The Ayala SquareMeal Best Female Chefs Series 2023: Pip Lacey

The sun is beaming through the windows at Hicce Hart, and it has Pip Lacey - chef and founder of both Hicce and its younger gastropub sister - in a buoyant mood as she jogs up the stairs. ‘Hicce is a whole different planet in the summer,’ she explains. ‘Everyone is bouncing now that the sun is out.’ True enough, the benches outside the pub are full, sunglasses are out and cold pints are disappearing quickly on all the tables.

It’s a testament to the welcoming pub that Lacey and business partner Gordy McIntyre have launched here, which is all the more impressive given Pip’s last twelve months. Aside from battling through COVID and Brexit, the pair have opened two new sites, adding Hicce Hart in Islington and Little Pizza Hicce at Goodness Brewing Co taproom in north London to debut restaurant Hicce in King’s Cross. That’s before we get onto a certain high profile new opening that Lacey headed up in summer 2022 - Jeremy Clarkson’s Diddly Squat Restaurant, erected in one of the fields of his Cotswolds farm for season two of his hit Amazon Prime series.

Champagne Ayala: Celebrating over 160 years of history, Champagne Ayala was one of the original twenty-six Grandes Marques Champagne Houses. The House received a Royal Warrant in 1908 and became a part of the Bollinger family in 2005. With its longstanding commitment to the restaurant industry, Champagne Ayala is known for its chardonnay driven, low-dosage wines, crafted with precision and delicacy in a boutique scale. These wines are the ultimate epicurean pairing, it’s no wonder they have been served in the UK for over 100 years in many of London’s most prestigious establishments.

With Diddly Squat Restaurant closed until further notice, this summer is looking a little different but no less busy. When all of Hicce’s al fresco spaces are open the restaurant packs in over 300 across the dining room, terrace and market - Lacey admits wryly that this is ‘slightly larger’ than the debut restaurant they’d planned for back in 2018. ‘It’s about ten times the size of what we’d envisioned,’ she laughs. ‘We were looking at places the size of coffee shops.’

Hicce didn’t start off that big, but it was still a sizable 70 cover restaurant and with much of the cooking being done over wood fires, there was no shortage of stress for the debuting restaurateur. ‘The first service at Hicce was so full on,’ she says. ‘I’d created this concept that I couldn’t really deliver, and it turned out fine but in my head it was total carnage!’

Four years on, Hicce Hart has been much easier in some respects - Lacey is more seasoned and the team has been more organised - but other aspects of the economic climate have made the process a slog; experienced chefs are thin on the ground and cost of living crisis, rising rents and a shortage of chefs have come together to create an industrial firestorm.

'Brexit was the hardest thing, not COVID.'

‘Finding experienced chefs has been the hardest thing,’ Pip explains. ‘We’re an independent so we can’t compete money-wise with the big corporations for the best chefs sometimes. Lots of chefs come to us liking the idea of working for an independent business, but they want the corporate money and the numbers just don’t add up.

‘In that sense, Brexit was the hardest thing, not COVID.’ she adds. ‘But the combination was a nightmare.’

Still, Hicce Hart has assembled a great team, despite the challenges, with head chef Charlotte Harris bringing bags of experience from Hicce and Fallow. ‘There’s a trust level there when you’ve worked with people before,’ Pip says of Charlotte. ‘She’s a great chef and I have a lot of trust in her. There’s always scope to improve but we’ve got the main things right I think - we’ve got the right team, the right beer, the right wine, great customers, so it’s just a case of building on that.

‘Most of all, what I’ve learned about the whole process is just to breathe and not get too stressed.’

Clarkson's Farm was 'a chef's dream'.

That’s sage advice for anyone, but clearly, it stands you in good stead when you’re standing in a field, preparing to open a farm restaurant for Jeremy Clarkson. Lacey is familiar to some more foodie types who have followed her from her days working with Angela Hartnett at Murano, or even her appearances on Great British Menu, but hundreds of thousands more came to know her in 2022 as the straight-talking chef that took on Clarkson’s Diddly Squat Restaurant, amid a storm of angry locals and roving Amazon Prime cameras. There seemed to be no shortage of stress as the restaurant readied for its first service, but Lacey is shown calmly directing traffic as Clarkson neared a Basil Fawlty-esque meltdown nearby.

‘It was actually really straight-forward,’ she says. ‘Essentially it was just setting up a restaurant, which I had done before. The main concept was, "we’ve got the produce and you need to use it". That’s a chef’s dream!

‘Yes, the sun was shining, and if it was pissing it down with rain it could have been the worst experience of my life, but the gods were with us in that sense. Opening a restaurant in any situation is tough, let alone in the middle of a field, but it was a wicked experience.’

We ask if there were ever moments when she wondered what she’d signed herself up for and she takes a pause. ‘Err… I think there were moments when I really thought, “how are we going to get this done?” There was lots more going on that you don’t see - the show made it look easier than it was on my side. There were a few scary moments when I thought we could be royally in the sh*t, but we had a great team, we had done our homework and we were organised. Without all of that it would have been an absolute sh*tshow!’

‘If he (Clarkson) asked me to front up another restaurant and he had permission, I’d do it 100%.’

As for Jeremy, their interactions were more or less what you see on the show - after an initial planning session, she was given full reign over the restaurant from there. ‘He gave me full trust, which was great,’ she says. ‘I think it needed that if it was going to be a success. I did a tasting for him, he thought that was great and that was enough for him to say, “go and run with it.”

‘There was never a moment when that was in doubt, except maybe when we were a bit late opening. But that said, I’d rather be 20 minutes late and have everything go well, than on time and it’s a sh*tshow on live TV!’

Diddly Squat Restaurant was a roaring success, thanks in no small part to Pip and her team, but after a protracted back and forth ding-dong with the local council the restaurant was forced to close, with no current signs that it’ll reopen. As it stands Pip’s summer looks busy with Hicce, Hicce Hart, Little Pizza Hicce and two more potential sites on the horizon, but if Diddly Squat was to reopen, she would be back in a heartbeat. ‘It was a logistical nightmare, but we managed to pull off something quite incredible, in an amazing place,’ she says. ‘It should be open full time - for the concept behind it, the ethos, the desire to support local farmers. It’s nonsense that it’s not allowed to stay open.

‘If he asked me to front up another restaurant and he had permission, I’d do it 100%.’

Pip's perfect match for Ayala's Le Blanc de Blancs 2016

The dish: Sea bream ceviche with orange, nasturtium and fennel
The Champagne: Ayala Le Blanc de Blancs 2016

Lacey explains: 'The Blanc de Blancs is an amazing Champagne, and I think the ceviche goes really nicely. It’s more of a cross between a ceviche and a tartare - I don’t marinate it as much as a ceviche, and I don’t use lime juice. It’s a sea bream ceviche with orange, nasturtium and fennel, and a classic dressing that has sherry vinegar, garlic, orange zest and olive oil. There’s orange in there and an orange puree - Phil Howard’s burnt orange puree that I’ve used a lot, I’m not going to lie! It actually tastes like chocolate orange in the best way, and that chocolate works really well with the Champagne. The fennel has a gentle aniseed flavour, and that works well with the chocolatey notes and the Champagne. Bream is a strong enough fish to carry those flavours, and there’s a little bit of spice from the nasturtium which comes and goes on the palate. Each bite gives you a slightly new, different experience.'

Read more about our Ayala Female Chef of the Year awards, including interviews with the likes of Chantelle Nicholson, Julie Lin and Lisa Goodwin-Allen.