Balans’ Secret Ingredient: The Story of H.Forman’s Finest Smoked Salmon

To our new followers keen to learn more about our produce or our more seasoned customers who know us for our almighty breakfasts, we have a story to share with you. It’s about one of our most beloved dishes, Balans’ Eggs Benedict, and its star ingredient: H. Forman & Son’s Smoked Scottish salmon.

For over 130 years, H. Forman & Son have been smoking the finest Scottish salmon in London’s East End. And for the past two decades, we’ve been lucky enough to receive their fresh deliveries daily (at around 10 am, we’ve heard).

We recently sat down with their Managing Director, Lloyd Hardwick, a former Executive Chef at the Tate Modern. He shared his journey from being a dedicated customer to becoming a supplier, and how, by chance, he joined the business and has stayed for nearly 25 years. His partnership with Lance Forman is built on a shared passion and vision for taking their craft to new heights. The pride in their work is evident in Lloyd’s words and reflected in the exceptional quality of their London Cure salmon.

Read on to discover why we wouldn’t dream of using anyone else…

Your London Cure Smoked Salmon is the first product in London to gain PGI protection, like Champagne or Parma Ham. What is it about London Cure that makes it so special?

What makes London Cure so special lies in three things. Firstly, we use Scottish salmon, the best salmon in the world. There’s nothing wrong with Norwegian salmon, but it takes longer to come from the boat to market, around 5-7 days. But for us, it’s no more than three days from the Western tip of Scotland to your plate at Balans. Secondly, we only use pure rock salt for our curing, with nothing else added. No sugar, no additives. And lastly, we use a traditional approach to smoking, over oak and nothing else. 

The reason we went for the PGI was to lock in our craft. That’s the nucleus of our whole business. We’ve protected our smoking process because it’s very artisanal and we’ve been using the same methods for the last 130 years. In fact, we’re the original smokers of Scottish salmon in the East End.

The process of smoking traditional smoked Scottish salmon started in London’s East End, and Forman’s has been perfecting this for over a century. How do you keep innovating while staying true to your traditional methods?

We’re the oldest purveyor of Smoked Scottish salmon in the world, and we still work to the three-day system: one day curing in the salt, the second day smoking in the kiln, and day three slicing and serving. The smoke is still a massive part of the business, and we’ve kept our smoked salmon the same, but the byproducts and the gravlax are where we’ve really gotten creative. 

Our product range is vast, and we’ve got around 12 different flavour combinations of gravlax, all inspired by the conversations we have with chefs who want us to try different things. We’re also using our byproducts in all sorts of ways you wouldn’t believe. We’ve started tanning our salmon skins and turning them into leather that’s ten times stronger than cow leather. We use it to label the bottles of our English Fizz in our restaurant and we sell them to prestigious clients London-wide. We use the whole backbone, hang them up in the kiln and sell them for people to make smoked salmon stock – and they love it. We also work with the no-waste restaurant Silo, and anything that we end up not being able to use we give to ReFood in Dagenham, who turn it into biodegradable waste that is converted into energy and put back into the grid. 

We use our brown meat (the bit in the middle that isn’t very sexy) to make it into Maple Back Salmon. This is where we add a load of maple syrup, chilli, sesame seeds, toss it up, put it on a tray, bake it in the oven till it gets quite gnarly and caramelised (I sound like Jamie Oliver all of a sudden!) and people just adore it. It’s a great by-product. You can get it from Ocado if you want to try it.

Forman’s has been a family-run business since 1905. How does this influence the way you operate today?

I suppose because we’re a family business you feel more responsible for everything you do. It’s just myself and Lance. And every member of the team takes their craft very personally. We’re all one big family not just because we’re a family business, but because we’ve instilled in each other a sense of pride and real passion for what we do.

We love that your daily delivery service gets your salmon to us at Balans within hours of production. How does this add to our customers’ experience?

 It means you get the finest product possible. Smoked salmon is not like fine wine or cheese. It doesn’t get better with age. The fresher you get it, the higher your enjoyment. We deliver to Balans every day. We’ll get the fish out of the kiln and I’ll slice it, package it up, invoice it and put it on the right trolley by hand. Every single piece. People are surprised when I tell them that we don’t use a machine, but we employ people and I prefer it that way. 

When you’ve got a product this fine, you don’t need to over-complicate it by adding things to it. Serve it with crème fraîche, a few capers and a cold glass of something bubbling. It makes chefs’ lives a bit easier because the product speaks for itself. That’s what’s important.

As the first Executive Chef of The Tate Modern, how did your culinary journey lead you to Forman’s?

I trained under the late Michel Bourdin when I was 17 at The Connaught and then I joined the Roux Brothers for 8 years; I worked around Le Gavroche and other city restaurants and then I ended up in contract catering.

It was taking off in the late 80s, and I worked for Swiss Bank Corporation as their in-house chef. I did that for a number of years, and then the Chief Executive at Swiss Bank at that time was a guy called Rudi Bogni, one of the private founding members of the Tate. He said Lloyd,”I think this is a great opportunity. They want a chef for their massive opening in Europe. Do you want to go for it?” I needed another challenge, so I took it up. On day one we were feeding 15,000 people and I ran a team of 70 chefs across six restaurants. Tate Modern was a beast! 

I started working with  Lance Forman when I was at Swiss Bank and the Tate, because wherever I’ve worked, I’ve wanted to showcase the best of British produce. Lance had taken over his father’s business three years prior and he came to me and said “You know the chefs, you know the scene, why don’t you come and join us.” So I said I would. That was 25 years ago. 

We’ve got a really good synergy, we’re like brothers. We’ve got the same outlook on life. 

What parallels do you see between the art world and the food world? For example, balancing creativity with tradition?

When I look at the culinary world, it’s just a reinvention of the wheel. Food and art both go through fashions and fads and are very much influenced by whatever is trending at the time. If there’s a parallel to be drawn, it’s the importance of keeping the traditions alive, fine-tuning the skill sets but also allowing people to flourish and try something new, whilst never forgetting where you come from. 

Balans and Forman’s go back a long way. What do you think lies at the heart of great brand partnerships? 

It’s been a good marriage between Forman’s and Balans over the years. A steady partnership lies in having mutual respect for one another and acknowledging that we both have businesses to run. We’ve never let Balans down, and as the saying goes, you’re only as good as your last service. It all goes back to having pride in what you do. And that goes both ways.  

What’s next for Forman’s?

We’re opening a New-York style old-fashioned deli at the front of our building, with slices of smoked salmon and other bits alongside really good coffee. So on the weekends you can come on down, and ask for a quarter of a pound of smoked salmon (we use quirky old-school measurements), which we’ll slice for you and wrap in a bit of greaseproof paper so you can put it on your bagel. 

Our restaurant is reopening for the first time since COVID. All British, seasonal produce and it’s a great way to use our byproducts. We’ll serve five starters, mains and desserts. I want it to be a destination restaurant – going back to my roots as a chef. You’ve got to be mindful of your location – we’re not in Soho or Mayfair, we’re in the East End of London. But our clientele enjoy Michelin standard food for a fraction of the price. And it’s a great showcase for us to show off everything we do.