Jackson Boxer - The Real Reason I Closed Orasay and Opened Dove

35:25Wait, the word you've said that I've, like, you know sometimes you're like a word is kind of, you just sort of dropped it into my head but it makes so much sense now, like sort of lucid clarity is the word you can animate things, you can animate the food is almost a vehicle to animate your emotion and pass it through to the end consumer if you want to call it that or the person in your restaurant let's use that as because i want to talk about um or say to dove um so you've got that that part which is taking food animating it and then that's the sort of the the the feeling you're passing on to someone which is kind of a story that can be shared with someone else i think that's kind of what great restaurants do on the one hand the other hand on the other side of this we were talking before we hit record is like a restaurant has to make money or you can be restaurant with me as you said it can't lose money can't lose money exactly so talk about let's just if we could talk about those two things i mean first of all i'm i've got a i hope this isn't going to be disappointing to your audience but i am not the person that you want to turn to for business advice i i have a long history as an operator but i never got into this to make money um and i've never been particularly motivated by it um and i i've never been good at making lots of money i have friends who are very good at making lots of money, who are very interested in money and pursue it, and it seems to come to them.

36:43I sadly was cursed with an almost kind of total indifference to money for money's sake. But I do have an incredibly finely tuned survival instinct, which means I'm very good at not losing money. As soon as I think I'm losing money, I get absolutely ruthless. And I have almost my poor accountants suffer, as long as they're sending me nice, you know, positive numbers, they can't even get a meeting with me. But the moment they send me a negative, I, you know, they can't get rid of me. Because, you know, I suddenly become fascinated on a totally granular level with where the money is going through the business.

37:22Because it suddenly speaks to my ability to, it suddenly speaks about our ability to survive. With Orise, it was interesting. I mean, I opened Orise in 2019. It was a much smaller restaurant than both Brunswick House and St. Leonard's, which I'd just opened. And it was a really interesting proposition. It was, you know, a friend of mine, a really good friend, who was not in restaurants but had invested in a restaurant and then had been abandoned by the other investors, kind of out of, you know, because he was the only kind of decent individual around that table, kind of paying the bills of this place that was being very badly managed while working.

38:01I mean, he had a full-time job of his own. He was not equipped to deal with that. So he asked for my advice and whether I would help him to get out the weeds. And so we went into partnership together and we gave it a lick of paint. We reopened it and very quickly turned it into a very successful operation. But it was much smaller than my other restaurants. And I needed to impose some kind of creative limitation on myself in order for the idea of taking over a small dining room to be stimulating enough to make it worthwhile. What were some of those creative limitations? Well, basically to be a restaurant that was only about serving line-caught dayboat British fish and shellfish, which was something that I loved.

38:39And one of the kind of weird quirks of our island nation that while we have like the most, you know, one of the most formidable maritime histories in the world, we are not a great nation of fishies. A history of seafaring. Okay, sorry. Britain's dominance over the world was largely predicated on the strength of its navy. um we're an island nation who's always caught fish always sold fish to the world um but we don't any longer eat very much fish ourselves sure um or understand fish or know how to cook it um equally uh we have a great deal of some of the best fish in the world that we do export everywhere else because you know line caught cornish turbot scottish longuistine uh diver scallops these these are you know in in our in our little pool of water this is some of the you know the hebrides the irish coast these are some of the best waters in the world um and as a result we export these to everywhere um but we don't necessarily appreciate them ourselves and so i had this idea that actually to have this small dining room where we are only working with this one thing and because we were small we could only work with this one thing because actually this is a very elite product and there's not much of it going around but a small dining room was probably sufficient to uh to deal with with that you know we could have a relationship with a a small number of individual boats and fishermen and buy directly from them.

39:55And in working in this very direct way, we could have access to this kind of very elite product, but not have to charge a huge amount of money for it. And hopefully, you know, find a little niche for ourselves in the London dining landscape. What I don't think we prepared for was how successful RSA became and how far in the age of Instagram, its influence was able to spread through the world. So we found ourselves, you know, really, you know, while half our audience would be, you know, from our local area in West London and other bits of London, you know, often most of our guests would be from overseas, especially China, especially lots of Americans, lots of Australians, lots of, you know, a huge amount of guests from Asia, which was always very gratifying.

40:42It just meant that our restaurant turned into being this place, which was never intended to where we had to invest a vast amount in not only, you know, having making sure that we had a strong kitchen team, but, you know, also an incredibly large floor team for the size of the restaurant, because first of all, we were working with a product that was quite obscure. So for instance, people would walk into a seafood restaurant expecting to be able to order cod or, you know, sea bass. But, you know, we would only work with sea bass if it was during the season where it's able to be caught we would only work with it from boats that were using lines to catch it and uh you know we had various criteria to make sure that what we were working with was the best product so if we couldn't get that sea bass we'd have something else we'd have pollock we'd have garnet we'd have you know any one of a number of other really fantastic and interesting fish native to wild waters um problem is most people haven't heard of these um and so suddenly you have a menu where of the 20 items, 15 of those items obscure even to natives of this country, let alone people who are operating in their second language.

41:47And so we'd have to invest a huge amount, first of all, in training our floor team about the complexities of what we were working with. Second of all, we had to pay them to stand there and explain the menu in detail for about 10 to 15 minutes to each guest so that they knew what to order. And all of which was incredibly rewarding um but increasingly um hard to justify as a restaurant that was not a fine dining restaurant and not charging fine dining prices and actually if you have 10 servers serving a room that only seats 40 people you need to be charging you know 150 to 200 pounds a head for your food otherwise you can't pay all their their wages and you know london is an expensive city um with the best one in the world even if you were a skin flint and didn't want to pay your staff well you know you'd have to pay them at least a considerable amount in order to be able to afford to live and work in London.

42:34As it is, we believe that the future of this industry is in its professionalization, is in paying people really well for that work. One of the terrible things that has happened to this country, well, one of the many declines in this country is the fact that, you know, traditional well-paid jobs such as, you know, law or teaching or healthcare, which require training and which require dedication, are no longer at all well-paid. and it's remarkable how many of my incredibly talented team are in fact trained as lawyers because they can't actually get well-paid jobs as lawyers but they can get very well-paid jobs in hospitality um nevertheless you know we believe these jobs should be well-paid the problem is if you make if you don't if you set up a system which requires too much labor for too little guest spend um it's not going to work and i think the fundamental reason that oris say was not sustainable was that uh the we were not able to put up our prices or we did not feel comfortable putting up our prices in line with how much more expensive restaurants had become to operate and that's not labor that's largely the cost of utilities largely the cost of ingredients largely the cost of rent going up and up and up and up um and uh orisei is a small restaurant with tables that are quite close together without table linen it's very very comfortable and it's very beautifully designed but it's not luxurious in the kind of ostentatious uh and aspirational sense of the word it's luxurious because everything there is beautifully made and everything there is very special but it's not it doesn't scream uh you know five star you know uh uh you know that that kind of aesthetic that that encourages people to spend upwards of 200 quid a head on dinner um and we didn't want to be that restaurant the problem is we could no longer afford not to be that restaurant and so we had a decision we either pursue being that restaurant and put all our prices up and try and aspire to be a fine dining restaurant or we simply acknowledge that the dream that we had of being a small restaurant working with elite produce uh with a incredibly focused and driven team but crucially doesn't charge ridiculous prices was no longer sustainable in London and that was really the decision to take what had been Orise and instead of trying to bastardize it in one way or the other either make it too expensive or gut the product by working with farmed fish or whatnot we felt that the only the only sensible course of action that was respectful to the legacy of Orise was to draw that chapter to a close and to think of a new direction which you know would hew closely to most of the same principles would work with the same quality of produce, would cook with the same level of flair and imagination and wit and deliciousness, but crucially, crucially would remove certain obscuring factors that made RSA so incredibly challenging to run.

45:32What are some of those obscuring factors? Well, I think the first one would be, you know, for me, you know, menus can do two things. They can either stimulate a conversation where you say, wow, this all sounds very interesting. I've never heard of any of it. Can you explain what all of these things are? or it can solicit your appetite. You can say, wow, that all sounds delicious. I could eat all of that. I wonder what the best thing on the menu is. Let me ask the team. For me, one of those questions takes 10 minutes to answer. One of them takes two minutes. And I think in this day and age, being a restaurant where you're demanding 10 minutes from each of your floor team for each table is not practicable unless you're charging significantly more money than we currently are.

46:09So it was like, okay, cool. Let's think about things that we know people like eating. And I had this experience. I was invited to go cook in New York in November, and I went to work with a fantastic restaurant over there called Claude, which opened a few years ago, has done incredibly well, so much so that they've just opened another restaurant on top of their current restaurant called Penny, which is also amazing. And New York is a city not with all of London's strengths, but fewer of London's weaknesses. It has a booming economy. New York is kind of roughly the same size as London, roughly the same density.

46:44There's not a huge amount in it, but it has an absolutely booming economy because unlike the UK, it, you know, it didn't engage in an enormous act of self-sabotage with Brexit. It's found other ways to do that, perhaps, but we'll see. That remains to be seen. But, you know, nevertheless, it, you know, New York is a booming economy in the way that London simply isn't at the moment. And, you know, I was there and I was cooking there and I thought, wow, this is going to be so fun. I'm going to be so inspired to be in this very, very positive, optimistic climate, unlike London, where everyone's moaning the whole time.

47:13and you know what they had exactly the same problems we did they had uh you know they were still you know really struggling to get people even in this very successful very hype restaurant they were you know struggling to reconcile the cost of operation with what people are prepared to spend there they were struggling to you know get guests to engage with the value of really good produce versus what they were used to spending on cheap produce when they bought produce for themselves at home you know the kind of sticker shock of finding out the distinction between a supermarket chicken and a hundred day old, you know, organic plus chicken from a, from a beautiful farm somewhere, you know, is massive, but you know, like we are not shopping in supermarkets.

47:54We're not shopping at the bottom of the food chain. We're buying the best of the best. And, and, you know, they were, you know, to find that in New York with its very wealthy and very much less economically anxious clientele, they were still having the same issues was, you know, with salutary. And, and I came back with this, also this, this thing that I was very impressed by New York, which is that even the very cool, self-consciously cool, edgy restaurants were incredibly comfortable with having food on their menu that was kind of quite obviously crowd-pleasing, having some variation of a Caesar salad, having a really good cheeseburger, having a really good roast chicken.

48:26You know, they did not consider themselves above doing slightly obvious things that we know people want to eat in a bid to remain, retain a sense of niche obscurantism. And I think that, you know, this was kind of revelatory to me in as much as I felt like, wow, a huge amount of restaurant culture and the restaurant culture I grew up in was niche. It was necessarily niche. It was subcultural. It was an idea that, you know, we are deeply invested in this world, this kind of punky world of authenticity. We know all about natural wines from regions you never heard of. You will like these wines too when you know as much as we do, but you won't because you will never be as deeply invested as we are.

49:04But we will share that knowledge with you because we're generous and kind we're not going to be too cool to share it with you but we're never going to let down the the the the sense of our own superiority for knowing more about this and i think you know it is interesting i mean i certainly grew up in an era where you know uh the internet didn't exist and if you wanted to get into an underground form of culture you had to invest in it and it was deeply rewarding if you wanted to if you wanted to know about underground hip-hop you had to go and hang out in a record shop in soho and listen to a pressing that had just come in on vinyl because it wasn't even on radio here and you couldn't stream it over the you know it was if you wanted to get into drum and bass you had to hang out in a record shop especially if you were too young to go to raves you know you had to wear the clothes you had to try and fit in to just pick up little scraps of information that gave you access to these fascinating worlds of deep cultural resonance um and i think that you know to a certain extent the food culture of of the of the 2000s and 2010s uh was was indicative of that You know, we were cooks.

49:59We were wine people. We had deep knowledge of obscure things you hadn't heard of, but that were really cool and that you would find exciting and delicious. And which, crucially, there was a lot of cultural capital in knowing about. Why did you... I read somewhere that you said, and I thought it was a really interesting piece, about how kind of chefs have supplanted rock and roll stars. And that you said, like, you know, there's... So just to be clear, I was resisting this idea. I mean, I feel, you know, that you know ever since the days of marco there's been this desire to um to to to project onto professional cooks a romantic iconography of you know the the byronic kind of um flame you know that kind of youthful vigor that burns too brightly until it until it expires and and you know and and the rock star they're kind of you know whether that's you know the the the and I feel I feel this is kind of pernicious I feel that this is misguided I feel it's completely sensible culture needs these figures it needs these scapegoats it needs these beautiful young people to reflect the burning authentic passions of youth that we can feel stimulated by feel attracted to feel drawn to but also ultimately uh you know see uh finds kind of um you know in in seeing them burn themselves out, find also a kind of a salutary social lesson that encourages kind of conformity.

51:26And I think that this is, this is, this is very misguided. I think that first of all, chefs have more than enough on their plate without worrying about being rock stars. I think also, you know, the fact is if we want rock stars, we should allow rock stars to exist. You know, the fact is when I was growing up in London, every single pub had a room where you could gig in the back. Every, you know, London was full of squats where a group of young people could live and very cheaply and jam every day and work in pubs and gig in bars. And, you know, there were 10 ,000 bands for every good one that made a success.

51:58But nevertheless, it was a thriving ecosystem of, you know, rock and roll. That simply doesn't exist anymore. Big cities like London and New York can no longer produce rock and roll bands. That's what I was trying, the thread I was trying to pull at is why do you, I think with the vacuum of less amazing bands. We've obliterated the room for culture. We've obliterated the room for culture and therefore we're now thrashing around for anyone else that we can project this need. And you think chefs have come in? Chefs are there. We're there. You know, like. Okay, with you. Yes. Yeah. You know, it's like we still exist.

52:32So we've become the, you know, we're filling that hole at the moment. But it's something I resist. It's something I resist. And it's something that I think reflects poorly upon us. I don't think we should need our young people to destroy themselves in order for us to feel good about ourselves. And, you know, I resist the idea of the chef as artist. You know, I think the romantic idea of the artist as a creative genius is completely misapplied to chefs. Kitchens are teams. Kitchens are an organic unit of different individuals who come together to create something much greater than they could create on their own.

53:06You know, when I opened Brunswick House, it was tiny. It was 10 seats. It was that counter there. and it didn't look like this. It wasn't a bar. This was a big shed full of Lascaux antiques. It was full of bathtubs that they were repainting and chandeliers they were rewiring before they went into their showroom next door. And I had this corner here and I had an old secondhand coffee machine. I had a fridge from Argos. I had one induction hob and I had a semi-functional blue seal turbo fan oven, which I bought secondhand. And I was the only member of staff, essentially. I mean, you know, I did all the cooking.

53:36I had, you know, a couple of people who'd come and help make coffees. But, you know, essentially it was me on my own. And that lasted for a period of 18 months. And it was wonderful. It was exhilarating. I was 23, 24. You know, I felt so charged by what I was doing. It didn't matter that no one ever came. You know, in commercial terms, it was a disaster for the first year or so. What sort of stuff were you cooking at that point? Mostly sandwiches. Mostly sandwiches. Again, this is going to sound completely absurd. Of course no one came. The star item was a bone marrow sandwich. Sounds delicious.

54:10It was absolutely delicious. It was whipped bone marrow, seasoned with horseradish, spread on toasted focaccia with a very, very punchy watercress salad and pickled walnuts. And it was absolutely delicious. The office workers of Vauxhall could not have been more baffled by the idea as a concept or as a reality. There was a very good kind of essentially a meatloaf sandwich made of a very good French-style terrine with cornichons and mustard. there was a very good aubergine terrine that we made a pressed aubergine that was kind of dressed with a kind of crispy chili oil kind of central chinese style crispy chili oil it was it was a really fun creative menu of sandwiches that probably actually looks like quite a lot of what gets served in all of the the very fashionable sandwich bars that london sees now but at the time you know our competition was pret and tesco's next door and we couldn't compete with either of those on price or accessibility so i was just trying to be interesting i think we're probably a bit too interesting for Vauxhall in those times.

55:07But the big change that happened for Brunswick House was we found that the building used to be a working men's club and still had a kind of elapsed alcohol license, which Lambeth very graciously pretty much waved through when we applied for it to be recommissioned. And so suddenly we had a reason to start opening the evenings. And Vauxhall may not have been a hugely thriving area during the day, but there were a lot of people living around here, a lot of people living near enough to want to come and eat and drink in the evening. I only knew how to make one drink, which was a Negroni. So that's all the only cocktail we did.

55:41And I didn't really know how you price these things. So we put it on for five pounds. It turns out that doing a five pound Negroni was certainly more compelling for people than a bone marrow sandwich. And we were very, very full very quickly as a result. And, you know, then the menu evolved slightly. And I was doing things like, you know, we, you know, terrine and toast, uh, grilled sardines, um, merguez sausage and lentils, very, very simple plates. Um, kind of slightly in the style of St. John bread and wine. I feel like that was a place that I had a huge amount of kind of, uh, I remember, I think it was probably still when James Lowe was the head chef there, but you know, I was really, really captivated by that place.

56:18Um, uh, but I was on my own. Um, and I think spending that long period working on my own, feeling the great exhilaration of doing it unaccompanied, but also the, fundamentally the loneliness and the boredom of doing it on my own. I have that like. And the limitations, you know, there were so many things I just couldn't cook that I wanted to cook because I only had two hands. And so ever since then, you know, I've had a very, very deep appreciation that, yeah, sure, you can be one sole individual, but yeah, there's, there's so little you can do as one person and there's so much you can do as a team.

56:54and so this idea that chefs are these unique creative visionaries kind of leading a team of acolytes for me yeah i'm sure there are some cases was that's true i've never eaten in a restaurant which i found wholly rewarding which subscribes to that but you know it is necessary you know it's evidently the case that there are some places that operate on that principle however that's not my ethos you know my vision is that it's a team of a collegiate team of individuals all at different skill levels all at different parts of their career but all of whom are similarly committed to producing a shared vision of what they think delicious food is and all collectively investing in that to create a really beautiful experience for their diners such a like refreshing lens or like just approach and way to look at it, I think.

57:41Well, it also takes a huge amount of pressure off me, I'm going to be honest. I'd love to know what are some of your favourite words and then what are some of your words that best represent the way you cook at your various restaurants? Because the word unimpeachably I think is just a delicious word. I don't know, I think that was in reference to Lyles, I think you were talking about that. I am interested in the idea of deliciousness as an objective concept i mean i kind of feel like the more i get to explore of the world's cooking and london is a fantastic place to explore the world's cooking it's one of the most diverse cities in the world and you know notoriously you know if you want to eat well in london you leave zone one and two and you go and see what's being cooked you know in the places where the rest of the world lives you know which haven't been hollowed out by developers um and such as well you know i you know discovering korean food in new malden you know discovering um you know the the plethora of different subcontinental cuisines in east ham uh you know where you can eat um caroline food sri lankan foods uh food from uh from bangladesh you know each each uh place on the street has like a different speciality of its incredibly rich you know culinary heritage in relation to the region that it emerges from.

59:00You know, the fact that London has become, you know, such a, you know, a kind of, have such a huge population of students from China, all of whom have allowed the, you know, this flowering of regional diversity in Chinese cooking to the point where it's actually very hard to find traditional Hong Kong-style Cantonese cooking in London anymore. Used to be that Chinatown was just Cantonese Hong Kong chefs. Now there's almost none of them left. um you know the closure of hk diner has left a gaping hole until uh the eight opened a couple of years ago which is somewhere i really like at the moment but you know generally speaking you know london has an incredible diversity of food to be eaten uh and and and it's it's a wonderful place to to explore in that regard but it does you know every time i do eat this food i am kind of i'm just like well this is just delicious isn't it it's kind of delicious in the same way that all food is delicious you know and and and uh that that kind of that's that you know that's an idea that i find kind of very very liberating in terms of my own kind of cooking you know that that there is that is a truth that you know deliciousness is a truth um it's there is there is there is a you know and i think that that you know this probably comes from a sense of guilt that as a young cook, I was guilty of playing with culinary ideas that I found interesting, but didn't necessarily find delicious, but persisting with them anyway, because I thought they were interesting.

1:00:27Is there an example of a dish that kind of... My early experiments with fermentation were not good. Before I understood that in order to ferment things well, you needed a scrupulously clean environment. You know, not that kitchens aren't clean, but that you couldn't take a vegetable just give it a quick rinse and then expect it to ferment nicely you know you had to really carefully clean it make sure you weren't taking any dirt with it but crucially you have to leave the skins intact because they can contain the ambient bacteria which is going to stimulate the fermentation process you have to use filtered water you have to use non-iodized sea salt you know these were all things that in my early experiments with fermentation i did not understand and led some very very murky uh flavors emerging through the process that i thought were supposed to be there.

1:01:13You know, I actually personally, I have an appetite for those flavors. I'm, you know, although I don't drink, you know, when I used to drink, you know, really quirky, weird, funky, natural wines, I always found fascinating. I like weird flavors, but I also crucially don't believe that those are innately delicious or should be irresponsibly foisted on unsuspecting members of the public. So, you know, my own personal taste, I do not expect to be everyone's. I'm always looking for where my personal taste intersects with what I believe to be universal good taste you know where what I find interesting and supple and responsive to my very particular kind of my very particular interests also clearly has a scalability in that you know nine 99 people out of 100 will taste it and be like you know what that is delicious delicious that is delicious so delicious almost is the apex of everything you're trying to 100 % yeah what about some of these other words and we maybe talk about other restaurants say here versus dove so you know the other thing that preoccupies me with food is authenticity uh and authenticity is i don't use authenticity in the way that most people seem to use it which is in relation to whether it's truly reflective of the cultural heritage of a cuisine to me i'm not particularly interested in those ideas because i you know this is uh you know i i grew up in london uh where with such a great diversity of cuisines in my face and in my nostrils that I find it very hard to distinguish one cuisine from another in some ways.

1:02:41You know, I respect culinary traditions. And when I go to a country, I love exploring and getting deep on that. But in the place where I live and where I've always lived, all of those things are constantly intermingling. And just like having several intermingling smells at the same time, it's very, very hard to extract one strain from the other, especially when in tandem and in confluence, they're all very delicious. So, you know, I'm not particularly interested in authenticity as in terms of reflecting the true and distinct culinary heritage from which a cuisine emerges. Where I mean authenticity, I'm talking about an emotional authenticity, which is that essentially food can only be happy to eat if it's been truly happy to cook.

1:03:23If food is pleasurable to cook, if the experience of cooking that food is an enjoyable and rewarding one, then the food will have an authentic joy at its core and will inspire authentic joy in the diner. And for me, this is a big preoccupation because it's completely what, you know, it's, this is either, and I say this to everyone who wants to come and work with me, I say, you know, this can either be the best job in the world or the worst job in the world. It's the best job where we all come together in, you know, commit ourselves to doing it as a team, support each other and what emerges from that kitchen is therefore uh you know a synthesis of of all that positivity um it's the worst job in the world where you're divided where you will come in with your own problems where you are resentful of the job and the guests and your colleagues and you know you are constantly trying to find fault with yourself and with the other people around you and as a result you're bringing a sense of embittered resentment to what you're doing and you're not enjoying it and you know i see my job ultimately as being creative the kind of environment where the expectation that people will enjoy it is fair how do you do that though because that's i swear that's the the riddle wrapped in the enigma isn't it about how you get people to um there's a difference between or seth godin taught me this there's a difference between authenticity and professionalism i.e so say say someone's feeling really shit right and they're going through a horrid, torrid time, personally.

1:04:53Or the word authenticity can go, you can pull at this in many ways. If someone comes up authentically to work thinking, oh, I feel like shit, and they're just moping around like this. There's that part which you don't want, but you want professionalism where people come and they bring their, do you see what I'm saying? I can make no sense. So I would say in response to that, that I got into cooking because I was a very depressive individual, that I was naturally predisposed towards depression, that I was a procrastinator, that I was lazy, that I'd always done too well at school without really trying, so I'd never learned the value of hard work, that I was very stuck within myself because my head moved too fast and I couldn't put it into words, that I, you know, I had a huge amount of energy, but I had total fear of expressing it because I was a perfectionist and I worried that if I didn't do something that was brilliant, I'd be mocked.

1:05:45You know, I, as a young man, I had all of those insecurities and kitchens were, you know, the saving of me. I was finally in an environment where I was given simple instructions and all I had to do was fulfill them. And if I fulfilled them, not only was the process of fulfilling them tactile, fun, and, you know, physical, which, which made me happy because it was completing tasks. It was also using my hands, not being stuck in my head. But it was, it was achievable, you know, like get your head down, work hard, pick those herbs, chop those vegetables, and we'll get there. But crucially, it was unavoidable.

1:06:16Lunch will start at 12 if you're ready or not. So you better be ready. If you're not ready, it's going to be hell for you. It's going to be hell for everyone else. Get ready. And that sense of mutual obligation, the sense that if I do my part, everyone else will do their part. That sense that we were doing something as a collective, not as individuals. Therefore, we will be judged as a collective, not as an individual. That sense that in fulfilling our obligation to our team we're fulfilling an obligation to ourself all of which was remarkably valuable to me in dragging myself out of a thinking that was purely preoccupied by my own mental well-being and seeing my mental well-being in the context of the group seeing that having a shared commitment with other people and putting aside my own feelings of inadequacy and taking a leap of courage would allow me to be caught up in the group, supported by the group, and crucially, remove that kind of affliction whereby we can't see beyond our own nose because we're so tortured by our own sense of unhappiness.

1:07:16And, you know, look, if someone comes to me and says they're unhappy, of course, you know, take the time you need. You know, let's fix it. Maybe you're burning out. Take a week off. We'll arrange some, you know, that's all doable. But if you don't come in today because you're not feeling great sure you might feel better in a few hours but the rest of your team who you're not turning up for are going to be left in the shit and then they're going to be miserable and if you turn up nine times out of ten after spending an hour or so in the context of the group working in that sociable environment getting on with it you will feel better now i know that from personal experience i can't force that and i can't insist upon it um but i will say that having spent a lot of my life on and off medication to try and treat myself for the way in which I find life hard, for the way in which I torture myself with my anxieties and my unhappinesses and how debilitating I found that at various points in my life.

1:08:11And having for the past few years lived, you know, blessedly without the need for any more medication, you know, because it had very, very undesirable side effects on me, which I really didn't want to perpetuate. You know, I stick by that. I'm not saying that hard work is the cure for depression. I'm absolutely not. But I am saying that the work that a kitchen engages with is a remarkable cure for a lot of the malignancies of modern life. Well, it links back to what you said at the beginning, which was so beautiful about like there's almost just the because you're cutting something. You don't want to cut your finger off.

1:08:46It's like that sort of almost the jazz of conversation where it's not too, too intense. It almost sort of softens your mind. and there's a lot of music and camaraderie, but it's like you can either sit at home in a pit of self-pity or come here, show up, lunch services at 12, and it pulls you out of the depths of despair, I think. You know, look, cities are hard alienating places. They get us stuck within ourselves. They fill us with senses of anxiety and insecurity. You know, this is a pretty human condition anyway. It's a kind of Promethean exchange that with the gift of consciousness... Making exchange, sorry.

1:09:25Well, as in, you know, like we stole fire from the gods. We stole, you know, the Prometheus myth is that you steal fire from the gods and that we've stolen something divine, which is consciousness, which is our intelligence, which is our wit. You know, we have taken this and our curse is self-consciousness. Our curse is the doubt that we inflict upon ourselves. We have the capacity to look on the world with an incredibly judicious and critical eye and navigate the world in very sophisticated ways. Unfortunately, we spend a lot of time imposing that upon ourselves, which leads to enormous, you know, huge afflictions of self-doubt and inadequacy.

1:10:04That's the trade-off. And you often find this. You know, the smarter people are, the more they tend to inflict their smartness on themselves in very destructive and debilitating ways. For me, the simplicity of cooking, the simplicity of social cooking, the simplicity of standing in a kitchen surrounded by people who you like, who like you and engaging in this collective act of making delicious food for other people to enjoy is a huge tonic to those problems and you know i can't repeat this enough i am not saying that depression is cured by professional cooking i am just saying that a lot of the most iniquitous effects of modern living in the way that we live now and and the way in which it can make us so happy by its nature and almost as a as you know as its purpose in some ways um are um alleviated by coming together as a group and playing cooking is play this is what people don't understand about cooking people are like it's so stressful it's so hard no it's not it's play yes team sport is stressful and hard but it's play it's fun go and look at kids in the playground when i pick my kids up from school they are not like they're having fun they're playing but they are taking it so seriously they're so invested in the worlds that they build for themselves and it fills them with so much satisfaction to to play in this way and and you know that's what professional cookery is it's very very serious play it's like these kitchens in this big sort of metropolis these sort of mini tribes where people get to play and it's like you if the human condition if you if you're in a tribe and i'm playing it's kind of because i've had my run-ins with sort of nefarious mental health things in the past where you just um you're just overthinking overthinking overthinking overthinking it's your brain turns into sort of a just crazy washing machine of thoughts um and i know a lot of founders i think there's a sort of not always i think it's a bit reductionist and a brash um brash statement to sort of or broad stroke brush to say that like everyone's who starts their own thing has their own sort of mental difficulties but there is a kind of come to theme and a lot of people speak to me about this i think everyone does i mean my experience a huge amount of my job is pastoral you know is caring for the people who work with me because not because i'm particularly good at it just because uh i'm 10 15 years older than most of them you know uh there's a there's a big misconception in the general public that you know uh i had this thing the other day i was advertising for a job on social media and it was for a sous chef i saw that yeah on like 44k and someone wrote to me and they say okay you know i know you're a good guy, but 44K isn't a lot to raise a family and buy a house.

1:12:37And I said, how old do you think a sous chef is? And they said, oh, probably 40, 50. And I was like, no, a sous chef in my kitchens is about 28, right? That's the average age of a sous chef. You enter kitchens in your late teens, early 20s. You're already very experienced after two, three years. You can run a section. As long as you want it and you want the responsibility, by the age of 28, you're a sous chef. The average age of a head chef across my kitchens is between 28 and 30. By that point, you're on 50 to 60, you know, good, good money. Um, by, you know, if you actually compare what chefs earn, what young chefs earn relative to the average earnings of a Londoner of the same age bracket, it's an incredibly well-paid job these days.

1:13:16And it should be because they work hard and they do amazing work. But, you know, actually because of the physical demands of it, most people age out of it by their mid thirties. They're stepping up into executive positions or they're taking on consultancy work or they're going into development or they switch careers entirely. But, you know, I think there is a misconception that this is something that people get stuck in for life. Actually, most people who work for me are under 30. And as a result, I take enormous pride and pleasure in helping them navigate the challenges of their lives, not because I know more, but just because I'm older and have already done it.

1:13:52And, you know, they come to me with these questions um i think that uh you know what you said about you know these problems being kind of universal to people who've risen to the top of their professions it's i'm sure that that's true but i think actually the reason is that it's universal to everyone i think the thing is that you're probably just interviewing people who are prominent sure you know i think i think if you were to interview people who are less prominent you'd probably find them having exactly the same problems because i think these these feelings are just profoundly universal to the human condition and what of because i know you've and we don't have to go here so you can tell me to fuck off happily but you've talked about um your struggles with sort of addiction and cocaine and sort of that fast-paced frenetic lifestyle uh talk to me about like the rock bottom of that and how you how you pulled yourself out of that so so i mean i have um when i enjoyed my 20s a lot um i made the fundamental error though of misunderstanding that my adolescence my teens and my early 20s were a stage of my life and not adulthood you know i think when i was in it i was like okay i'm an adult now this is how adulthood feels it's very intense it's very extreme it's really fun it's for big highs and big lows and this is this is i'm alive you know this is this is this is a really authentic experience of being alive all those people living those square lives they're just scared.

1:15:18You know, they're limiting themselves. This is what real life feels like. And that's how it felt for me at the time. I think what no one explained to me is actually that I'm going to wage out of that. And that by my late twenties, my body, you know, I will be slowing down. I will be looking to find a balance. I will be looking to establish a more like ordered and calm and peaceful existence. But I had kind of conditioned myself to not only fear that, to see that as some kind of death in itself. I was like, you know, that is, you know, You live at full pace until you die. Anything less is a compromise or a surrender.

1:15:54And, you know, I was really kind of, I think, deeply committed to this as an idea of how one should live, of what the authentic and good life was. Naturally, my very hedonistic existence, which was all about the pursuit of my own pleasure, really, which was kind of, again, fine when I was in my early 20s and didn't have much responsibility, but increasingly not fine when I was, you know, responsible for myself, my family, you know, the people who work with me, was also undermined by the fact that what I was pursuing for pleasure was no longer giving me pleasure and was making me very unhappy. And I got very, very stuck in a very adolescent mindset, I think, and very committed to it.

1:16:36And to the point where, you know, I'm going to be really frank here. You know, I like I knew I was very unwell. I knew I was very unhappy. I was having very, you know, constantly having very, very dark thoughts. Such as? Self-destructive thoughts, you know, because I was so kind of riddled with unhappiness and shame. But I, you know, I had no desire to change my path because for me, anything different would be, you know, would be a betrayal of my values, I suppose. and I just thought I was cursed with this this this was me this is who I was uh to live any other life would be an authentic so I need to follow my destiny into an early grave um I think it was also harmed by the fact that I was living in a living in a you know in restaurants I didn't feel that I had any I wasn't aware of anyone who'd got clean you know I wasn't aware of anyone who'd you know everyone I knew and looked up to still had a very wildlife you know and it was something that always draw me into the industry.

1:17:36And I just kind of didn't think I could stay in the industry if I didn't stick to that.

1:17:43Luckily, happily, I eventually, you know, got to a place where I was so unwell, so unhappy, in such turmoil that I was, you know, I felt very aware that I had the opportunity, having made many failed attempts to stop drinking and stop taking drugs, that, you know, I had this moment of clarity where I was like, fuck, this might be my last chance. I'm very, very unwell. I'm very unhappy. I'm having very dark self-destructive thoughts. If I carry on down this path, I know where it's going, but I'll give it one last try. I'll just give it a shot. I'll see if I can do it. And I will think radically.

1:18:23I will quit my job. I will change careers, whatever it takes. and yeah I went into recovery I started going to AA I started going to NA I went to a meeting every single day for the next six months I immediately discovered that there was in fact loads of people around me who'd done the same thing who I just was ignoring lots of people got in touch with me you know Phil Howard John Spiteri figureheads in the industry who you know reached out you know Phil I didn't know but he heard and he was just like look I'm here for you give me a call let's have a coffee you know what did he say to you over the coffee well you know we we shared experiences you know and found you know a lot of it was just about finding a common bond but he essentially reassured me that it was possible to have a future in this industry without pursuing that life um which is what i needed to hear uh to make it possible um and i stuck at it um and i am you know hugely relieved and deeply grateful uh to say that i've managed to make it stick for the last six and a half years.

1:19:27It's, you know, I'm very, there's no, I don't think there's any value either personally or publicly in sharing the more salacious aspects to my wild years. It's something I try and avoid talking about because I don't want to glamorize it. Equally, while I did many things during that time that I look back on with regret, you know, hurt people who I love and let people down, and I feel shame about that, I also, you know, I, you know, I feel like I learnt pursuing excess and learning its limitations is a good life lesson as well. And I certainly learned the limitations of excess. I feel now that you know the best the the role I take seriously I suppose is less as a you know an evangelist for total sobriety because I think that everyone needs to find their own path and in fact if I'm totally honest with you I wish I could still drink I miss drinking terribly I feel very I still find it hard not to be able to drink I don't miss drugs at all I don't miss that life.

1:20:40But I do miss wine. I miss being able to sit sociably with my friends and enjoy a glass of wine. It's a hole in my life, but it's one that I'm committing to maintaining because it's given me so much in return. And I think that what I hope is that I can at least be an example to young people who are struggling to imagine a life without it, especially in this industry, are worrying that if they do stop, they'll have to quit their jobs and find new careers. And they don't want to do that because they love their job. I hope that I can show them that there is a path where you can do both and actually find the job much more rewarding for doing both.

1:21:19The bit you said earlier, Jackson, which I thought was incredibly profound, you know, and I said, oh, everyone interviews got their own sort of malaise of problems in their own head. And you're like, actually, that's just people I've interviewed. And it's actually a universal thing. And you said your role now is sort of help people because you're 10, 15 years ahead. um i think there is a kind of a lot of people who are feeling that internal malaise right and you've gone through some really hard parts as i say i wasn't trying to get into the sort of salacious uh debauchery i was more trying to shine a light on how you pulled yourself out of that what are some of the one two three uh ways you know as you said at the beginning you're kind of um you can veer towards depression like what's some of the ways you pull yourself out of that now that could help a lot of people?

1:22:07So, you know, ultimately what gets me out of bed is my responsibility to the people around me. If I don't come into work, the anxiety that that will create in my team will be far worse than anything I'm feeling. You know, my personal anxiety is worth a lot less than the anxiety of the people who rely on me, whether that's my team or my children. And my sense of obligation to the people I care about is ultimately always, first and foremost, the thing that if I wake up in a particularly dark frame of mind, which sadly I often do because I carry an enormous amount of anxiety, I sleep very badly as a result, I work long hours, I have the best life I can have under the circumstances.

1:22:49I exercise as much as possible. I eat very well. What sort of exercise gets you going? I run for pleasure. I swim whenever I can. I, you know, I do weights now and again for resistance. Not, I don't, I'm not a gym guy, but you know, I, you know, I, I enjoy exercise. It makes me feel good. I have to force myself to do it because I don't, I'm lazy, but you know, I feel good afterwards and I know it's good for me and I'm, I'm disciplined. I'm a very disciplined person. But you know, look, ultimately our, our, our sense of mutual obligation to the people around us is what will save us from our own demons you know like every single negative thought we have the capacity to give into in our heads which distracts us from reaching off the full potential that of a brief remarkable life on this planet you know like inertia in the face of you know in the face of all that potential due to insecurity is kind of the worst waste of a life one can imagine right and and ultimately it's not enough to say that like the way to put that into practice is to not think about yourself but to think about other people to think about what you can get by giving by sacrificing for other people by by being of service to other people and for me that culture of service not to our guests but to the people around us you know is is what is so kind of fundamental about you know uh making this you know one of the most deeply rewarding ways to spend my life i can imagine let's talk about margot henson um she's been on this podcast she's wonderful and um i i read again wonderful wonderful writing jackson but you said margot taught me how to get shouted out without bursting into tears she showed me how to work hard on no sleep and remain absolutely confident in the clarity of your own vision she's an absolute force and incredibly talented cook but with the most extraordinary drive and tenacity behind that I utterly revere her.

1:24:56What are some of the underrated pieces of wisdom Margot taught you that are so good that you'd probably pass on to your own kids? I mean I learned so many things from Margot and I still do. She's someone I have huge reverence for.

1:25:14Margot really opened my eyes to the fundamental value of tenacious hard work. And, you know, Margot Woods, I've never known anyone, you know, to, you know, really seize every opportunity life presented with them with the same kind of enthusiasm and vigor. You know, when I was working with her, she'd often, you know, she'd not only work incredibly hard cooking for people all day, she'd then sit down with everyone after the meal and keep the party going, and then she'd dance and you know long after everyone else had cleared up and gone home she'd be keeping it going and then you know she'd be the first in the next day and her ability to produce you know incredibly delicious foods um on very little sleep was was just unworldly um you know extraterrestrial um but you know she had this kind of commitment to both sides like she also understood her obligation as a as a hostess and a host to you know to keep the conversation going to keep the sense of fun going as well.

1:26:15I mean, it's, you know, really a huge amount of my life in my early 20s was trying to live up to the very high standards that she showed me. And, you know, in all honesty, I wasn't capable of it. You know, I burnt out. And she's remarkably not only kept going, she's kind of gone from strength to strength. And, you know, I have... When you say, what, in terms of helping people play? Or when you said those high standards... You know, like what she's built, Rochelle is incredible. The Three Horseshoes is incredible. But, you know, she's, you know, not only maintained, you know, like raised her kids, she's kind of maintained an incredibly, you know, rich social life.

1:26:52You know, she's looked after Fergus through his kind of, you know, his health struggles. You know, she's a really, really kind of formidable person. And I just love how strong her views on things are, how strong her opinions are and how clearly her personality is expressed in her cooking. yeah we'll begin to wrap this up in a sec a few more things mate that's all right um when you said express her personality through her cooking like what how do you do that i mean it's very interesting isn't it i'm very very un i feel like i'm the person who has least access to my own personality um i i would not be able to describe my it would feel weird to have to describe your own personality You know, I know what the experience of being me is.

1:27:40I know how it feels to be me. But I think that probably the experience of me is very, very different to the actual people around me, partly because I'm very conscious of me, you know, mediating myself for their benefit, as in, you know, obscuring a lot of the kind of more tumultuous emotions in order not to destabilize the people around me. but also because you know we're all cursed with a certain amount of vanity and the inability to see ourselves clearly in the mirror and I think we all have ways that we hope we are seen by the world and I think there are ways that we probably know we're seen by the world that we're you know we would probably rather not have articulated it's that kind of terrible curse of listening to yourself described by someone you like without them knowing you're an ear short.

1:28:31Even if you're being described affectionately, it can feel enormously treacherous. I remember once overhearing my dad describe me in very loving terms, clearly speaking about me with reverence when I was a teenager, but I felt so wounded to hear him talk honestly about where he thought I was good at things, where he was scared I struggled with things, that, you know, I felt so, you know, and it was said with so much love, but I still felt this kind of, you know, huge sense of kind of deep, you know, felt utterly thrown by this, you know? And so, you know, having a clear, you know, I don't know how useful it is to know what our personality is.

1:29:24I think we know how we respond to things. I think we know what we're good at. I think we know what we're excited by. I pursue my enthusiasms. I mean, I think my personality, if it's anything, is defined by maintaining a hugely positive outlook and disposition towards life by exclusively pursuing the things that inspire and stimulate me and scrupulously avoiding anything that depresses and bores me. And this has positive and negative effects. It's why my accountants find it so hard to pin me down and get me to sit in a meeting or read a spreadsheet. It's why my managers tear their hair out that I'll never sit down and, you know, sign all the contracts I'm supposed to do or, you know, read long emails and make decisions about, you know, business strategy.

1:30:08But it's also why I feel like I'm the best boss I can be, which is to say absolutely not perfect, but at the very least a force of, you know, positivity and enthusiasm within the business. because, you know, really I privilege entirely the things that I enjoy doing, which is cooking, over the things that I don't enjoy doing, which is reading spreadsheets. And I love what you said there about I don't necessarily know my personality, but Margot is great at putting her personality in her food. Earlier you said what we're doing is we're mechanical, we're taking different ingredients and we're animating them.

1:30:43So Margot has a very, very complicated personality, as most brilliant people do. I think that her food in its boldness, generosity, warmth and soulfulness reflects all the like most marvelous sides of her nature. I think, you know, she's also, you know, she's fierce and ferocious and daunting. And that actually isn't true of her food. You know, I mean, I... Daunting how so? Well, she's got incredibly strong opinions and is very, very, and likes conflict. and I you know I really love that about her I love getting into an argument with her about things we disagree on but she's still someone I'm you know I'm scared of very few people but I'm still still very timid around Margot yes yeah it's interesting because she was saying to me like with with she'll say to the chefs at Rochelle is sometimes don't make it too perfect she'll go in to be like you've made that too perfect and she was kind of saying terrifying yeah yeah she's like That would terrify me.

1:31:40Yeah, what the fuck do you say to that? It's, yeah, but it's interesting just seeing the two different ways you kind of operate. You said once, you said, if you're a chef and your job is to cook people dinner, your world is so much bigger than the food world. I'd love to know who are some of the most interesting people you've met or come across on this wonderful journey.

1:32:11one person who I think deserves a mention um I had a brief academic career I spent two years up at Cambridge reading English um before I got very bored and moved back to London to pursue ultimately pursue cooking um uh without finishing my degree um I loved it for the first well I loved it for both years I loved reading I loved having this thing where I just sat and read all day um It was amazing. I had a few very, very inspiring teachers there. One in particular. But they all completely dropped out of my life when I left. Obviously, they were very disappointed in my failure to live up. Did you drop out after two years?

1:32:51Failure to live up to their expectations. But Pete DeBolla, who was the head of English at King's College, Cambridge, where I studied, who was of all of them the man I you know I had most you know most admiration for suddenly turned up in one of my restaurants about must have been about 10 years ago now so after not seeing him for probably about 15 years or maybe less but whatever about a decade decade in between and announced himself to me said you might not remember me but I'm Pete I taught you at university I said Pete of course I remember you this is amazing to see you and And we, you know, formed an amazing friendship.

1:33:32He's one of the most brilliant, interesting, eclectic minds I've ever had the pleasure of engaging with. And we then having, you know, you know, having revered him as a young student, we became kind of good friends through the medium of food, which is something he knows vast amounts about. And he's even, you know, he's an incredible cook. He's a better cook than I am. No question. He's just one of the most. And you found this out after you'd been... Yeah, subsequently. Oh, wow. And, you know, one of the most naturally gifted and talented cooks I've ever had the pleasure of engaging with. To the point, and, you know, that for me has been a really...

1:34:13I've met many famous people. I've met many prominent people. I've had fun hanging out with them. But, you know, actually, you know, it would be very boring to just name drop at this point. But the most meaningful connection I've ever formed with someone through cooking is this man Pete DeBolla who's retired last year and it was my great honor to cook his retirement banquet at Brunswick House and he had a big symposium in London where academics flew in from all over the world to read papers. What sort of stuff had he written about? His specific interest is, well he has many interests but one of his specific interests is is the sublime uh within within you know romantic literary and kind of artistic theory and where you know what what's what this what this is about really what the human experience of engaging with the sublime signifies uh which is something that i find just endlessly fascinating um because it challenges every single atheistic materialistic assumption i have um and you know uh it i mean it's got it's a whole topic of conversation for another time but anyway i I cooked Pete's retirement banquet and we had academics flying from all over the world to honor him.

1:35:23And I cooked this menu for him. What did you cook?

1:35:29So there was a course of turbot with sauce. It was very classic. Turbot with sauce van jaune. Roast beef with a very, very delicious bon marajou. There was a very, a really fun challenge. You know, he said, I don't like puddings. I just would love a really good chocolate sorbet. and uh and you know i was like look my chocolate sorbet is good but it's it's not the it's it's not the best i'm gonna i'm gonna make the best chocolate sorbet i spent about two months making chocolate sorbet every day until it got really really really good um and yeah he was he said it was the best chocolate sorbet he'd ever had which made me very happy um that that for me to form a meaningful connection like that with with someone who i'd had so much reverence for as a young man who felt so kind of utterly stratospheric in terms of their intellect and their wit and their knowledge.

1:36:19And then to form that very, very direct and authentic connection through my cooking. And then equally to find out that they were also an incredibly gifted cook, more gifted than me, but still liked my cooking. That was probably more meaningful than any famous chef I've ever cooked for or any famous actor or musician that I've ever had the pleasure of meeting through my cooking. And probably will remain so, I hope, for a long time to go. quickly on the sublime because i was speaking to uh nina about this yesterday about like um marcel proust and prussian moments you know those moments that like i think he says about the sweet smell of madelines and like a parisian bakery and it like i think it is there's something about food that gives you that sublime moment where you start like really not even like just living but like experiencing everything's in like 3d and like high definition i think you can get that with food but what's pete taught you about the sublime and how does that sort of link to food how do you think food plays as a role in the sublime because i think it does but i just would love to get your take on it yeah i i mean i suppose i i feel that i've never had a sublime food experience and i it's not that i don't believe it's possible for some people um what's your definition of sublime first so a sublime the sublime is where we're exposed to a moment of artistic wonder where the universe opens up before us and we feel a deep and intimate connection to a kind of a fundamental higher reality of existence which is not immediately apparent in the material plane.

1:37:52And, you know, for instance, there's the implication of feeling both a sense of oneness with everything but also a sense of profound insignificance. and it can be achieved through the contemplation of death. It can be achieved through meditation. It can be achieved through a particularly resonant sunset. It can be achieved through music, I think. Music has a sublime capacity for sure. And I think art does and I think poetry does. And, you know, art, poetry and music are three of my great preoccupations outside of food. They are the kind of, you know, they're my kind of real personal pleasures.

1:38:30you know when my children are asleep at night and I'm on my own um and I you know I feel that time listening exposing myself to new sounds and reading music do you do um I well I I had you know I I did what I think lots of people do uh and stopped listening to anything new at the about about the age of you know 30 uh and suddenly realized this a couple of years ago that I was still listening to the same records I listened to as a teenager because as an adolescent everything I heard hit like so fucking profoundly and you know i was no longer able to feel new things in that way so i just listened to old things that you know yes in proustian terms had this nostalgic capacity to reconjure a period of my life where i felt things incredibly keenly um i've since realized that this is just due to a failure of imagination on my part and that i should just work harder um so you know i i listened to a lot you know i listened to the you know i listened to like nts radio a lot stuff like anywhere where I'm going to be exposed, not necessarily to new contemporary stuff, but new anything, you know, could be, you know, jazz from the seventies, you know, could be ambient music from the sixties, you know, whatever it is, it's, it's new to me and it's, it's challenging my preconceptions.

1:39:42Um, and, and I find that like an incredibly rewarding thing to do. Um, but you know, I think music has the capacity for the sublime. I was talking to my dad about this the other day and actually talking about how I've been trying to understand classical music which has never been a preoccupation of mine um but i found it very uh sentimental uh and very inauthentic and he was like well no you found i find most classical music within the european romantic tradition very very you know it just doesn't speak to me yeah um you know bach i love uh and and i love a lot of contemporary uh you know more minimalistic uh 20th century classical music but you know mozart beethoven i've never formed a connection to my dad was like no you've got to listen to it live you've got to go and you've got to sit in that auditorium and feel it you've got to feel it you can't understand it from listening to it through speakers unless it's a huge sound system it's got to be felt and he's right i did i then did and i was enraptured utterly enraptured um and and you know you know i realized that i my my appreciation of bark was purely intellectual uh and that that was what i was i was kind of you know dazzled by the intellectual incredible intellectual kind of uh construction of it but that actually the emotional thing of hearing it played in person just touched pits of my body and mind that I didn't believe were possible um and I suppose it's kind of you know this is going to sound really I remember discovering electronic music as a teenager which had you know I grew up as a teenager just listening to like punk and rap probably uh and never really had much taste for electronic music until I remember you know going to uh you know going to a rave at the age of about 16, 17 and being exposed to proper techno music for the first time on a really good sound system and just hearing levels of music that I just didn't know were possible.

1:41:31What sort of techno do you like? Oh, I like all sorts of techno and I like all sorts of electronic music now. I have a kind of voracious appetite for electronic music, but I also listen to it less and less because I only really enjoy it on a very big sound system in a club and I enjoy it around other bodies. I don't really listen. I don't enjoy it nearly as much on headphones. So it's less a part of my life these days um but you know i think music music has the capacity for the sublime uh art has the capacity to provoke the sublimeness poetry you know has the capacity to provoke the sublimeness i you know and again yeah i think nature does i think you know i think to to sit and gaze out at the sun as it sets over the horizon uh is is is to be confronted with both your incredible significance and insignificance at exactly the same moment in a way which is impossible to fully comprehend um and that is that is the that gives you a whisper of the sense of of kind of what the true reality of existence is um and you know that's what i'm constantly seeking but it is not in food for me food is food is fuel fuel is sustenance it is emotional fuel it is deeply human the sublime is inhuman it comes from completely outside of us wow um just personal question here what are some of your favorite books because i'll i want to just personally go and read them or like or like some that you think are pretty profound you'd recommend it could be fiction

1:42:55um

1:43:06i recently uh i recently we read a book called the transit of venus by Shirley Hazard, who is an Australian writer who lived most of her life in New York and I think is the most incredible prose stylist. And it is a very good book. It's a very, very incredibly astute, intelligent book about the impossibility of love between intelligent people. And, you know, for me, it's a very good book to read if you're emerging from adolescence into adulthood, into true adulthood, and can no longer, you know, the possibility of falling in love with total abandon as we're kind of conditioned to understand romantic love is any longer possible.

1:43:55I just, I really liked it because I hadn't read a good piece of, you know, realist fiction, I suppose, for a very long time. I'd read a lot of, you know, more ambitious experimental stuff, a lot of contemporary, you know, first person stuff, but, you know, just a kind of a straightforward narrative framed around the impossible love between two complicated individuals and the whole, you know, a very, very

1:44:29uninhibitedly straightforward attempt to account for the reality of human experience via multiple voices was so refreshing and rewarding and brilliant. And I loved it. I really, really enjoyed it. And it actually started me reading fiction again for the pleasure of reading fiction in a way that I probably had been forcing myself to read interesting fiction and contemporary fiction, especially a lot of things in translation, which I find often at the moment more inspiring and more interesting than a lot of contemporary stuff published in English. But nevertheless, this book kind of really gave me a taste for 20th century English language literature again.

1:45:11And I heartily recommend it to anyone. Final question, because I know you're about to open, but what's one truth you believe that most people would disagree with you on? I don't think I particularly believe anything... First of all, I think there are very few truths. There are very few things that I believe to be fundamentally true. and I think that most of the things that I believe to be true were they expressed in simple terms would sound incredibly banal. You know, make your life about service to other people. You know, love. Love yourself. Love the people around you disinhibitedly. You know, this will give you, you know, figure out what you believe is right and wrong and then live by it scrupulously.

1:46:00you know these are the kind of fundamental principles that I try and live by that I think are the kind of nature of a good life a life worth living and a life where you will ultimately be of more service to people around you than you can expect in return but you should expect in return because by doing good you spread good that will come back to you I believe that and I believe that only through that optimistic vision of shared human living will we build a better world um i am you know a committed utopian and even though i i have no theoretical framework which i can kind of sensibly construct that i do believe a better world is possible uh and i will never stop wanting to believe that and i will never stop being committed to that idea um even if it's only just because it gives me the hope necessary to carry on.

1:46:55I've absolutely loved that. Thank you so much. I'm super grateful. That was wicked.

1:47:02Thank you so, so much for listening to the podcast. I really, really do appreciate it. If you liked that episode, only if you liked it, please do give it five stars, subscribe, tell all your friends, families, foes, next door, but one, cat, dog, whatever. Please tell everyone about this podcast. It means the world to me. And I really want to understand what your pain points are as the new wave of challenger food and drink brands please do hit me up on linkedin search dan pope and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands thank you so much