The Chef Who Turned Pain Into Purpose | Kirk Haworth

0:00This is my light through the darkness. This is where I look at it. It's like the food that is presented to you has gone through a lot of pain.

0:17Ten box of peas come in and you have to grade them all. Extra small, small, small to medium, medium, medium to large. and what I, I just try and be who I wish someone was for me when I was that age. I think this is the first time on any podcast I've ever spoke about this stuff. So I've always kept it to myself because I don't want people to like, oh, I'm just going to go and do it. So I had to get on the flight and go back and I was just, wow. Six months, pretty much bed bound. Really was, you know, like you see another part of life. Yeah, and I think when you lose your health, it changes you forever.

0:57Olly Fawcett:kirk welcome to what it takes how are you i'm great thank you for having me absolute pleasure mate i'm very excited to uh talk talk all things food today with you how's uh how's the start of the year being for you though let's start there yeah it's been amazing um you know like a place we're just trying to get better every single day so that's the goal so it's constantly like looking at ourselves looking at the business looking at the guest experience and then constantly tweaking that yeah and making sure that you know we're investing in the team and the people that's also the most important thing right i believe you put your staff first the guests will automatically equal that right because they're purveying everything that you believe into the guests yeah definitely well like i'm so excited to learn more about plates and and some of the other places you work because you worked at some pretty some sort of pretty special places but before all that growing up your your dad was also a chef right is that was that where your career really started yeah yeah my dad's still a chef now he's still cooking at 69 yeah wow crap but yeah my dad had um he got a Michelin star at 26 wow so very young um so I grew up in that mainly my childhood memories are mainly my my mum kind of getting upset that my dad's never at home and kicking off and stuff like that really um rather than my dad because my dad was always at work so it wasn't like he was cooking at home um but I grew I was very lucky that I got to grow up around food you know my dad took me to restaurants and I used to eat at my dad's restaurant if it was like my sister's birthday or something like that so from like you know 10 or something like that I would get to eat my dad's restaurant and stuff which was amazing that's wicked was there always a bit of an idea that you wanted to follow in the footsteps or was it a bit more like I want to work out other things yeah not not really um I wasn't ever really thinking about cooking until I kind of left school right I used to do pot washing on the weekends when I was at school my dad used to make me my dad's like an old school guy where you work for work for your money have your manners have your respect um which is you know I think is a good basis of life right I don't think I'd be doing what i'll be doing now if i didn't have that upbringing upbringing um and it was more like i left school hated exams right hated revising everything about school i didn't really like apart from playing football in the breaks um and then yeah my dad's basically one christmas bought me like a chef's jacket and then i started just doing like canapes on the weekend instead of doing the pot washing right and i was like wow this is amazing like i don't i don't get to i I don't need to wash the pots anymore.

3:40Felt like this massive like promotion.

3:42Olly Fawcett:Yeah. And then I just kind of never really looked back really. It just, I think a lot of chefs say like once cooking gets you, it kind of gets you. And if you're passionate, you're driven and you're willing to work hard, then it just becomes kind of your life. Did you, so you were pot washing in your dad's restaurant, seeing him at work versus seeing him at home. Was there two different versions? Uh, yes. Yeah. Um, it was a very interesting dynamic because when i started to do my apprenticeship with my dad i would be working with him and then we'd get in the car together and then we'd drive home together um and i always remember like driving home after i've had like a bad service or he's told me off or something um and then and then i have to get up the next day and then do that again it was it was quite it's quite interesting and quite difficult at times yeah because you don't really not for me it's just my normal but then when i tell other people they're like oh that must have been so hard i'm like oh yeah maybe yeah maybe yeah you know what i mean from both aspects i don't think my dad realized maybe how challenging that was for me as well do you know what i mean um but yeah i have a good relationship with my dad um he taught me the basis of cooking you know but sometimes we fell out and it was hard you know yeah cool because i think as well like i run plates with my sister now and i think if like a friend or somebody else says something to you exactly the same thing that your dad or your sister would say it wouldn't annoy you the same but it annoys you differently if you like know that person on a deeper level um so like you know like little things that my dad would say would annoy you more than if just that someone else said it um so yeah and going into a kitchen for a first time at that level of of apprentice right starting to learn and actually be taken seriously do you kind of remember that time is it was it a fond memory going into that into that level yeah yeah it was um i don't think i really started i was quite a young teenager right you know i'm not saying i was immature but i was you know i wasn't the most mature at 16 right okay um you know you're a little bit cheeky still and all that sort of thing um so yeah it was kind of okay now you have to like focus and you have to concentrate and you have to put in work um so yeah it was kind of a big transition and i think the even bigger transition when i moved to london at 20 um after being up north and that was a real like holy shit you know what i mean we go for what's interesting up north is in that kind of area is the the atmosphere and the type of people it's softer it's more friendly yeah it's different everyone says morning you know people look each other in the eye and they say hello you know and you get on a bus and you're speaking to the grandma behind you yeah and then you get on a tube in london and you're like whoa why is no one even looking at each other it is weird isn't it why if I smile at that person, I'm the bad person for smiling?

6:47Olly Fawcett:Yeah, we look a bit creepy. Yeah, exactly. I do it on purpose now sometimes. I purposely like go on the tube and see how many people I can smile to and see how many people I get to smile back. Because it's bizarre, right? Yeah, it's weird. Yeah. So that was really difficult for me, that transition and getting into a London kitchen compared to that was a lot more intense, a lot more physically demanding, you know no thank yous and no pleases and it was just like hardcore yeah did you so going as 20 you came into down to london yeah and that was kind of like the plan of like i need to go to london to take the next step was that kind of a feeling you had um it was more um i worked for a chef called phil howard at the square and he was one of my dad's best friends at the time he used to cook at a food festival my dad created called obsession 25 years ago he created it and i feel how i did the first 10 years so when i was apprenticed every year phil would be there cooking and his food was just at that time was just probably the best in the uk it was just incredible and so it was more that style of cooking and that chef that i wanted to kind of work for yeah really yeah and for those that don't know what's the real process to that in terms of like getting getting to work in those kitchens like it's not it's not an opportunity that everyone's getting right it's it's about proving yourself as you walk in the door yeah i think i think i think the amazing thing about our industry is most people will give you a chance no matter if you've zero experience or you've got a year experience right if you've got the right attitude you can knock on probably most one star two star kitchens in london and they'll be like okay come and do a few days right um so i think it's more once you're in there then you've got to prove yourself right yeah yeah yeah but um yeah i just believed in sending cvs writing letters um obviously i was living up north so i didn't really you know you hear the stories of people knocking on the back of restaurant stores and i love that that old school stuff i think still needs to stay um because it shows you really want something yeah um but yeah it was just through through that and luckily like obviously my dad was friends with phil so um you know and obviously i met phil through obsession so it was like i asked him basically nice and then how did you end up in a very famous restaurant in america how did that happen um i was working at a restaurant called pierre de terre at the time under shane osborne it was a two mission star restaurant um i was actually very happy there um so i struggled in my first year at the square in london and i was i left and then i came back so i felt like i hadn't finished what did you want i need to do just struggled with how intense it was um and just the atmosphere and stuff i just really it was just a lot um but i wanted to give it another go in a smaller kitchen like at the square we're doing like 100 covers lunch and dinner um so i went to a restaurant called pied de terre um it was very strict and very disciplined but it was very fair there was no like bullying going on or you know like shane osborne was the boss and that was it and everyone respected him um but everyone wanted to be the best do you mean there's only like six of you you're all pushing each other and it's all like you're all competing against you in a healthy way you know um does that always still hit stay in a healthy way or no it does well i don't think yeah um i think in kitchens some people want to put other people down um don't know why and as i've grown older i feel that that's an internal right it's like it's the same as you could as bullying when you're a teenager at school you think it's you but it's actually the person that's doing it it's got the pain right yeah just projecting the pain onto you you're just the vessel for that pain yeah does it feel like a lot of insecurities when chefs and people in kitchens do that in terms of they don't think they're good enough on that person so they'll send that negative energy that way is that what yeah or they feel threatened by it yeah um yeah because kitchens will always be competitive right like there will never not be a level of competition within that because that's what breeds such big creativity would you say that yeah i i think but we shouldn't we should compete to all just get better as a team yeah right yeah definitely and i don't believe that you have to be shouty or any of these things that you hear in the in the industry um to be successful or to be a good leader or to be a winner yeah you know what i mean there's i'm constantly looking at different when i look i look at myself every day i'm not perfect but i'm constantly going how can i make that person tick okay what's up with that person okay that person needs something different than that person yeah let's move this around yeah you know like how can i look at this guy in the eyes and he goes home at night knowing that his boss cares about him do you know i mean like i literally look at i tell my guys every day like i love you guys you know what i mean and if we do something wrong that's how i'll introduce i love you guys but we cannot cook like this we have to you know guests are paying this amount of money we have to cook at this level yeah we know how to season things properly please can we pay attention and just think about those details guys and speak to them you know and i think that's a constant growth and a learning phase in my position now that i've never been in before you know it's an unknown for me um and what's interesting every different character as different personalities we're all so different right yeah um and what i i just try and be who i wish someone was for me when i was that age so what you're saying you didn't really have that um i didn't have i don't think like it was all very like um it was all very like work and boss and you just work for that person right the way i look at it is even if it's two in the morning and one of my young chefs needs something, but it's got nothing to do with work.

12:42I want him to know that I will get up and I will go and help him or her. That's how they're my best friends. Yeah. Yes, I'm the boss. And yes, I have to set the standards. And yes, you know, we have to work to the way I want it to be. But I'll always listen to them. But I want them to feel that I actually care about them. And whatever they do and leave after, I'll always be there for them. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? It's not just this, oh, you worked, you worked there for two years and then you never hear from me again do you mean like that's how i see i see it is like we're a big family of like close friends that i generally care about them

13:18Olly Fawcett:yeah that's amazing so did you learn part of that at the french laundry was that was that like kind of environment not really it's just internal like i say it's like i wish i want to be what someone what i wanted when i was younger do you know what i mean yeah no I haven't learned it anywhere else. And I don't know if it's right or we'll see as time goes on. Sure. What's achieved at plates or what fails and what succeeds. Yeah. By just doing what I feel is right as trying to be a good person. Also trying to keep standards and be a leader. Yeah. Because also the industry is changing a lot. And I'm sure we'll come on to that.

13:53Olly Fawcett:But the industry has to change in a way. We should all want to change. Yeah, totally. 100%. So tell me a little bit more about ending up at the French Laundry. Because it must have been an incredible experience. yeah so i was at pied-a-terre and then my dad actually knows the ex-pastro chef there called claire claire clark um and he said oh i've got you in at a french lounge you're like i've been speaking to her and my dad was amazing at like trying to trying to you know like always pushing me and i was actually really comfortable at my job at the time so i was like oh i was just kind of like i thought oh i might get a promotion here and stuff like that how long have you been at pied-a-terre i've been there nearly 18 months oh right yeah yeah yeah but i was planning on doing maybe three four years you know it wasn't i wasn't even thinking about leaving yeah um but it was just like i the the book that always resonated with me was the french laundry cookbook yeah i never forget just reading the care about how to cook a green bean that he he wrote on that piece um and just thinking god like that's like a dream so obviously i was like right gotta go yeah yeah so yeah i just never thought anything of it handed my notice in obviously explained to shane why and he was cool with it you know i think he understood is that your first time working in america that's right yeah yeah what was that experience like different way of thinking similar to i was kind of explaining with like how the north is different to the south this is also very very different yeah um very different i mean the french laundry is like sitting in a Ferrari in terms of like the the the the vessel of atmosphere you're in and the quality and the you know the cleanliness and these things the level is just so so high did you you obviously would have known that before you got there right because obviously you knew the book you like you knew that it was going to be another level but were you surprised by the level at which it was yeah i think you have you have some sort of idea yeah um but you yeah there's always stuff that you're like well i didn't know that or do you know i mean and i thought i was working at a really high level um and then you go there and it's more i think it doesn't matter where you've worked or how good you see it is before when you start at french laundry you start at zero right and then you have to work up again you have to prove yourself um but yeah just the pure like professionalism right the cleanliness the detail of every single thing that's what i learned is like the detail and the care from the tiny things to like how you cut a label impacts the final dish um to goes to that guest because it's all starts somewhere right your standards start from cutting a label to how clean the floor is you know impacts your whole kind of standards that relates to the food it's hard to connect it to food but when you understand it yeah and i think that's what french laundry showed me at first oh god this is a bit much and you think that in your brain like no you can't put that there it has to go there and then when you understand why that has to stay there and that has to go there and everyone everything has its place then you really understand that that's creating a whole standard within the whole restaurant yeah so then they do everything in that certain way and that certain standard then how you cut that piece of fish or how you cut that pepper how you put it on the tray relates back to how neat you cut that tape do you know what i mean yeah yeah i i can standards it always starts always everyone says everything starts at the top it does but it starts with the smallest moves at the bottom also did you find that adjustment to that level of standard quite exhausting like oh yeah it was mentally like i think like you know we'll talk about this we'll talk about my health later on but like yeah i know myself pretty well and like mentally i'm strong like i can take a lot which has actually been sometimes detrimental in my life because i'm like yeah okay keep pushing me and i'll i'm not going anywhere yeah i'm very stubborn this was different it was just like constant of like okay redo it okay redo it what's that there your knife's not straight you have to move your knife straight what do you mean but while you're cooking no like when you when you're prepping at the french laundry like they're looking at everything about you like if you don't put your knife straight they can see it they see everything and you have to like constantly stop and clean and polish the windows and they have certain times where they do that and if you have to do it um i had a story that they just do that randomly as well right yeah yeah so they'll just say housekeeping that's what i shout yeah they shout housekeeping and then you have to stop and clean did you find at any points like you were saying it was kind of exhausting but did you not find um experiencing that in such an intense environment sometimes just a bit like what's the point you know did that ever settle in into that because i imagine it can do because that level of detail like for you now looking back it must feel like part of your journey and part of your story and you can respect it but in that adjusting to it as a young person as well like yeah was any of it just a bit like why are we doing this i don't get it almost yeah because you're young you know like 22 23 yeah and you you know like yeah it's you're in a different part like now why while i'm running my own restaurant i completely get it that but i explain it to my guys i'm like guys i'm only on to you guys like this and trust me you might find me annoying but when you leave you'll appreciate what i've what you've learned trust me because i explain that i didn't but well you know i mean because we have certain things you know like Yeah, every half an hour I have to clean the floors and certain things that I've put in place there.

19:40And sometimes it might get a bit annoying, but I'm like, this is what we have to do to keep the standards. And it's my job to keep the standards. And when you go and run your own restaurant, I promise you, you'll look back at it and go, actually, I appreciate that. And I think that's also the thing that I didn't get is a boss that communicates why they're doing that. Rather than just, this is what we do. And that's it. Do you know what I mean? Which completely in the standard, like in a restaurant there's time and all that sort of thing yeah but i try and explain to them why i'm doing that so if they get frustrated they understand you know what i mean yeah definitely how did the french laundry look at mistakes because you're obviously kind of training there partly right you were yeah yeah what position did you go into the inter well i just

20:21Olly Fawcett:did a stage there fine so they know there's gonna be you know this environment of like you know mistakes happen how did they look at mistakes internally um it wasn't it wasn't really your thing you just redid it and it was just clean and calm you know cleaning calm like yeah i never saw i never saw um screaming and shouting at the french laundry ever yeah but you like it had that like fire it had that energy where no one would ever dare answer backs it's like this is the standards that we work to and this is the best restaurant in the world or one of the best in the world and this is we have to redo it and the sous chefs would just be like redo it redoing you just redid it and that's as simple as that yeah if the dice isn't perfect you get told and you redo the dice the other was this sometimes with that level of perfectionism and it's something i always think about like running my teams and stuff is that like and you were saying about communicating it it's that sometimes it's almost hard to explain why it is wrong if that makes sense like some of these mistakes like if you're dicing something a certain way and whatever that might be in your world and as you're learning that did you ever go through that experience of being like i actually don't know how to get this right if that makes sense you know i don't know how what good looks like but then do they set that standard for you yeah the the french loan did it would um it was very detailed so yeah there wasn't really a space where you could kind of make excuses unless you unless you're just like this i'm not good enough i can't do this job or whatever right but they would for instance like if it was a red pepper dice they would draw the size of the red pepper merchandise on the on the on the handover sheet the night before so all your jobs will be written down and there'd be diagrams of exactly what they wanted and exactly the right measurements wow it was almost like so literally almost illustrated to the point where you could look at the look at the diagram and look at what's that exactly which is good because then you can't make excuses can you yeah you can't be like oh i didn't know or the chef didn't tell me or oh well i thought it was done that way it's like the proof is there yeah you know what i mean which i think's great when you were there did you see people that couldn't deal with what the french knowledge was yeah lots i saw lots of people just leave yeah just because it's just too much and is that because they just a tediousness of it right like 10 bucks a piece come in and you have to um grade them all extra small small small to medium medium medium to large large extra large yeah wow imagine how many peas that is and then you have to blanch them blanching means hot water into cold water and then you'd peel the little skins off the peas but you know how long that takes to just get like a container that full like a long time right and we'd be doing like 10 boxes or something so you can imagine like the mental i love that me like them tedious jobs don't bother me really but they get to some people yeah i'm just like i'm gonna beat that person next to me and you sat in silence doing those little things is it very french launch yeah it wasn't really you couldn't really like start having a laugh no it's very serious and fuck because you could talk you couldn't be like having a full-blown conversation do you know what i mean yeah yeah but it could be like hey hey mate like have you how many pieces have you got you could say stuff like that fine but it wasn't like you don't speak but you can't start having having a crack generally no yeah yeah i get it and for you those tedious job you're saying you didn't mind them yeah is that just natural for you it just didn't feel like a problem still to this day at my age now i get involved i'll pick parsley with the boys um i'll chop chives and ice onions like i don't care like i literally like that part of cooking yeah amazing so after um you were there you ended up in sydney yeah yeah why sydney what what drew you to that part of the world uh we've gone from north to london to la to sydney yeah it was more um um shane osborne who was the head chef at pied de terre was australian yeah um and there's a lot of australian chefs there because they all came over because they wanted to learn the hymn because he was the first ever australian chef to get two michelin stars was he so he was quite big at the time yeah and obviously in australia they don't have michelin so a lot of the aussie boys came over and girls um so michelin don't actually reach australia no they have hats ah yes a hat system so he he had two mission stars yeah because he was in london right and then he went back over no no this is he stayed in london oh right yeah um but he was there's a lot of aussie uh chefs in pied-de-terre right so they were like you know kirk go and work in australia for a year like go and get some rest and stuff you know like so you know you're working non-stop um and you can you know you can have a bit of a better life get some sunshine and all that's like you know what let's do it um so because i used to love running and stuff like that i like the sports but i couldn't really do any of that when i was in london because i was just exhausted i just sleep all day on my day off really literally no social life at all no um but to be honest yeah i just came to like work and learn so it wasn't really it was weird i was in my own little you know you're just on your own your bedroom sleeping and then next day you're back to work you sharpen your knives and i was in my own world it was fine um but yeah that's why i went to sydney basically um to try and get like look after myself a little bit and get a bit of a balance where i could work somewhere great but in sydney as well a lot of the restaurants don't open for lunch so you start instead of starting like six in the morning like you were in london at the time you'd be starting at like 11 12 o 'clock okay makes a big difference yeah huge difference so actually you're trying to kind of recover a little bit from a couple of hard years exactly catch up pretty quickly um So it was nice.

26:03I'd be going on runs before work and stuff like that. It makes a big difference. You have an extra few hours in the morning. So that's why, basically. And then there's a few amazing chefs there. One of the chefs I worked for at the store was called Mark Best. And he had free hats, which is the highest accolades in Sydney. I'd probably... Some free hats are probably like one or two stars, and some are definitely two stars.

26:27Olly Fawcett:Right, okay, fine. Is it similar system in terms of inspections and sassels? and that kind of thing or is it i'm not sure i don't think it's as kind of hidden and serious yeah fine the hats okay it's michelin great um so yeah worked there under mark best ended up um i was only planned to do a year and i actually uh met a girl out there and ended up staying obviously like most of us do uh ended up staying yeah for nearly four over four years wow what was the food influences like when you were there in sydney it was amazing if you look now like i think the biggest trend in the last five years is what all chefs have been doing is like inspired by japanese cookery right or asian especially in like the high michelin kind of fine dining in australia you're exposed to all that stuff that you take all the best soy from japan all the best kombu siwis all the best sesame like when i was working at key as well which um was an amazing restaurant that's on the harbor right probably the most famous restaurant a chef called peter gilmore that's also a free hacks he was in like the top 50 in the world as well um very famous for dessert called the snow lake you should look at it i think i've seen that yeah yeah yeah um yeah we were using all the best asian ingredients really so like my my knowledge on asian culture and japanese flavors and stuff like that i was learning all that then which generally know now because i like twist it into some of my dishes yeah um a lot of people guests that come go did you work in in asia and stuff like that and a lot of people say a lot of the asian cuisine in australia is sometimes better than some of the stuff in asia really yeah interesting really good what was the um kind of environment like in the kitchens in in os for you yeah again so different again you've got so many different variables we're just way more chilled right still like really high standards but just the aussies live in a different they put life before work yeah you know they take it just don't take it to the edge of what we do do you know i mean is that a slight different mentality that i kind of missed if i'm honest it kept itching away at me what the london sort of like yeah just a little bit of it where it's like let's do it now like right now do you know what i mean right it was a little bit like we'll do it we'll do it tomorrow mate um just yeah and just to tie you know but it was it was good to see again because now i look only now i look at it and go okay i take all them different ways of being and put it into my team and how i kind of yeah you know because we call it living yeah i don't want to my staff to work you know um and and have have certain environments that i was in so i pick and choose which you know that's what i've learned and then put it in to my space while you were in australia was there an element of thinking what you're going to do next and how you're going to take some of those influences into what you want to do in the future was there a goal to open up a restaurant there did you want to stay there you know obviously there's a girl involved so i mean complicated but what was the thought process of that time um yeah yeah that was the time I was like mid-20s mid yeah I know my goal was always to have my own own restaurant um I was nowhere near ready then um I was quite late if you look at like the age that I woke the restaurant compared to some chefs but when I look back at it now I was like okay I was nowhere near ready that time really what was not ready for you um my cooking style the dishes that probably I would have created there would have been a lot of failure there um which would have obviously you learn a lot but yeah just is that from a technical perspective or like in a kind of creativity perspective do you think i think when you're that age like mid-20s unless you are like an absolute genius yeah like most chefs are just trying to like look at cookbooks and create dishes and you know influenced slightly by where they've worked they don't really know themselves yeah or what they want to showcase or how they put dishes together fine so you weren't ready at that time to do that and you kind of knew that yeah yeah yeah um but it was more yeah it was more like even though i had i felt guilty sometimes i'm like i should be working like i was in london do you know what i mean yeah yeah imposter syndrome almost uh but i tried to look at it as like okay what can i do with this time okay i can go to the beach and write down ideas instead and stuff like that so I used to kind of do stuff like that.

31:01Olly Fawcett:Did you recover from the previous couple of years of intensity? Yeah, yeah. It was nice to start feeling good and to have some energy and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. And then what made you come back to the UK? Well, I got four. I had to come back because I got really ill. Yeah. I'm like really, really ill. This is 2016 time? Yeah, something around that time. 10 years ago. That's scary. Yeah. I just started with the most... I can't explain how bad the invisible symptoms were but like chronic pain memory loss like severe headaches severe dehydration stomach issues like just symptom after symptom after symptom I just found myself in the doctors like three times a week going to have scans um all the time like trying to find out what was wrong with me um every kind of pain medications you give me wouldn't do anything because the pain was so bad it was like having the worst hangover ever had times it by like 100 and that's how it was every single day did it start while you were working yeah yeah you know in australia when you're working in australia yeah well i got bitten um on my hand i woke up one morning and my hand was like swelled up like massive like four times the size um so i got bitten by something i didn't see what it was so I went to the doctors and they just said, take these antibiotics for a week and then it goes down and you're good.

32:25So my hand went down and I thought it was good. And then I started then with all these crazy, horrible symptoms.

32:32Olly Fawcett:Jeez. And so you're working, trying to keep the job, trying to keep kind of focused and that was all settling in. Yeah, I was dealing with a lot inside. I used to cover my legs up in heat rub and rub them up in like bandages because my legs were just so much pain. I couldn't hardly walk up the stairs. when you say that chronic pain so is that throughout your whole body whole body yeah but really bad like in my legs right legs were the worst part yeah um and it got i'd stay for about a year trying to find out what wrong with me doing everything i could all these scans but probably in australia you don't have health care so you're paying right you're paying for these scans so obviously you're the other side of the world as well i've got no family there so my dad was like i can't help you when you're at this side of the world and so that's when i decided to come back and then we um tried to find out what it was because at that time we didn't know what it was right um and obviously and i was on medication i was on opioids um medication called gabapentin which is like mainly for people with epilepsy or people with like chronic nerve pain it really helps but then obviously that comes with loads of symptoms and they're very very addictive like i couldn't sleep without them and i was still working like 15 hour days as well and pretending to you're still working 15 days i'm pretending to a whole kitchen that was fine why um i just have this and i've learned a lot now like it i don't live in regret but if i could have my time again i would have stopped a lot earlier but i just didn't know what to do and where were you working at the time i was working at key okay yeah um and yeah i don't know at that age and at that time in kitchens i just didn't i don't know just kept going it was always my thing keep going no matter how painful anything is just keep going don't give up yeah that's my mentality yeah which is a a good and a bad thing yeah because it's probably got you through it but got you through it in a harder way then maybe it could have done you know what i mean yeah but for you it seems like you're into health and i know you are now and those elements but like for you having your body react to something you don't know what's wrong must have been fucking terrifying it's terrifying when you don't know what it is yeah and everyone's just telling like doctors is making out i'm crazy because every time i'm going to doctors i'm telling them another symptom so then i think i'm going crazy right right so you were going back and being like right last time i was here was this and now i've got this and this on top yeah yeah yeah geez so you flew back to the uk yeah yeah and then what did you do about the health at that point so that point um i moved in i moved back up north live with my dad and then i i because i still had to like at that time i was probably underplaying how ill i was as well because i didn't want to stop cooking so i worked from a then i was like my dad needed chefs so i worked for my dad um actually his head chef was away she was um just about to go on maternity so he's like i need someone to cover and i took like basically like a head chef on top of all that is crazy was that your first one as well yeah under my dad as well it's the hardest person ever um and then on our days off like i was just going to all these specialists across the uk trying to find out what's wrong with me um and none of them could really find out wrong wrong with me otherwise say just keep taking medication it's not that bad and i was like no i don't want to keep taking medication he's just the guy with benson yeah yeah because that is pretty seriously addictive right yeah yeah yeah they've stopped kind of just giving it out now on prescription you have to have like certain yeah criterias and i think they banned it in in the u.s um but to be fair to that when i was in australia like the pain was so bad like it was horrific like i needed something into at least tone it down yeah um but yeah um and then i was like basically i have to cut a long story short after five years of trying to um find out what was wrong with me going to all these doctors all these doctors like not really taking me seriously i was just like right fuck this it's been over five years yeah yeah i'm gonna find out what's wrong with myself and then i started doing lots of research and a friend of a friend rang up with my stepmom and was like have you seen there's this guy on tv talking about Lyme disease it sounds like what your Kirk's got like like all these invisible everything he's been saying well no one believes you and it's invisible and yeah and I remember writing like typing Lyme disease in and researching I'm like my heart just was like that's it like I didn't even need to get tests I could tell like feeling in my body yeah so my all these symptoms what I've been going on about for like seven years and no one's been believing me yeah um and then yeah I got some professional tests done privately in american germany and it came like super high um line disease the problem is line disease so many things co-infections yeah for those that don't know how would you explain what line disease is line disease is a bacterial infection um so basically like spirochies they call them um they go into your body and they just cause absolute chaos right so they can go into your bones that's what causes all the chronic pain they take all your nutrients from your stomach like a parasite would do wow um so you can't absorb food like the nutrients they're just like because it basically shuts down your body like your immune system and everything that i think that was the trigger for me when i look back at my life yeah there's so many factors that were coming up to that point where it was just like i was putting so much pressure and stress on myself and it was like almost filling up a bin and then the bin blows up and i think the bite was like the opening of the bin right that's fine okay yeah because like when you actually look at anyone that's had like chronic health issues or mental health issues i don't know anyone from my experience this doesn't count for everyone obviously that hasn't had some form of like childhood trauma everything relates back to childhood in my view and it's only when i've done so much healing work on myself now 10 12 years of constantly looking at why okay that makes sense why okay that makes sense ah that okay when you're that age you don't know how to absorb emotion or those things you saw you saw sorry when you're younger your body's absorbed that and it turns into pain and it stores in your body yeah then it has to come out eventually um so there's them sort of things that all pile up on that that thing so discovering that you knew finally what this illness was yeah relieved it's more stressed concerned what was the feeling yeah like uh like worried but also relieved yeah i was like at least i can i can work for something i can find somebody that can help me i can do something myself um and that's when i started to like look at and the guts because i remember the first thing reading about was like when you have chronic leg pain for instance you're constantly like having scams on your legs and looking at your legs right but the pains can be controlled through your gut interesting a lot of people have headaches all the time and they look at the brain it's probably the gut that's causing it yeah because that is basically second brain right yeah you can have shoulder pain and it can be caused by a very terrible diet and your gut's just inflamed right and it's just that's the reaction that your body's every symptom is your body trying to tell you something right during we just take paracetamol and then shut it down instead of listening to what is talking to us that symptom is our body communicating with us and it wants you to listen where medication just shuts it down right we put of blue pasta on everything that's how society wins now we don't look at root cause we don't look at ourselves and during the five years when you were really ill what was your i guess diet health like because famously some chefs are pretty good at looking after their diet some are less so yeah yeah i was done yeah i was trying to be kind there um but like for you was there a bit of a correlation to go like i've been on the meds and taking lots of like medication and blue plastering it but did you kind of realize that actually there's probably a connection to how much you've been looking after your gut while you've been so little yeah yeah of course yeah i mean i didn't eat terribly like i wasn't one of these guys in mcdonald's every night um but i didn't eat great i didn't i wasn't conscious i wasn't going oh let's have a look at those ingredients oh you know what i mean yeah drinking coca-cola and sometimes and you know and then where now i'm like you won't touch coca if you paid me right um and i won't touch a big mac if you put 100 grand on that table so tell me about the discovery then so you went through the whole process of understanding more about how the body's working and food in in another level in a more medical sense yeah so what was that process for you was it like a deep dive of research and then you helped yourself or did you then work from those tests with doctors and other medicals yeah so um once i started to read about the gut this was when i was waiting for my test to come back so i was like this i'd stopped working by this point you you weren't working so far yeah because after my dad's i went to work for a chef called sap baines because he introduced a four-day working week but it was still like four long days but i was like oh maybe i can handle that but i was still really ill right that lasted that lasted about 10 months and that was like the last of it where i was like i couldn't even walk through a door properly um i fell asleep in my car and put it into the back of a lorry on my way to work oh my god um because my chronic fatigue was so bad what you just almost passed out yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah.

42:24They'd put us out. And then I had to go to work and pretend I was late and then take a ball looking for being late. Yeah, all the crazy stuff. And that was like, okay, shit, Kirk, this is enough now. Like, literally, we can't carry on. And I accepted out myself.

42:40Olly Fawcett:Right. That took, yeah, best part, like, seven years. Was it you talking to yourself on that? Or were people around you starting to, like, No, I mean, I only knew. I was just good at lying and covering it up and pretending I was fine. Do you know what I mean? Like, men are. We good at it. Yeah, I'm good on the phone. how does that person on the other side of the phone know you're actually in agony if you don't tell them yeah um so i was just pretending i was fine all the time and how quickly did you start to get better so when i moved back here with my my dad so i did a lot of stuff on the gut i took this is when i was like basically eating plant-based but without knowing i was eating plant-based or knew what plant-based was or anything i was just taking out dairy making soups with like because i was intolerant to dairy making soups with like coconut oil avocado oil all these different oils and i'd be tasting like wow that's delicious making all these like salads with raw garlic because raw garlic's really good for the gut and it's an antimicrobial and it's a nature's antibiotic right yeah and i'd be like so like when i make a dressing i make it super medicinal so we put an oregano in it and coriander because coriander detoxifies heavy metals from the body so i'll be reading about this stuff and then cooking it for myself almost i heard about the garlic thing you just said they've got people that have been severely ill that have just like consumed an awful amount of raw garlic it literally like clears out it's not good for your breath everything i mean like there's a downside there's a there's a like a purify there's like a thing called alice in max alice in max it's called yeah this is like garlic um they're like high high absorption kind of high level garlic capsules like supplements right and that's that's literally the better way of than eating lots of organic yeah yeah fair fair point um so then obviously then i was obviously reading about lime and i'd ordered um a protocol from a doctor called dr uh calden he's an american he created um um um like a tincture um right like program like a protocol basically where you take tinctures drop them in water and they kill different types of bacterias for lyme disease wow and you have to take them at certain times per day it's very intense i was doing that and i was doing another thing called bioresonance bioresonance is a quantum physics so it's frequency based so everything that's going on this room now is frequency right it's connected it to wi-fi it's all frequency our body runs on frequency uh a guy called raymond rife created a thing called the rife machine in america decades ago um and he i think he cured 17 terminal cancer patients with a right machine what i have to fact check this but um and then he disappeared funnily enough oh is it a bit of a conspiracy thing well it's true that he disappeared but um this rife machine what never seen again yeah yeah gone um now a lot of people then started to catch up on this and then make rife machines made by a resonance machines by resonance machines are actually in a lot of hospitals in china and russia where they diagnose what's going on in your body okay um and it's amazing you can see everything so it's almost like a scan system where they can literally scan intolerances but viruses bacterias everything why in a really like cost effective way like blood tests cost a lot of money right um but also what they can do is they can treat those things by resonance so you can show up like lyme disease co-infections candida um borrelius and then you can treat those things through the frequency so the bioresonance machines have the certain frequencies that these bacterias work on yeah imagine like electric shocks and then they And match your frequencies and then basically attack the frequencies.

46:27What these bacterias are on through your body. Yeah. So you basically put your hand on these plates and the frequencies going through your body. I have a Rife machine at home. And you can treat anything and everything on it.

46:40Olly Fawcett:And for you with where you're at, it worked. And so I did these three things like that diet, lots of the herbal stuff, by a residence i was doing like twice a week uh with a guy in liverpool actually that was getting amazing success treating dogs with lyme disease um and yeah and then i actually saw a woman that was getting treated at the same time as me and she was in a wheelchair through lyme disease me like chronic yeah and he got her out of wheelchair that's the thing when people tell me the wheelchair yeah yeah she was walking and when people tell me that like things are conspiracy as well i want to see i'm not bothered about reading a study from some controlled thing yeah through a system yeah if i see something from a physical person actually storm cold getting better then that's enough for me and as well when you're that ill you'll try anything yeah um were you quite desperate at that point do you think yeah i mean he got more desperate on the second part of the story but um yeah i was i was just up for doing everything to get better it was almost like the way i looked at it was like okay I put all this energy into cooking for somebody for cooking for people in a restaurant that I don't even know and giving everything to the point making myself ill and carrying on and carrying on and carrying on I'm going to put that same energy into myself and if I do that then I've always got a chance because I'll never give up on myself because I was never going to give up like trying to create the best food um so I did for about nine months like and i cut i was very strict like cut out zero white sugars i was literally just drinking filled water every day and juicing like all the time only you know organic zero alcohol like within nine months i got about 80 i'll take 80 better i was like running again wow if i'm not really being able to walk upstairs without medication got off all my medication on my own with those things that's insane with no one else really giving you the guidance and advice yeah you know no professional doctors no nhs just getting on with that and i used to make like um i used to buy like pure oregano oil frankincense oil stuff like that i used to make my own capsules ashwagandha powder and stuff like that and i'd buy the capsules and i make my own supplements uh and i used to create like an itinerary of like monday tuesday wednesday thursday and then put them all in that's what i mean i put the same passion and energy instead of looking at a negative way oh god this is gonna i was like okay i'm gonna make this almost it sounds weird because it was so painful but make it exciting do you know what i mean yeah because yeah how much can i learn about this yeah and like like like treat this as as something that's gonna make me a better person which did you get pretty obsessed with it yeah i got yeah now i've had or like i kind of had too though yeah it's like i think people that that kind of say those things have no idea about the people that have actually been that ill before yeah you can't be like oh yeah but i'll still go and have a mackie's on a wednesday night trust me your body keeps the score have you read that book no read that book your body keeps the score like and you know like like even if like the odd time which i never did but i'd like like a piece of chocolate or something and it'd play on me that I broke like the trust or the deal that I made myself to get better.

50:09Do you know what I mean?

50:10Olly Fawcett:Yeah, yeah, for sure. Now I'm a lot more evened out because of how far I've come. But I'm still, yeah, I'm still like quite strict. I'm still. You mentioned before, so you're starting to get better, but you're mentioning it became, it became harder again. Yeah. So the second part is though, which is, this leads on to the last kind of five years. My best friend lives in Australia. Okay. We went out to Australia together as a restaurant. And because I felt better, my mate booked me a flight to Australia to basically we're going to do some dinners to raise awareness for Lyme disease. Nice. Which is not really allowed to be spoken about in Australia because doctors don't want to admit that it's a thing.

50:55Olly Fawcett:Why is that? I don't know. It's crazy. Well, they just they don't want to treat it or they just. Because it's so complex. Like you need a whole, you need a whole NH, like a whole system just to treat Lyme disease. Really? Because you can't treat it just with medication. You have to treat it on understanding that whole person's life. And just so I can understand it, is there different levels of Lyme disease in a way? So can you have way more severe, a little bit more like you've got a little bit, which you need to do that? It's very complex. Yeah, exactly. There's some people, like I've got a friend, she's not left the house for like three years.

51:28Olly Fawcett:And she's got Lyme? She can't physically, yeah. her mum has to take her to the to the to the shower and feed her god yeah and she's just left like there's no help on the system um is she uk yeah she's uk Birmingham yeah we still speak now that's that's awful yeah I've known her from like the start of the journey there's a very famous musician actually he's blown up he's called Ren um he's incredible but he had he was doing YouTube videos 50 years ago talking about Lyme disease and he's done some treatments and done so many stuff and been so ill and he um he speaks about his music as well um is incredible he's called red I'll show you him after yeah I do he's like the most insane artist as well like mate he's gonna be like the biggest star in the world yeah he's that big so you went out to odds to raise some money on the dinners well yeah that was the plan um and then like Kirk again I was still in that era of kind of not listening and wanting to like do what i wanted to do in terms of like my dad my dad was like don't go to australia you put all this work into getting better like it's such a long flight you know how sensitive you are anyway was it just for a trip sorry were you going were you going just for like a couple of weeks three weeks oh fine yeah but the flight to australia is like 30 hours right with the stopovers and all that and at that time again a big learning i didn't realize how stressful and impactful flights were on your health right like the radiation the air do you like the air con is created through the propeller of the plane what do you know what i mean so you're pushing that air is in it comes through the jet engine and goes back into the cabin yeah brilliant i hate flying so uh yeah me too um anyway cut long story short i basically land in australia and all my symptoms came back shit so when you were on the when you boarded the flight you were in a good spot yeah and I was like 80 % better going off all my education going like fuck this is great like I've done it I couldn't go and enjoy myself Did you feel fine on the flight or were you gradually getting worse At the start I did I knew like towards the last bit that I was starting to feel yeah and then you got to look at the jet like so different like morning is night there night mornings that was it for you and that's still a lot people don't realise when you're fully healthy and strong but when you're compromised that's a serious amount of stress on your body.

53:48So what happened? I was just in bed for the whole time in Australia, pretty much. I was so ill. I was absolutely like, that's the time where like, I remember ringing up my sister crying at like one in the morning going like, I'm done, like I don't want to live anymore. Because I put so much work in. I've gone through so many years of like pain and the doctors, the trauma of the doctors of like not believing you is a lot as well mentally. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, you know how you feel inside and you're told that you're fine. Yeah.

54:15Olly Fawcett:it's really frustrating you actually feel like you're going crazy yeah because you started questioning yourself um so yeah and then i spent the whole three weeks basically like trying to get better like my mates were like booking me massages and all sorts of stuff i couldn't sleep like the jet lag was so hard for me um yeah and then so then it was just like a case of like how am i gonna forget bike and deal with that do you know i mean do it all again yeah so i had to get on the flight and go back and i was just wow six months pretty much bedbound just from the flights yeah um i think when i came back to england i was worse like worse than i was in australia why in your understanding of the disease like why were you worse coming back to the uk is it just just like the double like two of them out two flights of 60 hours right it's crazy how that flight is so impactful to the elites the stress and the pressure of yeah does that just magnify everything basically that yeah just weak like your immune system compromise oh i didn't even got a weak immune system it's like yeah it's not a great thing and for you for obviously you've already said it but like mentally you must be in a really hard place yeah that was the hardest place i was in when i came back from australia and i was like in my bedroom on my own like stuck for for a long time did you see that it was gonna eventually get better or did it just feel like it's just at all before that i'd always thought so at that point i was like no because it was so bad the pain was worse than i'd ever have it it was horrific so i had to go back on the gabapentin as well just to get some sort of ease which was also hard because i put so much work in you know to get off that type of medication it doesn't just take a week yeah it takes months and months trying okay taking a little bit more taking a bit less like okay you know i mean not sleeping one night all them sort of things um so yeah that that was um that was really hard to take what year was this ah i'm not good at years is it this is pre-pandemic right yeah yeah yeah pre-pandemic yeah um about eight years ago seven yeah yeah and then i take it you got better at some point how did that happen so no then i was like okay obviously i'd heard like people like ren doing these big treatments and people online there was some people online sharing of like treatments and facebook groups stuff like that and there was this one place in cyprus that was doing an array of treatments for lyme disease um different types of ozone therapies laser red therapy uh colonics vitamins ivs and stuff like that and it was six weeks so you got up six weeks so you get like treated every day wow um so i was like i'll do that so that's they're doing pretty much every treatment to attack every area of the body yeah in every single way possible like chronics red light therapy like the whole lot yeah yeah wow and what was that like yeah it was intense and it was just full of people that was in the same boat as you they were like invisibly ill um was that reassuring in a way to know that there's yeah i met some beautiful people like really was you see another part of life and I think when you lose your health it changes you forever you really look at things so differently like nothing else really matters in life like if you haven't got your health what can you do did you feel like that we stress about getting a mortgage by the time we're 30 and we have to have this, we have to have that sit in a 10 million pound mansion mate but sit there in absolute agony you don't want you don't care about any of that stuff literally um so yeah i did the therapy and it was six weeks and then that made me even worse so i went there thinking that it was gonna like make me better and be this magic thing and it made me even worse like then you already were at that point yeah yeah it was just too intense to give me too much and i do ozone now but on a lower controlled level sorry what's ozone just for a mask?

58:24Ozone's basically H3O. So it's basically like gas. Right. It's like a reaction. Gas masks. Yeah. On molecules. Right. It's a big thing. Like look at like Tempas where they basically Tempas ozone therapy is a Russian method and they take out the blood. They ozonate the blood and then put the blood back in the body and they do it 10 times and it cleans the body. Wow. It cleans the blood. I'm like meant to like re-enjuvenate your immune system stuff like that but again every single person is different that's the thing with lyme disease you can have 10 people all with the same treatment some people get better some people get worse

59:00Olly Fawcett:some people won't feel anything really yeah and it's is that because of the level of research that they're trying to do to understand it or is it just your body like for me for me it was just too strong because it's too much like it's too much stress yeah flipping out so you got worse yeah so then i came back and then i was like oh my god what am i gonna do so i was like okay well I don't dare doing any more big treatments anymore. So it was like, you could go to another clinic. But they're like 10, 20, 30 grand, these places. So they're expensive. So you're probably burning through all the cash you've made.

59:32Well, it was just my savings since I was a young kid. My mum always told me to save since 16. So it was just basically all that. Um, yeah, so, and then I was like, okay, I'm just going to go back to all the things that I did at the start that like aren't too risky. Do you know what I mean? So the buyer resonance and the protocols and working with naturopaths and then obviously food and all that sort of stuff. But I was so ill that nothing could bring me back. um and i just that's when i got a rife machine as well invested in a rife machine i had a sauna in my bedroom um and i'd just go from like sauna shower bed sauna shower bed um and just yeah keep trying to get better um and this was for like yeah another couple of years i was pretty ill were you working at that point no i mean no but this is when i just started to start doing plates like once a week right because i'm like mentally i need something to like at least have a little bit of purpose and do something that's when i started doing like one day a week pop-ups at trinity oh yeah yeah so it's like okay i can i can hopefully manage like one night a week because that's how we started plates basically and it gives me something mentally to like look forward to as well because my work was all just about getting better like researching something trying it buying it doing it you know i'll be getting on trains all over the place meeting people trying their things oh i've got this new thing that's amazing okay can i try it go there try it buy it okay you know what i mean it was like that it's like you just i was literally just doing anything

1:01:08Olly Fawcett:i could to get better and so when you approach trinity to do the pop-up what was the concept you wanted for plates what was the main thing you wanted to try and create and was the goal to sounds like it wasn't but it was like thinking of what a restaurant might be but also just trying and get back into the work mode yeah look i was not thinking about a restaurant at all at that point it was more like yeah just for myself like giving myself something to yeah feel a little bit of joy towards you know i couldn't do my running anymore i'd have to quit so many things i couldn't hang around with the same mates anymore because i couldn't drink any i stopped drinking so your whole life kind of you lose most of your social life right cooking was the only thing that really I had kind of left so and it was my mental like I always think like I'm like kitchens are great places if the environment's good for your mental health really they are creative you're part of a team you're excited you know I mean so many things I think we don't talk about that side enough if the kitchens run really well um so yeah it was more like just to do something you know and I to adam buyer and had a chat with him and he was a bit worried about my health that maybe i wasn't well enough and stuff like that but did you tell him at that point yeah he knew he knew yeah yeah yeah he knew um and he still asked me to this day when i see him like how's your health are you all right you know like um but yeah i just told him like i need to do this for my health do you know i mean i need something that i can like work towards i think yeah um and then i just started yeah and then that i was always searching to like i was if even if i was like okay i'm a little bit better i wanted to get more better and more better you know what i mean and again my goal was to get back off the gabapentin um and at that point i was still on it um and i was still i think the thing with medication it gives you all sorts of other side effects as well yeah and then what it does long term for your health it's not good gabapentin's pretty aggressive drug isn't Yeah, and you don't want to be on, I don't want to be on medication on my life.

1:03:09No, that's not healthy. And that's when I started to, I'd always, this is kind of where the healing gets to an all over level when it comes to like deeper stuff. And I'd always, funnily enough, read about plant medicines, specifically ayahuasca.

1:03:29Olly Fawcett:Yeah. And I'd always like scared to death. I'm like, yeah, no, that is like 10, 15 years ago. Anyway, around that time when I was still pretty ill, but I was kind of getting somewhere, but I was still searching and trying to get to the next level. And I was still in quite a lot of pain, but I was on the medication. I was managing stuff a lot better, but I was all, you know what I mean?

1:03:53I read about a thing called Cambo. Now, Cambo is the secretion from a monkey tree frog in Amazon. It sounds absolutely insane. Say that again, sir. One more time. A monkey tree frog. Right. like a green tree frog yeah and the amazonic frogs but yeah and they scrape the secretion off the belly of the frog and it has peptides in it it's incredibly powerful who discovered that well in the amazon that if you look the kids have been taking this medicine since the age of five six seven eight yeah generational thing you gotta ask yourself why does that generation really never get sick they're not going to doctor's offices it's mental in the amazon jungle right it is mental that so there's something there to be to be read about and i've always been curious about anything do you know what i mean um and i was like okay sat with it and all these things you know like you think oh god what could happen and for me it was like i got to a point where i wasn't scared anymore because i've been so ill for so long because i was like i kind of lost fear of like okay if i die i die or you know what i mean yeah the fear of death

1:05:03Olly Fawcett:kind of like i guess for you you've gone through chronic chronic pain for so long has changed your life yeah you've also done most almost every treatment you could possibly do at that point as well so it's kind of like well why stop here in terms of the treatment trying do you know what i mean yeah but what's interesting with combo is it's incredible for pain and incredible for addiction so i know some people friends personally who have done it like who are alcoholics or addicted to cocaine or stuff like that and it completely got them off so so what actually is this process so basically what they do you probably see i've done many ceremonies now but they basically um burn dots three dots yeah three to five you can do it anywhere in your body but different parts of your body it's stronger so if you do it by your spine it's more intense you do it more your heart it's more intense and then they scrape the skin off and then they put the poison of the frog it's a it's technically a point yeah yeah so that's what protects them right in the outer world right in their world and then your body basically within a couple of minutes starts getting really really hot like really really hot your heart starts pounding and you feel this medicine like whoo like they say the cambo cambo goes to the places that needs healing you can feel it's like zoom your body's gone like this what fuck and then and you have to obviously you can't like start freaking out and get anxious and basically you have to drink out and get anxious no you too no i mean if you do it with a good facilitator and that's very important like i don't speak i think this is the first time on any podcast i've ever spoke about this stuff because i've always kept it to myself so i don't want people to like oh i'm just gonna go and do it yeah right you can't do them these are highly powerful things that need to be done in very very safe spaces yeah with people that know what they're doing were you doing this in the uk yeah right um stupid question is it legal at the uk yeah fine it's not like a underworld type situation no but it kind of is but yeah it's a great area yeah okay fine um and what it does then you drink lots of water there's two ways of doing it you can drink all the water before then then take the cambo you can take the cambo and drink all that water the way i do it is drink all the water once the the cambo's on and then you basically purge all that water out so you basically be sick but it's not sick it's like you're purging all the toxins out your body and you just have this massive release it's great for emotional and mental release as well wow that's about 10-15 minutes not long what was the first experience like for you because you've done a few scary as hell really but i was like i could feel my body like healing weird what like in like kind of like yeah just like the pain easing um there and then as it was happening no like after like it stays with you for like long weeks after um and then you have to obviously rest sometimes you can do cambo and feel so energized energized after i can go to the gym like literally straight after and then sometimes i just want to lie on the couch and rest all day is there like moments of like does it give you some form of high in that level of like release no it's not psychoactive or psychedelic right so but it's a very like almost like everything is falling out of your body from emotional so you're saying it's affecting most yeah yeah it's great for pulling like emotional pain and stuff like that and how does that you were mentioning about the addiction stuff what's the correlation of benefit there does it just change mindset like how's that helping yeah good question i'm not 100 sure um in terms of yeah it just basically like clears all the toxins out your body right um but for the addiction yeah i think just about the power of the medicine just in terms of you're not addicted to the stuff yeah yeah how we had that so i did many many ceremonies and that got me off the gabapentin again the second time right with all the other stuff i was still doing the tinctures i was still really focusing on what i ate januarina was still doing lots of meditation and without cambo do you think you would still be ill uh well i mean i'd probably tried something else so i don't know yeah but yeah um i also did a lot of work with mushrooms so magic like psychedelic mushrooms right with with facilitators again so like we've trained people so like you don't take mushrooms on a night out like with alcohol that's that's not what they're there for my mushrooms are teachers and they showed me a lot about like again my childhood and healed a lot of that which also helped me with healing pain and them sort of things wow because they go back and show you your life you know and um really help you like see things and see life in a different way give you a lot of gratitude um for things so those two things together at that time took me to the next level in terms of getting better as well and was this during the pandemic period by this point um before uh yeah no before that during it and after yeah and i still do it now you still go around yeah no and is that something where you just have to work with those practitioners yeah i mean and i go when i feel like my body needs to go i was going to ask you what happens now with your health so is it a constant maintenance like how do you look at you know you obviously changed food lifestyles and all those things for good now what am i doing like for you does it feel like there's a pretty stable stable future in that many sense or was it yeah i think i think for me it's just because i love cooking so much i'm so passionate yeah and love my work it's about controlling that and not being so work obsessive all the time and actually remembering your health do you know what i mean yeah and taking some time out and stuff like that so you can keep doing what you yeah yeah so let's talk about plates yeah because how many years have you had plates for now well we've been building plates for eight years but uh our site in shoreditch is 18 months amazing so tell me where what was in the site before but it was like a little rundown it was a it was a cafe yeah but then it was they closed i think just kind of as soon as covid hit and then it was derelict for like three or four years amazing and you found it and it was a great opportunity yeah yeah fantastic so you're saying you're building for eight years so what is the concept behind plates what are you trying to build with that obviously it's kind of personally related to you right yeah so the deeper journey which this is my light through the darkness this is where i look at it it's like the food that is presented to you is gone through a lot of pain right right and that's my journey that's my message really um and i think i'm trying to like work out now how to purvey that to the guest and stuff which is super interesting um but yeah it's about you know that's the first time i ever did a soup without dairy in it from a chef that's been trained to put dairy in everything and going wow that's delicious and then getting almost like a calling in my body that i need to pursue this direction of cooking there's something that i was felt i was pulled i was told i was cold or whatever you want to call it yeah that i need to share this story with the world um and the creative part of it where it's so restrictive in terms of ingredients um what can you do with it do you know i mean that challenge gets me up in the morning yeah you know i mean how creative can you be today um and i'm here to create a drama of cooking that doesn't need a label i think i've said that always like i'm not here to call i don't like calling food vegan all these names like food is food if it's delicious and it's exciting and it's innovative then it it should be respected in the same format yeah why don't you like the labels i just think it gives a connotation to like say like you go up north and you said someone oh you want to eat vegan tonight as soon as they're in their head they'll be thinking oh i don't want to eat a bowl of lettuce or some lentils or some chickpeas it gives them a vision in the mind of a style of food is and my food does not reflect that at all right but you wanted my food is the opposite of boring i think yeah i mean it looks like definitely looks the opposite of boring as well but for you so when building plates was it always to focus on plant-based yeah yeah that's what we've done all the time yeah but it's a keep pushing the boundaries of like what's possible just through nature and make plants like super exciting yeah and you know what's interesting is like 99 % of people come to plates eat everything or like say like their partner's vegan and their husband's not and he didn't want to come and she did and then after he's like hugging me because he loved it that much do you know what I mean that's like amazing for me yeah that's an amazing feeling and then I love it when plant-based people come and they're like i'm so glad there's a place to come where i've made to feel special because you're always the second you know like when you go out for dinner you always get like the crappy veggie options and your mate's having a lobster or a piece of steak do you mean yeah and that again is super rewarding yeah i've got a friend of mine drives me yeah i've got one friend who is vegan like i'm a pretty much yeah 100 um but like we i like i've not really been around many people who are part of this right like most of the people most of my friends most of my family or you know pretty much will eat anything um and she always says it's like just it's it's always second best it's always not even in some restaurants they're just not putting that much attention into it yeah you know in terms of what that option might be which is challenging but it seems like you're completely flipping the script on that and you started with your sister yeah yeah that's exciting what why did you want to deal with her uh my sister's always wanted to do she loves food always wanted to do um like something in food um and she's supporting me so much throughout my journey like when i couldn't afford to pay rent and stuff like that i was living with her oh man um you know i've been so lucky in that respect same as my dad um and she's super smart which helps doesn't it are you kind of oppositions yeah we're opposite i'm like physical and she's like i can make this she's got so many amazing ideas she knows how to bring business in she knows how to look after clients she knows how to build a brand right and how to like make a product happen very fast yeah yeah so it works really well and do you enjoy working with her yeah yeah yeah we've had challenges of course but we have boundaries now and we learn you know as you get older as well like last we want to do is fall out and what does your dad family's fall out together um my dad yeah he's proud yeah i think he's a little bit jealous really i think he always wanted me to be like his chef right i think he wanted me to like run his restaurant for him and or with him do you mean yeah but deeply i think he's proud is it when he comes in is there ever a little bit of like just a bit nosy wanting to know what's going on yeah yeah he wants to know everything yeah yeah yeah amazing and you guys got a star yeah yeah pretty quickly i mean i think you were the first plant baby refresh one in the uk for a mission start right yeah yeah first ever that's insane for you like it was was that the goal as you opened the doors was it like we want to aim to that obviously you want that standard and your your background and training is of a mission and standard right yeah yeah it's a big part of what you've done but what was your perception on that yeah it was internally but i never really voiced it i was like let's just try our best do you know i mean there's gonna be challenges we're gonna have bad services things happen in restaurants especially when you're opening them yeah you know what i mean i'm not gonna start shouting to everyone that i want this and that you know what i mean but internally that was the goal yeah what did it feel like when you got the start um do you know what it was it was interesting because a feeling that you've an accolade that you've wanted since she was a 16 year old boy now when you get it you're like okay next really yeah i struggled to celebrate really i was going to say so i watched the video of on the on the plates instagram of you guys getting a star and your expressions aren't like overwhelmed if that makes sense like i feel like you and it may be just how you are in the kitchen and with the team and stuff but like you know screwing up the plaque and cutting the cake and that it all looked great but when i looked at you in it i was like i don't know it feels like it's a road that you've walked before but am i right in saying that um yeah i don't know if it was that i don't yeah it wasn't that because it's that's the first time i've got it but i think i think through all the yeah i don't know it's interesting because i guess also you've gone through so much in your personal life like you know incredibly low lows that some people would really struggle to get through and you obviously did struggle to get through yeah but like getting to the point where you are the first plant-based it's a big deal but it's almost i get what you're saying in terms of your like you have it in the mind it's part of the journey it doesn't mean we stop going forward right yeah yeah um yeah i know what you mean like technically i should be on the floor probably crying um which i probably will be doing when i get two stars oh really but yeah but i don't know with that it was like it was like it was yeah it was a weird feeling that's the only way i can explain it but if you watch great british menu that was very emotional and very connected to my journey right and very everything that you're probably thinking i should have been on on the other um but i think it's just because i know i've got more in me and i know i can do more and i know i can do better um and i think great fish menu was this like big thing so many people watching yeah like this is my whole journey and pain encapsulated in my body that nobody knows about and I've got to show the world that this food, like I was almost doing it for everybody that suffered as well.

1:19:03Do you know what I mean? Yeah. It's like all those people that are still suffering now, that's for them. Because it was like, if you fight and you believe and you keep going, you can heal and you can get better. And that was like winning that was like so, that was the best feeling in my life. Because you won it in 24, right? Yeah. Was it hard? So hard. yeah it's hard like you nobody you don't win that competition easily like it's the chefs are amazing it's intense because it's like it's on tv you've only got like an hour and a half to do your dishes yeah it's in october so for me it's terrible for fruits and vegetables to do a whole menu like four or five courses every chef watches it you're going to be judged right oh yeah you're going to be judged left right and center um you've been very vulnerable um so yeah what do you think there was a reason why you won um i think it was just my time um the food the food was i got very important things right and i right and i practiced a lot to be able to put the detail into my dishes so like the seasonings were perfect the you know like I made sure um because the first time I did I don't know if you know about I did it like four or five years ago and um when I was still quite unwell but I was like I can't yeah when I was still ill but I couldn't obviously I was like I can't miss out this opportunity so I'm gonna do it anyway but it was too much for me the pressure and really still be not um and I messed up loads of dishes because i didn't practice properly it was in covid i did it um and i was then i went through six months of like really really bad like depression where i thought everyone's gonna think i'm a shit chef and blah blah blah and i wrote down like a journal everything i'm gonna do when i get my chance again i'm gonna win it and when i got my time again i did all those things because i learned when you when you do tv it's a whole of the world it's nothing like you're watching it so when you're in there you experience it oh shit this is how it is yeah and then you go okay right i know that how that works like that i know that them pans are there i know that you know what i mean so the second time you go in yeah it's like you've got what much more awareness of what's going on so i was like right when i get my second time i'm gonna i'm gonna win it did the second

1:21:33Olly Fawcett:time put any strain on you from your personal health or was it yeah it was a lot it was a lot yeah uh because your adrenaline's so high you care so much you like getting up at four and you sleep like three hours a night because you're waking up like 4 a.m like thinking about your dishes oh check it like you know you got paranoid oh like thinking you forgot something or you know what i mean like your brain plays tricks on you yeah and then and then yeah it's it's a lot the adrenaline the pressure the stress the emotions it is but that was amazing like the impact that had on your career as well yeah can you try and explain this um i think it's the most impactful thing has happened ever happened in my career i think it's amazing i had lots of great rich menu for that opportunity um and i think lots of chefs do as well um it just filled the restaurant for the whole year like as soon as we launched a booking website online like our website crashed crashed yeah we had 76 000 people trying to book at the same time for the new plates yeah um than the restaurant yeah it was just wild yeah flipping out it was just insane um so it was amazing that's one way to put more pressure on the launch of it right i know imagine people queuing it like half an hour before i'm going go this is all i need but yeah so care for what you wish for right yeah and what you pray for is that really i used to pray for these things really like when i have holidays now i'm actually living my dream like this was like eight years ago this was my dream and i think it's good to look back and have gratitude because you don't once you get those things you don't you don't acknowledge or appreciate it you know what i mean but when you don't have them you're like oh it would be amazing to feel that or have that yeah it's like you've got it mate like yeah do you know what i mean yeah yeah i think it's just a psychology of like p of like yeah always wanting to do better it's a good thing but it's also a burden what's that thing where we're always saying to ourselves like i'll be happy when this happens i'll be happy yeah none of i can guarantee you now and i thought it none of these things will make you happy what things the things they're the material things none of them will make you happy unless you're internally happy what does for you now then just a very simple life feel good in my body yeah healthy that's it i don't do i'm like i don't need much in my life like very simple like i don't you know like i like my routines you know i do my saunas do the gym do jujitsu now and again now um but i don't need to go on lavish trips all the time and be in a champagne booth or just to look cool like just like it's just don't do anything for me yeah i don't just i've got people around me i think is the most you know the best way small circles good people amazing so with plates you want you said you wanted two stars what's the future of plates where do you want to take it i want to take plates into a place where it's like on the world map so like we take we we really transform how plants are presented in a creative way that's kind of never been done before that's the long-term goals like the whole experience etc so we're working on it at the moment um and it's difficult when you have a tiny restaurant because you've got to make financials work as well yeah do you know what i mean yeah yeah um but yeah i want it to be like world class i want like everything to be like amazing is the goal for it to be around for as long as possible is the goal get three stars is the goal yeah better every year like how do you how do you goal set now that's kind of what my goal set just yeah just by like yeah i don't really set like okay i have to get this by this time because then i think you can end up disappointed right yeah i think they say expectation leads to disappointment don't yeah so just habits isn't it um yeah i would love to get place to two stars just what it would do on the world map um but again if that doesn't happen it doesn't happen it's not meant to be i'm also wise enough in life now that i know things happen for a reason and i know if it's meant for you or find you um so yeah just focusing on on the product and not looking anywhere else really yeah um and then yeah i'd love to like you know maybe in 10 years time i don't know do another creative project in smaller capacity that's less intense or something like that do you know i mean um yeah insane i've got a few questions around the industry just generally to finish up like i think a lot is i feel like your industry is massively blowing up at the moment in terms of um eyeballs on it people talking about it the show's coming on you're talking about nama no i know i mean yeah noma's noma was what yesterday that whole that whole thing's kind of happening but um i think the biggest question i have is that everyone knows hospitality is a bit screwed right now as an industry in terms of like the ability to make money the ability for businesses grow we were talking about heston closing one of his places down it's been there for 17 years and like those sorts of variables for for the people listening and for the people that aren't in the industry as much as obviously you are and maybe have the understanding that i do what is the biggest problem in the industry right now for those businesses and those restaurants um i think the biggest problem in the industry right now is the lack of support from um our government really i think 20 tax um vat sorry yeah um it's crazy business rates like they're almost making it impossible to run like if you're not full every day it's really impossible to make a business like successful and you're under the turning tables right yeah you need to be doing i would like i do consultancy and lots of other stuff to bring other things into support the business that i have to do on my days off um because yeah there needs to be some respect on our industry i think from everybody from society and from yeah the government you know for business owners you know and then we can you know like like i say i'm trying my best to change you know working culture within the team and give them better working hours and stuff like that but there's only certain level you can go to because financially you'd have no business you know what i mean yeah of course and you're the guy that's taking all the risk and all the pressure and all the stress so there has to be some there's to be just become this has become some sort of medium where there's some fairness in it that actually otherwise what's what's going to happen for the younger generation that want to open restaurants this is not good there ain't going to be any do you think that's going to be too hard if we don't change it yeah yeah and it's a shame for the you know the young 21 21 year old cooks now yeah because when they get there they're working to have the restaurant when by the time they're 30 they're gonna like they do the financials and go it doesn't make sense it doesn't make sense yeah and there's gonna be less people wanting to invest in restaurants but our industry is incredible it's so resilient and i it's and i honestly believe that we can overcome anything and i think it's good that there are still people out there willing to risk it because who excites you in the london scene at the moment Who incites me?

1:29:02Who incites me in London? Good question. I mean, like I said, Adam Bayer, I've got so much respect to him. We spoke about it before. I think he's rightly, deservedly having his time now of being recognized as a legend. He's worked so hard. I think, again, with not as much recognition as he probably deserved for his 30s and 40s. and now he's becoming this kind of shining light in the industry and almost like a, what's the word? Like a Bernard Boise or a Rue Brothers where they're classically trained and they're showing the younger generation how to do things properly.

1:29:43Olly Fawcett:Yeah. I really think he is investing in the future. And his food looks insane as well. Yeah. He's pushing the creativity of his food in the restaurant as well. So, yeah, I think Adam Bayer deserves it. everyone deserves it this year yeah amazing well look you've you've you've told me so much man it's been like an incredible story like absolutely incredible and you've been through so much personally and you're now building an incredible business and a brand my question to you is what do you think it takes to build such a interesting business but also having a career that you've had um yeah i think i don't think there are any secrets really i think it's just like resilience hard work like passion care about what you do um and and yeah never really give up i think and if you believe in something if you feel something in yourself don't listen to anyone else i used to and if you feel that feeling you've got that feeling for a reason so follow it amazing hello dude thanks so much for coming on it's been a pleasure i'm excited to uh come down to the restaurant and get some food but um yeah you've been really inspiring today and it's been a pleasure to meet you and chat and I'm sure we'll see each other soon.

1:30:52Olly Fawcett:Cheers mate. Thanks dude.