Chef, restaurateur and food writer Mark Hix opened his first restaurant – HIX Oyster and Chop House – in 2008 after 17 years working for Caprice Holdings. He now runs five restaurants and two bars in London and a restaurant and boutique hotel in Lyme Regis in Dorset. Following last month’s relaunch of HIX Soho he speaks to Hospitality & Catering News about service, discovering hidden gems and why the government needs to step up to help solve the industry’s staffing crisis.
Tell us about HIX Soho’s relaunch:
Over the last few months we’ve started making it a bit more fishy. The menu is now about 90 per cent seafood. There’s so much choice around Soho now, so I just though I’d change it to fish, because there aren’t many offering that in London. Obviously there’s Scott’s, J Sheekey and Randall and Aubin down the road, but other than those there aren’t many restaurants with a fish-focus, so I’ve changed the offer and given the interior a bit of a refurb too.
You’ve also re-focused on service at the restaurant, tell us why that is?
Service is crucial, it’s what the customer experiences. It’s no good having good food and not so good service, or vice versa. You need to balance it between the two. With the fishy menu we’ll serve lots of types of fish on the bone whether it be turbot or dover sole, so that requires more service. Marco Fazzina (we worked together many years ago at Caprice Holdings) is general manager and is doing a great job. He managed J Sheekey, so he’s got a lot of experience in that field.
How would you define good service?
Not too fussy, because I think customers want to be left alone without being pampered too much, although each customer to their own, obviously. I think if your food is simple you can add attention to service, recognise the customers and give them what they want in a semi-formal way.
Why are those working front-of-house never given the same spotlight as those working in the kitchen?
Managers don’t get as much credit as they should and I don’t know why really. They are front-of-house but it’s almost as if they are behind-the-scenes in a funny sort of way. I think managers should get a lot more credit in the industry, that’s for sure. I guess publicising them more is the way to do it.
Where do you stand on tipping and service charges?
I think it should be down to the customer to do what they want. If you want to reward good service, that’s down to you. Equally, if you don’t have good service, you are entitled not to pay the service charge. The service charge is there for the staff, so obviously if they haven’t performed and the customer hasn’t had a good time then quite rightly the customer shouldn’t pay for it. I think the whole tipping process is confusing, especially for people who people travel a lot.
You now own or have involvement in nine businesses, how do you juggle them all?
I’m lucky enough to have good, consistent staff and good management working for me. It’s not easy, but you have to get on with it and spend as much time in each business as you can. I do not watch it from a distance. I’m in at least two or three of the restaurants every day, probably driving people mad.
You were one of the first to start the single item trend in restaurants with Tramshed, did you mean to start a trend?
I was already doing it a bit with my first restaurant HIX Oyster and Chop House, so I suppose what I did at Tramshed was just on a bigger scale. Nowhere at that time specialised in chicken. There were a few steak restaurants surfacing, so the obvious thing was to do a bit of both. We still serve the chickens whole with the feet on and give a bit of provenance for the chicken, because chicken is unfortunately one of the meat ingredients where restaurants don’t seem to want to let the customers know where it’s from. At Tramshed we give the provenance and the breed, which I think the customer is entitled to know about.
London is the restaurant capital of the world now. There’s so much going on I find it hard to keep up! As someone who eats out a lot though I just think we’re really lucky to have so much choice.
Where do you like to eat out?
I’m always trying new places and trying to keep up with what’s out there – it’s always very difficult because new things are always opening. I’m quite a few restaurants behind at the moment. I do like discovering the little places that no-one knows about too: It might be a scruffy Chinese in the backstreets somewhere, or a little Indian restaurant. I like going to those places, rather than the fancy restaurants.
What inspires you?
Inspiration comes from all sorts of things: Eating out, travelling, walking round a farmers market, or even a supermarket with a few unusual things, picking up a magazine and just chatting to like-minded friends in the business. There’s always something. I’ve got a massive collection of old cookbooks that often inspires me to try something again. I’ll just pick one up and think ‘ooh, I haven’t done that for a while, that looks interesting, I could do a version of that’.
If you could solve an industry problem tomorrow what would it be and how would you do it?
I’d like to solve the staffing problem. When I first moved to London 30 years ago it was hard to get a job in some of the big hotels and famous places, but now it’s much easier because everyone needs staff. The government needs to step up and open more catering colleges and focus more on hospitality. If they want to embrace hospitality, which is such a big driver of tourism in the UK, they need to invest in it a bit. Where’s the Minister for Hospitality?
There are new hotels being built as we speak and they need staff – not just dozens, thousands of members of staff. So often we have to recruit from abroad, which has some benefits, but we should be training English school kids in hospitality.
I have an academy in Dorset and have attached my name to a catering college, but schools could do more to introduce hospitality to students at an earlier stage. If we can teach kids throughout their schooling about food, all the better really.
What are your plans for the business? Will you open more restaurants and bars?
The last couple of years have been busy, so I’d just like to see how this year goes and maybe see what comes up next year. People like me naturally get sent sites all the time. This year we’ll have a a bit of consolidation, see what’s happening out there and maybe we’ll do something next year.
Emma Eversham
Hospitality & Catering News, Interviews Editor