What do you do when the chef-owner of a Michelin-starred restaurant leaves the business? In the case of Drake’s, you find a talented young person to take their place and rebrand. Now known as The Clock House, this Surrey-based business housed inside a beautiful Georgian building has seamlessly continued serving high-end dishes – thanks to head chef Fred Clapperton.
Originally from a small town near Doncaster, Fred’s first taste of a professional kitchen was potwashing in local pubs for a bit of pocket money. From there he progressed to waiting on, then to helping in the kitchen whenever someone was off sick. ‘This was while I was at college studying architecture, which I chose for the creativity but soon realised I wasn’t interested in the maths side of things,’ he explains. ‘It eventually clicked that working in the kitchen could be a really creative career, so I left my course and enrolled at catering college.
‘I continued working at the same pub I’d been a potwasher in for quite a long time and eventually moved to a new pub in another village opened by the same landlady,’ continues Fred. ‘I was the only chef in the kitchen, and while I was teaching myself lots of things I wanted to progress to the next stage of my career. So I moved down south to work at a restaurant near Huntingdon called The Pheasant, which was a runner-up on The F Word many years ago. After that I worked at a 2 AA Rosette place in the Cotswolds, and after that I joined Drakes.’