{"id":2534,"date":"2012-06-27T10:54:13","date_gmt":"2012-06-27T09:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mostlyfood.co.uk\/wp\/?p=2534"},"modified":"2026-02-09T18:11:45","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T18:11:45","slug":"andrew-wilson-ashdown-park-hotel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mostlyfood.co.uk\/index.php\/andrew-wilson-ashdown-park-hotel\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Wilson, Executive Chef at Ashdown Park Hotel – interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrew Wilson has returned to Ashdown Park Hotel in Sussex for the third time and he is now executive chef. It\u2019s not difficult to understand the appeal: it\u2019s the quintessential English country house hotel \u2013 Gothic Victorian architecture and more than 180 acres of grounds.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Andrew Andrew heads a team of 25 in the kitchen at the Elite Hotel Ashdown Park\u2019s Anderida Restaurant but I caught up with him at the Bluebell Railway station at Horstead Keynes. No, he wasn\u2019t waiting for a train but rather serving afternoon tea on a polished and gleaming Pullman carriage during the Sussex Food Festival weekend.<\/p>\n

This chef has a relaxed manner and a quick smile, his conversation is peppered with compliments for the quality of baked goods at the show, and for his staff who joined him on this cool, blustery day. He comments that he would love to offer his hotel guests some of the locally produced jams but he would need so much that a small producer would have trouble consistently filling the order. Ashdown Park Hotel is, however, a sponsor for the Sussex Food Festival, which allows small producers to have a forum for their quality wares.<\/p>\n

I asked Andrew why he chose to become a chef. \u201cMy eldest brother was a chef in the Royal Navy, and as the youngest in the family I looked up to him, and was always interested in what he was doing around the kitchen. My mother has a small wedding-cake business, too. As I \u2018slipped through the net\u2019 when the school was picking the football team, catering was what I decided to become involved in, and I wanted to get to the top. It\u2019s been long hard hours, long hard days, some very tough restaurants and some very good restaurants to get here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrew is a Dorset lad and wanted a local culinary education. \u201cI went to college in Bournemouth. You have to plan out your route to where you want to get to; I was determined to become an executive chef, so I set my goals and worked towards them from a young age.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did some stages at restaurants while I was at college \u2013 Le Gavroche, The Hyde Park in London \u2013 to get a \u2018taster\u2019, to get that experience. That process is designed so that a youngster can see what it takes to get to the top places: that\u2019s when it hits home! But you have to work hard at any job; it\u2019s true that catering is long hours, but it\u2019s very rewarding, and it was more of an inspiration to me \u2013 I wasn\u2019t put off.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter college I worked at a small hotel in Weymouth, where the food was traditional, and at the Sea Cow Restaurant where the chef\/patron was head of cuisine for the British Culinary Olympics team, and where the emphasis was more on fine dining. From there I moved up to London to gain experience in Michelin-starred restaurants. I wanted to work in London, but I always knew that was only temporary.\u201d\u00a0 Andrew is still a country lad at heart.<\/p>\n

\"Ashdown Andrew\u2019s food is contemporary British so I asked him how he viewed the place of British restaurants in the international culinary arena. \u201cThere used to be just a handful of Michelin-star restaurants in the \u201980s, and most of those in London, but these days they are everywhere. This is both a good thing and a bad thing: it\u2019s good that there are so many chefs at that level now, but it can take the shine off that Michelin star: there are so many different styles of cooking, so you can go to a pub and have good steak and chips and they\u2019ll have a star for it, or go somewhere else and have an amazing gastronomic experience, and that restaurant will earn the same star. The criteria are so mixed now, and no-one\u2019s quite sure what you have to do to gain a Michelin star. But we do have some very clever chefs and very innovative chefs, and it\u2019s a good thing that Britain\u2019s on the culinary map \u2013 not just France and Spain. It\u2019s changed massively in the last 15 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a clientele from all over the world, and my job is to \u2018wow\u2019 them with the food, so it\u2019s traditional with a contemporary twist, and I use modern techniques and equipment. We don\u2019t go too mad on the \u2018molecular gastronomy\u2019 side, but there is an element of that \u2013 it\u2019s important to keep it in context, and use it to your advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrew has worked at Ashdown Park on several occasions during his career and it seems to be a magnet for him.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ve been at Ashdown Park for 7 months now, and we have changed the food dramatically \u2013 flavours, techniques, getting the best out of the ingredients. When you have worked at 2- and 3-Michelin star restaurants you realise that their techniques are so different, so precise, and you can bring those elements from a 40-cover restaurant into a hotel of the size of Ashdown Park. Customers are starting to notice the difference in style. It\u2019s important to motivate the team, and to keep everyone interested, because the industry is changing all the time. This is a big establishment to manage, so although my name\u2019s on the food there is a big team, and there is some management too, it\u2019s not all cooking!\u201d<\/p>\n

Sourcing produce locally for Ashdown Park is important for Andrew and he likes to support the Sussex economy where possible. \u201cGuests like to know where the food comes from, so, price permitting, we will buy from local suppliers where we can \u2013 we have fantastic produce around here, like the 32-day aged beef from Lamberhurst. I don\u2019t have what you\u2019d call \u2018signature dishes\u2019, but there are a couple of things that I\u2019ve kept on the menu: we have a salmon that we cure in black treacle, served with a passionfruit jelly with peanut dressing and a little spring roll with mango, chilli and coriander; then there\u2019s our duck with squid, which works so, so well, and we do a duck dumpling with it, with lime and peanut \u2013 Asian with a difference! These are two dishes that I take a particular pride in.\u201d<\/p>\n

What does Andrew like to eat at home, and what were his childhood favourites? \u201cAt home I appreciate the comfort of sausage and mash, a shepherd\u2019s pie or a nice bacon sandwich! But my wife Roberta cooks very well, and we do take it in turns \u2013 I have to have some down-time, otherwise I\u2019d be thinking 24\/7; cooking food away from the restaurant is vital for me. I remember a cauliflower cheese that my grandma used to make for me: I didn\u2019t like cauliflower cheese when I was younger, so she made one with crisps on the top and then baked it \u2013 I\u2019ll tell you what, I loved it, and from then on it had to be crisps on cauliflower cheese! And Gran\u2019s steamed puddings and crumbles \u2013 you couldn\u2019t beat them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes, Andrew has an appreciation of tradition, but he wants to take that forward and showcase the exciting face of new British food, while retaining the essence of his local ingredients.<\/p>\n

Anderida Restaurant
\nAshdown Park Hotel & Country Club
\nWych Cross
\nNear Forest Row
\nEast Sussex
\nRH18 5JR
\nUnited Kingdom<\/p>\n

Phone: 01342 824988
\nFax: 01342 826206
\nVisit Ashdown Park here<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Interview by Chrissie Walker \u00a9 2018<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrew Wilson has returned to Ashdown Park Hotel in Sussex for the third time and he is now executive chef. It\u2019s not difficult to understand the appeal: it\u2019s the quintessential […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24352,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,7],"tags":[1996,567,1995,568,187,178],"class_list":["post-2534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","category-restaurants","tag-anderida","tag-andrew-wilson","tag-ashdown-park","tag-chef","tag-hotel","tag-restaurant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mostlyfood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mostlyfood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mostlyfood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mostlyfood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mostlyfood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2534"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.mostlyfood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25365,"href":"https:\/\/www.mostlyfood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534\/revisions\/25365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mostlyfood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mostlyfood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mostlyfood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mostlyfood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}