine it’s like a really interesting spin from a caper?

GW: Totally. I mean it’s the same thing, but we’re a big fan of the foraging approach. I mean, it’s food for free, right??

PM: Absolutely.

Gabriel brings out the “PEASO” as the pièce de résistance…

GW: So this is called ‘Peaso’ which is like Soya Miso but using a ferment of peas, and this is going to stand for at least three months, so will ferment very slowly.

PM: And what’s the difference in taste to using peas rather than soybeans?

GW: Not much, it’s not so much about taste, but the reason we use peas is because they come from this part of the world rather than soybeans, so it feels a bit more like a British version of Miso. But for this you need something called Koji which is a mould that you grow here and then you mix with the peas and then more salt to stop it going off, but the more salt you use the slower the ferment.

PM: And what’s the Umami profile of this compared to the soya version?

GW: Oh this is far more, yeah. Would you like to try it?? This has only been fermenting for about 6 weeks… But for this we’re actually using it to make Lentil Tamari, which we’re using for the chicken dish.

PM: God that’s incredible. Shit that is good. Congratulations.

GW: Thank you. It’ll be better in another six weeks though.

PM: We’ll come back!

Gabriel wears the M04 Indigo Short Sleeve Shirt, the M01 Denim 2 Pocket Jacket and the M001 Denim Full Length Trouser.

July 4^th, 2024

THE WATERHOUSE PROJECT

1 Corbridge Crescent, Cambridge Heath, London E2 9DT

Opening Times:

Wednesday – Friday: 7-11pm

Saturday: 12:30 – 11pm