Q&A: The Templetons
The four cousins behind Carousel—Ed, Ollie, Will and Anna—reflect on five years of guest chefs, loyal locals and one exploded appendix
Interview: Ellie Costigan
Images: Hannah India, Caroline Ciccotti
Carousel began by hosting immersive pop ups, then evolved into an all-singing, all-dancing restaurant, gallery and event space. How did that happen?
Ollie: This site was shown to us and we were like, oh my god. The opportunity was insane: five years, central London. It needed a lot of work, but we thought it was worth it. Previous to this we’d done a few pop ups where we’d invited different chefs to do cooking battles, a thing called Rumble in the Deli, and it was really fun collaborating with different people, so we riffed on that.
Opening a site was new territory for us and even though I’d worked in restaurants, I was only 22 so I didn’t really feel like I could do my own restaurant with my own food. We developed the idea of collaborating with chefs into a model that worked as a restaurant, constantly inviting different chefs from all over the world. It was an opportunity for us to learn; to bring unique experiences into the city, make connections and eventually be able to travel ourselves.
You’ve had some amazing chefs here. How do you go about getting them in?
Ed: At the beginning it was pretty challenging. The whole idea of a chef doing a residency was new—there are a lot more people doing that now, so people understand what it is, but back then, both from the chef’s perspective and the customer’s, people didn’t really understand what it was we were doing. We started with the network we had. The first chef who came was an Argentinian guy called Javier Rodriguez, who was a friend of a friend of Anna’s. Then we had a chef from Paris who we had some connection with. Eventually we ran out of people we knew—we didn’t have the biggest pool to draw on—so it meant approaching people we were excited about and inviting them in. The more who came, the more of a reputation we built.
Will: There’s definitely been a shift. People were familiar with pop ups, but what we’re doing is very different—more manicured and controlled and there’s a level of excellence that we stand by. Now you see the idea of a chef residency everywhere.
Ed: There’s a massive distinction. People would often say, “Oh, so and so is doing a takeover at Carousel”—I was always frustrated by that, because it didn’t tell the full story, which is what we bring to the table not only in the kitchen, in that the guest chefs are cooking with our team, but the whole front of house, the experience, the atmosphere, the setting. That stuff doesn’t change, week in, week out. The menus are also very collaborative. Our chefs work with the guest chef to source ingredients, advise what’s in season in the UK, make tweaks and suggestions based on what we know people want to eat here. I think that’s a part of the story that gets lost a bit. Over time, that’s become clearer and now chefs are just as excited to be here.
You’ve managed to create a space with the slickness of a restaurant, but the intimacy of a supperclub. Was that deliberate?
Ed: From the very first, we wanted to create a sense of shared experience, with everyone sitting at a long table. One of the most rewarding things that we’ve found is all these little connections that happen just by bringing people together.
Ollie: We wanted it to feel like you were going into someone’s house. We had a base in Spain where we’d all go on holiday together, it’s where I grew up, and we’d always be in the kitchen around this big table. The long tables were actually born out of wanting to recreate that feeling.
Anna: We also realised the service had to be on-point because if you’re asking people to get to know a new chef every two weeks, you need everything else to be completely consistent: really friendly, well trained staff and also the quality of food needs to always be of a high level. I don’t think ‘slick’ is a word that comes to mind when you think of the Templetons, but it was definitely the case that we wanted to make everyone feel welcome, comfortable and looked after.
You offer a really high quality of food, from some of the world’s best chefs, at a relatively accessible price point. Can that be challenging?
Ed: It was always our intention that it would be a place that we would choose to go to ourselves. It’s paid off; we get a real mix of people here. We get so many locals who come in a lot, but we might also get a younger crowd for a particular chef or it might be people who are passing through London and have read about us. Accessibility is really important, but it does also throw up challenges.
Ollie: There have been weeks where we’ve been serving arguably some of the best sushi in London, for 40 quid!
Anna: Carousel is a creative hub, it’s not just a restaurant or event space or art gallery and if we didn’t have all those elements, it just wouldn’t work. There’s no way a central London restaurant with just one sitting and 46 covers, offering five courses at 35 pounds a head at first, would still be open five years later otherwise. None of it would work if it stood alone.
The opportunity you provide for chefs shouldn’t be underestimated. You’ve helped shape or indeed make the careers of some. That must be rewarding.
Ed: Massively. It is also hugely rewarding to know that we provided a platform for chefs like Romy Gill, Selin Kiazim and Tom Brown. It adds to that sense of community—and our credibility, too. It doesn’t do any harm to give people the feeling that this is a place where they might find the next big thing.
You mentioned the number of locals you get here. How do you think you’ve gone about creating a place that’s at once a ‘destination’ and a neighbourhood restaurant?
Ollie: You’re eating in the same setting, the same people are serving you, you have your favourite drinks. We really get to know people. There are people who book in the whole time because they just trust us—they don’t look into it that much, they’re going to come regardless. When we do two-weekers, we often have regulars who come in the first week and then rebook with different friends the second week. That’s the mark of a really good residency.
Ed: We get to know what people like and don’t like. Our best customer, who lives locally, is a French lady and she doesn’t eat a particular ingredient, so whenever she’s coming in, we make a note and the chefs will cook something different just for her. Little things like that—that’s what keeps people coming back.
Anna: I think the price point also comes into it. We didn’t want a restaurant full of really rich people, we wanted a restaurant with lots of different people. You know when you go to a wedding and there are people of completely different ages and with different lives sitting together, but what you have in common is you love these people who are getting married and you just have a really jolly time? I think we wanted to bring that to it. We didn’t want price to get in the way. We wanted people to come because they love the food. Whenever I eat at Carousel, I feel so proud of the buzz in the room. There’s an energy.
Carousel also does its own lunch, and now a Christmas menu. How would you describe your cooking style?
Ed: Predominantly the ingredients are from UK suppliers—the guys are working with a farm now in London who grow stuff just for us. There’s a lot of foraging. Also, a lot of things even respected kitchens will buy in, the team will make ourselves: crème fraiche, cheese, charcuterie, bread, pasta.
Ollie: It can be very complicated behind the scenes but ultimately we want to make something that’s simple to look at, that’s delicious—it could be cabbage that’s had 10 things done to it to make it into a dish that tastes amazing. I like to cook things that are very natural and very focused on one specific ingredient at a time.
Do you think the fact you’re in Marylebone has helped make it the success that it is?
Anna: We feel extremely lucky to be in Marylebone, we all love it. It’s central, without being way too busy. It’s cool and there’s lots of interesting stuff going on, but without the showmanship of east London. I think Marylebone is a really special place.
Will: It gives it a legitimacy that you perhaps wouldn’t get in other postcodes. We work with international brands, and they need to be in the middle of town, they need to be in a respectable neighbourhood and they need to be in touching distance of the media.
Ed: Marylebone is a neighbourhood. That’s why it’s cool; it feels like a little community but it’s slap bang in the middle of London. We don’t ever want to leave. There’s something about what we’re doing that just kind of clicks.
Does the fact you’re a family have its advantages—or disadvantages?!
Anna: Luckily, it’s mainly advantages. We’ve had our moments of childish arguments—that was one of the biggest learning curves when we started employing people; we’d talk to each other like family and we realised that’s not always appropriate. But it’s a rocky road running your own business, so having people beside you who you love and really care about makes you stronger. Equally, having a four is great because if someone is thinking, god, I can’t cope, there’s always at least one other who’s on the other end of the spectrum to say, “What are you on about? This is amazing we can make this work.” It also meant our values were unwritten and I feel like that made us grow such a strong culture. People really bought into it and to being part of our family.
Ed: The good thing is, we do say what we think to each other and if we do fall out, everything is forgiven really quickly.
You’ve just celebrated your five-year anniversary. What have you learned in that time?
Anna: One of our definite strengths is that we’re always looking at what we can do better and what we can do to add to the experience—what can we do to make it even more extraordinary? It’s a hard market, London, so we should be and are proud of the fact we’ve made it five years. There is a lot of appreciation for how fantastic our team is. We’ve also learnt that it’s okay if it doesn’t work; to not be afraid to try something and then if it’s not working, do it differently or do something else. It can feel like failure but it’s just part of the process.
What have been the highlights? Any disasters?
Ed: We had a chef whose appendix exploded two days into his residency. He went to hospital, we had to cancel the reservations for that night and miraculously, he was back in the next night, clutching his side.
Anna: Even though it was a collaboration, he wouldn’t let any of the guys he was working with deliver his food—so he came in.
Ollie: We once set the curtains on fire.
Anna: Turns out halogen lights shouldn’t sit under a curtain.
Ed: A friend of mine came in and the chair collapsed underneath him. I just thought, thank god that was you!
Anna: The highlights in terms of chefs are the ones who’ve really become part of the family. There are some who you idolise because they do amazing things in their restaurants, like Niklas Ekstedt, who’s just inspiring in terms of what he brought to Swedish cooking and the world, but others have become really good friends. One chef came with his mum and then took everyone out afterwards for drinks and karaoke.
Ed: We’ve hosted loads of weddings here too, for locals and people who’ve been customers in the restaurant. There’s something lovely about that.