Meet The Couple Behind the Best Local Restaurant in the Country

Tell us about your backgrounds before Bavette.
Clement: I’m originally from France, from the Loire Valley where my family makes their own wine, and I moved to the UK because my dad was selling wine in London. I worked there for the summer and a couple of months turned into 12 years. That’s where we met – I was working as a waiter and Sandy was in the kitchen as a chef. I worked for years in London in quite a few different places and our last stop where we both worked was called The Culpeper, which was a pub and hotel where I was the manager.
Sandy: I’m originally from just down the road in Wetherby. After university I decided I wanted to be a chef and moved down to London which was about 18 years ago now. I was working in different places including Racine with Henry Harris and I think that’s where I realised that French bistro food was what I really loved. Eventually I was looking to do something partly on my own so met up with two guys who were in the process of opening a pub which turned out to be The Culpeper. I came on board with them and became head chef and partner, and we grew that from one pub to four hotel-pubs and I ended up as managing director of the group. I was with them for nine years before Clement and I decided we wanted to do something together and we decided that Yorkshire was the place to do it. We moved up to Yorkshire last summer. 

What was the vision for Bavette?
Clement: We wanted to have somewhere that felt homely, and was warm and light, with art we’d collected over the years. Somewhere you can come and be in a relaxed environment, with very friendly service and great food.
Sandy: What we see Bavette as is a love letter to all the places we’ve worked in and been to. We had very different upbringings, in France and England, but one thing that was very similar is that both our sets of parents are really hospitable people. They always loved entertaining and always wanted to provide a lovely space for their friends to get together. That’s something that’s really stuck with us and I think above all else, hospitality is the most important thing. We wanted Bavette to be a great restaurant with great wine and food, but really more than anything we wanted it to be a vehicle for friends and family to get together and have a really nice time.

Talk us through your menu and how it came together.
Sandy: We talk about this quite a bit with the team – we’re trying to explain to them not just what the dishes on the menu are but why they’re there. First and foremost, the ingredients need to be really well sourced from an ethical point of view, and also take into consideration the kind of people we want to work with. We also very much stay completely true to the seasons. People say their menu is seasonal quite often when it isn’t, but it’s something that is really important to us. The dishes are classical and mainly French but not exclusively. If we’re hitting well-sourced, seasonal, and delicious at a good price point then we’ve done it. 

Do you have a personal favourite?
Sandy: I’m in a very fortunate position that the menu is just a list of things that I really like to eat! Our new fish main course is being served with Coco de Paimpol beans which are these really lovely white beans from Brittany, and we’re doing that in a cream sauce (northern France is very cream based). Also, our pork chop is one of my favourite things in the whole world. We’ve been doing it Provence-style with an olive oil based mashed potato and braised fennel. We don’t set out for anything to be a classic or a fan favourite, but the creme brûlée from day one has been our bestselling pudding, and then other fan favourites are the shellfish bisque, and of course the bavette which has had a few different garnishes along the way but is always popular. 

Tell us about the wines you offer.
Clement: I grew up with my dad making wine on a very small vineyard of only about 10 hectares and it was all organically made and very traditional with no additives. For me, that’s what what I wanted. Our wine is predominantly French (mainly because that’s what people want to drink, they’re coming to a French restaurant after all), but we also have Italian and Spanish wines. We have suppliers I’ve worked with for years who are friends now and some might think the wine list is huge but I think it’s small to medium. We have maybe 30 white, 30 red, and a bit of orange wine, and rosé. It’s about getting wine from every region in France and we work very closely with our suppliers. We go in and do tastings, and then we chat with the team and see what they like. If our team have tried a wine and it’s their favourite, it makes their jobs easier because they can share their passion. 

What are you loving at the moment?
Clement: A bit like Sandy, all of the wine that we have I like. I would say especially at the moment I like a juicy red and we have a nice orange wine from Campania.
Sandy: Officially my favourite wine is my father-in-law’s of course!

The past few months have seen success after success for you. What has it been like? 
Sandy: It’s been a whirlwind and a complete dream to be honest. We felt like we had what it took to open a good restaurant but you never know if that’s going to be enough. For anyone that starts a business, the biggest worry is survival. From day one the support from locals and people further afield has been amazing, we’re still quite shocked by it. Running a restaurant is hard but it’s something we’ve done before and I think for me personally, doing it together makes it so much more special. Opening a family business has been the most rewarding part for me.
Clement: Knowing that Sandy is in the kitchen and I’m on the floor and we both have our areas of expertise helps. I know that in the kitchen it’s going great and on the floor it’s being looked after and I think since the Good Food Guide we’re in a great position, and the challenge is reaching expectations and keeping the standards high.

What does the future look like for Bavette?
Clement: I think it’s about wanting to make sure we’re training the team right, making sure we can focus on every part of the business and make sure we don’t have to work 65 hours a week. One of the reasons why we left London was to have a better work-life balance.
Sandy: I think for us, we’ve run big sites before and we’re really content with one site, one menu, one floor. Just us and our amazing team. I think the challenge that we set ourselves before we opened was if it was just a restaurant, how good can we make it? Every day, every week, every month, we’re just trying to get a bit better. That for us is a really exciting challenge and we want to make Bavette as great as it can be. 

To make a booking, visit bavettebistro.com.