Inside the Sussex hotel restaurant run by the latest MasterChef: The Professionals winner
When someone says they work with a parent or partner they can expect to be met with a smile that twitches with pitying horror or a wide-eyed declaration of: “Wow. That must be intense.”
An intriguing exception is the restaurant industry. Most of us can point to at least one solid family-run affair in our neighbourhood or village – but the trend also extends into fine dining. I’ve always been fascinated by this. After all, if working family units are still cropping up in high-stress environments such as restaurants then maybe there’s something in the idea so often dismissed as a toxic recipe for disaster.
So when I heard that Tom Hamblet – sous chef at the five-star South Lodge in Sussex and this year’s winner of MasterChef: The Professionals – spends his days working under his dad, executive chef, and with his mum, the hotel’s pastry chef, I had to pay a visit.
“My parents are really supportive and they know a lot; they’ve been doing it for years... It’s a good support network,” Hamblet told me.
Of course, like any family working together he admits there are ups and downs – though mainly ups.
“If we fall out it gets a bit awkward, but for the most part it’s an advantage. You have that trust. We know none of us are going to send out anything bad.”
Clearly working under his parents’ guidance has given Hamblet an edge. His current menu is injected with just the right amount of zany panache one would expect of a MasterChef victor. A starter of perfectly pink wood pigeon comes flirtatiously served with a velveteen chocolate sauce. Lobster tail with curried carrot mentally transports one from the South Downs to a Sri Lankan beach seafood shack. While beef is the signature main, I can vouch for the hogget, which has all the flavour of a prime steak but retains that enigmatic delicacy you only get with lamb. It is served both seared and as a tartare, with deft droplets of sheep’s curd.
Desserts include olive oil cake and tart with caramelised popcorn, but I had to get the deceptively complex chocolate and peanut mousse, served with caramelised banana, miso caramel and a peanut tuile (the attempting of which, as regular MasterChef viewers will know, so often ends in tears).
While Hamblet’s time-limited MasterChef-inspired menu at the Camellia restaurant is now fully booked for dining-only guests, there are still daily slots available for those staying overnight at the hotel.
That is a great excuse to book into one of South Lodge’s rooms. While all come with splashy wallpaper, plush seating, king-sized beds and Molton Brown toiletries, the suites also offer fabulous views of the grounds, enough space for cartwheels and sumptuous mosaic bathrooms with soaking tubs.
I am something of a South Lodge veteran, having visited the hotel numerous times in the last few years, most recently when it launched a multimillion-pound spa back in 2019.
If you’re staying multiple nights, there’s also the hotel’s other restaurant, the Michelin-starred Pass. Here guests will once more find a successful family affair, with Ben Wilkinson in the kitchen and his wife Monika running the front of house.
Familiar, hyperlocal ingredients are cooked to the highest level, while service runs like a perfectly programmed machine, albeit fronted by waiting staff who brim with enthusiasm for the oak-matured smokiness of Slovenian pinot gris. Of course, the food is on another level, the work of a chef at the pinnacle of his confidence. I found his foaming scallop with Hokkaido squash and coppa ham to be a subtly brilliant dish, the meatiness of the fish elegantly overlapping with the salty sweetness of the ham – not so much a collision as a coupling of sea and earth.
The beef fillet is a formidable signature plate refined over time; delicate slakes of meat in smoked emulsion grated with truffle and cut through with celeriac. The beef broth served in a crystal glass enhances rather than distracts. At Michelin level, I tend not to enjoy the dessert courses (the point in the menu when the desire to “challenge” guests so often gets the better of culinary geniuses). For once though, I hoovered up the palate cleanser, a blackberry and thyme concoction popping with chartreuse and yoghurt crumble, and devoured the wreath-shaped chocolate delice oozing with caramel, hazelnut and raisin.
At a five-star institution such as South Lodge there is no shortage of ways to detox from a foodie overdose. I revisited the spa, complete with spin studio, outdoor hydrotherapy pool, indoor pool, aromatherapy steam room and sauna – still as immaculate as the day it opened five years ago. The sprawling grounds framed with camellia bushes are also perfect for walking off a heavy lunch (or working up an appetite for dinner).
When check-out time came, I consoled myself with the promise to come back again sooner rather than later. Ben Wilkinson’s revelation that he already has “one guest who rings every month to see if the menu has changed yet,” doesn’t surprise me. I might just make the second.
Essentials
Book double rooms at South Lodge (01403 891711; exclusive.co.uk) from £415, including breakfast.
