Food and wine expert Melanie Brown is an alumni of Peter Gordon’s The Providores and Raymond Blanc’s Petit Blanc, and now helms her own restaurant in London’s Brixton.
It’s a somewhat ponderous prelude to my meeting with Melanie Brown, arriving as I do at her restaurant, The Laundry in Brixton,
“The timing was awful,” admits Melanie, when I catch up with her over lunch at the now-reopened restaurant, “but I was determined that it wasn’t going to beat me. It probably helps having a Kiwi can-do attitude, and I wouldn’t go back and change anything about the experience,” she adds, to my surprise.
Recounting the immense challenges of recent years while calmly sipping a virgin paloma on the restaurant’s expansive al fresco terrace, Melanie doesn’t appear at all drained by the troubles that saw London’s booming restaurant scene decimated, and Melanie lose her customers and staff overnight, while trying to sustain her business. Seemingly unphased, she epitomises the relaxed vibe of The Laundry, her most recent venture.
Melanie shows me around the impressive premises that now house her smart but relaxed bar, restaurant and private dining rooms. A laundry for 119 years, it used to press the linen of the prestigious hotels of London’s Park Lane. When the lease came up for this iconic Edwardian washhouse conveniently situated next to her office in Brixton, she seized the chance to become the first tenant since its closure.
“It has a sense of place that matches my philosophy and reflects my ultimate aspiration to have a restaurant built on the foundation of France and Italy, but with Kiwi flair and attitude,” she explains. To honour its history, she’s retained the laundry’s rustic brick interior and some memorabilia from the original space, softening its industrial edges with leather-upholstered seating. There’s also a definite Parisian feel to the outdoor area in particular, which became a godsend over times of social distancing. Melanie even sourced all the cutlery from Paris flea markets.
“There’s a connection of soul and culture that the bistros and cafes have on this side of the world that we don’t necessarily have in New Zealand,” notes Melanie, who was inspired by her travels in Europe. “However, these often don’t have New Zealand’s customer service and its personal connection. Aligning the synergy between those two really beautiful elements is something that truly inspired the birth of The Laundry.”
While in the past decade she’s become better known for her work with wine than food, Melanie was originally a chef; something she drew on when designing The Laundry’s menu. Created from as much locally sourced produce as possible, brunches are a big feature, as are bistro classics from croque madames to confit duck… but with a New Zealand twist.
“It was always a big thing for us to use quality ingredients, but not trying to be too fancy: hearty, classic dishes, maybe pimped New Zealand-style with some spicy jalapeno,” says Melanie. The jalapeno-topped prawn cocktail and perfect bavette steak frites with Cafe de Paris butter that I tuck into as we talk are testament to this.
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From chef to wine specialist
Melanie started her culinary career in the UK nearly two decades ago, which included time as a pastry chef at the legendary Raymond Blanc’s Le Petit Blanc, then for Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen and a stint at New Zealand chef Peter Gordon’s The Providores and Tapa Room. After her passion for the grape intensified over her time at London’s wine-focused Vinoteca she returned to Providores as a bar manager, where she made the radical decision to list only New Zealand wine: a UK first at that time.
Spurred by a frustration with the lack of good New Zealand wine available in retail, in 2014, when her daughter Isla was just 2, Melanie started an online wine company, The New Zealand Cellar, out of her living room. “I wanted to connect UK consumers with wines that were not necessarily available at retail environments, and encourage them to trade up in their New Zealand wine purchasing and move away from the commercially produced supermarket wines that I didn’t think represented what New Zealand wines are.”
Her success with New Zealand wine, which resulted in numerous high-profile awards, saw other New World wineries keen to work with her. While she says New Zealand wines will always dominate the wines she represents, her business expanded to encompass wine from Australia, South Africa and California, and was rebranded as Specialist Cellars in 2019.
An ambitious crowdfunding initiative also enabled Melanie to establish an actual wine shop and bar in the temporary Pop retail hub in Brixton, where it remains today. “It’s been a huge success, the amount of wine we can sell and how many events we can do,” says Melanie. “We’ve been so fortunate that we were supported so widely throughout New Zealand with the crowdfunding campaign, which really made me who I am today and led to The Laundry.”
Surviving Covid
Entering 2020, the Pop shop was thriving and The Laundry already buzzing and receiving rave reviews. Then in March came Covid, with the British Government’s chaotic on-off stay-at-home decrees, interspersed by social distancing and a furlough policy that supported staff but prevented them from doing any work for their original employers.
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Advertise with NZME.“Nothing could prepare me for what happened when Covid hit,” Melanie recalls. “We had a team of about 30 at the time and everyone just freaked out. There was this innate reaction of trying to care for everyone, and guide everyone through what was to be a long, tiresome mental, physical and emotional roller coaster, not to mention the financial impact that was being thrown at me from the other side.”
Melanie found herself juggling the roles of a boss working with her investors to restructure the company’s operations, and an auntie offering pastoral care to anxious staff. On top of this, she was a mother to her own “restaurant baby”, Isla, who she cites as one of her main motivators.
“Restaurants were getting smashed,” says Melanie. “So we had to work hard to pivot and make a unique offering.” These pivots included selling takeaways out of the restaurant’s front window, creating menu boxes for people to assemble dishes at home and starting a general store.
“It was mental, but it kept us afloat. We had to use loans, which was scary as we weren’t making any money.” However, the business benefited over these nerve-racking times from the support of her largely Kiwi investors, as well as the location of the restaurant opposite Brixton’s newly opened theatre, in a community where she’d already built strong connections.
“We’re three or four years behind where we thought we would be,” she acknowledges. “However, the silver lining is that we’ve had to analyse and critique everything we’re doing, and have learned things in a short space of time that would otherwise have taken years.”
Braving Brexit and power struggles
It does seem like an incredibly stressful way to learn the ropes of running your own restaurant, but Melanie’s glass even remained half full when Brexit delivered another blow to Britain’s hospitality industry. Suppliers struggled to source produce from the EU, but as this debacle unfurled over the period of the pandemic when restaurants were closed, Melanie saw this as providing time to acclimatise to the new EU-untethered normal and understand availability issues.
Staffing remains an ongoing issue. “The hard-working EU professionals were shipped back to their homelands,” she notes. “We were left in the dire situation where we couldn’t find any staff, were trying to keep staff and then having to turn them into professionals in an industry that many view as just a job rather than a profession.
“If a global pandemic and Brexit weren’t enough, the new cost of living crisis is certainly taking its toll,” Melanie tells me when I check in with her again. “We’ve also seen our energy bills triple in the last 12 months. Surviving to pay these beyond the financial impact of Covid on the industry has been brutal and every week there are more London restaurant closures.”
However, The Laundry is far from washed up. “We’ve made some sacrifices from our original business plan and concept, but these have really paid off and now we’re operating at roughly 1000 covers a week.”
World Class New Zealander
Another recent triumph was Melanie being named a Kea World Class New Zealander; an award that recognises industry-leading New Zealanders around the globe who are helping build the country’s reputation overseas.
“To be honoured in that way was just absolutely mind-blowing,” she says. “I couldn’t believe that I was being recognised for the small piece that I do for New Zealand. It really made my heart smile.
“At the end of the day, I love absolutely everything about my job. Connecting people, stories and experiences via food or drink, or creating hospitality spaces that showcase authenticity. I’m also exceptionally lucky to have an incredible team around me.
“There have been moments where I’ve been exhausted, but secretly I think I love the challenge,” she concludes. “There’s a beautiful restaurant and a beautiful team, so it’s a wonderful position to be in. I’m incredibly grateful.”
Melanie’s selections
Melanie shares the New Zealand drinks she’s currently enjoying in the UK.
I just cannot for the life of me get enough of this chardonnay. Poised, graceful and exceptional, it has an incredibly taut character bundled with sumptuous fruit and exquisite elegance, and don’t get me started on value.
I’ve been going through a sauvignon renaissance of late. This particular style piqued my interest in what I found to be a challenging grape to consume. This example has a secret ingredient [spoiler: it uses green tea extract rather than sulphur as its preservative] and is produced by a pretty kick-ass duo. It’s also a food matching dream.
Literally the best-value pinot I’ve had across my lips. Abundant fruits, soft tannins and immediately moreish, this is my all-rounder and suits me every month of the year.
I’ve really been getting into a lot of riesling recently, and still one of my absolute favourites is Pegasus Bay Bel Canto: dry but fruity, with just the right amount of riesling sass.
