All great dishes start with an idea, and the best chefs know that inspiration can strike at any moment. That’s why, along with a good set of knives, a notebook is one of the most valuable things a chef can have. But while there are hundreds of different knives to choose from which are designed specifically for professionals, notebooks have been left at the wayside – until now.
Stone is something that solves many of the issues a bog standard notebook suffers from. A professional kitchen is a busy place – drips, spills, slippery surfaces and missing pens can make keeping track of ideas tough. So when photographer Stefan Johnson was at a photoshoot with Great British Chefs’ own Eliot Collins, they dreamt up the concept of a notebook designed with chefs in mind.
‘The idea came about during a shoot with Michael Caines,’ explains Stefan. ‘He was writing something down in a notebook and it was sliding around on the stainless steel work surface. I mentioned to Eliot that it would be easy to put a hidden magnet in the back to stop that from happening, and then we both started developing other ideas that would benefit chefs. No one else had created a notebook specifically for the industry – something which was robust, looked good, featured the right format and was functional – so we came up with Stone to fill that gap.’