What can diners expect from The Drunken Butler?

It’s like walking into someone’s home, specifically mine. There are memories of my family and my travels all over the restaurant.

How would you describe the food you cook at The Drunken Butler?

We have two different menus; a modern European tasting menu with Asian influences throughout the week, then on Sundays we do a Persian feast – very much a tribute to my family and the recipes I grew up with. The tasting menu has nods to places me and my head chef Mattia have visited and worked all over the world, with classic French techniques. We work directly with producers and are always on the lookout for the most exceptional ingredients. When you have an excellent product, you want to let it sing in a dish. In one of my favourite dishes recently, we experimented with new cooking techniques for the beautiful hand dived scallops from Orkney. We blend them and cook them in oil at 60 degrees to look like udon noodles and served them as a ramen dish.

The Drunken Butler chef restaurateur Yuma Hashemi

What do you wish people knew more about Persian cuisine?

Persian cuisine is incredibly ancient, and I feel like it never really reached the mainstream. Unless you know someone, I don’t think you would come across it. Every family is different, but I try to recreate dishes I remember my mother and grandmother cooking, food made with love, slow cooked, sometimes overnight – it was a real ritual. On Persian Sundays there’s no menu, you are coming to my home for dinner.

The past two years have been particularly hard for restaurateurs, what have you learned?

Not to give up and that adversity can sometimes be freeing. We have kept the same team through all of this, and we cut down to just one blind tasting menu, which allowed us to be more experimental, to have the space to improvise and to limit waste. Also, after lockdown, the diners are more open minded, so we can be more ourselves and push the boundaries more, we’ve been able to progress faster.

What ingredient can you not live without?

Marmite, I had never had it before I moved to the UK and when I first tried it, I couldn’t get over that intense umami flavour. I love cheese, I love truffle but seeded bread, toasted, with butter and Marmite…it’s the only way to start the day.

Who is your role model and why?

My mother, my grandmother, all the women in my family. They taught me good values, about life and about food. My older sister gave me confidence in pursuing the things I love. I visit with my family when I can and we FaceTime – with all of my aunts shouting recipe ideas over each other. The loudest usually wins!

What are your biggest passions outside of food and drink?

Photography, which I suppose is also quite closely linked to food these days. My mother always had an old Nikon camera with her, she would take pictures of everything. Lots of those pictures are now in the restaurant, in fact. If I see something that catches my eye, I love to document it.

What is your favourite restaurant in the world and why?

There are so many, I couldn’t choose a favourite. The best experience I’ve had recently, though, was at Da Terra – Rafael Cagali is doing something really special there.

Who, living or dead, would you most like to invite for a night at The Drunken Butler and what would you serve them?

I would love to have all the chefs I’ve worked with over the years together at The Drunken Butler. I have worked all over the world; France, Germany, Sweden, Portugal and the US and I’ve learned something different from every one of them. I’d love to have them in my restaurant.

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