George Matheou is co-founder of London’s The Omni Collective which provides luxurious-feeling modern and international plant-based cuisine, private dining events and wedding catering.
Offering an exclusively plant-based menu, The Omni Collective has laid its roots in Peckham after years of operating as a pop-up. Their concept? Vegetable forward food focused on seasonal vegetables, as opposed to fake meats and vegan junk food that the market has been saturated with.
As a ‘micro-seasonal’ restaurant, their plant-based menu changes every three to four weeks depending on what is available, and they use flavours and inspiration from around the world to create new and interesting combinations. Current menu items include celeriac fritters with caramelised shiitake ketchup, kale ‘seaweed’ with jalapeno aioli, roasted delica squash with charred grape vinaigrette and activated almond, hand-pulled spring onion and ginger noodles, cimi di rapa with garlic sesame, and oyster mushrooms.
What’s more, all the dishes are designed to be shared and you can opt in for the Set Menu options at £40 per head, with pickles and focaccia included. As well as this, they offer an extensive cocktail menu, with delightful flavours of Rhubarb and Custard, Blood Orange Negroni, Charred Lemon Margaritas, Pomelo Daquiris and more. All drinking vinegars and kombuchas are made in house, and any leftover vegetables are pickled or fermented with a view to remain as sustainable as possible. To add to this, there is a great natural wine list and locally sourced beers available.
The Omni Collective is already becoming established nationwide – with a growing portfolio of London and UK clients. George said “For many, Omni means omnivore, those who eat meat and vegetables, those who eat everything. We decided to call ourselves The Omni Collective because instead of eating everything, we feed everyone. Our aim is to bring people together, to sit around the table as my partner, Jess and I did, sharing a meal. We believe that whether or not you are vegan, for one meal we encourage everyone to sit down and share.”
We caught up with the chef to find out more.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, including where you are today, professionally, and what got you here?
I’m the co-founder and head chef at The Omni Collective, we opened last year so it’s been a bit of a crazy year for my partner, Jess, and myself. Whilst Jess has been spearheading our previous incarnation as a pop-up, I worked in places all around London to try and get my skills as right as possible.
I worked at Ottolenghi and NOPI which was my dream job before I started there and then Ducksoup which was eye opening, I’d never seen a kitchen where everyone cared so much about each other, free of any toxicity and macho attitudes before. Then I did some work at the Camberwell Arms around the pop-ups and residencies with Jess before coming up with the idea of The Omni Collective.
What or who inspired you to become a chef?
Some of my earliest memories are cooking. At age seven, I remember my mum and I making a Thai feast for my family- prawn toast from scratch and we fried our own prawn crackers. I remember being so amazed watching those tiny communion wafer looking coins fizz and grow and transform into a cracker- it still kind of blows my mind watching things like that. But also, my oldest brother, Andrew, was pivotal to my cooking. My parents would go out and he’d babysit, and we’d have a game where we had to feed myself, my twin and Andrew for a tenner. We played and experimented so much.
Food was always a culture in my house, we ate at a table every night together. I think the importance of that can’t be understated. I was a struggling musician focusing more on my next meal than music and the Japanese restaurant around the corner from my parents’ house was hiring and I decided to just go for it. At that time, my highest ambition was to work at NOPI, I’d read and re-read that first Ottolenghi book on many sleepless nights.
What’s your signature dish?
For a long time, Jess and I were ‘the broccoli guys’. We’d been to Avant Garden in New York, and we tried a tempura-like batter over a cauliflower dish. I remember at the time we thought ‘why use a white vegetable to have a tempura-like batter over, when you could use something green, and no one would see a clear batter until they hit into the crunch?’
So, we started making this clear batter over a teriyaki broccoli. But very quickly both of us fell out of love with that dish, it wasn’t original at all, our teriyaki sauce was pretty traditional. So now we change the menu so often with the hope that we can’t be pigeonholed and forever attached to one dish. I hope our signature is being prolific.
What are the most important considerations when crafting your menu and do your personal preferences influence the menu at all?
Our personal preferences completely dictate the menu. If we don’t love the food we’re making, how can we expect anyone else to? There are menus and dishes we like less though, some dishes only last 24 hours on a menu because it becomes clear that it was better in mind than practice or it didn’t balance well with the menu as a whole. We have to show variety in technique, flavour, and ingredient.
What looks good is important but the only thing that matters is what tastes good, that’s our starting point for any dish. If you can nail the taste, then the rest will work itself out.
How would you describe the food you create at The Omni Collective to someone who has never experienced it?
I try not to describe the food at The Omni Collective too much, the words I find myself using don’t always feel that attractive to people; “9 dish, vegan, international, sharing set-menu” – it’s like a word cloud of what’s hip and doesn’t really describe anything. So, I’d say that we want to celebrate vegetables and their versatility as well as traditional and modern techniques using flavours from around the world. It’s dishes you generally won’t have had before.
Do you have a favourite time of year or set of ingredients that you look forward to working with?
There’s a couple of weeks in September when you can still get great tomatoes and when the delica pumpkins and other autumn ingredients are crossing over- that’s my favourite time of year. It’s so short but I look forward to it every year.
What is your favourite ingredient to create with?
I don’t know if I have an ingredient that I love to create with specifically, but my favourite ingredient to eat or drink is miso. That doesn’t have to come in a creative way, sometimes I just want a mug of miso soup, it’s not creative but it is delicious, other times it’s the final touch and the solution to a problem. We’ve made our own miso, we’ve done miso ice cream, caramel, aioli, different stocks and sauces. If I was on a desert island with miso, I’d be fine and patient waiting for help to come.
What is your favourite flavour combination?
This is a trick question really. Favourite flavour combination feels like it should be complicated but I’m still yet to find something better than a perfect tomato, good olive oil and salt.
What would you be doing if you were not a chef?
If I wasn’t a chef, I’d be living at my parents’ home pulling my hair out, broke and unhappy.
What is your favourite dish to cook at home?
My favourite dish to cook at home is lasagna, because Jess and I cook it together. We each make a sauce and bring it together later to make the perfect dish.
When are you happiest in the kitchen?
I’m happiest in the middle of a busy service. It’s the closest thing I ever feel to dancing, my body moves freely in the kitchen. The silent choreography that you have with another person or people as you twist around, toward, or away from each other, when you’re all in the zone and you come up to the pass on the same beat, I love that beyond words.
What is your favourite piece of kitchen equipment?
My favourite bit of kitchen equipment is a spoon, I remember working at NOPI everyone would hide spoons because we all thought we had the most important job and that we were priority. A spoon can replace tongs, spatulas, anything really, with a spoon and a free hand you can tackle anything in the kitchen.
When you are not in the kitchen, where can you be found?
When I’m not in the kitchen I’m usually horizontal. I’m on my feet 70 hours a week and by my night off, I’m not moving too much. Walking our dog is good motivation for movement in my time off. My favourite walk in London is to go with Jess and our dog, Dylan, through Southwark Park from New Cross to the Mayflower pub on the river.
What is your favourite takeaway or comfort food?
Arguably my favourite restaurant in the world is Happy Inn Chinese takeaway in New Cross. It’s no frills, takeaway only, cash only. But the price is so reasonable, the flavours are complex and comforting, they know who I am now, they recognise the number and when they pick up the phone they say, “everything’s vegan for you, yeah?”. I am never unsatisfied by Happy Inn, I would put it in the ring against many of our date night spots and special occasion meals.
Where is your favourite place to dine?
We recently went to Bubala, that was great and a very similar vibe to The Omni Collective. We loved it and strongly recommend. I also actually recently ate at The Omni Collective with my parents, and I was really happy because sometimes in the eye of the storm, you don’t have the levity to understand what you’re really creating. I was so pleased about what we did and really impressed with the whole team that night. That’s a cheat answer though!
What do you think is the most over-hyped food trend?
If I don’t like it and someone else does, then be my guest. I do have resentment that when we were starting out, we posted a dish on @theomnicollective Instagram, fermented mushroom pate and Earl grey jelly which got a few likes. The next day, we posted avocado toast, where the avocado was cut into a rose, and that got hundreds of likes. As we put up both posts, a lot of that resentment was aimed at ourselves for making rose shaped avocado toast. Maybe Instagram is the over-hyped food trend because people are spending more time looking at food rather than eating it and exploring it.
What differences do you find working with local produce as opposed to non-local produce in terms of what you can create and flavour?
When you work local, firstly the ingredients are just better. Food that’s travelled less will be fresher and at its peak. Sometimes it means that you only have certain things to play with. However, with being plant based, sometimes to think outside the box, you have to make the box smaller.
How do you go about menu planning? What is the process from picking the ingredients to getting them fresh into the kitchen and into dishes?
A lot of it is very instinctive. Jess and I will get a pint and sit over our laptop until the menu is sorted. What’s in season? What do we want to eat? What have we never eaten? What ingredients have we always wanted to work with? There’s a lot of physical experimentation, and there’s a lot more of daydreaming.
There’s a joint notes folder on Jess and I’s phone that reads like an epic poem. Some broken ideas, sometimes single words, some full dishes that sound great on paper and taste wonderful too. We’re constantly planning which means we never really plan.
What do your future plans entail?
Simply, to stay open! I think that’s what most independent restaurants have to aim for right now. We’re at the beginning of a really difficult time that already feels a number of years old. To keep the doors open is my only aim for the near future. At some point we’d like to have a farm, maybe in north Cornwall, and grow our own food similar to Coombeshead Farm.
What is the USP of your restaurant?
I think our USP is each dish. They’re almost always completely original or with a unique twist. When it’s a good atmosphere at The Omni Collective it’s like a party, our cocktails are delicious, the whole team is involved there, I stand by every one of our wines. We try to make good food affordable, which is increasingly difficult in this climate, we get a good mix of young people and older more affluent people. The Omni Collective is aimed at everyone, and I think there’s something there for anyone.
