Unbelievable Chef Discover Theo Randalls Secret Recipes to Cooking Delicious Dishes

The daily changing menu is inspired by Theo’s regular trips to Italy and dictated by the best seasonal ingredients available from the market each day. Theo has personally overseen the extensive wine list that features 90% Italian varietals.

Please speak to a member of the team if you have any dietary allergies or intolerances. All prices include VAT at the current prevailing rate. A discretionary 12.5% service charge will be added to the final bill.Please note that our menus are subject to change depending on the availability and seasonality of the freshest ingredients. Adults need around 2, 000kcal.

Please speak to a member of the team if you have any dietary allergies or intolerances. All prices include VAT at the current prevailing rate. A discretionary 12.5% service charge will be added to the final bill. The above menu is a sample. Menu item changes according to season and availability.

Theo Randall's Roast Lamb With Creamy Olive Sauce

Roasted guinea fowl stuffed with prosciutto di Parma, lemon zest, thyme and Mascarpone on pagnotta bruschetta, with Swiss chard and portobello mushrooms

Please note that our menus are subject to change depending on the availability and seasonality of the freshest ingredients. Adults need around 2, 000kcal a day.

Theo Randall At The Intercontinental

Please note that the Regional Tasting menu is created by Chef Theo to represent one particular Italian region with carefully selected unique products and wines. Due to this, we are not able to offer vegetarian and vegan alternatives and may not be able to accommodate other dietary needs.

Please ensure that you are aware of all party member's dietary requirements and contact us prior to making your reservation to confirm whether we are able to cater for you and your guests as the menu has to be served to the entire party to ensure a smooth and personalised experience.

Arrosto di faraona - Roasted guinea fowl stuffed with prosciutto di Parma, lemon zest, thyme and Mascarpone on pagnotta bruschetta with swiss chard, portobello mushrooms

The Italian Deli Cookbook By Theo Randall

Available for tables of up to six people. Please speak to a member of the team if you have any dietary allergies or intolerances. All prices include VAT at the current prevailing rate. A discretionary 12.5% service charge will be added to the final bill.

Adults need around 2, 000kcal a day. Please speak to a member of the team if you have any dietary allergies or intolerances. All prices include VAT at the current prevailing rate. A discretionary 12.5% service charge will be added to the final bill.A fascination for Italy was fed in London’s River Café, where Theo was head chef. Today, with restaurants in Hong Kong, Bangkok and London, he still spreads the love for the country, especially his favourite region

When it came to childhood holidays for the Randall family, it was always art that dominated the itinerary. With dad Peter an architect, mum Rosemary an artist and two older sisters [Justine and Claudia] who would both end up in the art business, a young Theo would have little say in the bulk of the agenda. ‘Our holidays were always based on art and going to amazing museums and galleries, which is a nice thing to have done, looking back now, ’ he says, ‘but at the time it felt intensely boring, so my thing was always to pick a restaurant.’

Theo

Bn45 111011 By Bridgton News

That choice was often Italian. ‘My mother used to cook from Elizabeth David’s Italian Food cookbook. She would bake bread three times a week and I’d go to school with these kind of homemade bread and Gorgonzola sandwiches – everyone else had plastic bread sandwiches with ham and cheese in them, so I was the odd one out. I had to pop to the corner shop and buy a pack of crisps to make myself look a bit more normal.’

When he turned 18 and decided to train as a chef, Theo’s eventual gastronomic direction was mapped out for him. He’d already been picking up kitchen experience in a French bistro and began his professional career at Chez Max, under Max Magarian, before hearing about a new opening – an Italian.

‘I went to the River Café and met Rose [Gray] and Ruth [Rogers], and we just hit it off. I loved the style of food; it was just so simple and so nice. There were lots of big chargrill things, roasted grouse and lots of lovely whole fish like grilled red mullet, but all these things were quite unusual back then.’

Paccheri With Leeks, Parmesan And Prosciutto Di Parma By Theo Randall

As head chef and partner, Theo spent a total of 15 years at the River Café, helping it to a Michelin star and iconic status in the pantheon of restaurants.

The team would regularly visit Italy to discover new produce, wines and flavours. ‘We’d go on these wine trips and get taken to restaurants that were off the beaten track, ’ recalls Theo. ‘They’d have wonderful wood- fired ovens and there’d be no menu – it would just be the nonna who’d come out, and say, “Well, we’ve got this, this or this...”

Paccheri

‘Back then, we’d be trying these incredible wines from young wine producers that are really famous now, with wines for hundreds of pounds per bottle. But they weren’t known then and it was sort of amazing to be part of that from the beginning.’

Picnic Recipes: Chef Theo Randall Shares His Top Tips

Although Theo had shares in the restaurant, the time came to move on and he found a new home at the InterContinental, where he could have his own wood-fired oven, and continue his love affair with Italy, specifically the Puglian region in the country’s south. ‘We go there every year, ’ he says, ‘two or three times.

‘I remember the first time, and having a plate of ricci di mari (sea urchins); it was one of the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten. It was the ricci di mari season, so on every corner you’d find a bucket of them for sale.

‘That’s the thing about Italy, ’ he continues. ‘It’s so much about what’s in season. If you went during the spring, say, you’d find peas, artichokes, broads beans and asparagus being sold everywhere – and that’s all they’d be selling, nothing else.

Theo Randall's Alternatives To Christmas Turkey Recipes

‘What I love about Puglia is the fact that it’s so simple, ’ he explains. ‘You’ve got the best of both worlds: you’re right by the sea, so you’ve got the amazing restaurants and fish from the coast; then you drive 10 miles inland and all you’ll see is meat and vegetables – they won’t even cook fish, it’s that particular.’ The landscape, he says, takes you from the ocean, via miles of olive trees, to a very green interior of tiny medieval hilltop villages and towns, all painted white to deflect the sun. And, of course, the region’s famous trulli houses (‘like little smurf houses with these curved roofs’).

Theo

‘Each town has its own market day and they grow everything – a lot of the Italian produce we get over here is grown in Puglia, ’ he says. ‘The vegetables you see in the market are incredible.

‘The famous dish in Puglia is fave e cicoria, which is broad beans smashed into a paste with olive oil, ’he explains. ‘Then you take the cicoria, which is really cultivated dandelion (a bunch costs you one euro and it’s enough to feed about 20 people), and fry it with garlic and chillies in olive oil – everything uses tonnes of olive oil. You fry greens in this flavoured oil and put them on top of the purée, then it’s eaten with little bits of toasted bread. This is the kind of staple food they have.

Mystery Lovers' Kitchen: Magic Peach Cobbler

‘The farmers’ breakfast would be these rock-hard bread rolls, ’ he continues. ‘They put one in their pocket with a tomato or whatever and, when they’re hungry, they pour water on the bread roll to make it expand, then put tomato, a bit of salt, some dried herbs and olive oil on top: simple and delicious.’ When you get to the coast, the cuisine shifts again, he explains. ‘You go to places like Gallipoli and the fish you get there is unlike any you get in other parts of Italy. The water is so clean and they have these prawns that are purple in colour. They blanch them in water for a second, and then put them in a bucket of ice so they don’t carry on cooking, and you just eat them like that, – no lemon, no olive oil, just the prawn as it is.’

‘You can order a couple of spiedini and veal chops, then sit down with a flask of wine and some antipasti while they cook it up'

Several dishes, including orecchiette – the region’s famous ear-shaped pasta – have made the journey from their Puglian roots to Theo’s menu, but one thing that can’t make the trip is the places and the people. ‘ You’ve got Lecce, with its beautiful architecture, which they call the Florence of the south; then