Tom Aikens may be a master chef but he has another great love in life –
mountains. With his twin brother, Robert, Aikens, 37, started skiing aged 8
at a dry ski slope just outside Norwich in the days when it snowed during
the Norfolk winter. “Sometimes we even had powder,” he says.
It was on his first first proper trip to the Alps and the small French resort
of Puy St Vincent that he became smitten. He was 12 and the brothers were
“majorly overexcited”.
“We skied from dawn till dusk. One evening we followed a group of children who
carried on skiing down the mountain after the lifts were closed. Being
local, they knew where they were going; we didn’t have a clue. We carried on
and it started getting dark. We started walking back up and found ourselves
in a thigh-high snowdrift. Panicking, we called for help. About 20 minutes
later we heard our father calling. We had never been so pleased to hear his
voice, though we got the bollocking of all time.”
It did not put off the family. Until the twins were 18 they went every year,
always drawn back to France. Avoriaz and La Clusaz were family favourites
but it was Megève that captured Aikens’s imagination.
Years later he went back to visit and discovered his all-time favourite
mountain restaurant, La Ferme de Mon Père. A mix of local ingredients and
traditions and cutting-edge culinary skills, the restaurant is in an old
barn with glass panels on the walls and floor, “where you can see chickens,
goats and cattle”. Even though Aikens knew he wanted to be a chef when he
was 12, food was not that important to him as a skiing teenager. “On the
mountain when I was young, food was just the fuel I needed to keep on
charging down.”
His favourite mountain treats are French onion soup and hot chocolate with
frothed cream on top. “They taste better on mountains than anywhere else,”
he says. But the thought of plastic frankfurters wagging at him from inside
a limp bap still makes him shudder.
So does the memory of his wipe-out last Christmas in Idaho’s Sun Valley.
Skiing with his wife, Amber, and his brother.
“I am one of those skiers who love flying down the mountain, whereas my wife
is very stylish and controlled. I used to love watching Franz Klammer
bombing down the Hahnenkamm on Ski Sunday. My brother and I were having a
race and a little kid cut across the piste. I had to swerve right to avoid
him and I had two choices; ski into a snow machine or a mogul field. I chose
the bumps.
“My tips plunged straight into the first bump and sent me catapulting forward
out of my skis. I somersaulted about 5m and landed head first into a mogul.
Thank God I was wearing a helmet. Luckily I walked away from it, even though
I was seeing stars.”
Aikens is swapping restaurants for chalets for a week this winter and will be
cooking in four of Descent International’s Engadine properties during the
week beginning February 3. www.descent.co.uk
