Lessons learnt, it’s time to go back to school

STEPHEN Bulmer is a born-again Yorkshireman.

The 45- year-old miner’s son, who grew up on the North York Moors, has travelled the world, cooking in Michelin- starred restaurants.

He has worked with just about every celebrity chef you could mention, from Marco Pierre White to Gordon Ramsay and Georgio Locatelli, all of whom have taught him a thing or two about the finest cuisine.

But after more than 25 years away from the county, this fast-talking Yorkshireman and protege of Raymond Blanc has come home to step into Rosemary Shrager’s shoes at the award-winning Swinton Park Hotel.

The former chef director of Blanc’s internationallyrenowned cookery school, Bulmer is a very different chef, but every bit as big a character as the indomitable Shrager, who has delighted TV audiences with her appearances on everything from Ladette To Lady to I’m A Celebrity.

Since she moved away to set up her own cookery school in Kent, Bulmer has been running Swinton’s acclaimed cookery school in a converted Georgian stable block attached to the family-run, luxury castle hotel in the heart of North Yorkshire.

He certainly appears to be rising to the challenge. Gregarious and brimming with enthusiasm, his conversation is peppered with hugely entertaining anecdotes from the high-pressure, cut-throat world of celebrity chefs.

But the characters he is enjoying getting to know now are the gamekeepers and farmers, fishermen and free-range egg suppliers, brewers and cheese-makers of Yorkshire.

Passionate about the abundance of delicious local produce being grown and farmed on his doorstep, Bulmer is rediscovering the county he left as a teenager.

The company he sourced his game from when he in London is only two miles away, while the incredible flavours of local cheeses, Whitby kippers, cider produced by Ampleforth’s monks and gulls’ eggs plucked from east coast cliffs have blown him away.

“The quality of the produce around here is incredible, “ he says.

He plans to make more use of the produce from Swinton’s estate, enthusing about the quail and pork and the array of vegetables and herbs grown in the castle’s kitchen garden. Everything from the nettles to the wild garlic which thrives here will be put to good use.

Bulmer’s children, Emily, eight, and 11-year-old Oliver, who were brought up in Oxfordshire and Buckingham, are now, along with wife Joanna, getting to know all his old haunts.

After his father retrained as a teacher and took up a post in Pickering when Bulmer was eight, the family moved from Sheffield to a hamlet near Goathland on the North York Moors. He recalls a childhood, played out in the countryside.

The family grew their own vegetables and had pigs, ducks and geese on their smallholding, enjoying hearty home cooking with freshly-made breads and cakes.

Bulmer wasn’t interested in cooking at school and spent most of his time tinkering with motorbikes. It was chance that led him to a career in cooking. While doing O-level resits, he took a job washing up in the Goathland Hotel, the “Aidensfield Arms” of TV’s Heartbeat.

In his second week, two chefs walked out: “The owner, Mrs McKeag, burst into tears. I said, ‘Show me, I’ll help you’.”

Soon the teenage motorbike enthusiast was producing meals and organising the kitchen.

Having studied catering at Scarborough and Rotherham, his first job was at the Hotel St George, in Harrogate.

But after reaching the regional final of the Roux Scholarship, a cookery competition for young chefs in the UK, he decided he needed Michelin star experience.

One week spent working with a rising young chef called Marco Pierre White, at the Michelin star Harvey’s restaurant, in London, was his baptism of fire.

“The passion in the kitchen was amazing, “ he says. “I was working alongside Gordon Ramsay and Marco had him in tears. It was a heated environment, there was a lot of aggression, but I was working with chefs five times better than any I had ever seen. Their skill was incredible.

Marco’s cooking that week was the best food I had ever seen. Still is.”

Inspired by the food, but less enamoured by the working environment, he took up a position at the three Michelin- starred Georges Blanc restaurant, in Vonnas, France. The atmosphere was very different.

“They were so polite and welcoming. That has stuck with me throughout my career.

It makes a huge difference,”

he says.

Here, he learnt much about fine, precision cooking. But he missed the drama and excitement of the food he had witnessed at Harvey’s.

It was the unlikely appearance of Raymond Blanc in the British Gas commercials of the 1980s, alongside a Yorkshire miner who spoke the catchline “Tres bon, Raymond”, that led Stephen to his door.

“My dad said, ‘That chef has a sparkle in the eye, he likes Yorkshire folk. Ring him up and ask for a job’.”

working in the kitchen

Stephen ended up working with Blanc at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons, rising to the position of senior chef and eventually running the celebrated cookery school there.

It was Blanc who instilled in him the importance of provenance and husbandry.

“It’s about understanding where your food comes from, how it’s grown, what it’s fed on. It really opened my eyes,” he says.

“Raymond’s food looked fantastic and tasted fantastic, he really pushed the boundaries.”

He met his wife, Joanna, who went on to become his business partner, at the Manoir and the pair ran their own restaurant, Atelier, in London’s Soho.

But after five years, when larger restaurants such as Quo Vadis and Circus moved into his patch and rents soared, he couldn’t compete.

Still only 29, he decided to gain more experience, working with the celebrated Simon Hopkinson at Bibendum and Georgio Locatelli at Zafferano.

“I filled in all the little gaps I had,” he says.

Since he and Joanna wanted to start a family, he went into hotel work.

“I couldn’t keeping working 18 hours a day and have kids. I made the decision to go for the big salary.”

He ended up executive chef at the Dorchester, but found the work “soulless”.

When Blanc rang him up and asked if he would come back to the Manoir and teach, he didn’t have to think twice. He was chef director of the cookery school there for seven years.

Eventually, he and Joanna went on to run their own cookery school in Buckinghamshire.

By the time Swinton’s general manager, Tom Lewis, contacted him to discuss the cookery school post, he felt the time had come to return to Yorkshire.

“When I saw the turrets, I thought, ‘Oh my God’. And then I met the Cunliffe-Listers.

I just knew I wanted to be a part of it.”

The family usually holiday in Tuscany, but this year they are looking forward to exploring Yorkshire, hunting for fossils at Sandsend and heading into the Dales.

“I want to cycle to Pateley Bridge over the Moors and stay in little guest houses and pubs with rooms that do good food,” says Bulmer.

“I’m just enjoying being here and finding myself again.”

Swinton Park, Masham, Ripon, North Yorkshire HG4 4JH.
Tel (01765) 680969.
Website: swintonpark.com.