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She’s Been the Private Chef to a Travel Dynasty for 30 Years. Here’s What She’s Learned.
Jennifer Clifton, private chef to the Tollman family behind Red Carnation Hotels, on learning to cook Jewish food, cooking for 2 or 30 at a moment's notice, and A Life in Food, the new cookbook dedicated to her.
Sometimes it was midnight when Stanley Tollman walked into the kitchen and asked, "What have you got?"
Jennifer Clifton always had something. For more than 30 years she has cooked for the Tollman family across five countries, sometimes for two people and sometimes for 30, often on her own.
Stanley founded The Travel Corporation, the family travel empire behind brands like Trafalgar, Contiki and Uniworld. Together the couple built Red Carnation Hotels, which his wife Beatrice (Mrs T to everyone) founded, named after the carnation in Stanley's lapel, and ran as president. Now the dishes Clifton cooked for them are in A Life in Food, a new cookbook from their children Brett and Vicki Tollman celebrating Mrs T and Stanley, who died in 2021. The book is dedicated to Clifton.
I sat next to her at the book's launch dinner at The Milestone Hotel in London, and she had me in stitches, especially with her stories about learning to cook Jewish food. Here's how a girl from a Leicestershire village ended up in the Tollman kitchens, and what she's learned about feeding people along the way.
"I didn't want the village life": From a Leicestershire bakery to Zurich
Clifton grew up just outside Loughborough, and she knew early on what she didn't want. "I didn't want the 2.2 kids and the village life," she says. So she worked in the village bakery, talked her way into the bakehouse, and was soon doing everything. Everybody in the village still knows her.
She found a technical college close to home for catering and hotel management, then did a year's apprenticeship in Zurich, in the kitchens of the Bahnhofbuffet at the train station. She made foie gras. She learned to butcher half a lamb. "I absorbed everything," she says.
"Come and work for me, dear": Becoming the Tollman family's private chef
Her big break came, she says, by "pure luck, really." In 1988 she joined The Chesterfield Mayfair (the very first Red Carnation hotel) as pastry chef and met Mrs T. In 1990 she moved to Florida to help open The Chesterfield Palm Beach. When visa rules sent her home two years later, Mrs T had a simple offer: "Come and work for me, dear."
So she moved into the family's private kitchens. "I did everything on my own," she says, whether that meant dinner for two or a house full of 30. Along the way she helped open The Milestone and Hotel 41 in London and The Oyster Box in South Africa. The best part of the job? "I do something different every day."
Mrs T is now in her 90s and doesn't travel much anymore, so these days Clifton cooks for the next generation, Brett and Vicki. (The grandchildren still call her.) Ask her about the years in between, and what comes through most is gratitude for the family and for all the adventures they had together.
The feeling is mutual. In the book's dedication, "To Jen," Vicki and Brett Tollman call her "so much more than a chef," someone who has "kept our family nourished not only with full stomachs, but with full hearts."
"Like my mother used to make": Learning to cook Jewish food
Clifton isn't Jewish, but she learned to cook like a Jewish grandmother. Mr Tollman would talk her through the dishes he grew up with, "like my mother used to make." His mother was a very good cook, and she shaped how he liked everything.
So Clifton makes the brisket (a Friday night dinner classic, now a big seller at The Milestone) and latkes that are just potato, salt and butter, shaped with two forks and never pressed down, "because it should be airy." She cooked him boiled corned beef, and tongue.
She can even make p'tcha, the old-school calf's foot jelly that few people know how to make anymore. When a friend's father in Cape Town asked her if she knew how, she walked him through it. "He was so over the moon," she says, "because he didn't know how." Not bad for a non-Jewish girl from a Leicestershire village!
"Well, no, dear, it's like this": Mrs T, South Africa's first female executive chef
Before Red Carnation, Mrs T was a chef herself. When she and Stanley opened The Colony restaurant at their Hyde Park Hotel in Johannesburg in the 1950s, no top chef would come from Europe to run it, so she did, becoming South Africa's first female executive chef. She never really left the kitchen. Clifton says she was forever in her hotels' kitchens, tasting, sending the chefs little notes and recipes, and telling them, "Well, no, dear, it's like this." Wherever they traveled, her first stop was the kitchen. She'd take one tiny bite of each dish, and that was all.
Andrew Pike, managing director of The Milestone Hotel & Residences, remembers those menu tastings, small dogs in tow. Even when a dish wasn't to her taste, there was always something positive to say first. It was "very nice, dear," but what about trying it another way? It's a lesson that works in any kitchen (or boardroom).
"You only need a few recipes": Her approach to entertaining
Mrs T once came back from Italy (Clifton thinks it was Ischia) raving about a tomato pasta, and the two of them recreated it in Connecticut. That pomodoro is now in the book.
It sums up how she entertains. "You only need a few recipes," she says. "They look good, and they work." Keep it simple and buy the best ingredients you can. A great steak and a nice salad is a great dinner.
Just get the timing right. The lemon pasta (Brett Tollman's favorite) goes out the second it's done, wait too long and it congeals.
"Make a plan": Holiday hosting tips from a private chef
Christmas in the Tollman household started at about 5 am, with roughly 35 people to feed once she counted all the staff and drivers. The two Christmas cakes were made three months ahead, in London.
For anyone hosting Thanksgiving this month, her advice is to make a plan, make a list and keep it simple. "Don't go with anything crazy that you've never made before." For roast chicken, she puts onions, carrots and celery under the bird with a little chicken stock, and olive oil on top. Gravy is non-negotiable.
And her most important tool? "My knife is my hand." She sharpens it herself.
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A book with a purpose
A Life in Food brings together the dishes the Tollmans discovered, perfected and shared over the years, from sesame fried chicken to Mrs T's cheesecake. Clifton says every recipe is geared to the home cook. "Everything in the book is easy."
Proceeds from sales go to the Red Carnation Chef Fund, which supports the development of the next generation of chefs in the group's kitchens. Clifton calls her own big break "pure luck." The fund means young chefs won't have to rely on it.
From A Life in Food
Mrs Tollman's Cape Seed Loaf
This is Mrs T's bread. "We would never serve bread without having Cape seed," Clifton says, and Mrs T called it "my bread." As in: where's my bread? Clifton baked it about twice a week, served it toasted every morning, and sent loaves (often with a jar of her homemade jam) whenever the Tollmans were invited to dinner. She even carried British granary flour on the plane to the US. It's still her favorite thing to make. I baked a batch at home after the dinner, and it's very good.
Makes 2 loaves (2 x 12" / 30cm loaf tins)
Ingredients
420g wholemeal flour (if you can get the seeded granary flour, even better)
82g plain flour / all-purpose flour
62g muesli
65g raisins
20g bicarbonate of soda / baking soda
10g salt
120g walnut pieces
155g pumpkin seeds
186g flax / linseeds
166g sunflower seeds
1 litre plain yoghurt
125g sunflower oil
75g runny honey
100g seeds for sprinkling on the top of the loaves
Method
Preheat the oven to 180°C / 350°F.
Grease the loaf pans with a little butter and line with parchment paper.
In a large bowl, mix all of the dry ingredients together.
Whisk together the yoghurt, oil, and honey. Then, using a spatula, mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.
Mix well, the bread mixture will be quite wet.
Divide the mixture between the 2 tins and sprinkle with the extra seeds.
This seems like a lot, but some will fall off when you take the bread out of the tins once baked.
Bake in the centre of the preheated oven for 1 hour.
Remove from the tins and cool on a wire rack.
The bread can also be made in a round cake tin or a small saucepan if you don't have a loaf tin or would prefer a round loaf. Line with parchment paper, as for the loaf tin.
This bread freezes beautifully, should you wish to prepare it in advance.
Want the lemon pasta, the brisket and Mrs T's cheesecake? A Life in Food is available from Red Carnation Hotels for £30, with proceeds going to the Red Carnation Chef Fund.
