The Park
I recently had the opportunity to take pictures in the professional kitchen at The Park on Queensway in West London, a great venue owned by the renowned restauranteur Jeremy King, with executive chef Alexandre Nicolas running the kitchen. Nicolas brings high calibre cuisine to this relatively recent addition to London’s fine dining scene, having previously been executive chef at the Ivy and the Ivy Club, the Bulgari Hotel, and Head Chef under Alain Ducasse at Spoon, Paris.
While it’s not the foul-mouthed stressful environment portrayed in the media, the energy of a professional kitchen is still quite unique. It’s a friendly but serious place and you can almost feel the concentration and sense of heightened awareness among the staff, that striving for perfection in the knowledge that mistakes don’t go unnoticed.
I was slightly self conscious stepping into this environment as a photographer - I didn’t want to get in people’s way or distract them in any way. The last thing I wanted was my attempt to get a good shot or an interesting angle of view to be the cause of some accident in the kitchen, which was relatively small in size so I had to move carefully in order to achieve this. I managed to leave the kitchen staff feeling relatively undisturbed and I was pleased with the resulting set of images. I thought they would work well in black and white as it has a timeless documentary feel which I like. I even added some grain in post production to recreate that analog film look!
I’m hoping to return again later this year to take some shots of the food for their new seasonal menu…
