The Blueprint Cafe may share a building with the Design Museum but taste comes first for Jeremy Lee, says Liz Marcy.
"I'm not a chef," says Jeremy Lee, "I'm a cook. Chefs sound as if they should be all stern and take themselves very seriously.
"I hope I'm not like that." His manner certainly does not suggest high seriousness, but the food at the Blueprint Café ensures that he is more highly regarded than your average cook.
He describes the periods he spent working with Simon Hopkinson at Bibendum and Alastair Little in his eponymous Soho restaurant as his most formative ones. "Both of them have a brilliant instinct for what will taste good, and their generosity was amazing. You were always encouraged to get out there and taste, taste, taste. It blew a lot of myths, like, for example, that you have to spend years chopping veg to make good food. They both feel that you have to do things properly, understand the origins of food and ingredients, but recognise that things grow and change."
A glance at the Blueprint menu shows this ideal is being carried forward in Jeremy's cooking, which is firmly in the Modern European vein. The list is changed daily and includes seasonal produce as much as possible. He enjoys traditional country dishes, such as the rabbit with piment�n, olives and basil that often features on his menu. "I've read extensively on the cooking of Spain and I think that, in their use of piment�n and saffron, the Spanish understand spicing more than any other European country, which is probably due to the Moorish influence. My rabbit dish expresses these influences even though it's from the Languedoc, since it's an area with food traditions that have much in common with those of Catalonia to the south."
Jeremy grew up in a small village outside Dundee in a firmly foodie family. No school dinners for him: he was packed off to Granny's house for lunch, where he would be served hearty lentil soups and traditional Scottish favourites such as mince and scurlie. Back home, these dishes were combined with the cooking of Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson. Jeremy's mother had trained at the Athol Crescent school in Edinburgh, where she'd been taught the wifely virtues of sewing and homemaking, and where she'd taken with great enthusiasm to the cooking part of the course.
Jeremy's father and grandfather were artists, and Jeremy assumed he'd go to art school too, like his two brothers. Instead, he got a job as a waiter in a local restaurant. But, he says: "I hated being front of house, so when a job came up in the kitchen I went for it." Jeremy stayed there for three or four years before "hightailing it to London." His first job in the capital was with Boodles in St James's, from where he moved on to caterers Duff and Trotter. But during a dinner at Bibendum, Jeremy experienced an epiphany: he realised that what he most wanted was to be back in a restaurant kitchen. He got a job in that very one, and went from there to Alastair Little. Then in 1995, he opened Euphorium in Islington, north London, before taking over as head chef of the Blueprint Café.
He has been there for five years now, though the restaurant opened ten years ago this month. It shares a building with, but is not part of, the Design Museum although the spare, uncluttered restaurant is themed around the concept of design. Classics such as bent-wood chairs, David Mellor cutlery and diner tables occupy the light, airy space, and the walls are hung with portraits of designers photographed by Philip Sayer. The 'less-is-more' approach is reflected in the Blueprint's cooking, though this is not to suggest that the look of the food takes precedence over the taste. "The delivery should be in the eating," says Jeremy. "People are sometimes as happy to be as pleased by their eyes as they are by their palates, and this lessens the impact of the taste... I hate that."