George Pell: Pioneering The Renaissance of the Suffolk Food Scene

0:00Hello there and welcome to Hungry. Hungry is the podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands looking to pour gasoline all over their growth. Each week we'll interview successful founders, thought leaders, unpack their lessons and provide you with a toolkit to scale super fast. I am Dan Pope, I am your host and without further ado, let's get started. Hello there people and listeners of The Hummery Podcast. Today I'm super, super excited to welcome George Pella onto the podcast. um george is the founder of uh the restaurant and a hotel the suffolk um which is in aldebar in suffolk i'm currently here now um it's absolutely gorgeous albeit it is shut um george has had an illustrious career um in hospitality um has worked at the home house the arts club uh less cargo i hope i've said that right mate and uh and uh the harwood arms um so yeah recently you've you've moved up from from london kind of escaped the metropolis um and have found yeah sort of suffolk pastures and right right by the sea um i think the first question to start with is how has, you were living in Brixton.

1:20Yeah. How has seeing the sea every day changed your perspective? Oh, massively. You know, it's a huge change. I think it was a, you know, it was a kind of fun and challenging time where businesses were pivoting like crazy during that sort of COVID lockdown. No one knew what was going to happen, where we were going to be. what what food was going to remain cool like at that time i was a director of a place called luscargo which is this like old french you know grand dame of french cookery like so many great chefs have gone through their galvins marco pierre white you know it was this institution and it felt like oh golly how does it stay or remain relevant at a time where everything was like delivery is that that you know stuffed your door in 15 minutes you know like who's sitting at their desks saying oh i want you know so we kind of were thinking scratching our heads about what the future of restaurants was um you know i always think you know i'm a romantic so those classic restaurants are always going to be there those dining rooms are what really people want from hospitality and restaurants you know plush carpets armchairs proper silver cutlery waiters dating over you that you know that's stuff you don't get at home well most of us don't get home some people some people do um yeah and then that sort of i don't know it spanned into this thing of me thinking right what what can we do with brand and where can i go where can i go look and um the opportunity to come up here kind of came about really quickly i was actually looking on the south coast i grew up down in sort of bath and always loved the idea of doing something on the case cornwall or dorset and uh down in devon or ever and and it didn't kind of work out and then very quickly an opportunity came up here in Albrecht and I was like, yeah, off we go.

3:11It was really like six of us on a train and a couple of rucksacks and turned up at this kind of crazy building on the high street. It was formerly run as a sort of, I think it'd been a successful hotel and restaurant, you know, closed in the 70s and then been a cafe when we took over called East Coast run by a guy called Andrew. Campbell, who's this great sort of guy in London restaurants, and he said, look, the space is open, which is the room we're sort of recording in now, little dining room, and yeah, we came up to do a pop-up. I think the first second I got here, I was like, God, like, what a dream, like, you know.

3:54Yeah, there's a totally overwhelming sense of, like, relaxation and chill and, like, you know. um you walk out of a mad busy service or stress and you can like get sea air you know it's like totally different and that that's kind of it's this speed in which you can escape stress that actually is like really really powerful and helpful you know like any restaurant anywhere is going to flood and you're going to get a late delivery and the waiter's not going to turn up you don't escape the problems of restaurants you know just because you've moved to paradise it's still the same issues that doesn't change so you're kind of the speed at which you can adjust your state of mind that escapism that route out away from stress or pressure you know to be able to walk down there and chuck a pebble in the sea or walk up on some marshes you know at the same time i got you know got the dog did did the classic thing and you know man's best friend it's true you know 15 minutes 20 minutes with a dog walking about mucking around you know that chills you out and gives you that perspective and, you know, connects you straight back to the stuff that, you know, perspective.

5:07Yeah. Being in London is like, I grew up in sort of, again, like small town bath. I grew up just outside, spent childhood like on a fish farm, you know, like I was a weirdo really, but, you know, a bit of a lone wolf in fancy dress and, you know, and then so London was always quite intense for me, like quite full on. so to get here you know be involved in something that's full on so like you know that itch that addictive kind of thing about running restaurants is there but then being able to go right got to switch off five minutes or got to take a break it's um so so funny like funny enough like any of you guys from honest yesterday they've both moving out of london well tom's moving out of london to the midlands yeah and one of the things they talked about is towards the end of the podcast is actually when you zoom out and he goes he does walking in um in scotland and he goes when you're on a fucking like massive moor and you're just you on your own or you like you and your dog you realize how sort of kind of insignificant you are in in a good way and actually how to when you realize how insignificant you are it allows you to kind of take the pressure off things and that's what they found by being out or near nature and or by the sea and i think what's interesting in london and he says when you're in london you think you're someone which is kind of true like you you know everyone's instagram page they were someone but yeah different for me but yeah 100 get that and like that's what i'm saying it's that kind of illusion of like you know self self delusion of importance or you know it never sleeps it never stops you never feel good enough you never feel like you're busy enough because you walk out and if you're you know you walk down a road where there's 20 other restaurants and one packed and people can't get in and you're like what are they doing that i'm not doing what you know we're on greek street it's great restaurants doing cool things very different to us you had like you know lena stores doing like quick awesome pasta completely different concept cue out the door the boys at 10 greek street doing like wicked you know now you know noble rots open there you've got like everything you know so you can never really walk out and escape also not just escaping yourself you don't escape the whole scene you know the scene exists constantly so much happening all the time um so like you say when you come to a place like this you kind of you know i walk out the front door and go over to the co-op no one cares that you've got a restaurant it's a totally different vibe hi there guys super super quick one um i write a weekly newsletter called hungry friday feast it goes live at 8am every friday i'm pouring my soul into this bad boy it's probably my favorite creative endeavor I've ever done I basically pick apart all the biggest lessons all the biggest learnings from all the wonderful guests and throw it into a feast or a newsletter we've got over a thousand two hundred subscribers come and join the party I'm going to put a link in the show notes it's right at the top and subscribe and if you are already a subscriber please just forward it onto a friend do the amount of favor it would mean the world to me anyway back to the old episode boys and girls so back to the kind of i suppose the c's linking this together is how's the george internally changed from say pre 2020 when you're in sort of the hospitality soup of of of noble raw of leaner stores yeah that hustle and bustle and hubbub to to now like how have you internally changed obviously you've refurbed the restaurant i i think change is really interesting because i've just gone through well last year a big period of change going in on this and i think i love exploring these moments when people make that change in life yeah i'd love to know how you've personally changed yeah it's a it's a awareness self-awareness thing a massive shift um like like you mentioned with the boys from i was maybe an ego thing like you just realize how relevant it all is and like what a privilege like i've like covid was good for me in that sense it was like some people it i don't think it was good for for me it was like what a complete privilege and how mad is it to be able to run a restaurant and like that's so cool and like so interesting and so fun and like you know to have that privilege taken away from us you know that you know um yeah i guess coming here yeah you just become small you're a part of nature all people talk about here is the weather you know like the tight my brother takes the piss out of me all the time because he's like all you talk about is the tide times you're like you know why does it matter i'm like well because it like dictates your life like if you want to go for a swim in the river you can't go in the tides low because it's it's a strong so it's out there's mud it's a mud flat same in the sea same with you know it's uh you build your life around the great outdoors mother nature takes over you become small and it's insignificant i think mental health wise and all you know that's such a big part of getting out of london and some again some people do it so well some people some of my friends can exist in london in like such a uh incredible way and it makes them powerful and all the stuff going on around them makes them function higher it's you know or quicker or you know they're learning or sponge to it some people can't um i went on an amazing walk last year and later shit with a guy called ben um who's got a wicked company called pesky fish uh really interesting guy and a sort of in that kind of disruptive kind of idea of how we buy fish and you know he i think we're doing the building project and it dragged and dragged and it was it's a bit of a bubble here and how many times i have to hear people oh when's it open them pelly like ha you know couldn't go for a pint without someone like oh mate you know you still haven't got your windows on you oh yeah shit it's dragging it's dragging and he said right come away did like these walks in a late day show you're like god doesn't matter like nobody nobody you know nobody really it's not that big a deal it's a privilege it should be fun and you should walk in every day with that kind of attitude like know your place and then when you get into work enjoy it be thrilled but you know kind of you know diminish the ego slightly i think i think as i said to you i was listening to uh um the rick rubin podcast on the way here and he was interviewing um whitney cummings you know she's a comedian and she was saying that people when you zoom out this isn't america right people in new york think they're more important than they are and people in la think they're more important than they are and uh when when you realize that you're actually creating something not for those two cities in the other polar sides of the states It's your whole perspective changes the way you create things.

12:02With opening this restaurant, coming at it from a different angle, i.e. living up here versus, say, coming at it from that London, how has your approach, your perspectives changed? How has your perspective and approach to building a restaurant changed? Yeah, it changes massively. It shifts. like um we came as a pop-up it was like our our concept here which was great and let's go yeah yeah um and that was wicked but then when we got the chance of you know when we closed that and then we sort of bought the the building so i got a group of local investors sort of helped you're amazing um and you know what i go back to your it sounds kind enough it's always embarrassing to have these sort of like totems but mine is a sense of place and it was became critical that the restaurant and the rooms and the terrace and everything functioned always with that as a considered thought like what the sense of place is key for the success of this place as in suffolk as in Albrecht, as in the restaurant should reflect where we are, not like we're a steak restaurant and it doesn't really make any sense within its surroundings.

13:23This is about bringing tones, fabrics, colours, working with local producers, artisans, to kind of make a melting pot that reflects what's going on around it. You know, there's no point just bringing a concept to Albrecht because Albrecht is its own little place. And if you miss that atmosphere and that special kind of sense and that feeling, like then you're making a huge mistake. I think as well, a lot of people, not a lot of people, but lots of people you watch struggling to make that transition into rural areas or, you know, places with fewer restaurants. They think a restaurant concept that works in London will work there or a menu that will work in London works here.

14:02And it doesn't, you have to be really sensitive and careful and thoughtful and think, you know, like this isn't concept driven. and this is sense place this is like a reflection of what's going on around us yeah that's so interesting how i think people can think you can take a concert that works in london and be like right we'll plop it here because there's no competition it's bound to work yeah and that where i am in surrey there's a lot of those things happen oh we're only down there's the a3 yeah of course we're only a drive yeah we're only a drive like literally wimbledon from my house is is 25 minutes 20 minutes and they just completely bomb like there's this italian restaurant and it's like it's just so overpriced even though it's in like a nice area it's like this is not gonna not gonna work um i want to talk about like principles of hospitality and your your personal kind of principles of what you've learned and maybe we could start at like the arts club or wherever wherever you want to take it but i think i'll be reading this book called unreasonable hospitality okay by will the guy did the work done to danny mayer in new york yeah um he's a name just gave me but a really good book but he talks about all these interesting principles so it's like service is black and white hospitality is color yeah uh it great it's a great restaurant this is the great evolution of the great man danny mayer right so that's like you can train people service is like the bench and then hospitality is like a bit you can't that's an eight i've seen in people it's a spirit I guess I grew up in well like first of all you just I grew up around people that loved food like family loved food family loved big meals together uh grandparents lived over in France for a lot of the year and it was about eating French food mussels snails you know that was it it was sitting around big tables 10 15 people my auntie's farmhouse drinking the cider the farmer next door made you know dad and me have gone fishing got some mackerel you know it was like simple humble kind of like farm style eating so you grew up with that inside i think that's kind of one of those innate pillars like you always go back to that that's kind of like origin story sort of like that's what food is that's what hospitality and socializing around food uh so that would always say like that's kind of like there's all in most people i know that are successful or good or in my opinion good at hospitality always have they always have a reference point a thing they go back to kind of like a nostalgia thing you know like a memory of food from whatever it may have been their auntie their grandmother you know there's always that origin food there's always and people that that gives you the soul and gives you the color and and the you know i think then you add bits onto that as you go through your journey throughout life but like that's your thing i don't think i think it's like oh humans really like you're conditioned in your early years your teenage years and like that part that's your vital spirit and like as you grow older bits get plugged on and influences happen and experiences happen to you and you meet other people that you're like whoa that's fucking why don't i do that or how did i not see that uh you learn sometimes it's tough learning sometimes people give you really back to basic lessons of like just beyond fucking time you know like you know stuff you learn different parts of your career and you know work to you know mates the lovely boys warburton family had um some gastropes had a place with the old house at home so we were talking about harvard dorms old house at home was just outside bristol uh the warbison family ran this place and that that really was you know that was one of the first proper gastro pubs you know we're talking they set out 80s and i when i was going through school i remember we used to get home to warby's pub and we'd try and nip down into the fridges and steal a bit of cheese or get a bit of ice cream out or you know and there was where i learned or like where you saw this like really warm homely hospitalities old man was just knew everybody's name knew everyone in the village but also it became like a destination it really was one of the it was absolutely one of the first gastro pubs in the southwest for sure let alone like you know people talk about these funky places in london i'm like well people did eat food in pubs outside london before um yeah uh but yeah and he knew everybody's name and everyone that arrived he made feel so special because he knows they've driven bristol was like 25 minutes away 20 minutes away baths 25 you know maybe less actually to bristol but he knew everyone was making an effort to get there that was kind of like destination dining in a pub was kind of it was a pioneer in that but he made everyone feel super special so i always remember thinking oh if i could if i could repeat you know the warmth that the warburton's give you know his mum's sally there always always at the bar always being super cool so you do that when you're young and then you know then bits and bobs go go to home house which is this like did university loved it studied history of art tried to try to study history about nottingham got distracted uh yeah got distracted and nottingham uh i think i scraped a degree which is good fine uh love the subject luckily but um and then yeah went went to home house and it was like couldn't be really more different in a way london where everyone kind of is irrelevant unless they're like david beckham or you know like no one sorry just for listeners what what was home house to give some context yeah i mean that's the key kind of conjure the home house of the members club right so it's like this kind of crazy mad eccentric building Laurence Isaacson and Brian Clevas founded Brian and I guess both huge characters amazingly warm awesome people that set up a lot of big hospitality Brian had been at Simpsons on the Strand and Homehouse and then he's gone on to do loads of other things and Arts Club and Lawrence the same of Cafe Fish.

20:24He had a huge, you know, they were great. They were at this pioneer of kind of quite, I guess they're kind of, they were revolutionary in the sense they were like, I don't know how to say it without sounding a bit off, but they were like both kind of quite radical, quite, they liked, they liked posh, formal, proper dining, but they liked it with a bit of fun, right? They liked it with a bit of edge and Home House was this like members club, which was like a real middle finger up to the idea that only toffs could go to members clubs and you had to be you know you're part of the guards or something and you had the right tie home house was like no no no you can be gay you can be black you can be a musician you can be whatever we want the best people the most successful and interesting people from all of yeah any from art background fashion anything like that we want we want those people we don't you know so he kind of created this new tribe new cult and they those two were just wicked at that they were just they just saw it they're like we're gonna have impeccable food but we're gonna have it in a really cool space um how did they there's there's there's a lot i want to uh pull out so you said some super interesting things i think the first bit we you talked about is that color and that that sauce or that spirit and how it's again rick rubin i've just listened to my way here it's pretty quite good i had that no one's eating but he talks about this sauce and everyone can tap into their unique sauce yeah um and what the callum from um the whole bun dining room was saying is he was saying that he would go around because he's from southeast london yeah you know tommy bank's sauce is literally pulling out vegetables because he lives on a fucking farm in the yorkshire moors or yorkshire dales but callum would go and draw buildings in southeast london and because that was his that was his source he couldn't he couldn't try and be something he wasn't what we were talking about right at the beginning is you want to have a sense of place right yeah i think that's really fascinating um and and how you how you're pulling pulling at that source now but then you talked about uh these these two characters who as you said were kind of like radical bit of a middle finger up to the to the kind of the posh way of doing things in this gnarly edge i mean they're yeah they were posh i don't know how to describe them without being you know oh i see what you want yeah yeah we can always edit this but but the one thing that's kind of bubbling up in me this question is like how important do you you know danny mayor talks about legends of hospitality how important do you think or is it important to be like a big character and an extrovert to to create these these pioneering restaurants do you think that's important ah it's difficult i mean the key the key skill is that you have to get people to kind of follow you and kind of believe in you right and the people that are great have this innate ability whether they're big characters or quiet or you know i've i've been influenced there's a guy called remy who was the he was the director at arts club and remy is completely opposite to brian you remember he says classic again done it all but he was so like he was like at arsene wenger you know like he's man in style he was like he had a book he'd always use to scribble notes he'd be like ah shit what's he is he writing about me what have i done wrong and you know he was really calm and made you respect everything in a in a different way um brian for me is like the king of like that was a warm jovial like you know he's like this great kind of massive character and everyone loves it and they they turn up but you know equally i don't think you You know, I don't think you need to be massive and, you know, I don't think you have to be like that to be influential.

24:06It's certainly in terms of building a team and certainly affecting change and inspiring other kids in the industry. I think you have to be like that. Those characters are great because they're easy to write about and they're easy to kind of like, you know, they're a good hook for a story or a bit of coverage or, oh, have you seen him? God, he's got amazing suits, you know. Bloody hell, you know. I guess, you know, are they that interest? I don't know. But yeah, you have people that kind of get on with work in a different way. We had a chef at Luscargo called Jimmy, you know, who's unbelievably wicked guy, wonderful dude, like so anti kind of fashionable chef now in like his whole approach.

24:54He's old school. He like loves it. He wears his chef's hat, you know, like has his little neckerchief. but he cooks like a don, but he does, you know, he's not into like the whole tattoo sleeve, silly, you know, would never allow people to wear trainers in the kitchen, you know, like he's just, and everyone has their way. Everyone has their, everyone has their voice and everyone has their thing. You don't have to be, Jimmy's not, you know, he's not out there and outspoken. And, you know, he just, he leads in a very different ways. He loves it. He's in the trenches. He cooks every busy shift. He's first in last out.

25:30You know, He takes the classics incredibly seriously. Yeah, so I think you can come, yeah, all shapes and sizes, all volumes, all kind of looks and still inspire people around you. Delighted to announce the extension of our partnership with the wonderful Billy and Paul from Mackenzie Jones, but even more exciting, they have just launched a brand new brand as part of Mackenzie Jones called MKJ Ignite. mkj ignite is a recruitment firm which specializes full shebang focus entirely on challenge brand space they work with some incredible brands lucky saint good race purdy and fig hunt and gather and real superfoods they can support with your hiring needs across all levels top to bottom junior entry-level jobs all the way through and up to md and ceo level so if you're looking for a field a sales wizard, an ops guru, a supply chain sensei, you name it, MKJ Ignite can help you out.

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31:40It was probably, you know, probably an XL loose linen shirt, you know, hasn't seen an iron for two years. And you're sitting in this room where everyone that walked past was just like, but it just feels like it. I'm sure they weren't, but like every guy was like chiseled and look like they just walk out of some, you know, Mad Men. Yeah, exactly. Saint-Tropez, Mad Men. It was all, you know, and, um, yeah, I've never felt more like a sort of stuff at Scarecrow, you know, like hair all messy. But you go and then you sit there and you're transported. You've got this amazing dessert trolley, you know, incredibly brilliant wine list, bar downstairs.

32:18It's such a cool place. So places like that that transport you, you know. When you say transport you, because what I'm trying to like dig at, I think it's a really interesting thing to explore, is totally get it, members club, people are paying. They're going to be in there all day. They're going to be working like this much. because you see them all the time yeah but with a new restaurant with a restaurant when you may see someone for the first time who only may be with you for four hours or three hours to get that level of connection or and or transportation is is really incredible that just comes from whether you care enough because it's you know that it's what would make you happy that's what i'm that's what i'm trying to articulate probably quite clumsily i think the people that are great know the value of that you know they know immediately how good they're going and make someone feel because they feel the same way or they have the same source right so they have the same source energy of that moment when they carried the their i don't know whatever it is i remember getting a buzz when i was a kid i used to say my grandparents lived in dinar and we used to go to this little bakery it sounds so spoiled and indulgent this story sorry but like you know like you'd go to the bakery and i'd be like right practice my french you know you know whatever my pigeon french um you know i can't remember mademoiselle i can't remember her name but she would always chuckle because i always tried my hardest and then the feeling of getting those knowing you've got that order getting back to the house you know presenting my grandparents with their order in the morning you know it was all kind of that starts that source that energy that like people pleasing because you know how much it makes you feel good it's kind of a cyclical thing um extrovert introvert sort of thing as well it's like always again people with great hospitality are like these introvert extrovert characters they all often have like these weird juxtapositions of like love the fuck you know love the fucking buzz but then actually are a bit like a bit weird and a bit like oh my god i actually like the fact these people like me are like imposter syndrome such a i think you've touched on like but and it's like imposter syndrome is such a big problem for me and like a load of people i've worked with or that i like working with seem to have the same problem it's like why am i here but again it goes back to that childhood running that bakery like running the pain of chocolate back to grandma and my mom knowing they were going to be buzzing because i was first in to the queue so it's hot and you know and that level of care they're the they're the tastemakers that i kind of love and like the restaurants where every you know those things are in there they're solidified within the restaurant process when you get welcomed that there's a cloakroom that they take your bag that they they have notes on your table at Corbyn and King were rad you know they were brilliant pioneers of that in London I mean outside you know again outside maybe Mayfair restaurants where they recognize people they had that open table resource flying very early on of oh Mr.

35:09Powell how was your meal at Zadel last week and oh you know yeah amazing that recognition shows that they care it's kind of like a self-fulfilling you know like loot right yeah yeah that's that's how i see it it's um i interviewed a guy called charlie mcveigh who did um he was kind of one of the first guys to bring this is like 2006 7 so before brewdog and before camden town brewery like craft beer he was one of the first guys to bring it a set up a chain of problems called the draft house yep and he said the founder a founder is basically the pendulum swings from messiah to imposter Messiah to Impostra and I was like finally someone's sitting some days I feel like I can walk in I can interview anyone and the other days like when I did the Paul Ainsworth interview I was like who am I?

35:55this is I am who am I? all day all day how have you how did how did you you've got this amazing restaurant now you're kind of you're on the board of the food festival we're going to talk about it in a sec but like how Olderborough comes it's oh it's older bro old bro all bro all bro fucking all bro yeah all bro becomes this this destination how have you how's imposter syndrome bubbled up in this process and how have you kind of combated it uh is yeah it is wild it is uh imposter syndrome is uh how do you i guess being aware of it is key firstly and then being able to sort of just kind of look at it kind of float above your body a bit and just be like yeah it's happening like i'm in the grips of feeling totally uncomfortable and meeting heroes and and when people were like i don't know like maybe we'll refer to you as an expert or like you know it is it's mad i get i guess it's just part of the journey you have to go on and you just learn um i still black out to be honest i'll just do things and just come around the other side i'd be like what did i do that like was i there was i talking example yeah uh a great example was um i just did the we yeah so the albert food and drink festival this incredible uh weekend um up at snake maltings i don't think you could ask for a more beautiful location you know it's on the river or top of the river beautiful estuary amazing views more any more sculptures it's incredible it's a really beautiful place always seems to be good weather don't want to do it was great weather and um we were hosting pierre kaufman and jeremy lee um pierre the king you know like for me the bear the big the big boss the greatest chef one of the greatest chefs the country's ever seen trained and inspired so many you know uh if jimmy you know so james terrell head chef at luscargo who's his go-to would be kaufman like kaufman is that classic friend the goat yeah yeah he's an absolute g the goat uh and jeremy lee quavani is unbelievable he's just written one of the best cookbooks a seminal kind of cookbook i think actually where he's gone back he's like a cool guy that's made the narrative and storytelling around food relevant like in a time you know we were talking about a time where everything's sort of snapshot and kind of like not thoughtless but like pretty rapid pretty quick video yeah chop chop butter scoop slap hello you've got someone like jeremy lee who's like uh really really thoughtful and pedantic about ingredients and the way it's put again he's written this book and it's like a story it's like a story book as opposed to a but in a time where you know i don't know if storytelling is going the right way for me for my older my older soul i'm not i'm not sure um uh and so we were hosting them looking after them for the weekend which was great uh that was in itself kind of just like oh my god i can't believe they were staying here and you're like oh god you know every every moment and we we we we we did actually managed to sort of you know you do that you hear the story like what you're like yeah yeah we managed to do that uh so you have those moments where like we've really dropped the ball didn't boil an egg long enough you know like stuff like that you're like oh well that happened yeah so these things happen and this is life and this is restaurants and this is whether you're in london you know suffolk or wherever it doesn't matter you still have disasters not disasters they're all not really disasters are they in the scheme of things anyway so you have these two guys staying uh which is for me kind of like a peak life moment oh my god just like yeah yeah these guys and you're trying not to be a fan boy you know i'm trying not to be like oh you know and you're trying to be relaxed and then i had to do a talk with them a q a and i was just like an hour i'd been so busy in the run-up to the festival with here we you know first time of season with the rooms and terrace and the festival build up and you know you just end up kind of running and crime runs away I'm sure it's like you you kind of get to the moment you're like god I don't think my brain is gonna be able to get one question out that's interesting and loads of people turned up and I said I've never done a Q &A and uh you know it was really like a kind of uh you know nerve-wracking kind of M &M moment in the loop I was I was like I was like dry retching oh god this is gonna be terrible i'm gonna be you know and it was my ego was not maybe part of that i was just like i'm just gonna ruin everybody's day here like this they've come to see the heroes like i have and i'm just gonna ask really terrible questions so you were doing the q a right and that was it like honestly like i was i'm uh you know not you know not a confident guy but i guess i I can do, you know, the bravado on the dance floor, especially in your own restaurant.

41:18You know, it's very easy to be like charming and calm and, you know, swan-like underneath. Underneath you're freaking the fuck out, but you've got all your security levers. You know you can dive into that cupboard or hide behind that waiter if you're like struggling, you know, in that confidence moment. But yeah, I sat through that and was just like, oh totally i was like trying to hold my mic yeah yeah yeah yeah like you know and i thought i'm going i thought i was going to faint at one point and then you just sort of you know get to the end of it you're like oh i hope it was good yeah but it's a buzz afterwards isn't it yeah i'm also like i have a real short uh my buzz is very very limited like my dad always says don't Don't forget to smile.

42:06Like I'm like, job done. That's it. I'm very bad at... Next thing, next thing, next thing. Yeah, I'd love to be way more in that moment. I'd love to sit back and take like a snap of that moment. I try and take pictures. Sounds mad. I try and take pictures of stuff. Now I did it when we sat down. Because when I'm going, my brain's churning and I'm thinking about a hundred things. You often forget to be like in that moment, don't you? You often forget to be like, oh, you know, oh my god i win my heroes it's so cool i'm sure some people are like this is so cool i was just like get through it get through it don't fuck up don't swear you know don't need them down the gone path what if no one asked a question from the audience you know and you kind of sad it's tragic you kind of sometimes miss those moments um but yeah i know what a moment for and a great moment for the festival you know a great moment of suffolk that we can bring these people and they're you know they're equally as passionate when they come and they love coming you know bohemi our beloved sponsor are helping build the fastest growing challenge of food and drink brands look if you're a small brand just starting out and need your first indie stockist your first hundred stockist to wholesale bohemi are the platform to categorically speed that up but if you're a big brand wanting to get bigger bohemi are also insane they make field sales marble smooth silky slick they're just epic ollie's ollie's been on this podcast twice actually they saw a 29 % uplift in sales when using boemy to check major malt listings availability insane 29 % uplift by downloading an app insane lucky saying my boy aaron duff is coming to podcast in a couple of weeks he uses it to manage a team of 30 people and they've lucky to have unlocked 500 draft listings by using boemy look you've got to get involved with this stuff it's absolutely insane and it will categorically change your life it's just the sickest platform i use it all the time at ireland hi guys super super quick one so so excited look for years i've been badgering on about hungary the podcast you're probably bored to death thanks for putting up with me but hungary is also an agency and we look after one amazing brand called ireland's chocolate we've had a great time over the year we've won listings at load of wholesalers we've won milk and more we've got our first grocery listing coming very soon which is very very sick but what i'm thrilled to announce is Hungary's merging with HC Consulting.

44:23My boy Harry Clark and his wonderful team, he's an absolute G. They do brand strategy, new business, business and account management. But why I really love working with Harry and why we've got on so well over the last couple of months is Harry was actually the founder of the boozy, isolated brand Pops. He's been in the trenches. He's grafted his face off. He's had the sleepless nights. He's had the turmoil. He's had the triumph. He knows what it is to be a founder. He is a founder. and he's got a proven track record in grocery and out of home holy moly dips the gut stuff savile drinks remio gelato so if you're a brand and you're you're stuck you're looking for like new business help you're looking to scale drop us a message we'd love to chat thank you so much back to the old episode i had a lot of that as well i've stopped drinking for a bit and that's helped slow like because i was the same i just like i've got that thing i'm just whether it's a cigarette or uh all these things i'm just constantly mixing and it didn't allow me to slow down and enjoy and i've done two months off now and feel but like that's helped me sort of appreciate the like the little things as before you know like i'd be in here having this podcast i'm like right bang straight onto my phone it's like not enjoying those moments and that's really being in the present being the present i know it sounds so fucking wanky we said so many wanky things like radical and you know but it is the cliched things what so i always find fascinating you learn from people uh you can learn quite a lot from osmosis when you like so there's stuff you wouldn't see about pierre or jeremy in a in a cookbook or on a tv show or um you know i've done so many of these these conversations now sometimes you pick up on the way um like your heroes approach things so i interviewed rory do you know rory sutherland yeah yeah he's like one of my big heroes interviewed him twice what when he came into the room he like was so um polite to everyone and just like what you see is what you get and also i know his bag he opened up his laptop bag and it was just carnage yeah and that's almost you could see like oh my god that is the innards of his mind is is in that bag it's like all this shit just pull up here like that all there i was like that it's so sick what what did you learn from pierre um pierre or jeremy just through like osmosis if that's i think it's it's it's absolute care of the craft like missing no detail you can see that they transport their eyes when they sit at a dinner or a lunch or you can just see the meticulous kind of nature they just look through what's the salt what's the what is that ice you know what's the plate where and you they just go through like a roller deck of like of like everything is really important like i was saying earlier i think they're really good the masters of it put so much emphasis on everything everything matters the candlestick the way the curtain is like you know i wish i'm a messy bad guy hopefully yeah my bag's right there mate yeah hopefully i'm a polite person and i care yeah yeah i'm a messy bad guy and um i'm not saying anything like southern he's an absolute g but uh like you know you yeah these people are great also again it's like respect and care they what was what was trying like really transcendent about them is that they totally and utterly care about um people in the industry like they absolutely loved meeting like some of the young waiters we've got here they absolutely loved it you know and they took time that care and that nurturing is like that's that's people that really care about the industry i think that's what comes across about both of them they really really care about auspices they really care about kitchens they really care about the next generation they're not doing it in like a sort of fake oh i'm a great dude kind of way they're like they really care you know like what's his name drew was very good oh you know you know we've got this wicked guy called drew one of our sort of uh local lads well he's from dundee but he's lived here most of his life he's brilliant he's you know loves it trained filleting fish at the table for pierre kaufman and jeremy lee most people would be nervous he's like i want it i want to be doing it you know and and they pick up on that through osmosis they know that that boy he loves it he cares he wants to make sure they get the best bit of brill baby and you know that that that that all goes around i think we we um yeah we went over to it's a great restaurant uh which is just open called the greyhound which is over in Pettersstree um near Woodbridge it's sort of like 20 minutes from here awesome like amazing guy called Will and his wife Cassidy and she's like this brilliant interior designer and they've just created this really perfect beautiful little dining room uh and Pierre and Claire his wife had eaten there before and really wanted to go back and it's because they care it's because they care about the journey that people are on and they really do want to give support and guidance and that that that came over in space and we were there and i know that you know that that's a crucial thing people people that are open to giving guidance and sharing that's a key that's a cool pillar of you know that's how i would judge someone if you can be you know if you can if you're able to kind of converse your experience and your your knowledge and and and in all language to all kind of matter of people people that care they were great and you know we had a great meal with the Greyhound and they go meet the chef and they love that they love meeting the chefs they love meeting the staff they love hearing the staff story they love hearing the chef story it's like that adds color to a meal because you eat a hundred when you're a foodie like you know you eat hundreds of meals foods democratize you get great food at home you get great food in supermarkets so it's the kind of people story the color of those stories that kind of make old romantics i them and us and people that care you know come alive because you want to know who's cooked that food and you want to know what sort of journey you're on and you want to know if you can you not me but i'm putting words in their mouth but they want to know how they can help i think that was cool watching that was brilliant definitely saw that in pere and jeremy like advice on suppliers or oh have you read this book or oh you know like you know i think they do i think they really can it's almost like an end yeah caring and curiosity because i think i think it's almost one thing i find fascinating is people who've i've sat with who are slightly older who've like you know like a julian metcalf is prete amon jay and it's yeah will chase founder tyrols it's like these guys are slightly older but they are more curious than anyone i've ever met like this there's an end there's an endless boundless curiosity in these people which i think's mad and i think it's i think they all transcend at a certain point their kind of own ego or their own like kind of who they are and they get into this place where they're just like better at business and they're amazing like so will kendall up here same yeah like i think he's now in this position where he's kind of this kind of mercurial you know lord of food you know like but so hungry and so keen and so caring and like wants to help and wants to incubate businesses and startups and and like you know be part of something and and like i think that's just like they shed their ego a bit they move past that and then it's just about creating the best businesses and the businesses that can impact the most kind of change and like they're they're inspired like will's totally inspired he's always bang on about something new or something interesting or something yeah to have that boundless energy that's wicked huh what do you i'm interviewing him tomorrow what do you think i should ask him after you've hung out with him i don't think you'll need to ask him anything he'll tell you what he'll tell you what to think he's an amazingly interesting guy and um you know he he's he's he's uh inspiring up in these parts because you know he he's he's done it all and uh he he kind of juggles and balances he's a suffolk man and looks after and preserves the countryside that's a key thing about him he's not just like kind of blake that's made a bit of money and now he's like setting up he's like he really invests in the landscape his sense of places rich and you know he's got maple fire which's beautiful and you know he's he's an amazing guy you know he your your you won't struggle to find questions he's done it he's you know like you said he's his curiosity is limitless he's done it all right he's done all sorts of business all kinds of investments and looks after his interests all kinds of people as well that's the other thing he's not like one-dimensional he's not like i just want to be you know i need to find disruptors in the food space he's like anything from someone's milling flour to you know is anything you know and that that's kind of what's well yeah did you know louise avery yeah from yeah yeah she's amazing yeah she's a good mate of mine um because she i i with the podcast i host like subaclubs in london yeah um so we did one at coal rooms in peckham yeah she was there um we were both pretty smashed but um she was telling me about will then i've only just sort of realized that the their breweries up here as well yeah um no i i completely agree and i yeah i think tomorrow's going to be a long enjoyable fruitful um conversation but i want to talk about what will has alluded to me and i and i want to get you the kind of perspective on it how albert could become what i don't understand is cornwall is this kind of mecca for food right yeah in the uk is that you go down there you've got paul lanesworth rick stein you've got um adam adam handling nathan outlaw like it's but but that i read rick stein's book which is really interesting that all started out was when he opened the seafood restaurant is cornwall was a bit of a divey place yeah he was running night yeah he was running night yeah and he was like yeah and he was i think he'd was playing rugby he wasn't even like a properly professional he went down under like he had quite a hodgepodge way to get there but but he's then pulled this scene and now it's it is it is in terms of a sense of place and in terms of a spirit you can't deny that's in cornwall what what is your goal like you've you've opened this restaurant here obviously will's will's involved you've you've got a food festival you've got pierre kaufman jeremy lee coming down oh coming up i should say it feels in the zeitgeist that it could this place could become like that like what's your goal and how do you think you could potentially it could become like that yeah absolutely um i need more restaurants right step one you know that's back to basics what do we need we need more young, cool people into the industry.

55:17We need to produce better local chefs and not rely on chefs coming from other regions. Norfolk's kind of light years ahead, really, in that sense. Oh, really? Well, they've got more hotels, more restaurants, a bit more of a trendy scene. Suffolk's not trendy. That's an important thing to always be aware of. So it's kind of the antithesis of that, kind of like people come here to kind of get away from it and like it's a frontier i always call it the frontier when you say frontier no motorway no like direct trains you know you're end of we're past the end of the line here saxmondon's like 20 minutes that way that's the last train station we're another 20 minutes so you when you reach these like remarkable frontier places uh will they ever will they ever go through a seismic change i hope that you know i hope that there's a sensitive and kind of like progressive move we've got some amazing places you know you've got unruly pig brendan over the unruly pig awesome top you know number one gastropub in the uk you know always in every list wicked you know he he cares so much in in the in the food landscape up here they're brilliant they're unbelievably good greyhound really really good us you know hopefully they'll sit in the mix um you know but we need probably 10 more of us i don't spend enough time in barry but everyone's banging on about this place called lark which i gotta go and try um we've got awesome food producers so it's it's all about the producers having like a canvas there's amazing paint here but no canvases so like right if we're gonna if we're gonna try if we're gonna try and find something that's how i feel when i got here i said what on earth are we like this is mad like there is within 20 minutes of here i've got like pretty much everything you like pretty much we can get the best oysters i mean i love the oysters they've got butley creek up in orford guy called bill pinney unbelievable far oyster farm beautiful amazing oysters little bit on the creamy side maybe for like becoming a hugely but i i personally think they're unbelievably good oyster um you got great bass out being fished lobster you got the biggest you know you got great asparagus potatoes you got some of the greatest growers you got fellow you know you got all of these cool people we we work with an amazing woman called tilly ware who has got great glamour farm with her with her husband argus and and lady crambook who's also part of the food festival she was like the founder she was like the founder of like the whole food movement really she was like we shouldn't live in food poverty you know she's a big big champion of food education that's part of what the festival does it's about training and trying to inspire families and children how to eat properly how to grow understand so we you know there's a grow cooky kind of initiative going through the festival and that that's the lifeblood for this area and future generations of foodies in this area like the kids learning what it is um yeah so tilly's there she's got this wall kitchen garden it's like unbelievable like what she's doing like they they grow you know like we were there last week and it's still like this cornucopia of amazing pumpkins and yeah you've got this char still going and you've got the chili you know it's an incredible place and so Suffolk has all of that and it just doesn't have so many places for that to be shone so it goes to London and it goes elsewhere and you know Pump Street Femme Farm like Femme Farm Dairy Johnny what a legend what a food pioneer you know another guy you've got to speak to like unbelievable cool bloke dairy farmer pivoted, made now barry bargain which what a cheese unbelievable he's here fem you know it it goes on and on and on and what will is doing is you know he invests in these startups and he invests in alice norman who's got pinch another awesome kind of like coffee shop she makes these things called krillers which are like absolutely obscene krillers yeah hopefully you get one tomorrow it's kind of like a donut ring ice donut thing and it's just like enriched that sounds amazing it's unbelievable and she's over at maple farm so hopefully you get to try those and she makes the best coffee and then you've got pump street you've got a guy called harvey who we does our bread harvey and co you got you know it's endless really but it just needs more and more places um doing it and that that's kind of it you've got husk these two amazing kind of up near tharrington which is this beautiful kind of outdoor natural amphitheater which they've built in the woods and then um they've got a place called husk where they've like transformed this farmyard into this like paradise outdoor swimming pool wild pool where they do these amazing supper clubs again pulling all these local ingredients so there's there's there's stuff happening and there's lots of fun bits but it needs to be pulled together food festival is why i got involved because like it's all here how do we put it together how do we bring connections how do we create these canvases that everyone can apply their color to so we can tell this story over and over again better and better that i think is really for me my opinion or my experience is restaurant that's my language so that's that's how i can paint and it's like you know i've got tom tom pain he's our you know we talked about earlier about how on earth do you find chefs how do you find people to work here you know you can see there's not much going on it's it's a it's a whatever day it is afternoon you know high street will be pretty empty two and a half thousand people live here how how on earth do you recruit if people are struggling in london what do you think happens in suffolk right um but we've you know so tom pain our head chef young guy love it how do we get him to be a better greater chef it's that thirst for knowledge he meets all of these growers people's producers he becomes a better chef you know and that's that's the thing and then you have tom doing his thing here and he's you know he's for me creating you know some of the best food we've certainly had here for the last two years like he's he's he's killing it love it oh my god i am so so so excited it feels like hungary is finally swimming in the big leagues i can't believe this it's absolutely mental but delighted to announce that big fish yes big fish are part of the podcast.

1:01:44Perry's been on the podcast three times. Listeners absolutely love it. Some of my most downloaded and cherished episodes of all time. But Big Fish are behind literally so many brands in your cupboard, in your weekly shop. Charlie Bigham, Year Valley, Tyrells, Clipper T, Goo, Rana. I mean, make the listeners longer than the River Nile. But they also share risk and invest in brands that they really believe are a force for good. They're brands that they believe are going to be the next big thing. like how the snack that gives back but even more exciting news big fish want to speak to the next wave of small challenger food and drink badders that are destined for big things the raconteurs the movers shakers buccaneering visionaries so look if you want to speak to big fish and just have a chat get your brand in front of them then drop me a message my mate louis from local beer amazing beer was in their office aka la fish bowl uh last week chatting to perry freddy and the big fish crew so drop me a message if you would like to speak to one of the things that fascinates me is how these movements spread with anything so like there's the quote by the guy from um who rick sapiens like business is essentially a fiction and it's like you buy into these fictions or like a movement is a fiction so the more people that buy into it the bigger it becomes so like in cornwall as we said you get same same pain just more people believe in the canvas and now it's become a thing right started with rick stein and it's almost like as you said here we've got the exact same amount of paint as cornwall and or other parts of the country we just need more um canvases well yeah or like a bigger canvas what would you say are the um like my dad's a painter an art teacher by the way so he's gonna absolutely hate that metaphor he'll come up he'll be like you pretentious i love what i'm well maybe art history taught me one thing that's the one thing i love i love a wanky analogy i should have like a little book called like wanky analogy my entire degree yeah um but what i was i want to talk about is is how like yeah as i said when you zoom out i think more and more people especially post-pandemic more and more people can work from wherever right so like now you don't have to be in london i think um what rory sutherland was saying is we were talking because his kids go to manchester uni right so and um i left manchester in 2016 and back then it was there was no real food scene in manchester whereas now that's picked up and he was saying that uh when when they used to ask back in like the 90s could you recommend a hotel i stay in in sheffield and the woman said we can stay in leeds yeah yeah it's like there's these kind of um these places that just weren't a thing but became a thing and i think um i think what you you mentioned like the kind of the critical mass of people that are kind of like-minded and being able to work from home means this whole kind of like you know that exhausted commuter that gets back to the countryside at the weekend doesn't want to explore the countryside they just sit at home so now it's like if you can work at home three or four days a week all of a sudden like you're this gastro tourist tourist in your own like back garden yeah you've got time to kind of travel around stuff i think that's a big thing that's a huge thing i think people post pandemic especially kind of that work life balance that time away from london or the city or the office has become crucial um and you know i guess the thing with suffolk is you know when you whenever have these sort of conversations you always worry you kind of think yourself it's kind of nice like the way it is being kind of quite uh obviously from a sustainability point of view of the business and actually for for the producers to have something to work towards and the growers to have something you know we have to have more we have to have a bigger critical mass of great restaurants is to sustain their efforts right they're the people doing all the hard work really like the growers like they're the people getting rained on and they're the people that they're putting all their effort in um yeah so like will it will it happen like cornwall i don't know like is that the goal uh i would never uh you know or what is the goal maybe okay i guess i guess i came really to see what you know yeah what what was what was appropriate here and i i think now like Suffolk that sense of place is that overriding overarching thing for me and it's like would Suffolk really look or feel right with like loads of rangers coming in and like you know branded restaurants everywhere and you know does it destroy I don't know does it destroy places do you have problem with just holiday homes is that already a problem in Alba probably that's probably you know we're on the edge of that becoming a thing but then the second homeowners really support the restaurants and the deli and the butcher and the fishmonger when they hear they they make a massive concerted effort to use those supplies so like it is it's a big thing i guess the goal for me is yeah i'd love i'd love a few more mates to be up here opening restaurants i'd love to do a few more up here i think there's scope to kind of expand and look across the east suffolk area coastal area a lot of opportunity um yeah i think it's great great you know great spots woodbridge Framlingham there's loads of cool places on this coast as well I'd hope to have another one and I hope that other people come and do more so um we've talked a lot about a sense of place yeah how did you did you feel like you'd lost a sense of place when you're in London like that was did you feel disjointed there um on a personal level I think yeah I was custodian of a place called Luscargo a thing you know that's a great sum of its parts and 1927 absolute you know Nick Lando, Marco Piy the Galvins you know like Alistair Little it's had the best in the business run it operate it and you kind of take over you know you're just the custodian so I think when you say you're just the custodian is that good or bad?

1:07:59I think it's a great and grounding and educational thing. I think it was really helpful. I was there for sort of seven, eight years. And it's like, that teaches you to respect and appreciate history, understand what it means to people, understand what, you know, like people coming back that got engaged at the same table 50 years ago, the kind of that deep romance in restaurants makes you appreciate and respect and learn all about that. I think in terms of, you know, personal journey in your relationship uh to food and like what your kind of soul is or what your kind of sense purpose i guess is it can be quite a challenging thing to work in a restaurant that or run a restaurant like that for sure i think you know um we talked about that ego earlier like there is kind of a good and a bad side to it i think um i love being there and it was absolutely brilliant place and it you know fondly fond memories of it and everything um but like i was saying that wouldn't work here right you know and i want to i want to be here and i you know so you have to understand there's things that fit for purpose for you and for you and your career and your time in life and your your moment and uh like you know you say you're going through a transition or whatever or you know like you do people do and like what what float boat changes and stuff happens in your life that can kind of move them the pathway and like kind of really shine a light on something you feel like you'd like to be doing a lot more in london do you really do do you know it's so difficult to have a connection to your suppliers and your your place you know i literally can get in a car or walk to i can walk down to thorpe ness and go to thorpe ness leaves you know uh and and like that that kind of connection is something that again where I started when we were talking at the beginning is like those food memories that kind of is that loop I guess and that's what I kind of craved from when I was a child from my parents having you know picking gooseberries and we lived on a trout farm so it wasn't glamorous but like you know it was kind of felt you know your connection to the the land and and and water and produce was like deeper entrenched and and I guess that was kind of part of the journey maybe and when i got here maybe i don't think to be honest i realized that you know you kind of you can you can fluff your way through if i was completely honest when i got here i just wanted to escape london why did you want to escape so much uh just because i think there was obviously this turmoil inside me of like maybe i'm not supposed to be in a city like maybe maybe i'm not going to be happy maybe the lifestyle and and the nights and and what that suit you when you're younger and you kind of felt energized by maybe those things aren't really you or what kind of like flat your boat or what potentially could be sustainable or like make again being california like the best version of you do you exist in that place and you know and i i think you know like a load of people right we all kind of sat there going oh who am i you know how how many people do you know left town after like so many privilege and fortunate to have the chance and choice to do that you know i did it and it kind of felt actually at the time quite kind of like don't know i just don't know i kind of had this sense that we were being quite brave doing something outside town with a brand like that and i felt like it was quite you know a lot of people when i said that they were like why would you want to expose like why would you want to take on another like risk or a challenge i was like well what are we going to do like i opened a restaurant in a post-pandemic time with no outdoor seats in the middle of Soho when I was going and you know it just felt I don't know I guess yeah it felt felt for me like this thing and then I got here and I very very quickly to be honest was like yeah this is this is the business love it this sauce thing is is fascinating me as it and it's almost like this as you as you head you were so like in Lescagaia it was such a institution yeah there's almost as you say Alistair Little Marco Piyo they're almost like their learning just soaking through the walls yeah yeah well if it's not your yeah it's also like it's it's it's it you can never not learn in a place so what are the lessons you took from there that you you've applied here continuity i think is the key like that i know that sounds a bit boring but like i think we've had enough wanky things i think continuity is like the key when you say continuity just being like doing the same thing kind of over and over again that makes people happy like a level of consistency that you become a reliable extension of their world of their life there you have a dish on that doesn't necessarily change and you sensitively if you if you restore the building you do it sensitively so there's still echoes and there's still murmurs of the past and that's kind of like again a bit romantic but that's about the atmosphere of the building and that's kind of what you learn about Luscargo it's like that you know the couple that would sit down and they'd be like oh we got engaged at this table 50 years ago you know that's the sort that's that's what i mean by continuity that kind of that repeating history sharing people's lives and people coming in like that's great these kind of like ghosts and spirits that live in old restaurants and this is an old building so it's got the same like when i walked in i was like whoa this you know from what was this before then so this was this room was a restaurant and then the front said we've knocked through that was a shoe shop and upstairs was offices so you know on the site 1630s 1640s was the first sort of recording of a coaching in sort of like traveling lunch sort of place went through incarnations it was called the new in the commercial and then in 1930 the cobble brewery did it up called the east suffolk hotel so it's got history it's got spirit it's got atmosphere it's got purpose and it's bones and it's DNA and you know from being working members clubs I think you kind of that is intrinsic in you a bit like it becomes a bit like you become a bit geeky a bit a bit romantic in the style like so somewhere like Nuskarga is it's like it's been there for generations and it's important it's symbolic in people's lives people have had there a number of people that came up to me that were like oh I had my first I remember the first bonus I ever got I took a client to the Scargo and like oh the first you know and you read all these amazing memoirs like Stephen Fry and Will Self and all of these like people that you know that admin were like so it was rampant and Diana was there and you know you have all these amazing people going and it becomes as continuous it becomes a kind of place like a clubhouse a kind of place that wants to last and and be durable and be consistent and have continuity and and they're key things that kind of like i guess my background in members clubs that kind of all fit you know around that kind of obsession this cargo definitely imparts that and you and then here it's like you know it's it's it's storytelling it's sense place and it's like mad bits about hopefully recreating people's histories and we still get it you know claire lawson used to run an amazing restaurant here and people come and it's had its own histories it's had because it's functioned for the town it's a community asset like that's how i kind of also see it you know i want this to be a clubhouse that people that used to come feel welcome that we don't you know yes yeah for sure i'm a bit like the restaurant is a bit i guess uh by suffolk standards definitely like a bit of flash it's a bit london-y i get that but i also think we've broken down the barriers of that and I think we've got a great sort of bar that people come in and play records and chat to staff and they feel like it's their little wine bar and the terrace and people come and have a cigar or a smoke or have a coffee and read the paper or bring their son when they're hiding from people or you know from the in-laws or whatever you know so it becomes this kind of community asset this clubhouse yeah that's special that's the spirit of the building and that's kind of again just going back to that sense of place Hi there guys thank you so much for listening as always means the absolute world to me before we jump into this episode i need a really big big big big favor i have pitched to some massive guests humongous guests and unfortunately they've said no because my subscriber count isn't big enough please please please just hit the subscribe button on apple or spotify or follow ultimately it helps all of us bigger guests equals better conversations equals hopefully better insights for you which means you can scale hopefully faster with a little less stress as well so please hit that subscribe button and yeah enjoy this episode so one thing you've talked about quite a few times george is this word storytelling and i think it's something like what i'm always trying to do is get people's stories and strategies yeah that's what i love doing how do you when someone walks in how do you like tell that story obviously we're on a podcast right now but how do you get someone and I don't know Tom whatever right walks through the door and how are you getting that to throughout that evening telling that story I think it's just all the little touch points like I know it kind of sounds a little bit mad but through details on on like the menu like typeface like everything has like kind of there's a continuity so we we found like this old postcard when it used to be you know in the 30s and it's got this beautiful font so my brother's a designer uh and did like the branding with me here and like part of that was like this journey process through thinking about all the little touch points and how that goes back to telling people where they are and what the experience is likely to be and kind of like slight nods back to the old school unfortunately we're sitting at an unlaid table but you know our cutlery is like silver cutlery and we use linen napkins and we kind of so there's little touches that kind of always keep reaffirming like what we're about so it's kind of like elegance but in an informal setting and I think that's kind of what in a mad way all there is it's kind of this weird elegant like cool crazy place but not over the top not overstated not pretentious not kind of like you know this is like you'd feel like a bit of a plonker driving down the high street in a ferrari you know it's an understated but very sophisticated town it's got you know great pedigree of awesome people writers historians journalists that live here now you know what sort of writing yeah it's like we you've got everything from you know Orford Way Horowitz up to Warberswick which is the Freud's you know empire with Emma and Richard Curtis and you know here you've got with my one of my heroes again one of my like oh my cool moments when Nick Robinson, like, you know, the guy that you live with every morning on the radio, he comes here, he's to Auburn, he comes to the restaurant.

1:19:01And actually the first person that booked when we reopened, and it was like, Nick Robinson, who's BBC Radio. And, you know, for me, he's one of my heroes. He's one of the great storytellers in terms of broadcasting. And like, you know, having him here was like wicked. You're like, oh my God, this place is mad. you know and I think it attracts that kind of architect it attracts that sort of mindset people love Albuquerque because it isn't flash and it isn't you know and again like here it's respond to those things respond to the the history of the place and the people and the building and try not to be you know yeah we've got bonquets but hopefully they're not kind of flashy bonkets they're not like the the you know like where you sit yeah they're kind of nice they're kind of like of the place and that's hugely important to me like you could have a really flashy sort of mayfair-esque sort of much more plush and velvety and it just wouldn't feel right you know you could still feel like you'd sit here with a linen shirt and a pair of shorts in the summer and you feel comfortable but you might also bring your girlfriend on a date so i guess that's kind of key that journey is all about those little touch points you know things on the menu the way we train our staff is super important like how do you do that i guess i guess that comes back to me hopefully and my my focus is always you know from the first job i had was always home away from home you know you know from old house at home to home house to wherever it's always about making people feel relaxed you know we always joked about the scargo being like this kind of your naughty uncle's house in soho you know you go there and you're like always going to have a good time always going to explore bump into some wild artist or photographer in soho and you know go and be crazy and naughty and like explore explore soho at night and that was always kind of its thing and here you know we're doing the same this is you're coming up and it's someone's home and it's someone in your family that you love and you love coming here and you feel safe and you feel like it's elegant and it's nice.

1:21:05And, you know, that's kind of it, you know, that's, that's kind of, I guess, familiarity, little touches there where dad's picture, it, it always goes back to like constantly thinking about, about that, about like those, the journey through, like, they're just little things like having an art, a picture that we all know. And, you know, you become a living, breathing sort of mirror, don't you? Like all the people in there, because they start caring about the building and they, so they care about the things inside it what's i want to talk about soho and um that as as a that's almost a place with every fucking color of paint imaginable and like hundreds of canvases right loads of canvases no paint right oh interesting so there's nothing well i mean the creative square mile and all that but like in terms of food um what's the connection like it's difficult for these places so great restaurants in london are amazing at celebrating produce you know like storytelling wise yeah but that's like that's down to like amazing shows but i don't know like so had everything right what i was at the barberry on uh sunday which yeah there's i'm so banging that like they do the um uh like the bagel with like loads of hummus wasn't i'm getting a salivating thing of it now um but like it is a real hubbub of of food restaurants i interviewed um gregory martian who's the guy at french did french and he talked about soho as this this something about it right we talked about sauce like what would you what's the most i don't know maybe we can't discuss everything that happened in so those days right but like it doesn't take rocket scientists but what are some like the hilarious or or delicious memories you have of that i'm going to say epochs i'm being a proper wanker today but like in that moment in time well you know yeah i guess it's a moment in time you kind of look back and maybe you sometimes you grimace sometimes you smile sometimes you laugh sometimes you know cry i was kind of at the tail end of that groucho sort of era being like wicked so for me it was always like my solo nights were always there uh after parties the aftermath of that but you know like yeah it was an amazing amazing kind of uh wild thing you know ever since this colony room like you had that the the colony room which was like this legendary bar that sort of started colony clubs like they sort of started this this kind of that that was the origin of the epoch if you want to like that was like you know these people mary lewitt the groucho belcher there these kind of eleanor salvoni who was at lascarga they were these crazy wild like madams maitre d's of the night you know like they were crazy always fucking swearing at people always saying people to fuck off very rude celebrities got the best table you know yeah yeah yeah got to meet eleanor salvoni who used to be she was like the boss at escargo for a long time and this legend like you know a number so many people come here did you ever meet eleanor salvoni and i'm like of course like she came to tell me about all her stories how old was she when you met her oh Oh man, I don't know.

1:24:14She would have been 80s, I think. Yeah, I've met her a few years before she passed away. But an amazing, amazing. They say it was for like these wild characters, gangsters, you know, we met everything. I had, yeah, that was another thing about Luscarga. That was the all walks of life thing that I'm kind of a bit obsessed about as well, which is like, I don't really like, if people, I hate the question, like who's your restaurant for? It's like, no, that's not how restaurants work. restaurants should be like everyone from all walks of life should find something in your restaurant that's your job as a creator not not their job like you know like you should be giving them the choices and like this cargo is absolutely epic for that you'd have like nights where you'd have like terry stone who's that is absolute legendary he does all the foot soldier movies and set up the rave scene in the uk and he's now he's he's a debonair sophisticated fashion guy i love him he's an amazing man you know gone on to do film everything but he's an art collector and you know he's sitting in the room next to some city boy who's come over for a sense of adventure who's just taking a girl on their feet you know you had this massive melting pot of crazy individuals freaks all kinds of people that that that was magic and that does give it its own energy and it is i think it's absolutely unique like in london there's nowhere like soho but it is anything like it in many modern cities anymore yeah it feels authentic this is the thing is that you take it so we take or i take it so for granted like how privileged to just be so close to that yeah it's like you people would would would but you know you've got a thing like the soho the soho we have now yeah like people that are in you know you know the whorehouses and all that that happened people say it's lost its color and it's like no way for me it's amazing if you think the creation of that as a as an area of a suburb or whatever you know like what the james you know so john james at so states what they've done in terms of managing that development and keeping the spirit alive is i think brilliant you saw that that was one of the most brilliant things to come out of lockdown was like that moment where soho closed its streets and did like food outside i don't care you know like i know it came up against uh and like you know you know it at points it was a bit hedonistic right and you had that amazing iconic i don't know if you saw this boy sort of like in front of like he had like a car stopped in the street and the and this car lights were like lighting his body and he was pouring this drink all over him so you know like you see these moments you're like that that's soho it can only happen in so um but yeah no soho was wicked i mean would i would i go back not in a million years like no way oh just because you go through it you live your life you do your thing you do your time i couldn't i couldn't live with i couldn't i wouldn't want to be around me describe like a typical like like not like don't maybe not all the gory details but like i mean i mean i even remember tom carriage talking on a podcast where he said he'd come out and like you'd have uh he'd go out for a ciggy and you'd have all the all the people coming from the theater the theaters because it's not just the restaurant you've got all these theaters it's everything it's literally everything so you know so what like what are you speaking going out with other people from other restaurants like how's it working i i i i was i was just like less a moth to the flame of of of groucho like whoever enabled that that addiction i guess and that's all these things become after a while they're like oh my god you know could go home should go home don't go home oh because you bumped into the coat check from you know family you know from balance you're like fancy yeah yeah okay and then like four hours later lights go on you're like oh fuck still got a martini pack of cigarettes good sweaty yeah yeah of course yeah yeah i think i think really the people and the energy are pretty addictive and you'd bump along with anyone you know like how important uh have you heard of the brand hyatt denim the jeans brand yeah yeah so i've interviewed david hyatt and he said as a founder you got to stay crazy yeah how are you uh crazy and how do you stay crazy i mean if you want me to go first like i mean for me i've got the whole kind of you know schmorgs aboard of obsessive compulsive but like it allows me to do this consistently yeah i think you need to channel a little bit of crazy in you and i'd love to think i've always been like on the edge of uh kind of like tolerable with like my my sort of personality always uh as in you personally tolerable of your personality no well i mean you reflect on that as you get older don't you but like at the time when you're intolerable you don't think you are but like yeah i was certainly i was certainly often on the limit of like hedonistic and uh quite antagonistic by accident i just because i was kind of always hungry like to hear people's stories or learn about people and often that kind of maybe came across in like a challenging way i think i had that a lot when i was younger a bit bit prickly in a accidental way could upset people because i kind of was like always quite i guess asking too many questions or like too interested in what was going on um yeah i mean i i i pushed limits of hedonism for sure and i think that gives you an empathy like to accept pretty much anything and like all walks of life and if you live in Brixton and work in Soho for 10 years then you're going to see pretty much everything you can see and I was putting myself in situations where I saw things I shouldn't see and you know part of that risque lifestyle is I guess that and that kind of hedonism and late nights and working really hard and and and you know burning candles at both ends it was kind of like kind of becomes an addictive cultish environment for sure so you kind of push yourself there when you've gone there super lucky to have come out of it make a few lifestyle adjustments to survive and cope uh of course you have to do that and then then the scars are lessons they're like don't what are the lessons well just to be empathetic with people understand like triggers and how people like for me now i'm a mentor i've got to look after a family of kids some of whom have moved up from london to work here for me or stayed when we came up with the the scargo gang you know some of it's about training and inspiring younger guys and girls to sort of work in the industry tolerate the hours work weekends want to love it you know um i love that scars build empathy well i think so i think right now i've seen it all and i've i've i've unblocked toilets and i've i've sat and danced with royalty you know like that through the members club as well like that you know that's where books are written in terms of if the wolves could speak you know what what you've seen and done and and the clubs that you go to and you know like for sure lucky lucky in that sense and also you kind of realize you know we were talking about you kind of realize none of it fucking matters actually well yeah like none of it really matters it's just it's just stories it's just silliness it's fun and it's lovely but the important stuff is is not you know the important stuff is the empathy and understanding and and care like pierre kaufman wanting to know if the chef is good and going to progress and how they can help that's important that's what this like for me that's what the industry needs or founders in my industry that's what they should be about taking their experiences and they're like fucking yeah hurts and pains and protecting and shielding and guiding the the young because that's our biggest problem our biggest problem isn't consumers isn't products isn't it's it's staff our biggest problem is only staff you know i'm spoiled i can get the best fish the best cheese it's the best vegetables I've told you that I can get it all on my doorstep easy peasy lemon squeezy so what's the hard bit for me what's my job as a restaurant founder is staff to find staff that care as much work out what their sources work out what inspires them walk and that's it and walk them hopefully to the gates that you get to and that's that's kind of it it's it's mad how like the juxtaposition of like and I think both of a great uh fertile kind of territory for creativity but you either have like the like the i believe there's like two types of creativity is like hard creativity have you seen the get back documentary with beatles no oh yeah yeah sorry sick sick so like that that the hard creativity is when they're just they're just going ding and they you know that song get back yeah and he's just fucking plucking away it's like intense creativity like almost a bit like so it's just this intense energy and then he wrote uh paul mccartney wrote yesterday in like eight five minutes and it's almost this lightness i I think when you're up here, when with the sea and like with it being...

1:33:01Do you think like every band needed George Martin there? Like every, like, does the orchestra need a conductor? So, you know, you've got like with the Beatles, like it was tempered, like they could have lost it, but he was like this genius that in that documentary, like alludes a lot to like, fuck this guy put a lot of, you know, like I guess we go back to like talking about mentors, people you can like, for me, like i've got buzz creativity ideas i say yes to everything i'll cook a i was cooking snails over a fire pit during the fucking storm for a shoot you know i'll say yes only i'll try and do anything but you need people around you that also can manage you yeah because i actually i actually think he wrote i don't know what the the songs he wrote escape me yeah but he was there he was like so he was their producer so he like kind of like brings this like maverick kind of the song writers and all the geniuses oh sorry yeah yeah sorry i'm with yeah yeah yeah yeah his son was a regular right you know so these people you hear these great stories about the beatles i mean they were just they transcended it like i'm you know we shouldn't even we should who would you say is the beatles of food i was gonna say we shouldn't even we shouldn't even try yeah who's the beatles of food yeah this is what rick rubin was talking to um you know johnny ive ivan the guys that did um you know that documentary with dr dre and who's the beatles of food i don't know if you had to pick if you had to pick like a chef or a who was so durable and lasted so long well no not not well no because the beatles are only around for nine years about how many albums yeah they just like they banged out and what i liked about the beatles and i talked about let's talk about this for years it's like they just constantly reinvented like they do something ink rip it up start again like they change the way they look they change the way like that is so fucking rare yeah do we have that i don't know this one thing is maybe we don't but like i don't know i think chefs are chefs are sort of guided out they're a bit more sort of tram-lined into sort of having a kind of that's my thing that's my space i'm the i'm that guy i do this i don't know like marco like at the beginning of his career like in terms of trailblazing and like being an absolute legend like harvey's oak room it's got you know marco's got to be up there you know gordon in terms of output you know there's a load i'm british centric as well i guess because there's probably loads of people outside the uk but you know yeah the man yeah i'm loving this we'll wrap it up shortly but the um you talked about helping you know staff so important and I think this applies whether it's a restaurant any business and this is what I find fascinating you said something that really kind of got me going is helping people find their source yeah how do you do that and I as in like it just it seems so essential for for for making people excited come to work maybe I think I think I guess you just get better I guess the experience helps you become better at seeing people and seeing what's actually making them happy and what's bravado and like if you know you've existed in that space where you're trying to enact and you think that act the outcome of that act is going to make you happy and then you realize five years later that's not where your happiness is going to come from once you've gone through that process I guess you become probably better at spotting it and other people um i i definitely say like my experience helped me like kind of again introvert extrovert everyone thinks i'm like absolutely happy and chilled but actually i'm just like crazy like oh god what am i doing i'm not good enough you know um i guess you just have examples as well because i think the thing for me here is like you know i've got this wicked guy called sam Sam Fry who's like, what a find, like local lad, awesome boy.

1:37:05How is he? He's 18, 19 probably now, 18, 19. Local kid, you know, he's grown up in Auburn where there isn't, or suffered where there isn't really great restaurants and places to go. And, you know, and he's now, it's wicked. We kind of like, he's like opened his, like Pandora's box of like experiences and restaurants. And he's going into London and he took himself to hide. and he's, you know, like, it's all these little things. It's just about, you know, it's amazing watching the awakening in someone. And he's so obsessed, like, because of the way his mind works, which isn't, he's not, you know, he's a kid that, you know, his mind works in a very particular way.

1:37:46And it's amazing to watch when he sees the precision of, like, these amazing dining rooms. All of a sudden, whoa, you know, what is, what feels out of control and stressful and overwhelming, all of a sudden finds this calm, peaceful kind of like sense of purpose like oh you know he comes back and he's like oh the way they went to uh 45 to make sure you know he's like the way they did that the way they did the crepes is that the way they did this the way they hold the napkins all the details of the waiters like and his brain's like he's mind dumping he's learning and it's like that's experience stuff like he just needs to see the world a bit and and and also learn how he can apply it in this environment and you know going from someone that like he probably would be embarrassed for me to say but like he couldn't recognize a cabbage at the beginning and now he again he's like out on the floor filleting understanding fish understanding asking the chef where the fish has come from asking to taste the sauce like that kind of journey over a year is like unbelievable like it's cool and you're you've unlocked his intrigue and passion for you know you know it's that kind of just hunger for knowledge that kind of passion and it will it will find itself his his probable thing he'll end up doing is probably photography that's where he feels most confident that's him that would be his canvas right like he he loves taking pictures he loves crystallizing what he sees in his mind in a photograph that's kind of like his language hopefully one day you know we'll get him trained up and he can help with the social media here and like he'll be taking food pictures and like that that would be great and like that could be the start of his journey either within this business or away maybe he'll go to london maybe he'll i think he's got an explorer he might end up going and traveling around um but i guess that's the other thing fear of not losing them like knowing that they're going to go on their own little mad little journey you know my head chef now is you know brilliant what i find like in terms of in terms of 25 so in terms of experience not really being in a classical dining room so like we kind of we're on the sort of you know we kind of straddle like pretty classic and trying to be like a nice brass like modern european brasserie where you have food you really just want to eat you know but we we have a sort of backbone we still got a few guys from who used to work at the scargo and langans and like all these kind of massive institutional kitchens so it's kind of a weird thing you know got a guy called andrew george who's our sort of pastry chef and does larder yeah he's in his early 60s he's seen it done it done it all and he's lived so in the glory days and you know you've got andrew teaching tom you know tom is again just this is a thirst for knowledge i guess asking questions that like knowing knowing and that we've created a really good balance in the kitchen that kind of like d you know samir who's on you know he's on the go he's he's cooked more steaks than probably anyone in britain he was in langans and liskaga and you know yeah so it's good it's good to see them on their journey and find them and then and then that's the only way you're going to keep them that progression and and um yeah i guess you know what you said at the beginning is you have that have that source and you talked about like your childhood and you know going to the laundry and then you go to have that unique source and you add on to it yeah it's like almost you help them find their source yeah and you help them out what makes them so much better yeah yeah because they're understanding they're understanding how to give back hospitality hospitality is the key to it all like that's it that's all you're trying to do like transcends beyond all everything else is that sense of you know when you walk in the door that that person cares because that person understands and that's all that matters like it really is and you know when none of us are perfect none of us produce perfect restaurants that would be you know maybe some people do some experiences can be close to perfect you're like oh my god you know like uh i don't know like what would be your des island neil but like or experiences i can think of you know i can definitely think of places i've eaten and and and restaurants i've gone to where you're like fuck that is pretty close to perfect but then also you experience the same fucking feeling like i said when you're having more free in a plastic tub at a jazz concert you know or or or you're eating lobster on the beach or fish and chips out of a paper wrapper with your dad and you know like the um there's a massive the thing about expectations as well i think yeah why are the expectations like difficult yeah they say like yeah the in between was happiness is expectations minus reality or something like that yeah reality minus expectations i love that and as you say some like when we went down to cornwall like this summer with my family is actually i was at bacon bat place i mean it's fucking revolting me comparing this but but like to a mission restaurant but i was just oh my god it's just like just doesn't look like a little hot yeah yeah yeah this thing is like a parcel of steaming joy do you know what I mean this is so banging it wasn't pretty that good but it's my expectations down here I also just think beauty exists and like anything done and like executed really well like so like I'm not really ever you know yeah each their own do what you do the best you can and offer hospitality and warmth as you do it some people can make it you know some people can make it hard and it's kind of part of their personality and they're rude and you know let's talk about um jay rayner coming in here yeah yeah um what did that feel like when he walked through the door uh describe that service because we talked about imposter syndrome this is a good one because i didn't know he'd walked in the door oh really thank god i was here uh so well not thank god i was here because i saved the day but thank god i was here because it you know it was a it was a great moment so so yeah what how far from from you opening the door like how far into the journey?

1:43:35He was seated. He hadn't had his starters. He hadn't ordered, but okay. No, no, no. Sorry, as in how far in the journey? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. How long have you been here? Yeah. Yeah, pretty, we'd opened the restaurant in the summer.

1:43:54And we kind of, what we're doing or what the ethos of the restaurant was never really, i didn't kind of felt like maybe we were yeah maybe maybe not good enough for that sort of level of sort of introspection of that i kind of if i'm honest and that's that's probably just being hard on myself i guess but like or hard on the place but i didn't really ever expect it wasn't at all what i kind of imagined was going to happen and then like i was sitting talking to another person table six there where did he sit and he sat on table two which is this one on the end there in the middle which i probably wouldn't have sat him on actually if i'd been at the door anyway and you never know so maybe it worked better without my involvement at that point um speaking to a guy called mark and then he was like oh uh jay's here and i didn't even look and i just to be honest didn't think no not in a million years like jay rain is going to be here i just thought i was jay someone he knew was you know i was like wicked i got up and i just remember uh walk i was walking back across the restaurant down down the center of the tables and and jay said george i said oh jay wow good to see you and i i didn't it didn't clock at all i was like why didn't you tell me you know why didn't you let us know and uh and then you're like oh shit you know penny drops like this could be a review and you're like oh my god like we're ready for this is this good like is it is it what you need does this like change people's x does it change your expectations of us does it like move the needle to a place we don't want yet or need or is it really who we are you know all those things like go through your head a million miles an hour then i was just like then you just get overwhelmed by that kind of great sense of like whatever happens like the fact he's here is just awesome and it's an awesome reflection of how hard all the staff have worked you know it's a it's a it's a great moment for like you know someone I've I've got my general manager's girl called Irina who's you know worked with we've worked going we worked out 13 years which is a bit scary a bit mad how anyone can tolerate me for that long it's pretty pretty unbelievable and that's through some of the bad times you know that's that's not always been good um and she you know for her to she left london moved up here has stayed and changed her life moved her life to be here so for people like that to get the recognition and have you know i think jay is one of the very few that has a wicker job and maybe you know there are a few that kind of like get out outside london without it feeling like they're going outside london to right outside London I think Jay goes and finds places that he connects to and relates to and I think that's one of his brilliant things like in terms of that London media thing so for someone to come to our little village past the end of the line you know into this little weird frontier where we kind of detached from that world a little bit like that's amazing and for someone like you know for us to have that I think the last time he reviewed like the Scargo maybe like five or six It was 2018.

1:47:01I read a book from last night and prepped this. Thank you. And Irina and I were there. You know, that was the last time. So you walk over to that table over there and you said the thoughts in your head is almost like, you describe almost like a feeling of excitement, terror. Yeah, yeah. I think excitement and terror. That's all restaurants, are they? Yeah, yeah. They're two sides of the cake. We live gripped, addicted. You're dancing between terror and excitement. Yeah. You go into the kitchen. What do you say to the, how do you, as a leader, how do you take that situation because as you say that for many restaurants can make or break a restaurant like if you get a bad review about jay rainer it doesn't well not necessarily make or break but as you as you say that can set the tone i think i think it would have been really bad if if a place i think in in a town where you've got a critical mass of people probably not so massively impactful maybe in a way but like here like people come because he's written a good review the people come they make the effort they make the journey you know this isn't a place that he's got a lot of influence yeah he's got a massive amount of influence on especially these like traveling gastro tourists you know um yeah so i think you think how did i deal with it good good question i didn't deal with it very well because i was like i uh it's embarrassing i actually i had a moment because i was like half again half like wicked we've created a restaurant that someone is even thinking about coming to even if we get a shit review the fact that we've done that we've done enough to get someone to send jorena here like and that is enough like do you know what i mean like in a weird way then there's like oh my god like i wanted to change the fucking water glasses they're so horrible we didn't do that and like we've got this dessert i hate and i can't believe you might order it and like oh my god like what if the chips what if the potatoes are too sugary that day and they crisp up and like all of those like the main things what if it goes to your head anyway and i kind of went i walked through the little gap there go back that goes through the kitchen and i was like jay rayner's here in the kitchen we're like all right and uh i was like they didn't respond at all tom is like my head chef coolest cat you know absolutely sick sick yeah yeah yeah yeah and i was like i wouldn't say i was on my knees but i certainly was like hunched I was certainly like oh shit like I guess being in London and having such like massive respect for Jay and like what he does I was like oh god you know I actually then it comes down to like right in that split moment Tom and me the chef go right let's just make sure we cook a fucking meal he's gonna love like he connects to you and you know he knows that we are cooking and our staff care about him enough to whether he loves it or not at this point we can't change what we do let's just make it the best version of what we do we had a good crack tom was super chill you know he was like he was like other chefs like especially guys that have been in london if i had a london chef that day maybe the gravitas of what was going to happen or potentially could have happened would have been like way too overwhelming for them so maybe i got lucky he was tom was a bit like your george martin in that moment yeah but he was like super chill he mellowed out he was just like don't you know he's like it's fine we'll do what we do every day every night and then chefs have got a great brainer that we do what we do consistency consistency is key uh it is what it is you'll get the same food everyone else gets i don't believe that i think that's always a bit of providing bollocks i think every chef will be like fucking hell let's make sure it's perfect but like to the front of house they're like yeah mate they'll get what they served you know like everyone else mate yeah that's the chef's line always yeah oh there's no vips but everyone's a vip um chef's always like tom doesn't speak like that he'd kill me if uh uh he speaks a bit more out uh you know he's more like marlon brando he's like he's okay you'll get what it's given it's okay he's he's a very cool cat um so yeah having marlon brando in the kitchen helps um he's very good we we hopefully he had a great night and i think it was in a time where you know time of year where it's quieter slower it was more locals and it kind of had a really nice buzz and fizz and it was cool it was a shame you know i'd love to get him back to stay because we didn't we didn't get him into one of the rooms but like you know hopefully he'll come back and again he just comes up like does like i'd love to know his process yeah i guess i guess i guess normally it'll go through the editor of the magazine so like they'll probably choose the places that they're going to send the the the pens out to you i guess and uh you know you know that goes back to picking you know we we work with crowd pr who are like absolutely brilliant and like that that you know they in terms of a guiding tool as well as a you know talking about that struggle you have when you're out here you kind of forget the rest of the world exists you know you're not really connected to anything and tiktok feels like completely irrelevant when you're on a high street where you can't get access to any of that stuff right we don't i don't we don't have Deliveroo we don't have Uber drivers we don't have getting a taxi at the weekend you've got a book two weeks ahead you know like this is like this is rural England this isn't this is kind of cool what are the what are the thoughts so like when Jay left the restaurant you go to bed that night yeah like you sound a bit like me like I worry about fucking everything catastrophizing of course yeah like it quickly switched to I will not sleep now for two weeks I know so so so So did we actually serve it on that plate?

1:52:36That's what I'm thinking. Did we actually do that? You're like, oh, fuck me. Did we, you know, like, I didn't check the seasoning on that or like, you know, he went, he went through the classics. He went through the food we do really well and we keep on the menu for a reason. And that's kind of continuity back to that. That's what people come here for. That's the journey. That's our, you know, we aren't like, you know, that's our job. That's what we have to do well. and he went through the classics and that was good he went through you know and uh yeah you go you leave and you just think oh fuck and when you read the because the review was gorgeous he gave it was like an ode to his mother because his mother loved i guess that goes back to like i guess i goes back again into this kind of romantic sense i have about like buildings and restaurants as a space and as an atmosphere i think it's very easy to just get too focused on on food like you know sorry to interrupt but this question that's like there's like zonking in my head right yeah how important is the food out of the whole experience in your like if it's out of percentage wise i don't know i never thought about it as a percentage i i think um i think more and more now like uh food has been democratized by like delivery companies and packaging and couriers and you know like when i started my career like restaurants were there any place you could get game and really nice steak and really good wines right supermarkets didn't have it and i mean butchers did but not not the same sort of stuff now you can go to waitress local and get an all right bit of meat and a nice-ish bottle of wine and and like you probably get a really nice steak now in waitress and a really nice bottle of wine because of you know because of what they do and so so restaurants the kind of seismic shift i think actually through supermarkets democratizing good food you know supermarkets get a lot of bad criticism but i think also they brought good food to a lot of people as well that's kind of like i always caveat you know there is good and bad but i think that's happened you know like now food is cooked and people make fucking sushi in their house you know like people people make ramen people make their own kombucha people do everything and it's like so home cookers and we had like jamie oliver stay here that was another kind of like bag mates he's one of my heroes yeah My hero.

1:55:09Yeah, tell me about that. What was that like? I dealt with that. So we, Jamie's dad, Trevor, and Oliver come a bit. They've, you know, Trevor had great places down the road, down St. Merz in Essex. I was going to say, is he from? Yeah, so that's the whole, like, Jamie, Jimmy, Jimmy's Farms down the road. So this is kind of like on that Essex border. Right, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. North Essex, I guess you could. Yes. And they came and, and they came and that was another, I did very, I tried as hard as I could to kind of like hide the fact that, yeah, I'm like downstairs with a shaky knee sort of like, Oh my God.

1:55:46And again, like, you know, this, you know, he, when I used to say, when I use the phrase to democratize it, like what I mean is someone like him, he had the same impact. Like I lived, I lived in Coon Down, you know, with my mom and I watched Jamie Oliver on TV or write a book. And I was like, Oh, bro food. Like, this is cool. like we can make i remember it was a steak sandwich on ciabatta like oh yeah just became like this thing you did on a board and it all became like so like bro food and like wicked and it it kind of made it so it feels so accessible to me and like so like relatable um so yeah for all like the big names that are all great chefs like someone like jamie oliver who's got into every house across every demographic across the whole of uk you know unbelievable unquestionable Do a lot of chefs give him stick because he wasn't like, didn't have the stars?

1:56:36I don't hang out with enough chefs to know the answer to that. No, no, but is that like a thing or is that not a thing? I think you'd have to be lacking in any sort of understanding of how it works to think like that. I'm sure. I heard that on a. I'm sure people will banter it. It's a podcast I've listened to. Well, they said he was not a good cook. No, they were like, they were like, they were basically saying the nightcap with a guy called a restaurant called Insult in, anyway, Meachers and Restaurant. Podcast is really good. Like they just, they have a nightcap after service and they speak shit.

1:57:14Yeah, sick. And they were saying that you've got like Merry Berry, all these big people in food didn't actually work, didn't have, you've got like two sides, right? you've got like your delia smithy mary berry they put jane oliver in that camp which is a little bit that's mad well no no because he's because he's core his source yeah is as rich if not richer than any other chef i know yeah exactly exactly yeah he grew up in a family obsessed by hospitality and food you know his parents are obsessed by warmth family and hospitality that's their like absolute there's a sam walberton bit of a rugby fan sam walberton does this a thing about leaders right podcasts about interview sportsmen and sportswomen and about captaincy and leadership he refers to things called like a compass and like you know your four points these are four points that guide you like you were saying at the beginning your pillars that what's your Danny Meyer thing yeah you know like he's grown up with that compass of like family hospitality you know warmth generosity he's grown up with those things like in spades and his dad was the hard and was until very recently one of the hardest working dudes you know um and you know trevor told me a really emotional story you know i never know what to say i'm not saying you know told me an emotional story about his relationship to some of his chefs and how some of his chefs became really part of his family and when they left they cried and they miss him and he you know still talks about him with tears in his eyes and you know sadly the same relationship you know you end up spending your lives every day in the trenches of these people you become very close and you become a really tight-knit family in hospitality so he's grown up in that so he knows that he's got that coursing through his veins so like don't think for any second like the cookbooks there's tv don't you think that's coming from a place that is from absolute hardcore understanding of what makes people tick what people want and then how to be good at good at cooking and good at hosting and you know that's that's not you know no i think it's probably people who are jealous of it's all comes from jealousy all this shit yeah so what did so anyway so he comes into restaurant with his old man trevor like what did he teach you or say to you or what did that feel like i mean again it's like you you uh my default is just make these people happy you know and do it in a way that you kind of hope i think you end up in a tribe of pretty similar like-minded people you kind of end up whether your foods japanese you know fusion french burgers piece you end up obsessed by giving hospitality and making people feel warm right so the food what is on the plate as long as you execute it you know you can transcend that with the warmth and the hospitality and the host and for me it was just like let's host them let's make sure they have the best night we possibly can make sure all the staff understand i guess again making sure the staff understand how important it is to me and important it is to the people that dedicate you know the head chef the general manager the people that are like in it every day long haul they care about it and then you drag up all the staff with you hopefully like they understand the importance to the founder the boss the the governor whatever you call them the chef you know if the if the staff at every level understand that and get that message and i think the customers know straight away you know that they say all the time the feedback i get about the staff is always positive you get occasional you know oh god they seemed a bit off that day or you know but on the whole like 99 of the feedback about my staff is oh my god they make you feel so at home they go above and beyond you know that's that goes back to members clubs of never saying no, like that kind of like Harrods, was it Harrods?

2:00:59You can't say no if someone asked for something in the shop. They sold elephants or whatever. Same thing in hospitality and members clubs.

2:01:35you can say no, gardia whatever is i can't pronounce his name says in this book it's like being generous and being people that plays is actually selfish it's like it feels so good it's like a thing a few more things but because yeah but loving this mate what's been the hot like we've talked about this journey we've talked about you know jim oliver coming in jay rayner coming in pierre kaufman jeremy lee this gorgeous festival it's gorgeous for anyone trying to get their dream going yeah there are some dark days yeah what have been the darkest days and how have you got through them uh walking absolutely getting a dog and walking uh it's unbelievably lonely coming to a place like this like absolutely lonely because i i'm not from suffolk i don't have i had one or two people i knew before i got here uh fortunately like you know andrew who runs Fisher's Gin, which is a distillery down the road, who I knew from London, awesome bloke, complete, again, completely crazy, brilliant, warm, unbelievably well-spirited, lovely dude.