Doing Thyme - my visit to The Clink

My visit to The Clink, a gourmet restaurant in HMP High Down, which serves up hope with its herbs

First published in 2011

Clink, clunk. clink: the heavy metal doors slam behind me. I give up my mobile, take the chewing gum out of my bag and put it into the locker. My ID is carefully checked and filed. I step inside. Clink, clunk, clink: more doors shut. Noisily. Eerily. This, without doubt, is a strange place to go for lunch.

But then, The Clink is no ordinary restaurant. Opened in May 2009, at HMP High Down, near Banstead, it’s the only commercial restaurant to operate from within the confines of a working UK prison. The message is simple: resettle and rehabilitate to reduce offending. Prisoners do the cooking and work as waiters. In its first 18 months, 13 fully trained chefs and waiters left The Clink with a secure job. Success.

Having never been in a prison before (honestly), I’m not entirely sure what to expect, and as I wait to be taken through to the restaurant, a sense of apprehension kicks in. Just then, a group of prison warders tumble into the room, full of jostle and banter, obviously at the end of their shift. One bashes into me by mistake.

“Sorry love, didn’t see you there,” she says, pleasantly, although they all look as hard as nails. Quietly, I move aside.

Soon I’m taken through more locked doors into the heart of the prison. Looming fences, iced with barbed wire, tower over an arid, treeless landscape. It’s depressing and soulless – though not nearly as grim, I’m told, as Victorian prisons such as Brixton.

All that is forgotten, however, when I finally walk into The Clink, which turns out to be smart and modern and washed in a soft pink light. A striking chrome-topped salad bar catches my eye, and there is buzz of conversation – The Clink also serves as a staff mess. Ironically, I Feel Free by Eric Clapton skips along in the background. It could be any restaurant, anywhere. Except that it isn’t.

From the outset, The Clink has had the media eating out of its hand. Michael Winner, for The Sunday Times, was booked in a couple of days after me, and the place starred in the BBC’s The Prison Restaurant earlier this year.

The contemporary British menu does indeed look impressive. It is the brainchild of Al Crisci MBE, catering manager at the prison, and former chef at London’s Mirabelle restaurant. You could say he is The Clink’s public face: the week I did my stretch, he had just returned from a job with one exoffender serving afternoon tea at a charity do with the Blairs.

One of the dishes made by the inmates.

I lean towards the deep fried Stilton quenelles with apple and walnut salad for my starter. Beside me, two ladies deep in conversation are already on their main course: lobster ravioli for one, slow braised pork cheeks for the other. Indeed, it’s only the lack of alcohol, and the plastic cutlery, that remind me of where I am.

The prisoners make absolutely everything from scratch. Produce comes not only from the prison gardens, but from other prisons too – the pork, I learn, originated in a women’s prison at HMP East Sutton Park in Kent. Prisoners have even made all the furniture.

“Our main aim is to stop prisoners reoffending,” says The Clink Charity CEO Chris Moore, who joins me for a chat. “As it stands, 49% of UK prisoners reoffend and return to prison within a year of their release. That figure rises to 74% if they don’t have a job or a home.

“Many of our diners are from the catering industry and we work really hard to forge links with companies so that these guys have a job to go to when they leave prison.

But attitudes are hard to change. How do you convince society to give a chance to someone with a criminal record? It is one of the reasons why members of the general public are invited to dine at the restaurant – whether they be members of the catering industry, or affiliated with local bodies or charities such as the WI or The Rotary Club – and to offer both financial and practical support for the charity’s work.

Selecting sympathetic clientele is paramount. It would be wrong to assume that anyone can just wander in off the street and go for lunch: The Clink, stresses Chris Moore, “is not a zoo”. The Ministry of Justice carefully considers every application, though people with strong links to the local community, whether through businesses or charities, are warmly welcomed.

And it’s not just the diners who are vetted. All prisoners from the South-East are entitled to apply to work at The Clink once they have only 16-18 months left to serve, as long as they have a demonstrable interest in catering. Most fall, however, during the security clearance process.

“We only take 20 prisoners at a time,” explains Chris.

Once an inmate has been accepted, the hard work begins. One false move and you’re out. But for those who stay, the rewards can be great. Dean, the headwaiter, is living proof. Once a prisoner himself, he was taken under Al Crisci’s wing, to the extent that Al invited him back to work as one of the restaurant’s two paid external staff. You can tell he loves his job.

Now the charity is hoping to expand the project to other prisons, besides its ambitions to open a restaurant in London. And hot off the press comes news that it has been nominated for a Catey Award, the industry equivalent of the Oscars.

I’ll drink to that: orange juice, of course. • The Clink is open for breakfast from 6.30-9.30am and lunch from noon – 2pm. Visit: www.clinkcharity.com