Nomadic chef James Sharman tells us about happy siblings, cooking at Everest Base Camp, and the fuel that keeps his travelling restaurant, One Star House Party, cooking.
Restaurateuring is hard work. So what in the world would possess a chef to take on the challenge of opening 20 restaurants, creating 20 different menus, in 20 countries, over 20 months?
“A competitive streak perhaps,” says James Sharman, the 25-year-old British daredevil chef behind One Star House Party, a series of pop-up restaurants hosted in a different city each month from September 2016 to August 2018.
READ: Gin’s in the Air this Summer
Sharman, who was former chef de partie at Michelin-starred establishments Tom Aikens in London and Noma in Copenhagen, says his first foray into the kitchen was when he tried to make his little sister happy by learning to make pancakes at home.
As he embarked on his cooking career, this simple motive, to please loved ones, turned into an almost combative drive for success in prestigious cutthroat kitchens, where according to Sharman, “every stroke of a knife, every well-timed knob of butter in a hot pan, and every fish you fillet is done to prove a point, to yourself and your peers”.
Tired of playing this game of one-upmanship, Sharman decided that the only person he would challenge for now, was himself. With One Star House Party, he returns to the days when cooking was all about putting a smile on the faces of diners like he did when he served his sister pancakes.
So far, Sharman has opened pop-ups in Hong Kong, Beijing, Ho Chi Minh, Bangkok, the Everest Base Camp in Nepal, Mumbai, Muscat, and Nairobi; his team not only creates completely new menus in each city but also builds or sets up the chosen venue using their own carpentry skills.
READ: A Sports Car For Your Flamboyant Alter Ego
“Each country presents different obstacles,” says Sharman, though for him, all the troubles are worth it for the joy of creating the new menus. “The difficulty is in all the other stuff. Keeping a website going, processing transactions in dozens of currencies, marketing, logistics, customs, transport, finding staff, sourcing furniture, tableware and kitchen equipment etcetera etcetera,” he says.
For Everest Base Camp, he and his team had to find a way to store groceries for a nine-day hike through varying temperature extremes. “It was a lot of trial and error and eventually the menu involved an array of pickles and ferments that we observed, edited and nurtured in our rucksacks during our ascent,” says Sharman who believes it is crucial that his restaurant creates menus based on the team’s personal experiences in each country.
“I think if we were to land in somewhere like Mumbai and give ourselves three weeks to summarise the city’s cuisine, it would be interpretive suicide.” In his opinion, building a restaurant, no matter where it’s done, is a community experience where the space becomes a magnet drawing together the locals who love good food. “These are the people we learn from, the people who help us understand what they grew up eating as a child, and the dishes that make their eyes light up.”
READ: The Private Jet Trip You’ve Been Waiting For
Looking at Sharman’s expedition, one sees a fellowship of intrepid chefs trekking off into the sunset, pots, and pans clanging from their rucksacks. Sharman says that the reality is not quite so romantic. “The truth is what we do is volatile, incredibly stressful, and keeps you up at night in a way no restaurant ever could. But it feels great!”
For more Society stories click here.
