Although many chefs are set on constantly trying to push boundaries with their cookery and move away from the traditional, there are just as many proving that, when done well, classical cookery can still be just as impressive. Often the dishes which are most memorable aren’t those packed full of modern technique but the ones that involve a few simple ingredients treated with the utmost care, and that’s exactly what Simon Shand’s food is all about.

Cookery didn’t always come naturally to Simon, though; growing up in Worthing, his family were never particularly into food and rarely cooked, so when he started working in a local café after college, he had plenty to learn, ‘I was being pushed towards doing front of house but I really wanted to do the kitchen side of things,’ he explains, ‘I was honestly appalling at it for a few years but for some reason I was determined it was what I wanted to do.’ Simon slowly but surely sharpened his skills in the café kitchen, before moving into Brighton to work a gastropub called The Chimney House, where he started to learn about the ins and outs of classical French cookery.

Things started to get more serious for the young chef when he took a position in the kitchen at Gravetye Manor – a luxury hotel in Sussex, where he stayed for two years, ‘I thought I was already good at cooking,’ laughs Simon, ‘but then I arrived there and realised I wasn’t; it was just such a big jump in terms of level. We all lived on site, so we were fully immersed in it; we’d pick stuff from the beautiful kitchen garden and I was able to work on so many different sections – I loved it.’ By his early twenties, London came calling and after being blown away by a meal at Anthony Demetre’s Arbutus (‘I remember them doing this stuffed rabbit saddle, which they served with a cottage pie made out of the shoulder, and thinking it was so clever’) Simon visited the kitchen to ask for a job, and was offered one on the spot.

Simon spent just eight months at Arbutus before he was transferred to sister restaurant Wild Honey. There, under the guidance of Demetre himself, Simon started to get a feel for the style of food that he really enjoyed cooking, ‘working at Wild Honey was such a formative experience for me,’ he says, ‘there was just something about the way Anthony cooks that I really connected with. Even now, I’d say that my food is stylistically very similar to his in the way it’s largely grounded in French and Italian cooking but isn’t overly technical. You visit places where everything is so precise and grounded, and I love eating that kind of food, but I wouldn’t have a chance with it – it just doesn’t work in my head.’