Amadeus Glorious Magazine Issue 06

FOOD EXPERIENCE IN THE SUMMERTIME, WE INNOVATE
customers. Their deli cakes are all made in-house and
the team have been looked at how to cut out sugar
and replace with more natural choices which doesn’t
dramatically affect the taste. “It’s actually a really fun
process where we get the whole team together work
review the choices. I love it when two of the senior
chefs come together and present a new idea and we
follow this up with a successful tasting session. I want
them exploring and testing new ideas. Now not all of
them will work but that’s a good thing. We want to
make mistakes and learn from them. It should make
us better at our jobs and in turn improves the
eventual food offer for the customers.”
Neil encourages his chefs to collaborate in this way
wherever possible. The chefs may go and visit street
food markets and sample the latest high street and
retail trends, he wants them making this background
research and improving their knowledge. Whilst he’s a
modest man, this creativity stems from Neil who
himself adventures into food markets to source tasty
ingredients and is always on the look out for
inspiration. This form of leadership empowers the
team around him and allows the chefs, especially the
younger ones, to explore and make a positive
difference. “The beauty of it is giving them the
ownership, one of the team may have one of their
creations end up on the menu and that’s powerful.”
Social media is also an area of inspiration for Neil and
the team and often the chefs are keeping an eye on
trends and seeing what’s resonating with people. “It’s
about taking inspiration from different sources.” Neil
explains, “We like to innovate and that motivation
shoots from various places. What I love at the
moment is that there are no rules. We recently
created a Pear Tartlet with Stilton Cheese Sorbet – to
be served as a cheese course rather than a dessert.
It’s amazing to try this – puff pastry case with cheese
sorbet – the rules have gone out the window and
that makes it so exciting. Standard pairings of food are
no more and even relevantly recent food trends like
the growth in fusion (mixing two food cultures
together) has started to fade out.” Neil believes this is
being partly driven by customers who have
developed their knowledge from
television shows such as
MasterChef and being more
adventurous when eating
out. They have their own
opinions and tastes, but
the chefs can at times
dictate this.
2018 marks an exciting year
for Neil and Amadeus.
It’s the biggest food
offer the NEC has
ever had.
Known as the
UK’s No 1
24 GLORIOUS