Cadet for Service Works

Cadet is a Neighbourhood wine bar in Newington Green, founded by restaurateurs and importers Tom Beattie and Francis Roberts, alongside charcutier George Jephson. The trio boast a shared love of French cooking and wine, championing French and European producers alongside traditional French countryside cooking and charcuterie, a little of France in North London.

Do you champion specific regions at Cadet or are you open to producers and bottles from all over the world, what’s the curation process like?

To explain this, it’s probably best to start from the beginning with our import company. In 2018, Tom and I started our import business, Beattie and Roberts, while we were both running restaurants (Bright and P Franco) in East London. For the first year or so we worked both jobs side by side until we got the import to a point it could support paying us a small wage. Essentially, we import and distribute wines that we love, made by women and men who care deeply about our impact on the planet. We search for small winemakers who follow organic and biodynamic methods in their vineyards and make their wine with as few additives and cellar manipulations as possible, that speak clearly of the place they came from.

As to where we source our wines from, we both shared so many incredible bottles from France over the years, it was obvious this would be our first port of call. Our first pallet came from Sylvain Bock in Ardèche, and later we made trips down to Languedoc to see Fond Cyprès and Axel Prüfer, finally making the pilgrimage to Jura. I’d say France makes up about 70% of our portfolio, with the rest coming from its neighbours - Spain, Italy, Germany and Belgium. One notable exception - a few years ago we were at a wine fair in the Loire and met Aaron and Daniel, the guys behind Forthave Spirits, who make incredible botanical spirits in Brooklyn, New York. After a few years of back and forth and an overdue visit out to see their distillery, we received the first bottles last year - it’s amazing stuff!

How often do you get out to meet producers on their vineyards, does this change the way you view and sell the wine?

Probably not as often as we should or would like to! When we started out, we were making a lot of trips every year, mostly to try and find new winemakers who were breaking through, or who weren’t represented in the UK. Since then, we opened Cadet and have both had children, so now our time is a bit more precious. I think if you asked our partners, we are still going away on too many trips! I just came back from 48 hours in Catalunya, visiting Moises Virgili, who runs Celler 9+ just outside of Tarragona. An evening of tasting extensively through all his new bottlings and then a sunny morning touring around his various vineyard parcels - there are worse ways to spend a Monday and Tuesday!

It’s essential we get out to see people in person - our business is nothing without the personal connection. Without travelling to see the women and men in their vineyards and cellars, you cannot truly appreciate the level of work that goes in to crafting each bottle, the dedication to their philosophies and how much is on the line each year. For us it is one of the most enjoyable and rewarding parts of the job.

How you approach food at Cadet, is the menu built around the wine or the other way round?

The kitchen at Cadet is heavily influenced by travels to France and a love of traditional countryside cookery. Mike Murphy, our brilliant Head Chef, shares our love of this kind of cooking, as does our business partner, charcutier George Jephson, who makes some of the best traditional French charcuterie in the UK. I like to think the menu is a blend of all these influences and, by its nature, is a wonderful complement to all the wines we import.

You do a lot of collaborations and pop ups, what do you enjoy most about these?

Collaborations, for us, are all about the vibes! They can be so much fun to work and they always bring great energy into the space. At the same time it can give us the opportunity to introduce our guests to other friends’ cookery and vice versa, they often bring followers of their businesses down to visit Cadet for the first time. In the near 4 years we have been open, we have done some excellent collaborations with the likes of Gareth Storey, Ed McIlory, Pam Yung and Tomos Parry, with plenty more lined up for the rest of the year to be announced in due course!