If there’s one question we get asked most, it’s why we are named Camel & Jeans! It’s simple really - when Hannah met Mark (one of the original founding members of C&J), they were both wearing camel coats! Of course they met Farokh at the same time… and in his everyday head to toe denim uniform, he represents the jeans.
Between us, we want to offer a dining experience like no other, whether that be through the ingredients we use, how we cook them, how we pair them, or how the dish is presented. Operating on such a small scale means we can try things or use techniques which might be fiddly, time-consuming or difficult to scale up, which you’d therefore be unlikely to see in a commercial setting. Experimental still must be delicious though, so thankfully we’ve done the legwork of tasting and critiquing each other’s completely weird and wacky creations, before the best bits make it to our tasting menus.
In short, we cook lots of fun, experimental food! Our signature event is our quarterly flagship Supper Club - this is where it all started! In between these, we host larger scale events at various venues, as well as doing at-home private dining and the odd wedding!
Keep reading to find out more about Hannah and Farokh.
Hannah’s style of cooking is inspired by the foods she grew up eating. She likes to reimagine traditional dishes, adding unexpected flavours, ingredients or techniques. Not defined by one particular cuisine, Hannah takes inspiration from all over the globe, whether she’s been there, read about it, or there’s a Grand Prix race there - Azerbaijan, looking at you!
Obsessed by ingredients, Hannah has been known to plan holidays around the assurance of a good market, an excellent foreign supermarket, and of course all the brilliant local restaurants. It’s after she’s home that the fun starts, recreating dishes and trying to source ingredients, ready to weave into everyday cooking. She loves nothing more than covering the table with a feast for friends and family, so can’t wait to extend this into a supper club setting.
Farokh takes his culinary inspiration from his usual preoccupations: art, stories, and theatre. He likes to think of dishes as more than just something for the tastebuds; they are also something to experience, to perform, to feel, and to think about. To achieve this, he draws from a variety of modern techniques, playful flavour pairings, and general gastronomic weirdness - he has been known to hair-dry white chocolate off of Camembert from time to time, for example.
Creating new dishes and flavour is probably Farokh’s all-time favourite thing to do. Over the years, he has done some strange things to food in the hope of finding new angles on familiar ingredients. From pressure cooking honey (don’t try this at home) to fermenting blueberries in beer (this one you can try at home) and from dehydrating ice cream (it works!) to baking a chicken Victoria Sponge (don’t ask), he is always looking for the boundaries of good flavour. He will make sure not to cross it when we’re hosting you!
