THE man at the back dressed from ankle to neck in white looked distinctly out of place among the super rich and their pin striped agents. But for Hugo Arnold, currently chef of Sotheby's "in store" cafe, the sale of Yeats's A Farewell to Mayo, for a record breaking £804,500 last week was a moment of drama to be savoured. The son of writer Mavis Arnold and political journalist, art historian, novelist and bon viveur Bruce Arnold is clearly a chip off the old block.
These days drama for Hugo usually means kitchens. At lunch he confided there had been the drama of the horseradish sauce ("We had a temp in and she hadn't even bothered to taste it"). When he was a student at Coleraine University 12 years ago (reading economics) the River side, a commercial theatre on campus, took all Hugo Arnold's energies. That and cooking for his friends.
He knew early on that economics wad a mistake. "Instead of recognising that food was what I really loved, I was one of those people who ran away. In retrospect I'm glad I didn't go into catering professionally. It's a worrying environment. You're exhausted all the time and who wants to spend 12 hours a day in a tiny room with no windows. The fact that I can move in and out is a much nicer position to be in."
Arnold was brought in to the Sotheby's set up as a troubleshooter. As all is now running smoothly, he will soon move on. Another change, another challenge. Nothing to a man who after university decided to make a career in stage management, but when he realised this would mean spending nights in the theatre rather than nights eating and drinking with friends, opted instead for the equally dramatic world of the House of Commons.
School in Dublin, with the politics of the North a frequent topic of conversation at home, followed by three years at Coleraine, gave him a useful perspective, and for two years he worked as a research assistant for Stephen Ross, then Liberal spokesman on Northern Ireland. So why chuck it all for something as seemingly plebeian as cooking? The truth is that nothing gives Hugo Arnold the excitement that he gets from food.
That excitement comes across vividly in his first book, Simple Suppers, which like all good cookery books tells you as much about the author as about how to make a sauce. In these days of edicts handed down by celebrity chefs, the vivid recipes of a self taught cook come as a welcome relief and the book is full of non elitist common sense. Simple Suppers is not the culinary equivalent of Karl Lagerfield giving you tips on darning something he has ever done in his life. Because "cheffing" has never been Hugo Arnold's job.
Cooking for him has always been about the pleasure of eating and entertaining, usually after a hard day/week at the office. Political research led to writing which led to journalism and eventually to the Evening Standard, where he worked as a sub editor. But it was only four years ago that his well known passion for feeding people persuaded the then editor to let him loose on the paper's cookery column.
His love of food came early and was two pronged. "My grandmother always had the best quality ingredients. Sligo had an excellent butcher and an excellent grocer. From her came the idea that ingredients were important. She had a huge kitchen garden and all the vegetables were home grown. I remember picking peas that were so sweet I would eat half of them straight from the pod.
My mother carried on with the tradition. Back in Dublin we would always sit down to a meal, always freshly prepared food."
From his father, Arnold has inherited a love of occasion. "He was brought up in an odd set up, never really having a home, a family. So when he married he was determined that meals should be a celebration, a coming together. Wine was always on the table, quite unusual in those days."
Yet Hugo Arnold has no time for the current obsession with food encouraged by such television programmes as Master Chef.
"They give the impression to foodies that they should be doing all this. So they shop all evening on Friday, spend the whole of Saturday preparing everything, then are in kitchen all evening producing this stuff. When their friends have gone they slump in a chair and complain they're exhausted. Master Chef is about twirling bits of spun sugar. But that's restaurant food. That's what chefs are there for. In your own home you've got to rely on ingredients and that means you've got to shop well and have a good store cup board. And by that I mean blocks of paresan, good olive oil, lemons.
"That's the reason behind doing the book. Cooking doesn't have to be complicated. There are far too many books and television series that encourage this idea that you've got to show off. You don't have to show off. What you have to do is to have a nice time. If more people concentrated on having a nice time they'd get into less of a pickle. Entertaining would be more relaxed and that's how it should be."
The recipes in simple Suppers although simple to do (yes really) are the kind of dishes that are familiar fare to habituees of the new breed of restaurants both in London and Dublin where vegetables, pasta and pulses play starring roles and where colour and taste are king. There are also walk on parts for Indian spices, the result of a year teaching in India after leaving university. (If you look at the cultures of Italy and India rural based obsession with the freshness of ingredients it's not that dissimilar) But the two traditions are not to be mixed.
"A lot of my latter training has been with Dan Evans, whose new venture, the Anglesey Arms is now blazing a trail for affordable good food in west London. He believes in cooking by association the Alastair Little school of cookery which involves putting a dish together which retains an identity. If for example you have saffron and chickpeas, then you're heading towards a Spanish theme, so you then use ingredients that are either Spanish or which you can get in Spain. As a result I'm very judicious in how I use spices. You can go to the wacky school of hurling in a teaspoon of this and a teaspoon of that far too easily."
The close cropped hair and steel rimmed glasses give Hugo Arnold the earnest mien of a perennial student. And to some extent he still is, with a week spent in the kitchen of one chef here, another one there. "There is just so much you can learn." The first time he set foot in a professional kitchen was just five years ago. "I had reached a plateau but decided I was a bit too far down the line to do a course. So a friend suggested I try out with Dan Evans who was always on the lookout for people who were interested in food. It was the worst day of my life."
First he was given a whole pumpkin that had been slow roasted overnight to make into a sauce for pasta with ricotta and nutmeg. "By the time I had finished grating, the kitchen reeked. I hadn't realised how strong it was. Dan appeared, stuck his finger in the vat of orange gunk and flipped. It all had to be chucked. Then he said `Okay, make the ravioli'. I'd only made pasta twice before. The scales were broken and I had to guess. After 20 minutes it still wasn't ready. Okay, forget the pasta. Then I was given clams to shell. But I forgot to put them back in the fridge. So they had to go too. Then I was asked to clean the squid. I'd never done it before. I just wanted to cry."
Not many chefs would admit to such a gaff. But then Hugo Arnold is not like other chefs. His views on food, whether at the eating end or the producing end, are not always what restaurateurs or producers want to hear. But hear them they will. Take Ireland.
"We have so much to offer. Ireland is in a fantastic position. In the wake of BSE people will become obsessed about origin and quality. The growth of Irish cheese is the prime example. But we have fantastic beef, fantastic lamb, herbs and vegetables. This is something that should be cherished. And it's not happening. We are perceived as this clean, green land and we must ensure that the quality factor is built in to all produce that comes out of Ireland." Arnold is just like his cooking. Uncompromising but always optimistic.