with Service Works
Published by SEVENSTORE for Service Works
Author: Millie Throp
Good food and congenial service is a given where both run as fluidly through Liverpool as the River Mersey. Coined ‘the heartbeat of the city’ by cult-chef and viral personality, Action Bronson, scouse – or lobscouse – is a humble, stew-type dish that once nurtured the trying fringes of a port-town in the late 17th century. The namesake of its local dialect, ‘Scouse,’ it is a dish of simplicity. A culmination of beef and potatoes gave way to a Gastro Renaissance in recent years. Aided by cultural capital, the city’s food scene is propelled by a grounded and grafting culinary community. With Liverpool’s docks at the core of this workforce – a bygone beacon of trade, but since recognised within World Heritage – the city’s influx of global gastronomy was piecemeal.
Liverpool’s food landscape is now established, electric with influence. It is laced with diaspora dishes, peppered with diligent chefs and an arsenal of artisans. Yet while food in Merseyside has shot far from the springboard that scouse provided, its working-class past is woven within its flourishing hospitality sector, where an ethos of passion and verve runs thicker than blood. Pride is infectious in a space where everyone clubs in and coming to work is a chance for ideation and play: a lifestyle beyond occupation.
While the will of a chef is not often matched, Service Works comes close to returning the favour. Gratifying the kitchen community, signature elastic waistbands and comforting materiality are considerations beyond closing shift, founded in 2020 by a chef who would skate after work in his whites. The brand appreciates the hybrid regimen of a chef whose personal and professional facets overlap, where days are spent poring over stacked plates beneath humming bars or arranging legumes in a conventional kitchen.
In celebration of Service Works’ first season at SEVENSTORE and Liverpool’s epicentre of eateries, we visited a local roster replete with restaurant pop-ups and fresh faces. From hometown heroes to contemporary vanguards, we trialled a taste of each through the lens of a signature dish.
The Wild Loaf
Starting the conversation of transparency and female triumph, The Wild Loaf on Sefton Street unites homely commodities with playful palettes. Global and local, their customer base is allured by a lingering of freshly baked bread, beckoning to Jess Doyle’s wholehearted confectionary. Hollow centres are sparce where milky pistachios swirl within, and marbling is revealed as a knife cuts clean through a pastry birthed by a silver oven: the crème de la crème.
In a process Jess describes as “steady and organic”, the success of her women-led microcosm has mapped Liverpool’s entirety, now settled between their very own, flour dusted walls 6 years later. “I think people are coming down for an experience, and that’s what we’ve always wanted with this space – to have the theatre of bread making. For people to be able to see through and chat to us, it’s a unique thing,” Jess explains, “plus we’re two women and that’s unique in the hospitality industry”.
Loyal customers fill their doors as we arrive, hoping the shop is open and filtering sporadic sunbeams that spill through a glass front. But beyond the buzz of a busy morning and its cinnamon aroma, The Wild Loaf – and its signature bake – are grounded by simple pleasures. “It’s sourdough bread, it’s just flour, salt, water and a starter in it. Our starter is 10 years old now. It’s got real life in it”. Regarding bread, it comes full circle from the city’s grass roots, and for the bakery too: “this bread has got better over the years, it’s just who we are. It’s where it all began”.
Big Lola’s
For Big Lola's, global comfort food is amongst the fundamentals of feasting. In South Liverpool, at 493 Smithdown Road, corn tortillas are upholstered with pickled magenta, splaying lashings of moreish guacamole, and topped with a rainbow of hot sauces – the palette of an artist, or Owner and Chef Oli Smith.
A year on from Big Lola’s existing as a mere concept, 3 sites now stand proud. Identified by queues of hungry habitués, their Smithdown spot has been open for half a year now, backed by a wealth of experience and an adoration for soulful servings. “It’s good food and it’s honest. Not too overly complicated, I wanted to create food that everyone could get involved in,” Oli explains of his punchy plates, a universal experience that we share over Baja fish tacos. “It’s exactly what I would say our food is; it’s vibrant, spicy, fresh”.
‘Buen provecho!’ is the final exchange from a chef in traditional Mexican eateries, marking the beginning of a banquet while they wait to begin their own. The affable nature of Mexican cuisine can be compared to the generative ecosystem of Smithdown Road. “You get to know other kitchens and its great working alongside them. You’re all there as friends supporting each other,” he tells us of a community we had come to know for mucking in.
Manifest
Manifest, in the Baltic Triangle, is a newer space with a lasting impact. They connect widespread strangers, lured towards Head Chef and Director Paul Durand's magnetic makerspace. Food-motivated tourism is a canon to Liverpool’s culinary repertoire, with dwellers taking time to savour small plates, symbiotic with the seasons’ ebb and flow. An industrial setting lays host to a locavore destination, reminding of the area’s seaport heritage. Resources are precious gems with ingredients plucked from regional locales, thoughtfully translated into Paul’s sought-after servings.
After opening in March of last year, wine pairings and post-work drinks became something more for Manifest. “We just went with it really. The format of the menu didn’t change or anything. People were coming for more of a three-hour dinner as opposed to a glass of wine after work,” he tells us of their naturalistic shift into fine dining. “At the start it was local, but we have got more guests from out of town, from other cities. People say they’ve come to Liverpool just for our restaurant, which blows my mind quite frankly. It’s lovely”.
While Paul’s audience is often omnipresent, its inner-city influence impacts every fortnightly menu amendment, including that which he crafts for us. “It was on the open menu, people loved it. I tried to take it off the menu and ended up having to put it back on because I was getting badgered every time,” he notes. “It’s the sweet onion tart, and the way I’d describe it is it’s the whole allium family on a piece of puff pastry. It’s just taking a really humble ingredient: the onion, and trying to showcase it with Roscoff onion jam, pickled onions, black garlic, chives, crispy leeks and ricotta”. The dish is delicately poised, with creamy hints preventing saccharine sweetness. The savoury balance is comparable to the mutual influence Manifest shares with its community, proving that when scousers like something – new or old – they cherish it.
Livia Alarcon
Despite cooking often being a team sport, once dominated by men, Livia Alarcon has flourished in freelance. With a BBC series of ‘Chef’s Brigade’ and a shining review from critic Jay Rayner under her belt, Livia has remained at the forefront of Liverpool’s watch list for 10 years. Where her Instagram captions ‘Girl Boss Monday’, her driven but casual persona questions if other days cease to be anything but.
Off the back of her residency with PINS Social Club, Liv meets us at the pulsing local hub, taking advantage of their grandiose pizza oven.
Alarcon works at the cornerstone of comfort, with neo-classical cooking and a nod to the city’s humble heritage. “I’ve decided to go for a little flatbread. It’s gonna be doused in Café de Paris butter. There’s gonna be some lardo on top which is from a local charcuterie guy, some hazelnuts and fresh herbs,” she tells of her dish curated for SEVENSTORE. “The inspiration behind it is I love bread and butter; I think it’s the best thing ever. It’s a staple in the kitchen when you’re hungry and you don’t have time to make something to eat. It’s a pimped-up version, for sure,” highlighting the hustle of a chef, and her wider appreciation for home-comforts.
Her love stretches to the city as a whole. “Liverpool’s home; there’s something about it. I think well, ‘there’s no need to move away because there are opportunities in Liverpool.’ It’s ever evolving”. Attitudes have also reformed for Alarcon, having grown alongside the city for a decade. “I came into it young, so I had a lot to prove but I feel it’s getting a bit easier to back myself in the male-female sector,” she continues. “A lot of people are more interested in the independents, about the food and how it goes from farm to table”. Her passion has a presence, staying beyond the final note of garlic in her concoction.
Belzan
A few stops down at 371 Smithdown, tucked behind a royal blue exterior, Belzan's menu is plucked from the itinerant inspirations of Chef Patron Sam Grainger. Having perfected their place as friendly neighbourhood bistro over the 5 years since opening, they are not sleeping on the responsibility, but stirring far-flung flavours, and galvanising their local area.
Sam tells us of the unfolding of Belzan and their outlandish outlook. “The first few months of when we opened, people’s heads fell off, because they were like ‘what is that?’, ‘what you are doing?’. Now we’ve got that name, we can play with it a little bit more, they trust us”. For most restaurants it is crucial to move with the times, but for Sam and his team, the community moves with them. “We see the same faces, week in and week out. There’s a couple that come every Friday at the same time and have done for three, four years. We have Maggie, lives round the corner and drops all her spare veg off for us and we put that on the menu”.
Ashy fragrances imbed the air as we mill over the aged porterhouse steak he will be preparing for us. A resourceful, and wide-eyed approach is present as he describes his method. “It’s just some salt and cooked on the fire, but nicely charred. We serve it with – so, this is where Belzan comes into it – a classic French sauce, Au Poivre…we serve it with a bitter leaf, radicchio salad which we get from a farm over the way, shallots, sesame, ginger… it’s a bit of everywhere in one”. Beyond smiling service, it is easy to see why familiar faces have developed a taste for the play pirouetting through their changing menu. “We know what works together, and we’re not scared of putting different culture’s foods with different things. Liverpool’s perfect for it because it’s such a melting pot of culture”.