David Taylor at Grace & Savour: ‘Eating real food is the most important thing we can do.’

The UK isn’t short of gorgeous country getaways. Whether it’s stout, windswept old manor houses in the Scottish Highlands or quaint seaside inns, a restaurant with rooms allows us the joy of relaxing entirely into something special, taking a break from the rigours of daily life without the concern of return tickets or designated drivers.

Even compared to the most beautiful of those countryside boltholes, Grace & Savour is idyllic. The restaurant has been purpose-built in the grounds of Hampton Manor so that it looks out onto the fruit trees, beehives, wild flowers and vegetable patches of the estate’s Victorian walled garden. Inside, a series of tall bay windows fill the space with natural light, whilst timber beams line a pitched roof overhead. The earthy, organic colour palette is typically Scandinavian but Grace & Savour is all about texture, from the soft mottle of plaster on the walls to shallow plane grooves in the wooden tables. It’s a magnificent space that feels modern, but still fits seamlessly in Hampton Manor’s historic grounds.

At the centre of it all are David and Anette Taylor, who moved to the West Midlands from Oslo to take on the restaurant. Just two years ago, though, the couple were happily settled in Oslo - they’d just had their first child and David was on paternity leave with no plans to leave. ‘James (Hill, Hampton Manor director) and I had been friends for a long time. He’d asked me before about coming back to the UK, but he knew my heart was in Norway,’ says David. ‘When the opportunity to do Grace & Savour came up though, it really felt like the stars aligned. We’d always loved the idea of having a restaurant with rooms, which would be about connecting people and would be built on authenticity and sincerity. We weren’t sure if it would ever exist because it would require so much time and dedication, but Fiona (Hill, also a director of Hampton Manor) and James’s vision and ambition for Hampton Manor is phenomenal, and we feel very privileged to be a part of it.’

‘I knew it had to be the right thing to get Anette on board,’ he adds, laughing. ‘Getting a Norwegian to leave Norway is probably the biggest achievement of this whole project!’

For David, taking the helm at Grace & Savour meant returning home after some six years away, in Norway and the US. Originally born in Nottingham, David’s love of food started early - he was a keen childhood baker and his youthful passion coincided with Jamie Oliver’s rise to TV stardom on ‘The Naked Chef’. ‘He was so passionate about food, and I got energy from that,’ he says. A short time later David would meet Brian Turner - at the time a household name via Ready Steady Cook - and Turner helped to open doors for the young 13 year old. ‘I asked him if he had any advice for me because I was thinking of becoming a chef, and he gave me his card and invited me down to Turner’s for a day,’ says David. ‘I was hounding him all the time on the phone - I think he kept picking up expecting it to be someone else! He was so patient though. I remember going down to his restaurant and prepping chicken livers and tasting ice cream. We had a bowl of pasta together and had lunch in the restaurant, and that was it - I was sold.’

'(Maze) was brutal, but it gave me a grounding that has helped me get where I am now.'

David went on to study culinary arts management at the University of Birmingham and his second year placement landed him at Maze with Jason Atherton, just as the restaurant was set to explode onto the culinary scene. With 30 odd chefs and nearly 200 covers, Maze was a tough kitchen and not for the faint of heart. ‘I had no idea what I was signing myself up for,’ he says. 'It was brutal, but it gave me a grounding that has helped me get where I am now.’ David’s time at Maze also connected him to one of the most formative stages of his career as Jason helped him get a job at Purnell’s - at the time one of the hottest restaurants in the country. ‘Jason was on Great British Menu with Glynn [Purnell], so he gave Glynn a call. Glynn doesn’t take part timers and I was still at college but because it was Jason Atherton, he gave me a go.’

David spent the next seven years at Purnell’s and Glynn would become an important mentor for the young chef, pushing him into a sous chef role at just 22 years old. ‘Glynn was a huge influence on me,’ says David. ‘He really breathed a sense of confidence into me and nurtured me into that role.’ David left Purnell’s with a much clearer sense of identity, but felt the need to broaden his horizons abroad and threw himself into stages and trial shifts at top class restaurants like Grace in Chicago, Atera in New York and Relae in Copenhagen. He would eventually land at Maaemo - Esben Holmboe Bang’s exceptional new Nordic standard bearer in Oslo - and join an all-star team that included Oli Marlow (executive chef of Aulis and Roganic Hong Kong), Jordan Bailey (chef and owner of two Michelin-starred Aimsir in Kildare, Ireland), Alex Nietosvuori (head chef of Michelin-starred Hjem in Northumberland) and James Goodyear (head chef of Evelyn’s Table, London). ‘The talent in that team was mad,’ says David. ‘Even the stagieres! We had a stagiere called Kevin (Finch), and after he left he became chef de cuisine at Atelier Crenn and won three stars there. When he was at Maaemo he worked on garnish!’

'Glynn (Purnell) breathed a sense of confidence into me and nurtured me...'

Over the near two years David was part of the team that won a third Michelin star at Maaemo, making it the joint first Nordic restaurant to reach that prestigious landmark alongside Geranium in Denmark. If Purnell’s was most influential on his career, Maaemo is the restaurant that has most inspired Grace & Savour - both share a certain Nordic minimalism that focuses on ingredients, and David runs the kitchen in a similar way that allows the team to bounce off each other creatively.

In the space of less than 12 months, the results have been exceptional. Grace & Savour is a worthy number one in our Top 100 UK Restaurants in 2023 list, but the food isn’t the only thing that makes it special; what drives the restaurant deep down is an unwavering commitment to biodiversity, regenerative farming, sustainability and ethical growing practices. David spent a good year building supply networks for the restaurant before it opened, and he works with a range of local producers and growers to supply the restaurant. That’s important because not only are you supporting small independents, you’re also able to grow specific varieties for flavour - varieties that most growers won’t touch because they aren’t hardy or profitable. ‘There’s a huge strawberry shortage at the moment,’ David explains. ‘There are no fruit pickers because of Brexit, so small organic farms can’t make money on strawberries anymore, and big farms are contracted to supermarkets and only grow high-yield varieties. I take my hat off to Billy who grows a lot of our berries because he could make a lot more money selling something else, but he does it to preserve these varieties.’

Grace & Savour only uses produce that has been ethically, organically farmed or fished within the UK. That throws up all sorts of complications - citrus fruit doesn’t naturally grow here, for example, so David and team are always on the hunt for alternative ways of adding acid to dishes (‘we use a lot of rhubarb and vinegars,’ he says). Storms can quickly axe the availability of line-caught fish, and growing regeneratively in the walled garden removes an element of consistency, so sometimes crops just don’t work out for reasons unknown. ‘We planted a load of celeriac last year and they just didn’t grow,’ says David. ‘They were so tiny we had to serve them as canapes!’ David realised this year that no fruit grows in the UK between December and June, so the restaurant is extremely efficient in preserving fruit in the summer - another new Nordic hallmark that gives them lots more options for ‘fruity’ flavours in winter and spring.

'...the plant-based processed industry is also killing us, just as much as the meat processed industry.'

Organic, regenerative, sustainable - these have become such buzzwords in recent years that it's easy to become a little blind to them, but David and Anette are engaging and open-minded on the subject. More than anything else, they’re keen to stimulate conversations. ‘Right now, all you have is polarisation, but there’s a much deeper conversation here,’ David explains. ‘If we all went regenerative tomorrow, would that solve all our problems? No. Do we need to eat more plant-based food? Yes, but the plant-based processed industry is also killing us, just as much as the meat processed industry. We think that fish is the most sustainable thing to do, but there are just as many problems at sea as there are on land with big gill nets and trawlers causing chaos.

‘Eating real food is the most important thing we can do, but that comes at an extremely high cost. If that’s the case, how can you tell a family that can barely afford food that they can't eat a £3 chicken that has been raised in darkness? It’s an incredibly complex issue with no single answer, but we have to keep having the conversations and looking at solutions.’

You can read more interviews with top chefs, including Andrew Wong, Peter Sanchez-Iglesias and Chantelle Nicholson. Or, head over to our list of the best restaurants in Birmingham and see what other restaurants in the area are worth a visit.