Ones to watch: Ollie Bass
Ollie Bass’ passion for excellent produce was nurtured in the kitchens of Quo Vadis and Sessions Arts Club. It now underpins his first restaurant, Faber in Hammersmith, where he celebrates sustainable seafood.
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Ones to watchOllie Bass is, in his own words, fanatical about good produce. He was fascinated with the journey of food by the time he was a teenager, an interest which only snowballed in the kitchens in which he honed his skills and eventually culminated in his neighbourhood seafood restaurant, Faber. Though he’s not sure what first inspired it – perhaps growing up on the Cornish coast, he says, or his grandmother’s diverse cooking, influenced by her Chinese heritage and Jamaican upbringing – it accelerated when he took on a job building a pub's greenhouses. ‘If you plant something and you see it from inception all the way through to pulling it out of the ground, you have a totally different perspective on it,’ Ollie says. ‘It was a great springboard into building the mindset that was already percolating. For me, it’s all about ingredients.’ What started off as a summer job turned into a two and a half year stint which eventually led him into the kitchen of another nearby pub. From there, he says, he never looked back.
When that chapter closed, Ollie joined the legendary Quo Vadis kitchen, learning from and sharing in Jeremy Lee’s appreciation of ingredients and respectful treatment of them. ‘I’ll be forever indebted to Jeremy for what he taught me; having that level of care over what goes on a plate,’ he says. ‘It was amazing to be around. Having him stand next to you when you’re on the pass was amazing – terrifying but amazing. It taught me so much.’ After another two and a half years, Ollie joined Florence Knight at Sessions Art Club, a restaurant where he felt at home straight away. ‘I walked in and it was this perfect representation of who I felt like I was,’ he says. ‘Such a focus on food and produce and everything done sensitively. The food mirrored the space and the space was evident in the food. The simplicity of it belies the actual depth – if it was on the plate, it was there for a reason.’
The artistry in both restaurants was of particular appeal to Ollie – as a teenager, he studied fine art at university, holding a few of his own exhibitions along the way. He still enjoys the cross-over between art and cooking, both literally (he has two sketchbooks on the go, one for art and one for cooking, but they often overlap; ‘they both have drawings, they both have writing – they both have stains of wild garlic’), and in a bigger sense. ‘I’ve thought a lot about the two crafts and the overlap; the way you can use ingredients like a palette and build something different,’ he says. ‘Food is always what I’ve returned to. It’s always been such an easy way of communicating, whereas art was a very personal, private thing. It’s a really nice thing to have the two as a balance.’
At the start of 2023, Ollie left Sessions Arts Club to start work on his first restaurant, Faber (he also had a brief stint at Sophia Massarella’s Polentina, an Italian café housed in a sustainable clothes factory in Bow). During the eight-month build-up to opening Faber, Ollie put his focus on sourcing, building a network of suppliers he trusted to deliver another of his passions; seafood. Putting his surname aside (he’s used to the jokes), his south-west roots, memories of cooking on the beach and a formative mackerel dinner at a Rick Stein restaurant mean he’s long loved fish and shellfish. At Faber, his menu of sustainable seafood mixes smaller plates with larger, catch-of the-day options; in all, the seafood is given space to shine, enhanced cleverly by a handful of ingredients. ‘We just really want to champion the plethora of amazing produce that’s coming out of the UK shoreline,’ he says. ‘But also the cheesemongers, dairies and everything in between. I think that’s part of the reason why people can be shocked – it’s presented simply, but when you start to unpick it, there’s so much detailed care.’
Though there is growing awareness around sustainable seafood (helped by the fin-to-gill movement), Ollie knows he has a role to play in educating diners about a topic which is yet to be as well-understood as eco-friendly meat. It feels like an opportune time for Faber to carve out its niche. For some diners, Faber is also a chance to enjoy seafood they might be yet to try – Ollie says it is important for the restaurant to have a ‘sliding scale of engagement’ and accessibility. ‘You should be able to come in here and order an amazing fish and chips for £15, or some amazing kind of fish that you haven’t had before. Oyster happy hour, for example, is a great access point.’
Faber feels like a true reflection of Ollie’s mindset when it comes to cooking, a restaurant that will hopefully become a destination neighbourhood spot. When it comes to what’s next, Ollie certainly has a vision, but can’t pin down exactly what shape it will take. He knows, whatever its final form, it will inevitably blend his dual loves of food and art. ‘I think about what this would look like, but something that includes community, somewhere people come in and treat like a canteen,’ he says. ‘A multi-platform, creative hub that’s rooted in food. Some of my favourite eating is in Paris, with that aperitivo hour – that kind of pavement culture. I need to work out what that would be.’ We’ll watch this space.
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