Meet Head Chef Rohan Kashid

To borrow from the Latin Omne Trium Perfectum, everything that comes in threes is perfect. To us at The Oxford Collection that saying translates to three Head Chefs, a trio of restaurants, and three distinct menus. All are deliberately distinct yet united by our founder Jeremy Mogford who continues the ethos of relaxed, honest dining from his early days at Browns Restaurant through to the Oxford team today.

‘The same but different is how I’d best describe our restaurants,’ Jeremy explains. ‘…the same techniques and expertise, the same freshness, but different flavours, transporting diners to the sunny Mediterranean shores at Gees, across Europe in Quod, and into the beating heart of traditional Britain at the Parsonage Grill.’

At the helm of the dining experience across our collection, Quod’s Head Chef Rohan Kashid wears a second hat as Head of Menu Development. Eyes alight, he says: ‘It gives me more responsibility and creativity. Gees is Gees and the Parsonage Grill will always have its own personality, but my job is to oversee the creation of all the menus to draw the very best out of the ingredients and to align the supply chain with local suppliers.’

Creating no-fuss dishes, as good as they can possibly be, is Rohan’s mantra. He doesn’t believe in stacking food in towers. He dislikes too much preening, too many decorative garnishes for the sake of it. ‘You have to be skilled to keep the dishes simple,’ he explains. A case in point is the Italian way of cooking. ‘I admire how gutsy it is to keep it simple with good olive oil, good tomato, good cheese, and basil.’

He’s as equally passionate about seasonality. ‘We know what’s coming in, so straight away we adapt the menus. That means blackberries, apples and plums in autumn, for example, and introducing crumbles and shortbreads. You have courgettes, red peppers, aubergine for ratatouille, and braised red cabbage. Things are not going to be better than when they’re in season.’ It’s fun, he adds, to take delivery of a box of ingredients in the morning, and transform it into something excellent.

Rohan wasn’t always so enthusiastic about cooking. He fell rather than jumping into the hospitality world when he enrolled as a young student at catering school near Mumbai in India. He was fortunate enough to be selected by Taj Hotels to join a course on management training, working in big kitchens in different cities and specialising in banquets for huge audiences, and feeding 10,0000 on one lavish occasion.

The experience gave him discipline, and he discovered he had a natural ability to be a leader. The UK then came knocking, loud and insistent enough for a young man with a natural curiosity of the world. He was invited to join Thistle Hotels in 2005, which led to positions with Marriott, the Royal Garden Hotel in London, Hilton, the Landmark London, and The Dorchester. He made his home in Oxford in 2014, originally as Quod’s senior sous chef.

Many years and counting, he likens the restaurant, which sits alongside Old Bank Hotel on Oxford’s High Street, to Britain. It’s at the heart of the city, it’s bustling, and it caters to casual meetings and celebratory dinners alike. ‘Different people from different parts of the world are welcomed here, and make it into a united kingdom. You can come in and have the rib-eye steak as a graduating student with mum and dad, or you can have the set lunch menu over a business meeting, or simply soup or coffee. It’s not rigid. The menu’s so big and varied, too. If you look at the fish, we have oysters, octopus, scallops, sea bass, salmon, and sometimes monkfish. For the meat, there’s chicken breast, burgers, calf liver, diced lamb, lamb cutlets…’

Asking him if he prefers breakfast, lunch or dinner, he says is like asking him to name his favourite child. He loves them all equally. As a leader, he’s just as committed to nurturing young talent. ‘I’m proud that so many people come to The Oxford Collection first as kitchen porters, and today they are sous chefs and senior sous chefs.’