Chef’s Table: An Exclusive Chat with Cal Byerley

Dish Cult: Huge congratulations on winning your first Michelin star this year. Was it an ambition to achieve that coveted star?

Cal Byerley: I’d be lying if I said no. Absolutely, it’s the holy grail of cooking and a huge team achievement, and we felt that’s what we wanted to aim for from the very beginning.

DC: How did you come up with the menu?

CB: It’s mostly Ian’s [Waller, co-Head Chef], I make the ice cream… seriously we work really well together, and ideas just bounce about, and we run with them. We both get what the other is trying to do and when you bring those two forms together you get some really interesting mixes and innovation – most stuff other people just wouldn’t even think of most of the time.

DC: Is there one particular dish you’re most proud of?

CB: Our garden tomatoes with fennel yoghurt, currants, iced tomato water and rhubarb root oil.

DC: What inspired you to get into food in the first place?

CB: When I was learning how to drive, me and my dad would drive across our fields to our local pub, park the car up, have a few pints and then we’d head back home over the fields on foot before collecting the car the next day. I got fed up with the walk and ended up working there and the rest is history.

DC: What is it about Northumberland that makes it such an attractive place for foodies?

CB: Being honest, Hjem at Wall. It’s helped put the region on the map and they’ve also inspired us to crack on, too. Which is understandable when you consider we’ve got so much amazing produce on the doorstep anyone would be daft not to use it.

DC: What makes Pine truly stand out?

CB: The team – it’s not about the chefs or the front-of-house team as individuals – it’s about every single one of us. We’re all focussed on the same thing and that’s what makes it work so well, which might sound like a bit of a cliché, but if it weren’t true it just wouldn’t work.

DC: Which other restaurants really impress you?

CB: There’s a few, but particularly Heft, Kitchen Table, Perilla, Brat, Ikoyi, Western’s Laundry, Riley’s Fish Shack, Trakol and SY23.

DC: Which ingredients do you enjoy cooking with most?

CB: Local ones – there’s so much for us to choose from: cheese, meat, fish, game, fruit, veg, nuts – the list goes on and on and happily there’s also lots of ingredients out there for us to forage too, and not too many people looking for what we use.

DC: Have you got any food that’s your guilty pleasure?

CB: Kirklands Signature Range from Costco. Quality stuff, Champagne, golf clubs and even shirts… 

DC: What’s the most exotic thing you’ve ever eaten?

CB: Mussel Garum – not your average fermented fish sauce!

DC: If you could invite any three people – dead or alive – to come and eat your menu, who would they be and why?

CB: Neil Degrasse Tyson so he can take us on his ship of imagination, Jeremy Clarkson so he can teach me about farming, and Courtney Melba Barnett because she’s an Avant Gardener – if you know you know…