Top London chef Elliott Grover on cooking for the Oscars

He has cooked for Hollywood A-listers and British icons, served fish and chips at the Oscars and is fast becoming a TV regular. But Elliott Grover, the culinary director at 45 Park Lane who presides over arguably the best steak in London (Cut) and a Michelin-starred Japanese (Sushi Kanesaka), wasn’t always such a gregarious character.

When he moved from Cornwall to London at 16 for his first culinary job at the famed St James’s restaurant Le Caprice (now Arlington), even the idea of using the tube scared him.

“I lived in Covent Garden and my mum and dad and Uncle Graham walked me up and down Piccadilly about 10 times because I didn’t want to get on the tube. I was so scared.”

When he finished his shifts and walked home at midnight, Elliott would call his mum and she would ask who he had cooked for that day.

“I would say: ‘Oh, Mick Hucknall from Simply Red’ or whoever it was. My mum actually has a book of the date and celebrity I cooked for.”

After a trial at Le Caprice he moved to Scott’s, where he went on to become sous chef, cooking for the likes of Prince Harry, Nigella Lawson and Charles Saatchi – yes, including the day the then couple had their infamous “row” on the terrace. While he might have been nervous about the tube system, as a teenager there was plenty of grit as he navigated Scott’s oysters.

“It was incredible,” Elliott recalls. “I remember Kevin Gratton, who is now at Café Royal, talking about fresh anchovies. The way he spoke about them will stay with me for the rest of my life.”

Elliott’s early inspirations were Gary Rhodes and Rick Stein; he would watch them religiously on TV and was particularly captivated by Stein’s storytelling. His parents were not from a culinary background – “my mum is a really terrible cook” – but from an early age he had ambitions to make it to the top. “I remember being in Cornwall, I must have been 12, and Dad said: ‘Elliott, don’t struggle like me and your mother.’ I thought: ‘Right.’”

After pot-washing at a manor house in Cornwall he wrote to Mark Hix at Caprice Holdings and asked for a job. Hix gave him a trial and the rest, as they say, is history.

Recalling the moment he arrived in the capital, he says: “My dad drove me up to London. We set off at 1am and arrived at 6am on a freezing cold day. I remember walking down Oxford Street and seeing the likes of Rolex and Hugo Boss and thinking that one day I might be able to afford a Hugo Boss T-shirt.”

Did he fall in love with cooking first or the environment of a kitchen? “Probably the environment. Le Caprice was insane. It was about a year in and the pianist, who is still there now [at Arlington] would say: ‘Elliott darling, do you want Jools to give you a lift home?’ Jools Holland in his Bentley with his driver used to give me and Paul [the pianist] a lift back towards Greenwich and I didn’t have a clue who he was!”

Plenty of celebrity encounters have followed. The first year Elliott catered for the Oscars – serving roast beef, fish and chips and sherry trifle – was a particularly surreal experience. “The doors opened and oh my God. There were over 1,000 people… you name it they were there. Brendan Fraser, Lady Gaga, Federer…”

Despite the stardust – Elliott is now one of London’s best-connected chefs – he remains friendly, engaged and down-to-earth company.

“I’m not at the top yet and I will never be satisfied and always want more. But do it with kindness along the way – that’s my motto.”

A typical day, he says, starts at 6am with an ice bath and sauna. “When I’m in the ice bath all these ideas come into my head. I run back to my phone to write them down and then I put them on my iPad, whether it’s ideas for TV or for the menu. If I lost my iPad I wouldn’t be able to function and anyone who doesn’t make a list, I don’t really want to know them because I don’t trust them.”

There is a 9am daily meeting “to go through all the guests and their likes and dislikes and how you can surprise and delight them”, and then he and head chef Ibrahim Arif inspect the meat. “It’s so meticulous, the level of steak we have on the menu, you need to check the marbling against the grading you buy, which is always top grade,” Elliott says.

If it doesn’t live up to their exacting standards, it’s sent back. “Never accept anything but the very best. I take only the best and that is the same across the board: staff, vegetables, everything.”

Suppliers include Riccardo Giraudi, Classic Fine Foods, the butcher HG Walter and Kingsbury Wagyu. Four years on from joining 45 Park Lane, Elliott is well aware of the responsibility and expectation of overseeing Wolfgang Puck’s London outpost, carrying The Dorchester Collection brand name and catering for such high-profile events as the Oscars.

Now that La-La Land has called again, what's the plan for the third outing? “I am keeping it British. I would never remove the fish and chips, they are too well loved,” he says.