Nowadays many Michelin-starred chefs have become celebrities in their own right. From appearing on TV shows, to being outspoken personalities on social media, and selling their own cookery books, they’ve become household names as well-known as musicians and athletes.
Therefore, when it comes to courting publicity, Stephen Stevens, is a chef who very much goes against the grain. On his restaurant’s rarely used social media account, his biography says “work hard in silence and let success make the noise.”
It’s an ethos which neatly sums up the softly spoken chef, who owns Sosban and the Old Butchers on Anglesey, one of Wales’ most acclaimed restaurants.
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This tiny eight-seat restaurant in the town of Menai Bridge has held a Michelin star since 2016 and is one of only three Welsh restaurants to be named in La Liste’s guide to the world’s best. So, it’s clearly a restaurant which is worth shouting about.
But Stephen’s low profile online means that his customers are often not sure about the experience they’re going to get when they visit Sosban. There are very few photos around of what the restaurant currently looks like and his guests are served a surprise tasting menu.
“We have customers who come in and say ‘we looked it up online and it doesn’t say much but it’s completely different to the images which are out there,’” said Stephen.
Whilst Sosban and the Old Butchers has changed a lot since it opened its doors in 2013, Stephen’s use of lesser used cuts of meat in his cooking is something which can be traced all the way back to his childhood being raised by his grandparents on Anglesey.
“We used to eat a lot of offal and cheaper cuts, like tongue, lamb hearts and kidneys and I suppose that has helped me along the way.
“What I remember is that the smell wasn’t actually how it tasted. Lamb hearts wouldn’t have the nicest smell in the pressure cooker but then when you actually tasted them, it wasn’t like the smell at all.”
One of the unusual dishes which now features on Sosban’s menu is lambs' tails served with cauliflower, mustard leaf, and lamb garum (a fermented sauce that’s a distant relative of Worcestershire sauce).
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“Not a lot of people use lambs' tails in Wales. I really looked into them because I wanted to create something completely different. People say it’s amazing and that it’s one of the most lamby tasting pieces of meat they’ve ever tasted.”
Stephen doesn’t only have childhood memories of offal. It was helping his grandparents with baking during the festive season that inspired his love of cooking.
“I wasn’t from a wealthy background so we used to make cakes or confectionery as gifts for Christmas. And that’s where I think my love of food came from. But initially I didn’t think I wanted to be a cook. That came later on."
In fact, Stephen started out on an entirely different career path, which could have denied Wales one of its most talented chefs.
“When I left school I was lucky enough to get an apprenticeship on the island with a plumbing firm. My family thought I was set up for life because being a plumber was a really good job.”
However, Stephen didn’t find fulfilment in his first career and so decided to follow Bethan, his girlfriend at the time, to London in 1999.
“Bethan was going to go to London to do a drama course and I’d worked in a greasy spoon as a pot wash and I thought, ‘oh, I’ll go to London and start cooking!’”
“You could look through the old Caterer magazines then and they had jobs in the back. I went through that and saw Gordon Ramsay holdings. He wasn’t as big at the time like he is now. I knew who he was and I thought, ‘that’s the one!’”
“Not knowing what I was getting myself into, I went down and had an interview. I went to Royal Hospital Road (Gordon Ramsay’s three Michelin-starred restaurant) to begin with and they saw it was too much and had a word with me. It was a shock to the system, the 16 hour days and never having been in a starred restaurant.
“So they said ‘okay, we’ll move you to another restaurant where it’ll probably be better’. Marcus Wareing was in Green Park at the time and I thought it would be a bit easier. But when I went there, it was exactly the same!”
Typically working 17 hour days, it was a baptism of fire for the 19-year-old chef who worked alongside famous names such as Angela Hartnett, Paul Ainsworth and Marcus Wareing.
“As a chef, it developed me into being organised. The main thing I took away from it was organisation, preparation, consistency and timing and that’s still stayed with me now.
“Gordon would come in perhaps one Saturday every month. When you look back, it was a hell of a kitchen to be in.”
After a year, Stephen decided it was too much so early in his career and he returned to Wales and took up a position as a sous chef working under Chris Chown at the now-closed Michelin-starred Plas Bodegroes on the rural Llŷn Peninsula.
“At the time, I didn’t even really know it was there and had a Michelin star. It was just by chance somebody said Chris was looking for chefs and they’ve got a star. Chris was at the top of his game in Wales for a long time. I learnt about how to not be wasteful and use everything you can, like the cheeks of fish, the heads of langoustines. There was absolutely no waste and that’s been good for here too.”
Having completed further stints at Phil Howard’s two Michelin-starred Square in Mayfair and Roux at the Landau, as well as a week’s placement with Brett Graham at the Ledbury, Stephen and Bethan decided it was finally time to open their own business back on Anglesey in 2013.
“We were expecting our first child and I was doing really long hours in London. We decided between us we’re just going to serve good coffee and good food and have a life balance.”
Whilst they originally planned to primarily open in the daytime as “The Old Butchers”, named after the listed Menai Bridge butcher’s shop in which the restaurant is based, and then occasionally do fine dining evenings under the name “Sosban”, things didn’t pan out as expected.
Instead, the restaurant ended up opening regularly from Thursday to Saturday nights and became known for its high end cooking.
“We started with three starters, three mains, three desserts and a tasting menu. It worked well and people enjoyed it, but people seemed to just be ordering the tasting menu. I suppose people were coming, because of what I’d done, and where I’d been, expecting a Michelin restaurant.”
So, they made the bold decision of switching to a surprise ‘no menu’ tasting menu for all of their customers.
“Nobody was doing it at the time in Wales. I thought we could get the best produce and the offering would be more of an experience.”
Despite some initial apprehension from customers when they were told about Sosban’s change of direction, people stuck by them.
“Bethan rang everyone and people were like, ‘oh, so what are we going to have?’ But, the clientele stayed with us and trusted us because of the food they’d had before. It’s all to do with trust isn’t it?”
Another thing which has stayed with the restaurant is its rather cumbersome name.
“It’s a long-winded name, it’s funny, when I answer the phone I just try and shorten it and say Sosban. It takes up half of the conversation saying the name!”
In the early days of Sosban, Stephen served riffs on dishes which he’d learnt throughout his career. However, he soon developed his own cooking style, making the most of ingredients foraged from the Anglesey coast such as mosses, pennywort and sea leeks.
He even started drawing charts to map out innovative flavour combinations.
“What we’d do is get an ingredient, say artichoke, and we’d branch out with every element that would go with it. That was my starting point of having my own modern cuisine.”
The kind of dishes which you can now expect to find on one of Stephen’s tasting menus, which change each season, include cod with onion fudge and alliums; lamb tails with cauliflower and mustard leaf; seabass sashimi; and lemon sorbet with liquorice puree and olive oil marshmallow.
With Bethan running front of house and Stephen in the kitchen, it didn’t take long for the talented husband and wife team to be recognised by the UK’s most prestigious restaurant guide. In 2016, Sosban was awarded a Michelin star, an accolade which it still holds to this day.
Reflecting on receiving the award for the first time, Stephen said: “Every chef who says they don’t want a star I think would be lying! It’s a dream isn’t it. I never cooked for stars, but you dream, don’t you? It was a bit too much to take in because it was the first live stream Michelin had ever done in the UK so we went down to London. And then you come back and it doesn’t change anything. Your prep day is exactly the same prep day whether you’ve got a star or not. But you take it, it’s hard work well done.”
Having just retained their Michelin star for their sixth year in a row, Stephen doesn’t feel the pressure comes from the guide to keep his standards up.
“I think the pressure comes from yourself. You put the pressure on, either pushing boundaries, or doing a little bit more. I wouldn’t say the pressure is from Michelin at all because they come in as a customer.”
“You know what chefs are like, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves because we want to do a good job.”
One of the biggest changes to take place since Sosban opened its doors is that Stephen is now running the business single-handedly.
Whilst Sosban used to be a 16 cover restaurant with a separate kitchen and a team of chefs, it has now been reduced to just eight seats and Stephen cooks single-handedly at a cooking suite which provides a focal point for the dining room.
“I brought in a cooking suite, which is like a chef’s table, so I made the restaurant chef orientated.”
He added: “Before the lockdown, there were three chefs and a pot wash, which was ideal because it was half the number of employees to customers coming in. So you know, four staff and eight people eating, it should be easy shouldn’t it?”
Now, however, Steve does all the prep himself during the day and is supported by a single pot wash and front of house member of staff in the evening.
“During the day, it’s all me and that’s really difficult. To do 12 courses you’re talking at least 100 dishes. Not a lot of people do it single-handed.
“From pastry, to protein, to prep, it’s quite a talent in itself to be able to carry out eight covers.”
Despite the evolution of Sosban, one thing which has remained consistent over the years is demand for a reservation. Having previously sold out of an entire year’s worth of tables in 48 hours, it’s still very difficult to come by a reservation at Sosban, with no availability currently showing on their website.
“I remember places like El Cellar de Can Roca and El Bulli (Spanish three Michelin-starred restaurants), where you’d have the same problem where people couldn’t get in for years. So, we’re obviously doing something right here.”
“Usually we release tables a year in advance, which is really good because you know you’re full and ready to go. It still is one of the hardest restaurants in Wales to get into.”
As a result of the unpredictable nature of the pandemic, Stephen has recently decided to change how far in advance people can book.
“What we’re going to do is release tables three months at a time instead of six months just in case anything happens again and as a safety net because we’ve previously had to give deposits back and rearrange bookings when we were closed again.”
Despite clearly being so busy, Stephen isn’t standing still when it comes to his future ambitions for Sosban.
“There’s always something to evolve and try to make better. It’s just pushing boundaries. I know a lot of people do relocate their restaurant to try and push more. It would be nice to be near the sea because it’s closer to nature and more appealing to people sometimes. It’s taking people on a journey. But it’s having time isn’t it?”
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