Project Introduction: Our Table - Dean Parker at Darby's

Introduction.

After being in the fortunate position to work as a full-time freelance food photographer for the past four years - I’ve been wanting to return to my roots by shooting more closely with restaurants and to give back a bit; reminiscent of when I was a child, growing up above my parent’s Anglo-French restaurant in East Sussex. This is where my passion for food was first ignited, creating many warm memories of food.

Introducing, my new passion project, Our Table. The project is a series of photo essays on London-based chefs and food producers - showing them within their natural environment, and captured as part of a shortform restaurant photography shoot. Each chef and restaurant is to either be a personal favourite of mine, or to be selected because it oozes originality and creative flair within their methodology. The focus is on capturing the essence of who they are by following the process of their day, and the work that goes into crafting a featured item on their menu. The brief for the content is to capture a heavy amount of storytelling imagery, with a lead-hero, and pairing of either an environmental portrait or interesting detail or ingredient.

I’ll be capturing this over a six-month time scale from June to around December of 2021, with roughly 12 of my favourite and well-known spots in the capital.

Dean Parker at Darby’s

I was originally introduced to Dean via a mutual connection, Richard Falk from Clapham's favourite, The Dairy. As the Executive Chef at Darby’s of Nine Elms - owned and helmed by the well-known chef and restauranteur, Robin Gill, the restaurant is an NYC-inspired oyster bar, large open grill, and bakery in one. They underscore what they do by using the best ingredients available to them - sourced locally - across Britain and Ireland.

Dean brings his passion for finding the best ingredients and puts a big emphasis on using a collection of techniques to bring out the best of each of them - in an amazingly easy-to-understand way for diners to appreciate without alienating them. A big part of this process lays within his exceptional baking skills, and his experimental approach to fermentation - a passion that was discovered on a trip to Copenhagen.

Moving on a couple of years, Dean is set to open his own restaurant with his wife Anna, in their spiritual home of Glasgow. I caught up to shoot with Dean two weeks before he departed Darby’s for his own flagship, Celentano’s; in itself, is an ode to Italian dining, seasonality, and small plates.

I spent half a day tailing Dean whilst we focussed on a food-based story of him producing Agnolotti with a lovely ricotta filling. The pasta dough is made with a high egg ratio, and the filling of ricotta is all produced on-site, with the team using Cornish milk, and once heated to around 85°C, is left at a lower and steady temperature - undisturbed for most of the day to form the curds. It is then piped onto the trimmed dough sheets before being neatly folded then re-trimmed into the Agnolotti, to then be cooked and placed on a bright bed charred of vegetables with lemony tones to cut through it all.

It’s dishes like these that I really love, as there’s such a clear amount of attention to detail that is poured into it, but it doesn’t try to be anything that it isn’t - just fantastic pasta that pays homage to Italy without anything to detract from that.

The pasta dish was captured in addition to a few other food heroes, paired with interior photography to showcase the interesting details of the venue and some more casual portraits of Dean in his natural environment.

A massive thanks goes out to Dean and the team at Darby’s for having me, and for giving me lots of amazingly handy kitchen-based tips and tricks. To follow his next steps in Glasgow, go check him out at @deanoparker and @celentanos_glasgow.