How Chef Jonny Lake Is Making Michelin Fine Dining More Accessible
"It’s important to deliver something that’s interesting without being gimmicky. Some dishes happen that way, but not every dish has to have a story," chef Jonny Lake tells Observer.
When chef Jonny Lake and sommelier Isa Bal opened Trivet in London at the end of 2019, the pair, who had worked together at Heston Blumenthal’s iconic Fat Duck, had no idea what was coming. They’d spent a long time conceptualizing Trivet, which they imagined as both a neighborhood spot in Bermondsey and a destination restaurant in London. The pair were initially inspired by travel as a way of understanding the convergence of food and wine, something that resulted in the creation of a signature dessert known as the Hokkaido Potato, which pairs potato mille-feuille pastry and sake cream. The indulgent dish came about after a drunken experience in Japan, and has manifested on the menu in several forms since the restaurant opened. But like many hospitality businesses, Trivet was forced to pivot when Covid-19 shut everything down in March 2020.
“That whole idea of us being able to travel fairly regularly and visit these places we wanted to go to—that stopped very quickly,” Lake tells Observer. “And we still hope to do those things and go to those places. But, in general, it’s important to deliver something that’s interesting without being gimmicky. Some dishes happen that way, but not every dish has to have a story. You’re lucky if you can have one dish you’re known for and that one [Hokkaido Potato] is ours. It’s one our guests are always asking for.”
Since getting back on their feet post-Covid, Lake and Bal have seen significant success with Trivet, which was awarded its second Michelin star earlier in 2024. It’s currently the only two Michelin-starred restaurant in the U.K. without a tasting menu. Lake always knew he wanted Trivet to be solely à la carte, especially after being head chef at the Fat Duck.
“We always stuck to what we wanted it to be, which is a very approachable restaurant and very quality dining,” Lake says. “People order what they want. We just want people to be comfortable. I think the decision to be an à la carte restaurant was one of the first things that was pretty clear to us. Where we worked before, we saw a very big shift in the feeling of the restaurant and the type of customer that was coming in when we switched to a tasting menu-only restaurant. The regular wine guests stopped coming. In terms of wanting to build a neighborhood restaurant with regular guests, it made sense to be à la carte, where it’s different every time someone comes to a certain degree.”
Trivet’s expansive wine list, which is presented in a massive book filled with compelling facts of the history of winemaking, is also intended to be very approachable. Bal was the head sommelier at the Fat Duck for 13 years before he and Lake joined forces to create Trivet, and he recently earned the Legend Award from Top 100 Sommeliers. But he wants to use that expertise to empower guests to learn about wine in a way that’s not intimidating.
“We list our wines in chronological order, telling the story of winemaking around the world with little pieces of information and symbols to indicate what kind of style it is,” Bal says. “What triggered me to look for an alternative way of listing wines was, quite frankly, I was getting bored with the old way of just listing the wines and the prices. It was very transactional. I wanted to bring a little bit of curiosity and information. It’s something that is full of culture and history and geography, and I wanted to include those elements of wine into our wine list. And there are other ideas on the pipeline for the wine list. It’s not going to stay the same.”
“Fine dining restaurants can be very intimidating,” Lake adds. “People can be very cautious and very conservative with wine because they don’t want to feel like they’ve made a bad choice. Anything they recognize, they’ll pick. And when it’s presented in a more conventional way as a list of producers and prices, it’s very hard unless you’re someone with the knowledge and experience like Isa has to know. It was a very tricky balance of trying to present it in a new way that’s interesting, but without hitting people over the head with information and not being gimmicky.”
The dishes themselves embrace a broad range of flavors, drawing on global cuisines even though Lake and Bal haven’t been able to travel as much as they’d hoped. The portions are generous, with options for vegetarian diners alongside meat eaters, and the British produce, meat and fish are juxtaposed with ingredients like sumac, kombu and smoked yogurt. Lake says he’s looking to build “big flavor impact without putting 25 elements on a dish.”
“À la carte are much harder to make than tasting menu dishes,” Lake says. “With smaller dishes on a tasting menu, some are only three bites. Nothing is easy, but it’s easier to make things exciting when you’re only eating two or three bites of something. When you’re trying to make full-sized dishes you have to keep people’s interest the entire way through the dish so they don’t get bored of it. When you look at our dishes, they might not look as complex as they are.”
Although Lake and Bal both have long histories with Michelin-starred dining, they didn’t debut Trivet with any expectations. To them, true accomplishment simply meant opening Trivet and getting customers.
“We had a great opening, and then all of a sudden everything came crashing down,” Lake says. “And it was horrible for everyone to go through that experience, but what we learned through that taught us a lot. Michelin is funny, but it’s something that’s important to us and important to me. But everything we’d worked for to open this was almost taken away from us instantly, and so I think our idea of success changed. Michelin is amazing, and in some ways it reinforces your beliefs and the things you’re doing. It also can help your business. But, ultimately, I think the success for us is to have a busy restaurant.”
“The most essential thing is that you need to be able to keep doing it,” Bal adds. “It needs to be busy enough that you can pay your rent and your suppliers and your staff. That’s the most important part. The accolades are successes by themselves alone, but they also contribute to the overall success of the restaurant. Even when someone finishes a meal and thanks you on the way out, that’s a success. These small things all make the bigger picture.”
Lake and Bal both hope Trivet continues to evolve, whether it’s in the dishes or the wine menu. They currently host Labombe Wine Bar at Trivet on Monday evenings with a special selection of dishes, and the aim is to eventually open that as a standalone spot. Trivet also offers a lunch menu, served in the dining room and the outdoor terrace, which emphasizes affordable dining.
“As time goes [on], both the restaurant and your guest that comes to the restaurant shapes it,” Bal says. “It’s almost like continuously molding a piece that changes its shape and form over time. We need to facilitate that so that the restaurant works.”
“You have to listen to the people who are coming,” Lake agrees. “You need to watch and listen to what’s happening. The customers don’t tell you what to do, but they’re telling you what their expectations of you are and you need to listen to that. Because, ultimately, having a restaurant with no guests in it is probably not a great concept.”