Michelin Star Chef: How To Build A Restaurant That Lasts 20 Years - Adam Byatt

0:00It was sexy, it was cool, food was becoming interesting, serving food to Kate Marston, to Naomi Campbell and Claudia Schiffer and people like these. London was about as cool as I've ever seen it. You were awarded the Michelin Star in 2016. When you were awarded the Star, how did you feel? I remember sitting there thinking, okay, how do we get two stars? Adam Byatt is a world-renowned Michelin-starred chef and founder of Trinity in London. Over the last two decades, he's become one of the leading voices in British cooking, alongside appearances on Great British Menu and MasterChef The Professional.

0:30I cook my heart out 16, 18 hours a day with no care in the world other than being the best version of me I could possibly be. I've had moments where the push doesn't seem to justify the pull. And you know what as well, Aberta, everyone seems to be very focused on the exit, selling for 10x, doing this, whatever. I'm all about the journey. Most restaurants don't make it to their third year and you've been 20 years rocking it. If you were to condense your biggest lesson learned that allowed you to achieve these 20 years of success, what would it be? I mean, the obvious answer is...

1:18Adam, you are one of the most respected chefs in the UK, also known as the Chef's Chef. can you please take me back to your childhood what was it like growing up and when did you fall in love with food sure um i grew up in essex in a very working class simple upbringing but a loving home you know my parents still together um my father incredibly hard working My father was a window cleaner for 40 years. He had a round in East London and was up very early every day, home late, worked an awful lot. Mum was a stay-at-home mum. She was a chef for a while, so she cooked at home with us and gave us that sort of nourishment, and she was the main figure in the household.

2:15But ultimately, it was a loving, happy family. Simple, working class, you know, lots of good community stuff going on there and all that. But I look back at it with happy memories. Holidays were simple, but they were joyful, you know. I've got an amazing sister and it was just the two of us, my mum and dad. Did mum teach you how to cook? Yes, I was always interested in what she was cooking. She cooks a lot at home from scratch, from her training and stuff. So food was interesting in that perspective. And I think I definitely showed an interest and lent into that a little bit. I don't necessarily think that's what sparked me to become a chef.

2:58There were a few pinnacle moments. I, at the age of 14, I did a French exchange. You could go over to France on the coach and go and stay with a family in Lyon. And I did that. I took that up. I was studying French at school. and I you know you have to remember I'm in I'm in a fairly simple working class family we land up we land in in in Leon I get shipped off to this family they live on a farm and I remember it vividly the lady the mum of the house comes over we're in an open uh dining room big country table big flowers and she comes over in a penny and she gives me a glass of milk which is from their goats the starter that we're all having together is a whole artichoke vinaigrette you know where you pull the leaves off and you dip in the vinaigrette and this was this was alien you know this was like a whole nother world to me i was i was and then that week i i went to school in france in in with with this young man that he then obviously came over to stay with us in england went to school with him and i got to experience school dinners in france and we went to the he would leave school and we'd go to the boulangerie and pick up a baguette for his mom and maybe take a small canelé or a madeleine or financier.

4:14Very different to my upbringing. And I think that really landed with me as something that there is a whole other world of food out there that's really exciting and really interesting. And it grabbed me. It really grabbed me at that point. I can't say that's why I became a chef, but it definitely was a pinnacle point for me. and then so i think you've got a combination there of sort of that mum mum is cooking at home really nice home food i do this little work experience thing i've also got uh godparents who are a couple two men who are together they were evacuated with my nan this is a nice story actually they were evacuated with my nan during the war ended up living next to my nan and they became imagine being a gay couple you know during the wartime yeah trying to hide that and you know it's hugely beautiful people and you know they they had trouble in their lives all the way up to the 80s you know people on you know giving them all sorts of trouble but they were they were my godparents and they were um one of them was and they would take us to restaurants they had a little bit more money they would take us to restaurants in east london walthamstow that sort of area really beautiful italian restaurants and i'm talking about italian restaurants with Chianti bottles and plastic lemons and all that sort of stuff.

5:31But, you know, the waiter would bring the dessert trolley up with a big bowl of oranges poached in caramel. They'd take down a Dover sole for my mum on the trolley. The wine would have the straw Chianti thing. And I would go there probably twice a year with them as a couple. And then when I started my college, they bought me a set of knives. They bought me my first whites. They, you know, they gave me a little bit of money to help me. So they were very supportive. But it was that introduction to restaurants, I think, so all of a sudden you're building up a bit of a picture, right? And for me, it was about escapism, actually.

6:07It was about I needed a route out of this. I needed an escape. I needed to create my own currency, and I needed to create my own world. So I think I was really building up a little what works for me. So this restaurant thing was really exciting. I loved being in these restaurants, seeing everybody. It felt amazing. I love that experience in France. I love that my mom was cooking with me. I was studying home economics at school, arguably because it was full of girls, the classroom, rather than because it was interesting and it was less academic. So I think the picture was building up, and I think that's what the foundation of my introduction to food started.

6:51Thank you. That paints a very good picture. it seems to me that from all these different experiences around food at home through your experiences in france in east london you perceived the gastronomic industry as a very refined culinary art rather than flavors in the most simplistic form of it right because right now the restaurants that you own particularly trinity it's a very refined restaurant was that something that was instilled in you the finesse of the gastronomic industry since you were very young no i don't think so i don't think i had any understanding of that at all i think it was more about i've viewed restaurants as an unobtainable luxury item that was way out of my league or understanding our our restaurant experience as a family was harvester or that you know it was very very simplistic and basic didn't mean we didn't have a great time didn't mean we had a you know we love spending time together as a family it didn't make any difference but it was it was simplistic but to see restaurants like this and then look when i eventually move in and and take my apprentice up apprenticeship up at clarity's you know i'm looking at high-end luxury brand like clarity's and thinking well that's way out of my league i i belong in the back door definitely yeah and i belong in the basement and I belong probably on the pot wash.

8:22You know, that's where I belong in this ivory tower of somewhere like that. What made you think that? Well, I think because of my upbringing, where I was from, my dad was a window cleaner, we were working class, we were a very simplistic upbringing. I'd never been exposed to luxury, never seen luxury. Didn't particularly aspire to it either. I didn't, not something that particular, I liked nice things, but I wasn't particularly, I wasn't sitting there thinking, I want, you know, I want to be that guy that wants all these things. And it also wasn't like that back then as well in the 80s and stuff.

8:53It wasn't really like that. You were pretty happy with what you had and you made the best of that. But I did enjoy working and I enjoyed earning money. So I enjoyed earning money so that I could buy more skateboards and buy better trainers or have things, but not luxury things, just more normal things. but I enjoyed working and I enjoyed earning money and I think that comes from my dad you know I had a paper round when I was very young then another paper round then I subbed out a paper round to someone else and then I would then I had a milk round eventually got a milk round which I know I'm exaggerating that but it was a big thing at the time you had to be on a waiting list to get a milk round but it was the one that paid the big bucks you know it was a great thing working my dad I went to work with my dad a lot when I was young.

9:45And then eventually, while I was at school, I got a job, a Saturday job at Primark. Worked at Primark as a Saturday job, plus the paper round, plus the milk round, plus working with my dad. And all of a sudden, I was actually earning quite a lot of money. And when I came to do my apprenticeship at Clarities, I got the job as an apprentice. They offered me my money, which is£72 a week. I was earning more than that already. So I had to say to my, you know, there was one conversation with my dad. I was like, I'm earning a lot more than that already. Why am I taking this job? You know, but obviously I knew that that was going to lead to a career move.

10:21This wasn't, you know, my, my current hustling wasn't really a career move. What did Claridge's teach you? Claridge's taught me to be a chef. It didn't teach me to cook per se. It taught me the fundamentals of cookery and it taught me to be a chef and how to operate as a chef in a hierarchy in a huge establishment like that where you were surrounded by grown-up people i walked into there at the age of 15 there there was a brigade of over 100 chefs and there were a lot of very grown-up men and women there they were doing this for their this was their job they're paying mortgages they have children this is a grown-up place this isn't somewhere that you can mess about and so I learned to slot into that hierarchy I slot I learned to you know I definitely hustled my way through the hierarchy a little bit and managed to kind of play people off and I started to learn a little bit how to talk to the kitchen porter but also talk to the sous chef in one way and also talk to your peers your chef to party peers with you as well so i'm starting to sort of understand how to work this field a little bit whilst learning to cook and learning to sort of stay out of trouble and learning to grow and progress i think um but over the course of that was a nearly a five-year journey for me at clarages yeah it was a five-year journey and i think over the course of that very very instrumental years for a young man to walk in there at 15 and leave at 20 21 whatever everyone was 21 i think i left that's instrumental years for a young man's life you you know you're going through all sorts at that point and a lot happens to a young man in that world so actually it very much it shaped yeah me as a young man growing from you know boyhood to manhood you know it shaped me so yeah i mean you were incredibly young i mean most apprenticeships right now are from the age of 18 or early 20s and you're already an adult right but uh 15 you're literally defining who you're going to be in the future and who you want to become why did you stay five years that's a that's a pretty long time especially for a 15 year old boy yeah it was it was a long time the reason is i i was very lucky i started there and i and i i took an apprenticeship at a local college in Essex where my family was from and it was a day release so every Wednesday I would go to the day release college but it was four ladies that wanted to be dinner ladies that were doing their primitive course I was there as well we'd share an avocado and we'd make an make a prawn cocktail this wasn't high-end luxury this was very simplistic cookery style but after a month or so at Claridge's they called me aside and they said listen there is a new course run by the Royal Academy of Culinary Arts.

13:19It's, you know, it's been going only for a year and we scholar between 12 and 15 students from around London, from high-end establishments, mainly the Savoy Hotel group. And we've chosen you to go on that course. It means you will be going to Bournemouth. So you're going to leave London. You're going to go and live in Bournemouth and board there and go to college there in Bournemouth and then you're going to spend the next four four years going backwards and forwards on block release so six months of college nine months at Claridge's six months of college and you repeat that for four years and then at the end of it you work another year with us at Claridge's um but your mum and dad have to guarantee this course and you have to stay on it and it was a very serious thing and it was the first time academia made no sense to me school made no sense to me.

14:11I had a really, really torrid time at school and it just didn't make sense to me. But this was the first time that academia really made sense to me. Once I got to the college and I was surrounded by like-minded people, I loved the subject. I could really immerse myself in the subject and I became really good at it very quickly. And all of a sudden, for the first time in my life, I had currency and I had somewhere to go with this. I had something about me. I could feel proud, chest out. I feel like I'm going somewhere now. And that's when I think everything started to click for me. From the outset, it seems to me that you tasted what success feels like or looks like at a very young age.

14:53Because Claridge's, and for those who don't know Claridge's, particularly the ones that don't live in the UK, it is probably the most well-known hotel in the country. Very well reputed, a five-star luxury hotel. Yeah. And being able to work there at such a young age, it's almost like saying, well, I've already made it to the very top. How did that feel? How did your definition of success and your feeling of success shaped during those early years of your life? Okay. So I definitely didn't look at that and think that was, this was about chasing success. And I looked at it again, we're still on that escape thing.

15:28My dad said to me very poignantly many times and for good reason you will only be as good as the people you surround yourself by which in in in sort of nowadays business terms is sort of talking about you will become the sum of the parts of the free people that you spend most time with right yeah and he was right and i was hanging around with people that were pretty you know celibrious and whatnot so he was right about that so when i went to clarages all of a sudden i'm i'm mixing with people that are going somewhere i'm in a hotel that is clearly full of people that have got somewhere yeah and i can see an escape route out of essex and this all starts to make sense so actually i'm chasing the escape still and i'm trying to surround myself with people who are going places doing stuff actually achieving things and so that i think was the main appeal there is food in here there is definitely still food in here but that's like the the glue that's keeping me stuck to all this okay it's the bit that's interesting for me because it's really stimulating i'm i'm grasping it and i'm taking it on really quickly and i'm learning it but it's more about that surrounding and that environment yeah and i also then was with a girl who's now my wife and she also had that same aspiration to escape from essex we both lived in essex we both went to the same school together and she wanted to escape too.

16:54So this was, and she was working in the city, a law firm. So for us, it was kind of, this is how we're going to get out of this. This is our route out of Essex to build a new life for ourselves. There was nothing wrong with Essex, but there was no aspiration there. For us, there was no, people were happy with the norm, were happy to be comfortable, were happy to just toe the line. And I wasn't happy with that. I wanted more. And I wanted to surround myself with great people that were going to potentially help me to become more than the sum of my parts, if you like. Out of my deeply respect and admire your honesty, I think the easiest way out of this question would have been you saying, well, since the age of 15, I was in love with food, and probably that would serve you very well from a marketing standpoint, because you're a very well-known chef, well-reputed, with Missionist Stars, about to launch your book, and that would sound like a better story, but the reality was different, and you're sharing with me the unfiltered reality.

17:49I needed a way out from Essex, from where I didn't want to be. I wanted to go places, and this was your escape route. So I appreciate that. Then let's fast forward those five years. So you finish your apprenticeship at Claridge's and your studies. Then what do you do? Well, then the thing that really defines the rest of my life happens. There's obviously Marco Pio White at this point. so we're around 1989 somewhere like that mark of pia white is very much coming out of the kitchen causing the noise that he's causing the rue brothers are on television floyd's on television raymond blanc is on television it's exciting for food and and food starts to open up in this country in the biggest way it's ever happened right so the rue brothers have set the gavroche which has ultimately you know set the path for so many restaurants in in in this country and i was i I was finishing Claridge's and that really, really appealed.

18:48There was a rock and roll part to it. It was sexy. It was cool. Food was becoming interesting. And I just wanted to be part of that. I couldn't work at Harvey's because he had just left Harvey's in Wandsworth. Good full circle chat with that in a moment. But so I left, I left Claridge's and I basically wanted to work as closely to that as I could. So I found that a chap called Philip Howard, who was working at The Square, Philip Howard had been at Harvey's with Marco and was now at a restaurant called The Square, which is in, currently was in King Street in St. James, very close to your place.

19:26It was a mission-style restaurant and I just applied for a job there. I walked in there and all of a sudden, I spent the next four years of my life there, but all of a sudden, everything came together. I connected with this restaurant. I connected with the food I connected with the chef I connected with what this was about and it was rock and roll and it was cool and it was frenetic and it was sexy and it was of the moment but it was but it was intense it was a level up of intensity from where I've been at Claridge's but I loved it I just immersed myself in it and spent the next four years of my life there but I really so I've I've learned to be a chef conduct myself as a chef I've escaped now but now is where I really connect with food and and this is where I cook you know my heart out 16 18 hours a day with no care in the world other than being the best version of me I could possibly be in this kitchen and I immersed myself in that place and I loved it dearly but it was about the connection with the place the people the food the ingredients and how kind of unhinged it was actually i love that part of it yeah this is a very interesting point because during your first five years of clarity you don't connect with food and then in your second work experience you do connect with food and i'm pretty sure that a lot of people listening to this right now maybe they are working in a company in a job that they're not very happy with and perhaps they're blaming the industry and they want to change careers totally but i would like to shed light on the fact that perhaps it's not necessarily the industry, but it's the environment that you're working in the company.

21:07So what was the difference in between your first work experience and Claridge's that didn't allow you to connect so much with food and then the second work experience? Okay, I don't know the answer to that, but sitting here now, the way you put that, I would suggest it's to do with the format. Claridge is very formal, very structured. You stand like this, you dress like this, you do this, you stir that there, you put that there, you label that there. It's very structured, very organized, as it should be. Yeah. I'm just not that kind of guy. Okay. And I can't necessarily thrive under that sort of scenario.

21:39I need to make my own pattern and my own environment. I landed at the square. It was about as unhinged as you could possibly get. And I was able to make my own little world in this restaurant. Weirdly enough, I could perform how I wanted to perform. I had to cook the food I was being told to cook, the way I was being told to cook it. I was still learning and I had to perform and work inside, you know, a very talented bunch of people that were already doing this at pace. And this restaurant was super busy at a really high standard, but I could find my own world here. It was a bit more unhinged.

22:18I'll give you a good example. When I turned up at the Square to do my trial day with them, I'd come from Claridge's. I came with a big hat, beautiful necktie, beautiful white apron, pressed, polished shoes, clean shaven. and I walked in the kitchen and everybody was dressed in a tracksuit bottles and white t-shirt and an apron that was drying over the hood in the kitchen. This was not about personal standards or presentation. This was about rock and roll, hardcore kind of in-your-face masses of cookery. That was the focus. That was the most important point. And all the rest of it came later. I will say to caveat though, the square then moved on to Bruton Street.

23:03It became a two-star restaurant. I was there when that happened as part of that team and it definitely became a lot sharper and a lot more refined and a lot more standardized as a restaurant and still remains for me as one of the most incredible institution restaurants there has ever been in London. And I feel privileged to have been a part of that and to have taken so much away from that and for my friendship with Phil, who I'm still friends with today.

23:36I want to talk about Trinity, a restaurant that you opened in 2006. Yeah. But before we do that, is there any other experience before you've opened Trinity that were very inspirational or that changed your direction in a meaningful way? Yeah, I think, yeah, there was a couple of stages before that, before I opened Trinity, actually. I, Philip Howard, this guy at the square, I told you about, amazing chef, still an amazing chef. When I, when I wanted to leave the square, he said to me, okay, would you, would you like to go and open in a photographic studio in Fulham? We're going to open a restaurant there.

24:13My friend and I, you know, in a photographic studio. So very simple, but it's only open Monday to Friday. I wanted to get married to my wife. So this kind of suited a bit more of a straightforward lifestyle balance suited. So I went and opened that with him. And I spent the next 18 months there, built the kitchen, built a small team. We were servicing, it was called The Works in Fulham in Parsons Green. So my wife and I got married. We moved to Fulham and lived there. We're now surrounded by incredibly go-getting cool people. this is night this is the mid 90s late 90s london was about as cool as i've ever seen it brit pop cape mars oasis the whole the the place was just the energy in england was in london was incredible and i feel privileged to be part of that too because it was it was an amazing time to be alive at in your early 20s in the late 90s in london i don't think it it's never been better than that I don't think and so privilege to be part of that and we were involved in this restaurant I did this for Phil loved it married got married to to to Vicky and but I was now cooking and taking restaurant you know serving food to Kate Marsden to Naomi Campbell and Claudia Schiffer and people like these that were having their doing their photo shoots in the in the in the studio so I was kind of mixing with the not with them i was mixing with the photographers and all the runners and all people like that so i'm kind of mixing it up now with people who are getting stuff done who are achieving stuff and this was quite inspirational i think after that uh they moved on from that but phil wanted phil and his friend wanted to open a a chain of juice bars so fresh selling fresh juices smoothies green juice um wheatgrass shots all those kinds of things that were happening in New York and a huge in LA at the time.

26:16And he asked me if I would be the chef behind it to do all the smoothies and, and to do the sandwiches, the wraps, the, you know, the cakes and all this kind of stuff. So I said, yeah, sure. I'll do that. Yeah. It sounds great. A bit more of a structured life again. Although we started very early, we started at three in the morning and to get the production done, to ship it out to the shops. And it was brilliant. I think, I think they opened four or five shops and were serving all these juices to all the, what were homes place gyms at the time before your time, but they were, they became virgin gyms and all the gyms we were serving all those.

26:50So they had a lovely business doing that. And I was producing all the food and stuff for it. And I was really enjoying it. But what was happening to me, I was sitting on a board meeting. I was reading P &Ls. I was seeing company structures be built i was seeing money be raised i was seeing directors be appointed i was seeing company accounts so i've gone from chef working like a beast in a in a two mission style restaurant to setting up a restaurant big tick employing staff big tick liaising with customers directly big tick i'm now settled i'm amongst people that are moving and shaking i have a a rental a house but a rental i have a lovely wife now and now i'm in this business where i'm seeing all the company structure work big tick and then a eureka moment really for me was kind of do you know what i need to be i need to be in a restaurant again i need i need that slightly chaotic, slightly phonetic rock and roll restaurant thing.

28:03I need that. I need, it makes my heart beat. I need it. So I need that. And I don't want to work for anybody else. I'm over it. Why? Because I, I want to be in control of my own destiny. I don't really mind if I'm not successful, but at least I want to blame myself for that. I don't want to be told when, I don't want people wasting my time. I don't like my time wasted. I like, if I'm going to exert energy to something, I want it to be for me or my family or for the growth of this. I don't want it to be for somebody else. And it's not because I don't, I don't mind working for other people. I didn't mind working for other people while I was learning, but now I'm not learning and I'm actually at the top of those trees i'm just contributing to someone else's pot well surely i should just do this myself but i wanted to be back in my own restaurant i wanted to be at the forefront of a restaurant i was very young i was 20 just just 27 nice story i i was just 27 uh actually that juice company then closed and i was kind of let go we had a few little bit of money saved up my wife and i so we we had a holiday to the Maldives.

29:22We got a really cheap, quick lastminute.com, it was called, to the Maldives. And we arrived in Malay, where you fly into before you go to your island, and I went to the bar to get a beer. True story, and I gave the guy a$20 bill for a beer and whatever Vicky was having. Guy gave me a$10 bill back, and I put it in my wallet, and I said to Vicky, I will never work for anyone else again. That's it. I'm done. I still have that$10 bill. Wow. And that was 26 years ago. Open Trinity. Nope, that was not Trinity. There was a restaurant before that called Time. And when I came back from the Maldives the week later, I contacted my best friend at the time, who was also called Adam.

30:16And we started to look around to find a restaurant. Well, what happens then? Well, first we find a restaurant. I'm living, I was in Fulham. We'd now bought a small property in Earsfield, South London. We bought it as a squat. My dad came over, everybody came over. We painted and decorated. We onboarded the windows and this was our first property. So this was amazing. We bought that. then we needed some money to open the first restaurant and so we took a i'll tell you what we did and you wouldn't be able to do this now and this is you know this is a well an odd thing but we we took 110 mortgage on that flat and then we used that flat as first charge leverage to buy a restaurant yeah you definitely wouldn't be able to do that now so i went from overdrawn bank account to a flat and a restaurant wow and a whole load of personal guarantee is that bank still open they're not sure i think 2008 sorted that out corrected the market and then and then what happened with that restaurant so i did that and i opened that restaurant and it was called time and it was unbelievably successful in terms of it captured a moment in London, only small plates, all sharing, the food came out when it's ready.

31:50So those three things, right? Food comes out when it's ready, small plates, all sharing. Those three sentences had never been seen in a restaurant in 2001. It had never been seen. I must add that the restaurant opened on the 12th of September, straight after 9-11. them oh yeah that was the opening day of that restaurant and i was leveraged to the hill and i had personal guarantees coming out of every place but um anyway that was another scary story but i opened that restaurant with those three principles that i wanted the food to be sharing i wanted this place to be small and and and it was all going to be you know just uh just a big menu of small dishes like that but i wanted to cook the food i was i definitely started there cooking the food that uh that i'd learned at the square you know it was a bit of clarities but mainly it was kind of the food at the square but realized very quickly that that wasn't possible in a tiny kitchen with three of us when i'd come from a two mission star infrastructure like that so very quick learning curve um and we managed to we managed to kind of we landed it very well in terms of we didn't have any pr we didn't have anything like that we just opened the restaurant We were a couple of guys having an absolute blast opening a restaurant, having a load of fun doing it.

33:11And then all of a sudden it kind of got a big serious because we were reviewed by all these people. We were reviewed by pretty much every reviewer. And I think mainly because we didn't have PR, we were discoverable, which meant that if you were reviewing a restaurant in London, you could actually bring new news to your readership rather than be told about it from a PR agent, which is something in that. you know a PR agent sort of telling you you have to go to this restaurant it's new and interesting and blah blah blah that happens nowadays this was more a case of I discovered these two guys you will never have heard of this it's mad go there and and we won loads of awards we got amazing reviews and we were you know we it was it was incredible um and and and yeah it just gave me a little taste of success, I think.

34:01Not financially, we were making nothing, you know. We were running around like busy fools, but did we care? We were really happy. Like, we both took a week's holiday every year. Both had enough money to live and drive and have a couple of beers and, you know, live a simple life and pay our mortgage. I mean, there was nothing else I particularly wanted. I was just, I spent every hour that God sent in that restaurant, cooked my heart out. I was loving my cooking. My dad would come every Thursday and clean the windows, come and talk to me have a cup of tea with me my wife would come on Saturday night after we finished the service and we'd all go out all night and party and close on the Sunday and start again on the Monday and it was just brilliant it was a great life and then one day somebody came along and said we want to move this to we love what you're doing creating a great amount of noise we would like you to move this to the hospital club in Covent Garden which I didn't really heard of Covent Garden felt like a long way away, but it certainly felt like it was a huge step up from a fairly gnarly street in Clapham.

35:05Yeah. So I did that. And look, long story short, I moved it from there to there. It didn't work. Within nine months, we were under. We were done. And it was shocking. I'm not going to, you know, no point trawling over all that now because that's 25 years, 23 years ago. all I can tell you is that's a really lonely place to be you learn a lot about yourself really quickly and you know on reflection now look the deal was wonky there was all sorts wrong with it but I reflect back on that and I know what I did wrong I know how I got that wrong to get to make that restaurant wrong and I think that's important it would be easy for me just to say well it was their fault that fault that fault that fault I know what I did wrong and I've spent a long time working out what I did wrong there, mainly so I don't do that again because it's crazy to repeat those mistakes, right?

35:58But I did get it wrong and we did lose everything. I did find out a lot about myself and I did find myself in a very lonely place for quite some time. But very quickly, I had no choice. I've now at this point got a one-year-old baby, my son, my wife with me. We've moved house. We're now in a slightly bigger house and we've got a mortgage. I've got a car on finance I've got responsibilities right I now have to make this work you can't just sit there and dwell and you know be all sort of woes me about it I've got to move this on so I just did some searching around and eventually I got in contact with the the person somebody told me that Trinity the restaurant it is now that building or that restaurant was closing and was for sale so i reached out cold email to the landlord of that restaurant and said listen i'm i'm looking to to buy a restaurant um i had no money and uh and uh the gentleman very kindly wrote back and said yep let's meet for a beer i know who you are so we went and had a drink together.

37:17Several drinks later, we end up agreeing a deal to do the restaurant together. He would finance it. He was the landlord, freeholder of the building. He just closed that restaurant, finished another project and wanted to leave the country for a little bit for personal reasons. And so we did a deal together that he, well we loaned on the back of the building and we did a 50 50 jv and i would run it and he would be my business partner 20 years later we are still in business um and we still have a partnership and that's quite remarkable you know i absolutely agree do you think you would have been able to achieve this level of success with trinity right now without having failed with inverted commas in your first restaurant.

38:10And obviously with failing, it comes all the learnings. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Are you grateful for that failure? Yeah, I'm super, well, I think what you need to do is put the two things together. I had huge success with the first restaurant. Okay. In terms of noise and learnings and accreditation and being on the front of magazines and people knowing who you are and marketing wise, huge success with the first one. huge failing with the second one financially if you put all those learnings together by the time i opened the third restaurant which is trinity it's a kind of a combination of everything yeah i i'm not getting it wrong again and i'm taking everything i learned to make that big noise thing into this and i'm certainly not taking all the stuff that landed me in a load of trouble so So I think Trinity was the accumulation of the learnings from the discipline of Claridge's, the incredible food and people of the square and the standards of the square, making my own wave at Trinity, the stuff I'd learned about business at the juice bars, the people part I'd learned with the photographic studio, and then obviously the loss from the second restaurant and the learning from that.

39:31I've now got a very big war chest, a big toolbox of information that I can take into this restaurant. I've accumulated a lot. I am only 30 at this point. So I walk into this restaurant. I feel like now, looking back on it, I walk into that restaurant fairly well armed with enough information to not get this wrong. I think this story is very beautiful because a lot of people in this day and age, as you and I were discussing earlier, they get the definition of success, unfortunately, wrong, which is heavily influenced by social media. We're being told that needs to be achieved overnight and you need to be making loads of money.

40:12But in your case, your early definition of success was not underpinned or defined by financial metrics. But it was, yes, there was a marketing element, but also from a learning point of view, learning a lot in that second restaurant that didn't work out. and the second thing that I think is very beautiful about this story is that once a business doesn't work a lot of people don't go and try again they don't get back on that horse and if that would have been the case your case right now the UK wouldn't have one of the best restaurants which is Trinity talk to me about Trinity so for those that don't live in this country what is it okay um so i opened trinity 2006 and i opened it as i was safe at the time it wanted to be an i wanted it to be a great neighborhood restaurant it's in a in a neighborhood called clapham south london opened with very simple beginnings it wants to be it wants to be the best neighborhood restaurant in that neighborhood a place you could come and have a a very accessible meal.

41:19Also a place you could come and have a date night. You could come and celebrate a family event. A place where the interiors felt aspirational. You felt like you were in a great place. The food over-delivered on what perhaps it said on the menu or you thought the food was going to be like. The wine list was greater than you thought it was going to be. So there's a lot of over-delivery there. And then, really importantly, the hospitality would be personal. It would anticipate what you wanted before you knew you wanted it. It would recognize you. It would understand you. It would welcome you like it was our home.

42:03These were the principles I set Trinity up on. And in all honesty, I can say that 20 years later, it still operates off those principles. It's a very, very, very different restaurant than it was when I first opened it. It was me and three chefs in the kitchen. I was working crazy time. You know, it was crazy. We had a hundred covers. We were doing a hundred covers at that point. It was a very different restaurant. It was only on one floor. Now the restaurant's on two floors. We only do 40 covers at Trinity. We do another 40 covers in the restaurant above. It's a very different business model altogether.

42:36There's far more chefs. The food's far more intricate and far more refined and far more polished in terms of what it is. the wine list is is now 650 bins you know it's a huge it's a hugely different restaurant um to what it was but it still has those principles it still is a neighborhood restaurant i still know four or five tables in every single service that are there yeah um so i think you know and it's gone on to win way more awards than i ever think it thought it was going to do but i didn't open the restaurant to win awards or become what it became i just opened it because i wanted to i love restaurants and cooking and i wanted to cook my heart out you know but i think poignantly what trinity is is a place of escapism for if you live in that neighborhood life's a bit busy and a bit hectic and you wanted to escape and you wanted to go and spend some time with someone you love or trinity is a perfect place to go there and forget the world for two hours.

43:38That's what Trinity is. I think my next question has been, in a way, answered, but I would like to ask you to see if maybe I can get something extra. A table?

43:52So, as again we were discussing earlier, a lot of restaurants, they want to become trendy and popular, but I think the hardest part and what ultimately every restauranteur really wants to achieve is to become an institution. a restaurant that people keep going back again and again and again and that has a very long lifespan. Right now I think most restaurants don't make it to their third year and you've been 20 years rocking it. If you were to condense your biggest lesson learned that allowed you to achieve these 20 years of success, what would it be? I mean, the obvious answer is hard work. hmm it's more hard work than people you know it's such an easy sentence to band around isn't it it's hard work what's hard work hard work is more uncomfortable than the majority of people are willing to go through that's what hard work is do you think it's attainable for anyone i think not having a plan b helps i think i think wanting something really badly helps and having a great work ethic helps but hard hard work at that level it's still really hard work it was hard work then but it's still really hard work he hasn't changed hasn't got easier i mean i have compounded my life now to a point where I'm still working as hard as I ever was in different ways, but it was hard work to do that.

45:29But I'll tell you the secret. I think what I think the secret is to the success of that restaurant and why after 20 years it's there and why do restaurants not fail so much, but why do they disappear off the radar? There are still, you know, I could, I could list 10 restaurants an hour that are incredible restaurants and you, and you'll say, I haven't heard of that for years I haven't heard of that for years and it's so easy to disappear into the backdrop of the London restaurant scene it is huge it is saturated unless you are making the right amount of noise or you are doing something that is relevant current and up to date you will disappear into the backdrop of the London restaurant scene unless you have embedded yourself in that community and it doesn't matter if that community is Mayfair Notting Hill or Clapham you have to embed yourself into that community and that comes from people if you think you can do that yourself you're mad I am 20 years older than I was when I first opened that restaurant I am not as relevant as current or as I don't have as much energy I don't I don't have the same vision that I had when I walked in it's different it's not worse it's just different now so i have been really careful to make sure that i've brought people with me into the restaurant all the way across that 20 years who are inspirational who are young who are current and i've empowered them i haven't stood there with a huge ego in front of this whole thing thinking this is all about me it's my interpretation it's my vision of what a restaurant should be this is what i think food should look like and because if i did that eventually i'm just gonna to wear out but that that story's that story's going to have been told too many times and people are going to be bored of it and it will just lose its currency and i really i really feel that so i've not made it all about me i've made it about the people that are there i've let them have their voice in all of this and i've let them keep the restaurant current and keep it up to date i'm just there really now to to to standard bear to make sure we're on the right track, make sure that the track is exactly right.

47:45Are we still guest focused? Are we still about over-delivery to a guest expectation? Are we still about recognition of a local guest? Are we still embedding ourselves in the local community? Does the food still over-deliver on what the expectation is? Does the wine list over-deliver on that? No, I just make sure those principles are still being adhered to because they're good principles. And I make sure the people that are standing there doing that are recognized set up for success and i'm investing in them to be the best they can possibly be with the knowledge and the wisdom that i have and i think that's the secret to it sounds complicated but it's not really it's the same principles we started just bring in young great people and empower them and and drop your ego and don't make it all about you.

48:36This is very interesting for me to hear because when I interview other founders from other industries, the one critical, let's call it business activity or business unit that they all identify as the most critical in their business is recruitment, hiring the right people. How do you approach recruitment? So how do you know you're hiring the right person for Trinity?

49:00um well it's a very good thing isn't it i i read something brilliant from a one of the best wrestlers in the world called danny meyer and i went to a forum where he was talking it was amazingly inspirational years ago and he talked about 51 percenters and it's something that when you read his book he talks about quite a lot and it's something i adopted and and just embraced and have always stood by the 51 percenter essentially is somebody who cares more about someone else's happiness than their own oh someone else being happy someone else having a great time is more important than their own happiness at that moment it doesn't mean they're a people pleaser it doesn't mean that they're weak and it also doesn't mean that the people that aren't like that are bad either they're just they're just different and they and they're less suited to hospitality if you fill your restaurant with 51 percenters people that people that desperately get off and seeing other people have a great time if you fill your restaurant with those people you're gonna have a good restaurant because they're gonna cook with generosity they're gonna serve with love they're gonna treat the guests like their own parents that recruitment thing is really important i can sit in front of somebody for 10 minutes and within five of those minutes i know where there are 51 center what are your views on social media how has it evolved and impacted your industry social media is it's a strange thing i have a i have a strange relationship with social media i've i've landed in this space that i've landed in now i assume that's where you're going with this and you know i've always enjoyed social media i'm a creative I enjoyed social media.

50:48I loved the photography. I loved the instant stuff. I was quite interested. I was really interested in it. And I can tell you the story of where I've, if you want, how I've landed into the space I have now. But essentially about nearly two and a half, three years ago, I had a small following, 15 ,000 on Instagram, which was good. I enjoyed it. It was kind of just putting nice pictures of my food. And if you go back, you can see it's pretty simple. And I had a PR company working for me. I've no idea doing what, but, you know, after 17 years of a restaurant, very hard to tell the stories or put flesh on the bones enough for a PR company to be able to really get messages out there and tell stories about the restaurant, right?

51:37And it's very difficult to tangibly assess whether you're getting value for money from what is quite an expensive commodity, which is a PR company. So I decided, let's switch that up. Let's go to digital media. I don't know why I did that. I think I was, I'd had lunch with someone and they were telling me about it. I didn't even know what it meant. I met somebody who said, yes, we can come in and we can be a digital, we can do digital media for you. I said, okay, all right. So you have a small following on Instagram or, you know, we can help you with this. I said, okay, fine. So I assumed they were going to sort of do lots of website stuff and do lots of YouTube.

52:18I don't know what they wanted to do. And I assumed they would do videos for all the restaurants that we had. And that would be it. And they said, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're going to cook. You're going to do the videos. And you're never going to mention the restaurants. You're going to be good at it. And then people are going to find your restaurants because they want to know where your food is. Oh, wow. And that woman was a genius. And now you have, what, 400 ,000, 500 ,000 followers? Yeah, maybe 600 ,000. Yeah, now we have 600 ,000 followers on Instagram and 300 ,000 subscribers on YouTube.

52:59But that's weird for me. I'm a 51-year-old guy. I'm like, how has that happened? I don't know how that's happened. but there is a few things in there that i will tell you about so it was genius because i i then so then we sat down and i said okay look i will do these videos but i don't want to do what all these young guys are doing make you a lasagna in 30 seconds or you know all very cat cut you know chop chop all clipped up stuff i i just can't do that i'm i'm i'm all about cooking takes time lean into it enjoy the process fall in love with cookery you know love classical french gastronomy let's showcase that in a slow methodical manner and they're sort of looking at me thinking this is not really instagram i said but that's what i do i'm also not doing it in a t-shirt i'm not doing it in my house i'm doing it in a chef jacket in the restaurant and i'm doing proper cooking that's it those are the principles so i started doing that and the the following grew quite quickly.

54:07The engagement, which doesn't really matter, but the engagement grew really quickly. What was really important was this was landing guests in our restaurants very quickly, and it was tangible. We could see the impact of this very quickly. Fast forward, essentially, long story short, that company sold. I then took the person that was doing all this with me as a key account manager i saw he was super talented we had great chemistry he was filming he was editing he was brilliant and i brought him into my business full-time and that was probably the best move i've ever made in terms of marketing pr or social two and a half years later we have together or he has i just stand in front of the camera but he does everything else behind that um and he is he's a genius i think you know i've recruited someone you recruit sometimes some people you just think i've got this person at the peak of their career this guy's going to go on to be absolutely incredible and he is brilliant and you know he's he's he's the person i would credit for all the success of that of course i stand in front of the camera and i do it i guide him i push him out of his comfort zone to do stuff that he's not comfortable to do because that's what i do that's my job to do that but he has grown that to to the following we have now which is you You know, 600K on Instagram and 300 ,000 subs on YouTube, plus TikTok and Spotify and all these other platforms, Substack and all over the place.

55:44I don't know anything about any of this thing. But I do know that I want to tell my story. I don't want somebody else telling my story. I want to tell my story to my guests and my followers and my people. So that for me is more important. And actually, it has landed as something that tangibly puts new guests into our restaurants. And across the restaurants, we see three and a half to 4 ,000 guests a week. There's a large number of that that come via social media, a large number. And I'm really proud of that. I'm proud that we can tell our own story. I'm glad that what we produce online also translates on the table.

56:28I'm glad that I'm not standing there flogging the restaurants using them to sort of create some kind of online platform thing which I'm not I'm not interested in that but you know the benefit the thing that I have I guess going for me on the whole social media thing is it's not my job I don't do it for money and I don't do it for fame I don't do it for self recognition I do it because I actually really love cooking yeah and i and i do it because i need to tell my stories to fill my restaurants those are my only motivations and i think actually that's the reason it's quite successful because i have different motivations in this i don't have a i don't have an agenda to to be famous or to or to earn money out of it that's not not why i do it i think there's also another very important lesson to be learned here and is the fact that you you looked inwards when you wanted to define how you wanted to create your content.

57:29So you were not trying to fill someone else's shoes. You were not trying to replicate someone else's success. You had your style of cooking, your way of working, and that was it for you. Like if we're doing this, if you're recording me, you're recording who I really am. And that's very interesting because I've had the pleasure of interviewing other very great content creators and they've shared exactly the same thing. They said that the moment in which they went viral and things started to go their way, is when they were themselves on camera. And I think for anyone right now listening to this that is creating content and wants to grow their audience, just look in words, rather than trying to replicate somebody else's success, just be you.

58:10Authenticity is king. But I will tell you, though, you're absolutely right about that. However, I will tell you, it's much, much harder to do that. I feel like I do a session of filming my content. I am exhausted I give I truly give I'm looking at you down the lens as a viewer and I'm trying to educate you I'm trying to give you all of my knowledge I don't hold back I don't say well I don't want to tell them that I give them everything I really do try if I'm going to do that stuff if I'm going to create content if I'm going to do social media I want it to be as good as it can possibly be I want to give as much as I can give and that's exhausting and most people don't want to give that much you know they want to just put a mirror up you know mask and just just deliver some kind of fast thing or this is this is i give quite a lot and i think that's the reason it it has grown to the scale it's grown yeah

59:13let's talk about trinity's mission star so you achieved you were awarded a mission star in 2016 For those who don't know, some people don't know, can you define in a very simple way what is a Michelin star and what does it take to achieve one? Well, a Michelin star is arguably the most recognized accolade a restaurant can achieve globally. It's held to the highest standard. and I think it's still, it's certainly my opinion and most people's opinion, it's still the most well-regarded accolade a restaurant can achieve. Like an Oscar for an actor. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. It's a recognition of quality of cookery, of quality of ingredients, of consistency of cookery.

1:00:04And I think it's a recognition of adherence to standards and wanting restaurants to be as good as they can. So it's an amazing organization that, you know, it also gets a bad rep sometimes, I'm sure, like everything does, but it actually supports and creates a huge amount of noise and energy around what is, you know, an amazing industry. So there's a lot of great things about Michelin. There's obviously one, two, and three stars, and Trinity has one star. I was looking at a very interesting piece of data. In 2026, there are just a bit over 15 million restaurants in the world, but only 3 ,100 restaurants have a mission in Star, which that puts your restaurant in the top 0.02%.

1:01:00When you were awarded the Star, how did you feel internally? i felt a deep deep sense of relief and pride why relief because relief because i had spent a long long time cooking at what i felt was quite a high level and i believed in myself i know i can cook a relatively high level i back myself in that regard but the environment never really sat well i don't think and my cooking hadn't found a place of comfort or or you know it was still a little bit awkward i think so actually once we'd taken a big step back refurbished the restaurant in 2015 i'd put a lot of focus into how can we actually just let's just simplify this a little bit let's focus on the stuff i'm really good at let's simplify this let's not worry about what anyone else is doing out there let's just do what i want to do and do it as well as i can and if that lands with mishnam if that gets recognized then great and very quickly 10 months after that we got a star so i think there was a big relief in that um you know my partner and i the intention wasn't to have a restaurant that was at that level my partner and i had a big long conversation about you know achieving a star and what that would take for the restaurant so there was a lot hanging on this around you know us pushing the restaurant to get a star there's a lot hanging on that so actually to get it was a relief for that regard it was a relief in in terms of sort of knowing that i guess i i cook at a level that is recognized that level which is brilliant and you know then i think a part of it is sort of pride as well you know and also for your team to to achieve something like that you are dragging your team on a fairly uncomfortable journey to get there to do that so actually to be able to turn with turn around to the mall and say this was worth it it is great did it feel the way you imagined it to be because I think many times in life we believe that when we achieve certain things we're going to be happy so when I get that promotion or when I find the right romantic partner when I buy the house when I go on that trip.

1:03:27And then sometimes we accomplish that and it doesn't feel the way we thought it would feel. How was this for you? No, it felt every bit as good, I will tell you. Lovely. The only problem is, you know, it's a bit like, I don't know if you've ever had a tattoo, but the moment you walk out of a tattoo parlor, okay, what you want when you walk out of a tattoo parlor about an hour later is to walk back in and have another one, right? It's a kind of, there's an adrenaline thing there. There's a dopamine thing or whatever. So that night I remember sitting there thinking, okay, how do we get two stars?

1:03:59I couldn't just sit there for an hour and kind of go, we've achieved this. This is great. Amazing. You know, and, and, and just celebrate that and be so happy about that. I just want more, you know, which is, which is a, which is a terrible attribute really. And I don't, I didn't dwell on that. I just, it was a moment where I just sat there, thought that immediately. It made me think that. And then I had to sort of address myself and say, come on, come on. maybe just celebrate the moment for that. Yeah, but that's very interesting because I was discussing this with my partner, who's also my twin brother.

1:04:31And unfortunately, I cannot recall right now exactly the name of the neurological theory, but there is a neurological reason why, once we achieve something very quickly, our brain sets another target and it doesn't allow us to sit on that enjoyment for very long. And I don't remember the name of the theory, but I do remember one of the reasons why our brain is doing that. And that's because it's an evolutionary trait that we have within our brains. I'm sure, yeah. But I think, in a way, I've discussed this with psychologists, and there are ways in which we can calm our brain and just enjoy the moment and enjoy the present and feel, well, this was enough.

1:05:12I worked so hard for this. Let me enjoy it because I do deserve it. And I think that's a very healthy way of living. It's not easy. I think I'm able to do that now. Now I am able to celebrate the successes that we have and take a moment. But I do have to remind the team about that. I have to kind of sit the team down and go, look, we've been massively successful. We did a relaunch kind of thing on one of our restaurants a couple of weeks ago. It's been massively successful. Way more successful than it should have been, quite honestly. And we had a complaint. We got a guest wrong. we got a table wrong you know we're all dealing with this complaint and I went in and they're all sucking up the whole room about this complaint that's happened I said hang on whoa we've just doubled the covers we've doubled the revenue of the restaurant we've made X amount of covers incredibly happy can we not just look we got something wrong work out how don't do it again move on celebrate the fact that we've been this successful with it all how about you spend some time celebrating that rather than dwelling on...

1:06:20I guess a lot of us are all conditioned to just don't celebrate your successes, dwell on the stuff that's bad and fix it and fix it. It's not... We dropped the ball. We got something wrong. We're all human. It's a human business. I've got lots of stuff. We get stuff wrong. People are subject to change. I think that's another great point. I was discussing exactly this with another guest that came to Thriving Minds. she's an amazing neurologist at MIT. Her name is Dr. Tali. And she was telling me that our brains are biased for survival reasons to be able to, so basically she was telling me that for every five positive things that happen in your day, it only takes one negative thing for you to only focus on that.

1:07:04And that's a survival mechanism that we have. So for example, probably on your way here this morning, tons of great things happened. Today it's not raining. Maybe your coffee was amazing, but there was this one thing, Like maybe you just got one text from somebody that you didn't like, and that's where your brain is going to focus its attention on. And unfortunately, this is something that our brains unconsciously and automatically will do. But that's not a terrible thing, right? Because the first step is for us to be aware of that, that that's just going to happen as a default mode. But once we're aware of it, then we can do something about it.

1:07:34Okay, now I'm aware that my brain unconsciously will focus on this little negative bit that happened today. But then I can redirect my thoughts into something a bit more positive.

1:07:47how did the business itself change in a substantial, tangible way once you've achieved a star? Did you get more bookings, many more bookings?

1:07:59Yeah, it did. The business got more bookings. I was asked probably to do more work externally, events and pop-ups and bits and pieces. so yeah it definitely impacted the business but you know what i think more importantly it gave us a sense of confidence and self-assurance i think after that the food really came into its own it became relaxed again um the you know recruitment became easier getting great supply line from amazing suppliers became opened up there's loads of tangible benefits to having a star in the restaurant but i think more you know it's more about that it's more about what you do with it than it is about what it is in the restaurant um it brings more customers it brings more business brings more supply line brings more staff that's great what do you do with it what do you do with that i think that's a question that i kind of spent a bit of time answering for me this is michelin's given me a pedestal to stand on like you say 0.01 whatever that's great amazing what i do with that surely there's something i can do i need to raise the level in which i support the industry wider i need to raise the level in terms of how i support young people in the industry how my team look at me is important all those kinds of things kind of came out of it for me actually on the back end of it it's kind of that the sense of responsibility that it brings not just what what can this do for me commercially how can i use this as a template or a an attribute for good for the industry yeah what has been the greatest lesson that you've learned from the restaurant sector?

1:09:58I guess the thing I'm probably most proud of in terms of the hospitality sector is how quickly it can pivot, how adaptable it is, how malleable it is, how entrepreneurial as an industry and a sector it is. You only got to look at COVID-19 for that. What the hospitality industry came out in force was doing unbelievable things. and the way it supported all of its teams. Some of the things that it did during that period were just incredible. And I think, you know, it goes through lots of periods of hardship and difficult. You know, policies come along that you can't change and wars come along and inflation comes along and COVID comes along and Lehman Brothers comes along.

1:10:50All this stuff. You've got to adapt and pivot and change and manipulate your business. and i think this industry is really really good at that it's really good at looking at it changing manipulating pivoting and that's a that's a real attribute for this industry yeah i want to go a bit deeper right now if you allow me to what has your journey in the hospitality industry cost you on the personal level well you know a lot i would say it's cost me a lot but i don't i don't see any of those things as sacrifices. I'm in the sort of autumn or latter part of my career, which in all honesty, I feel pride for that.

1:11:34I feel like I've done really well with the cards I was dealt. I couldn't be happier with the position I'm in now. But I've also managed to stay married, have two wonderful children that love spending time with us. We've all got our mental health intact and we've ended up with this business like this. I mean, that's incredible. Yes, there have been sacrifices. Yeah, I mean, you know, I have a friend group of exactly two. I didn't have a holiday for a decade. I didn't, you know, I could list out all the sacrifices. But I don't think anyone cares. And why should they? Those were my sacrifices to achieve a greater good for my family and so that we have a legacy business that can last for a long time.

1:12:21and I think there is going to be sacrifices there are going to be hardships and yeah you know it was costly but ultimately are any of those things that important the only thing I think does matter to me is you know that I talked about moving away from Essex and moving away to surround myself with these people and to generate this business which in some ways could seem very commercially hungry very kind of um not capitalist but it could seem very kind of driven at a sacrifice and and i think if i look back now the only thing i would say is that i there is a distance now a physical not emotional but there is a physical difference between my whole family my wider family my sister my parents my aunt my brother-in-law all those that are there in essex still doing their thing and happy as and still some of the most beautiful people I know but there's definitely a distance between us there that I can't bridge because the time because the because of the the relentless pace that I'm working at and the distance between that that's grown bigger than it should have because of the because of that decision to move away and the pace at which I move now that's a little bit of a regret but I don't really regret anything but not something that time can't heal us you know and we do we all work hard i think to try and make that happen to make that work during your journey during the toughest moments of your journey which in as an entrepreneur we tend to go through very very rocky situations and and periods did you ever consider quitting um yeah i'd be lying if i but the problem is quitting what i mean what do i quit here i own i own half the business and some of them get some regards i own all of things you know what what am i quitting and what why what actually am i what am i going to do a is that there's no plan b b i've got a whole family that are dependent on me i've now got two families that are directly reliant on me and 112 staff that completely directly reliant on me to turn up to work every day.

1:14:39What am I going to quit? I can't quit. There isn't another option. I don't have anything to turn around to. I have to make this work. I've definitely had moments where, you know, I felt, why am I doing all this? Or is this, I've had moments where the push doesn't seem to justify the pull. Yeah. You know, it's just too difficult, and we're not getting anywhere. That is really hard. When, you know, there's been, there were weeks and weeks where I never, you know, just going to work, coming home, going to work, coming home six, seven days a week. Terrible. And not actually making any money. And you're just thinking, why am I doing this?

1:15:21You know, absolutely crazy. Those are not moments to quit. Those are moments to just take a steady pause and work out what the problem is. And the problem's probably you. Yeah. And so there's been a few moments like that. But it's a bit like, okay, let me put it like this. If you're a runner and you're running an out and back 10K, you can't get to 5K and say, I'm going to quit. Because you've still got to get home. What are you going to do? Carry on. Have a well with yourself. Very, very, very refreshing and very beautiful because it's not necessarily the lack of other options. If you allow me to say so, from the outside, one could say that, well, with your reputation, with your name, with your experience, if you're not, if the level of stress is too much for the return on investment in your existing restaurant, you could close, work at one of the best hospitality groups in the world, become their executive chef, work at normal hours, spend more time with your family, go down to XX, get a decent paycheck, you know, happy, good enough amount of money for you to live a good life, but not deal with that stress but that's not the way you're built no yeah i would never do that yeah you can't even see that yeah i would never do that yeah it's so interesting and very admirable i've spent a long time building the life that i now have it's nowhere near finished and it's nowhere near polished or or brilliant or perfect but i love it you're a true entrepreneur i feel truly privileged to be in the position I'm in now.

1:17:00And you know what as well, you know, the other thing that people don't, don't necessarily get is everyone seems to be very focused on the goal, the exit, selling for 10X, doing this, whatever. I'm all about the journey. I'm not that interested or focused in the goal because there isn't a goal. I mean, I'm really interested in the journey and I want to try and this is something that I if you'd have asked me seven years ago I wouldn't have given you this answer but this is a bit of deep soul searching to actually say do you know what just enjoy the journey make the journey as interesting as stimulating as make it bespoke to me as I possibly can and love it and then include everyone that I love in it.

1:17:54So it's now full of lovely people and make that the interesting part of this. You know, everybody talks about that I'm going to sell for 8x, 10x. Okay. And I look at these people, right? And I say, okay, so you must have started this business with an intention to sell for this many multiples. What do you do when you get that pot of money? Surely there's a plan there you've got a plan for all that part of money right because i'm doing what i would be doing if you gave me a big pot of money i'd just be doing more of it and i'd probably be going fishing more or or do it or go on more holidays but i'm doing what i would be doing what what are you chasing to sell for x multiple is that an ego thing or is or do you actually have a plan for that huge pot of cash are you going to go and do something you know philanthropic are you going to go and you know just try to cure world hunger what are you going to do with that money yeah for me i don't have a plan like that i just i want the journey to be the main course that make sense it does make sense i think happiness is not an end goal and then happiness my opinion doesn't live in the future and in happiness is not from money i think happiness can live in the present and in the moment if you allow it to yeah and i i totally agree with you i can also happiness can also be stretched and and when you're uncomfortable and you're stressed and you're challenged and you're pushed and you're a little bit stressed that can also be happiness too that's my happy place yeah that's where i'm happy and that's why i think you're one of the very few restaurant owners in the world that has a very successful restaurant that has been operating successfully for 20 years.

1:19:43Because one of the things that I've identified in entrepreneurs, particularly during the recording of our first season where I've interviewed a lot of very young entrepreneurs, Forbes and their 30s, I was sharing with you earlier, is that we've had these discussions multiple times, is that sometimes people get into entrepreneurship for the wrong reasons. They're trying to chase money. As you said, that exit, right? I'm going to sell for this amount of money and then everything will make sense. I will be enough. I will be happy. And the problem is that entrepreneurship is a very long game. And if your fuel to be an entrepreneur is coming from money, money sometimes doesn't arrive.

1:20:21And it takes a long time to arrive in entrepreneurship, whether you're in the hospitality business, in the tech business, real estate, it really doesn't matter. And what will happen in most cases is that if you're not seeing money in the short to medium term, you will end up quitting. And then definitely you're never going to achieve your exit that you're looking for. but also you're going to miss the whole point of entrepreneurship, which is feeling alive, in my opinion. I don't think it's a game for anyone, sorry, for everyone. But if you have it in you, and I definitely can see that you love it and you have it in you, it's something that will give you an endless source of purpose that is not related to money.

1:20:55Money is an additional incentive, and we do need it, for sure, in the society that we've built. But it is not the thing that will give us the purpose that we need to feel happy and content and in peace. If you find the happiness in the doing, the money will come. If you could speak to your younger self when you were just starting out, what would you tell him? Maybe just to slow down a little bit and enjoy, you know, take the time to enjoy it and spend more time with the people you love, you know, rather than chasing something, probably. more something around that because that's kind of the thing that i think i've probably not done enough of you know i've probably moved at pace to a point at which i've sacrificed time with you know probably haven't spent enough time with my mom and my dad and my sister and that's the only bit i would say that but you know other than that i would say you know crack on are you happy now?

1:21:59I'm really happy you know I feel privileged to be as busy as I am I'm really busy I've got an amazing team around me and I've got an amazing family a wonderful family I mean what a privilege I am truly privileged to have these things around me great business partner great restaurant group amazing staff amazing family and I don't want for very much. I'm not particularly interested in crazy stuff. I'd like a nice holiday, but that's about it. So I'm super happy. You know, but my responsibility now in all of this, and this is, I think this is a key part of it. You know, there I've got six head chefs that work for me, you know, and they work in the different restaurants that we have and they're at the top of those.

1:22:49My responsibility in all of this now is to make sure that those guys become the best version of themselves and that they deliver on their true potential. That's my job in this now. My job in this is to make sure they are guided, they can thrive, they can grow in London, they can have a family, they can move into a property, they can have a life, they can keep their mental health intact and they can love their job and they can keep our businesses at the forefront of up-to-date and where they should be. That's my job in this now, the guidance and the steerage for those people that are at the top of my business, yeah.

1:23:32Beautiful. I want them to be happy. I have a couple of last questions for you. So the first one, I would like to briefly talk about your book. So you've written a book called Trinity, The Cookbook. Yeah. In a nutshell, what is it? And why have you decided that this is a good time in your life to write a book? Which, by the way, the book is releasing in September 2026. Yeah, I have. I've spent the last year and three months writing a book. I was asked to write the Trinity, the cookbook, 20 years of Trinity. And I think after 20 years, that restaurant needs its own documentation. It needs documenting.

1:24:11someone needs to write this book put it in a parcel and wrap it up and then and then it's there for life so it's been a such a special project i can't tell you i wrote it with a dear friend of mine called james steen but we've had so many previous staff contribute there's a hundred recipes in the main book there's stories there's anecdotal stuff about previous guests and this and so many wonderful things it's like a journey of 20 years going through but one of the special things about that book in the back of the book there is a little repertoire um which is a repertoire de cuisine based on that it's a repertoire of trinity so there's another 100 recipes in there the thing with restaurants books from mission style restaurants are they're difficult to cook from i didn't really want it to just end up being a a coffee table book so there is definitely 150 recipes that anyone could cook in there as well but I've loved that process for me it was a little bit about documenting that closing that chapter I think for me I've spent 20 years at Trinity I now have Harry at the helm we've got Abby there we've got some incredible people running Trinity now on a day-to-day basis and I think my you know my my day-to-day my every single day of my life at Trinity that chapter is done my my chapter now is is bigger in the in the suite of restaurants that we have harry is at the helm of trinity set up for success to be the future of that abby's there this was more for me about kind of closing that chapter and saying that's that's what i did for 20 years and i definitely won't do a better piece of work than i have done for 20 years of that restaurant and documenting that has been a i'm very grateful to be able to do that so yeah it comes out in september um we're doing loads of you know tours and chats about it and stuff but it's a very special book indeed yeah it sounds like it i'll definitely look forward to read it yeah adam if you had to compress all your knowledge into one essential piece of advice that we must implement in our daily lives what would it be i would say and only because it's relatively controversial

1:26:25prioritize your own self before everybody else it's a bit like the mask coming down on the airplane right i will selfishly prioritize my own health and well-being in front of and before my family and my business i i if i'm going to be in this position which is a privileged position to be in and be relied upon by so many people i have to be in the best shape i could possibly be to inspire to grow and to be the best version of me for them and and i do whatever it takes for me to be in that place before I put myself in front of those people. And I think that is something I wish I knew when I was 30, if that makes sense.

1:27:06And whatever that takes, whatever your jam is for you, you know, it doesn't matter whatever those things are, gyms, running, sauna, cold plunge, doesn't matter whatever that you need to do in terms of health, wellbeing, mental health, nutrition, whatever it is, do that first before you put yourself in front of the people that really are relying on you and looking up to you and i think that will ultimately make a big difference thank you i i find you and your journey incredibly inspirational so i thank you so much for sharing your story with with me and and and with our audience as we were discussing earlier it's a very remarkable that you have a michelle link star as as as mentioned during our conversation that's 0.02 % of the restaurant industry, which is incredible.

1:27:54By definition, you are one of the global leaders. But what I find more remarkable is that you were able to have a restaurant open and successful for 20 years. I don't have the stats for that, but I think it's even lower than 0.02%. So when you put those two together, your journey as an entrepreneur, I think it serves as a great lesson for many entrepreneurs, but also aspiring entrepreneurs because success is not built overnight. Success is built over time. And what I like the most about your journey is how human you are about everything that you do. So you were not in it intrinsically in the long run for the money or for the accolades or for your reputation.

1:28:39You just really enjoyed what you were doing and you would be doing the same if you were to sell your business. So thank you for sharing that with me. Thank you for sharing it with my team and with our audience. this has been a very inspiring session. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.