Chef
forward to the judging of the Menu of the Year Catey
All Menuwatches go
Chicken pie
die. Although the head chef would personally always choose snails when eating in bistros in Paris – her favourites being Bistrot Paul Bert and Allard – she was a little hesitant about put- ting escargots on the menu at the latest Crispin Group opening in London’s Shoreditch. “People are not necessarily used to eating
Bistro Freddie A
Parisian bistro favourites combined with traditional British staples are reinterpreted with a Nordic flair at this newcomer to Shoreditch. Jungmin Seo takes a seat
nna Søgaard confesses she did not expect her snail flatbread to become the signa- ture dish on her menu at Bistro Fred-
“I’ve always been
snails, so sometimes they just try them for the sake of seeing what a snail tastes like, but then they end up loving them,” she says. She buys the snails from family-run business Dorset Snails and blanches them before braising for two hours in a court bouillon (water infused with garlic, parsley and lemon zest) until they are “quite similar in texture to a mussel”. They are then chopped and served on a grilled flat- bread dripping with a rich tarragon butter. Søgaard always wanted to share her own
take on Parisian bistro culture, despite start- ing her career in Nordic fine dining. After spending her formative years between North America and Denmark, she enrolled in a
36 | The Caterer | 24 November 2023
four-year chef training programme at Copen- hagen Hospitality College after studying communications in the US. She was sous chef at a Nordic small plates
the only woman in kitchens” Anna Søgaard
and tasting menu restaurant called Bodil in Copenhagen before moving to Manchester for the opening of natural wine bar and restaurant Erst in March 2018, where she was based for five years. But London was calling and an opportu- nity to move to a “large capital city where the food scene is really booming” arose, leading her to head up the kitchen at Crispin Group’s third restaurant, the 45-cover Bistro Freddie. Ahead of the launch, the team conducted
weekly tastings to come up with new dishes, some of which, she says, elicited the response “this is it”, while others were “no, absolutely not”. In fact, the fried plaice, curry sauce and fried capers almost didn’t make the cut, but Søgaard’s love for fish and chips, sparked during her first visit to London as a child, saw her push for it on the menu where it is now a firm favourite. “I wanted to do something that was familiar
with a buttery, mild, spiced curry sauce that is kind of similar to what you would have at a fish
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