Published on October 05, 2005

And it’s not for the Beeb this time. Keith Floyd brings his ‘unfussy approach to gastronomy’ to diners in Phuket and Bangkok

Keith Floyd was television’s hottest cook when the Naked Chef was in diapers. Floyd is still in the kitchen and now is planning to launch three restaurants and a cooking school in Thailand with the Burasari hotel group. Top that, Jamie Oliver.

“All the recipes will be Floyd’s,” declares the British-born chef, who has 19 television series and 22 cookbooks to his name. “I won’t shirk on quality. Because my name is Floyd and I cook it my way.”

The 62-year-old chef, who looks like Rupert Murdoch’s lost twin, has been in the kitchen for four decades. He was schooled in classical French cuisine, has owned numerous restaurants in the United Kingdom, and has cooked with some of the world’s greatest chefs through his BBC series.

But his particular passion is for down-home cuisine.

“Some of the best meals I’ve had have been cooked on coals piled inside a steel drum,” he says, recounting some segments in his most popular series on the Brit channel – “Floyd’s India”(2001) and “Floyd on Africa” (1996) – which pulled in more than four million viewers.

He promises that his restaurants in Thailand will be more refined, emphasising elegant simplicity: “International cuisine whilst staying true to Floyd’s unfussy approach to gastronomy.”

Floyd says he was approached by members of the Burasari group two years ago.

He liked that the company was run by a family and that after last December’s tsunami it kept its entire Burasari Patong hotel staff on payroll.

The Burasari group is investing Bt20 million for the rights to Floyd’s recipes and to the launch the eateries, according to Lily Udomkhunnatham, managing director of the Burasari Patong in Phuket.

The first eatery, what Floyd calls a “small but sensible Thai restaurant”, will open in the Burasari Patpong before Christmas. It will be called Floyd’s Bowthai.

Floyd’s Brasserie, a 160- to 180-seat restaurant with a Hemingway-style bar, will open in the new Burasari Jungceylon hotel in Phuket in spring 2006.

“You’ll come in and you won’t want to leave. You’ll want to sleep at your table,” declares Floyd, saying it will serve “real food” like rack of lamb with a mint Hollandaise and sirloin steak with Bearnaise sauce. It will also have an Asian menu featuring fresh local seafood and produce.

Floyd’s Bangkok Bistro, envisioned as a 60- to 80-seat stand-alone establishment, will serve classic cuisine like French onion soup and entrecote steak with hand-cut fries.

It will also serve Thai Royal cuisine, which Floyd says he learned 15 years ago from a former palace chef. The bistro is slated to open in spring next year.

“At both my brasserie and bistro, you’ll be able to come in wearing an elegant jacket or jeans and a T-shirt and no one will give a #$%@,” says an elegantly dressed Floyd, wearing his signature bow tie.

The Burasari group plans to establish its cooking school for underprivileged children, Floyd’s Future Feast, in Phuket. The group says it will hire kitchen and service staff from the school, which will either be founded in conjunction with a local vocational school or established independently.

Floyd says he’ll teach kids “to cook the Floyd way… learning to respect raw ingredients and discovering the joy of cooking”.

He won’t teach the strict, classical way that he learned in France in the 1960s. He will instead use the lessons he gleaned between 1984 and 2001 as the BBC’s roving culinary correspondent.

“Give me a wok or a karai. Give me charcoal or cow dung. But don’t give me any of that technical stuff,” he says, stubbing out a Silk Cut and nursing a glass of Johnnie Walker Black.

Hal Lipper

The Nation

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