#182 - Hospitality Meets Natasha Robinson - Long Legacy: Family, Food, and Michelin Stars in Hospitality

And a huge hospitality meets. Welcome to Natasha Robinson. Oh,

thank you, Phil. It's lovely to be here. How are you? I am very

good. Today is supposed to be the first day of spring. It's the spring

equinox. It's trying desperately to be sunny outside,

but the blossoms are starting to open

and my garden is full of tulips and daffodils, so I'm great.

Yes. There's just something, isn't there, about when the weather starts to turn

in this way where, I don't know, everything just feels a bit

nicer and, you know, let's just get to it. Yeah. Hope

and optimism, that's what it is. Yeah. And especially as well, I suppose, from a

hospitality perspective. Look at me, getting straight back on message. You've

got, you know, they're pretty. They're normally the

lean trading months as well, aren't they? That sort of the first quarter of, of

any year, because people are, you know, got the Christmas hangover

and all of that. Although my wife and I do our best to compensate for

that because we've both got our birthdays in January, so trying to find

places that. That remain open for my birthday, especially on the 5 January.

So this is a note to everybody out there who closes for the first two

weeks in January. Please stop it. Don't.

It's funny, because we used to. Historically, January was always a very good month

for us because there was part two of

Christmas, if you like. So a lot of people entertain at Christmas, their

customers or their clients or whatever, but actually to be able to look after your

own staff and take your staff out on Christmas parties or things like that, that

very often happened in January, once all the excitement of

the season had passed and you actually had time to sit and think. So January

was always good for us, and then things would trail off slowly. But

I do know that trading patterns have changed completely over

the years. So for a very long period of our career, you could

pretty much plan because you knew this was a good day, this was a slow

day, this was the high season, this was the low season, but all of that

has changed. And in fact, you mentioned birthdays. April,

historically, which was my father's birthday, and my birthday

was the worst month of the year, actually. And it's so

within the family, April is like, yay, hey, birthday month. And because we

were just a week apart, we did our birthdays together. But from a business

point of view, April was not a good month. Is that right?

Is that right? Yeah. I mean, I suppose you kind of

just in some ways, there's some things that you can affect in terms

of trying to drive business in, but sometimes you've just got to go with the

flow, haven't you, really, of what is going on. Yeah.

A lot of people have said to us, a lot of our kids have said

that. In fact, the weekly pattern has changed completely as

well, because a lot of people still work from home. London

is busy now, sort of Monday, Tuesdays are good days, apparently,

in London, and conversely, Fridays, Saturdays, not so much,

because people take longer weekends or work four days, three days,

or however they do it. So that has completely changed as well. So that would

be alien territory for me if I was running a business now, having to

relearn all of those. Yeah, well, I suppose

London, from that perspective through the week, has changed, but actually

the benefactor has been then the local communities, isn't it? Because I've certainly noticed it

where I live, Stansted and Bishop Storford way,

the restaurants are busier. There's actually more restaurants coming online than there

have ever been before, which is just in the face

of all the doom and gloom that's out there in terms of business trading conditions

and all of that. And I think we're all aware of the pressures

that exist right now, for sure. But at the same time, there's

still the opportunity to thrive. There is. I mean, if I look at

Rye, obviously, I was born and brought up in London and worked in London all

of my life, but for that last ten years, we've been living in rye so

completely outside of the capital, we're backwards and forwards all the

time. But looking at the way that Rye has changed in the last ten years,

it's quite amazing. It is now full of restaurants. It was, historically, it

was always full of coffee shops and tea rooms and that sort of thing, but

now we have some really good restaurants either in town or around town.

And certainly people are always amazed when I tell them, Hastings and

St Leonards, and they all go, see, seriously, Hastings, isn't that.

St Leonard's, which is the far end of Hastings, is an

absolute goldmine for restaurants.

Young, new, hopeful, bright, happy businesses which

are extremely professional, extremely well run, very

popular. One of our favourite beach bars in the entire world happens to

be on the beach at St Lennon's, for goodness sake. So

all around here, businesses are doing hospitality,

businesses are being rejuvenated and starting to

thrive. We have lost some. There is no doubt we've lost some. But as some

go, they're replaced by new and arguably

better, more professional ones. A lot of. We have a lot of breweries

down here, a lot of kids who are starting up breweries were surrounded by

vineyards by accident. When we moved down here ten years ago, we didn't realize

that we were moving into the wine capital of the

British Isles, amazingly. So the part of East Sussex that we're

in. I know, isn't it terrible? We're very near to

Kent, so we're on that sort of on the border of East Sussex and Kent,

which is british wine country. I mean, who the hell knew? So there's

a lot of hope and a lot of growth, not just in London, but I'm

happy to say, in the southeast, if you like.

Yeah, absolutely. You can come again. I love this positive, positive

outlook for sure, but just gone straight

into this. But, you know, for the world out there, what is it that you

do? Okay, well, so I was born into

restaurants and born, grew up and worked in restaurants all

my life, and now that I'm retired from that,

I, along with Sergio, we support, mentor, and

encourage young people into hospitality. So I did 40

years in restaurants. He did 60 years in hotels and restaurants.

So we like to say that between us, we have 100 years of food

and beverage in front of house knowledge, which sounds crazy, but

in effect, we actually do have so much knowledge and experience, and it's now

time to give back and share that with the younger generations who are coming up

in our industry. Love that. Love that. And you do that under the banner of

Serenatta hospitality. Hospitality. Yeah, absolutely.

Combination of our name, sergio, natasha, Serenatta comes out, which is rather

nice. Rather pretty, rather lyrical. Yep. I can

find nice songs on. On Instagram to post behind our

posts with Serenata in, because it's a lovely word, isn't it? Yeah,

that is. That's lovely. I like that. Yeah. And you were very. You were kind

enough to reach out to me on Instagram, actually, and it's only taken us about

three years to make this happen. But. But we. We got there in the end.

I know, but, yeah, there's a lot of things that I want to discuss around

the work that you do, but we'll do that laterally because I actually want to

take you all the way back. You've already mentioned that you were kind of born

into the industry, as it were. So I don't know whether you didn't

really have a choice to go into hospitality or whether

it was just something that you were just born and destined to do. I

had a choice, and I actually opted out for a while, I have to say.

So on my mother's side of the family, which is the french side of my

family, I'm, in fact, a fourth generation restaurateur on

my father's side, on the greek side of the family, I'm a

third generation restaurateur. And I know. So,

yeah, so it is definitely in my blood. However, my

parents, when they met and married, were not

planning to go into owning and running a restaurant. They sort of

just fell into it. My father had tried all sorts of different

careers previously and finally ended up owning

a restaurant because after years of not knowing what he wanted to do,

they took a year out. He had enough. Took a year out, went to the

south France to where my mother's family are, and just

took a time out, basically. And they spent a year eating

and drinking their way around France and the local area and stuff.

That sounds terrible. I know, isn't it terrible? He'd been

brought up by in a household. He was actually born in

East Africa. So he was born in the middle of nowhere in Tanzania

on a size of plantation. And my great

grandmother had to make everything from scratch. So we're

now talking thirties, forties, fifties. So

no running water, no electricity. Everything was make do. She had to

make their clothes, she had to make food from scratch for

a large family. So my father was always surrounded by

fantastic food from the word go. And he kind of took it for granted, as

a lot of us continentals do. It's just part of our

life, and that's the way it is, you know. You wouldn't consider that

people don't like food, enjoy food, know how to cook food,

not a thing. So fast forward. He came to England

to study, started working, couldn't really find what he

liked. Took this year out eventually with my mother

and rediscovered his love for food and thought, I know,

why don't I open a restaurant? My mother went, yeah,

okay. Just like that. Just like that. And that's what

they did. So this is now 1973, and they open a tiny little

restaurant, East Dulwich. By now, they have two little girls with them. Where they go,

the girls go. And we were. We found ourselves in

this restaurant where we used to help and work

and mainly sit around waiting for my parents to finish service before

they took us home at night. And it was not uncommon for us to be

sort of sat at the back table of the restaurant, do our homework, have some

dinner, and then get carried home afterwards. I love that. I

love the visual of that in terms of the. How

integrated in family life that is for you. And, you know,

it doesn't have to be this

corporate machine of the cycle of restaurant. A good

restaurant in a local environment like that is a part of the community, isn't it?

So why not have your kids up the back of the

restaurant doing the homework? I love the authenticity of that. I think it's just really,

really cool. Well, so that's how we grew up and

a lot of because of the location at the restaurant at the time in

Dulwich, we were near a couple of the big training

hospitals, so the student doctors used to come and have something to

eat with us and then as we got

bigger and moved into town, the student doctors became more

qualified and more senior and so we sort of grew up together. So

by the time we ended up 30 years later, a lot of our customers were

sort of top medical specialists and all of this sort of stuff, so we

all grew up together and along the way they had families and children

and they brought their children to the restaurant who grew up through. So there was

a very, very much a sort of a progression of

us, the customers and the family

atmosphere sort of permeated throughout everything, really. Yeah,

yeah. Brilliant. And so you were a child at this

point. How did it progress from there in terms of

your forced into child labour? Of course I was the same. Yes,

child labour. Growing on the. Yes. In the garden, growing herbs

for my father and helping them out at weekends, which

I probably started probably at about the age of 16 or so,

Friday and Saturday nights, which, as we were saying earlier, were the big days of

the week in those days. So I would help my mother

in the restaurant front of house and it just

sort of went from there slowly, slowly, so fast forward to about

1718 when I was studying at school, which

I was not a natural study. I hate

studying. I hated studying. I have to say, I have changed a lot since

then. I am dyslexic, so it took me years and years and years to

know how to even read and write and therefore I was more

artistically minded. I drew, I painted, I

could do anything with my hands and I thought to myself, that's what I really

want to do. I don't want to work in restaurants. I've done the restaurant thing.

17. Done the restaurant thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Been there, done there.

Everything there is to see. That's it, yeah, move on. Next. So

I actually studied history of art and design and

merchandising. I thought, right, last thing I'm going to do is work in a restaurant

like my parents. I'm going to go out there big, wide world.

And I did that for a little bit and then slowly,

slowly got sucked back into the restaurant because I was working still part time

on and off with my parents. And then as

daddy became more

professional, I suppose, because it had started out as a sort

of. Right, let's try this and see where this takes us then. In

where we were at this time, we were in Battersea. He got his first

star. So he then. Yeah, he then. What

year are we in now at this point, roughly fantasy. Early

eighties. Yeah, early eighties. Okay. We lived

upstairs. Brilliant. Yeah. Well, here we are again, like the authenticity of,

you know, a family restaurant, as it were. But I suppose at that time

as well, the food scene in London

probably had not fully taken off by any stretch of imagination. So

you were, you know, to get a star at that time. You were probably one

of a chosen few would imagine it was. It was an

uphill battle at that time. Everything was a fight. People were

not used to eating out as much as they do now.

People were. Didn't have cookery books all over their

kitchen counter or shelves the way that they do

now. They weren't used to some of the ingredients that

we had in the food. Oh, I don't like this. I can't eat garlic. What's

that? Ooh, that tastes odd. Why have you put it in all that sort of

stuff? Right. And it was very difficult. And

as my dad says in one of his books, he always says that when he

started cooking, he had to go to the chemist to find olive oil. Now, he

had grown up in a greek household where olive oil was what you had

at home and cooked with. You couldn't move for olive oil in Greece.

Yes, absolutely. So here you couldn't move

for not finding olive oil. You had to move around boots to find olive oil

because that's the only place that they stocked it in little jars for

medicinal life. I know,

and we're not talking that long ago. No, I

mean, not in the grand scheme of things. Right. I mean, yeah. I mean, to

think of. To think about how that is just such a

taken for granted staple of any household now, isn't it, really? I mean,

anybody who cooks will have a bottle of olive oil

kicking around. For sure, and several others, because

we're now so used to the variety of things we can get and we

don't have to go to specialist delicatessens or shops or things like that. Any

supermarket will have an array of all sorts of things. And

so we got our first star. And

this made daddy realize that. Hang on, I'm

onto something here. I need to do a bit more investigation.

He was a very sort of erudite person. And

one star. Okay, that sounds very nice. What does it mean?

Why have I got it? And can I get another?

And then he realized that actually, once you've got the second, there is a

mythical thing called a third star. So to him it was

a given. Why would you stop at one or two when three are available? You

just go for the three. What? You know, that was his attitude. Yeah.

What was his rule? He wasn't the chef. Yes, he was

the chef. So my father was Nicola Dennis, and he was. He

ended up being the first british chef to get three Michelin

stars. And he was british because when he was born in Tanzania,

Tanzania was a british colony, and by default, you

get british citizenship. So greek family and

background, british passport. So when he got his third star,

that made him the first british chef to get three Michigan stars. Right. Isn't

that one of the wonderful things of hospitality as well, though? Like, just. You've

just named three places that, you know. Okay. The

british passport maybe helped to move between those two territories, but

greek background, tanzanian born, british made, as it

were. Yeah. That, to me, just sums up how

wonderful this world can be when you. When you just think

laterally about what's. What's possible. Absolutely.

And particularly, as you say, in hospitality, we are surrounded by

every nationality and it's wonderful. And that's. And that's

also London. That's very, very much London, isn't it? The melting pot, the hotchpotch.

That is London, where you grow up surrounded by everything. My sister and

I went to the french listi when we were growing up,

and the french list was also a pool of

people from around the world, because a lot of families

travelled or dads were posted to various locations.

And the one stable thing that they could give their kids was if they put

them in the french lysis. If you're posted to Dakar,

there's a french lysis. If you're posted to Athens, there's a french lysis. So

your kids education will be continuous and

unbroken. So within that school system, we were not only

surrounded by kids from all over the world, but

also all the restaurant kids from London. They all went to the French

DC as well, to all the french kids. So we grew up surrounded by all

sorts. And then in London, London is

a mini, is such a cosmopolitan city and it is wonderful for that.

Amazing. Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean, I read something somewhere, this is a few years

ago now. It's probably changed to even more. But

the melting pot of restaurant diversity that is available

means that in London you can eat somewhere for lunch and

dinner in a different place and you'd never have to go back to the same

place in seven years. It was just. I thought that was from

a statistical perspective, I thought, isn't that incredible that there is that

quantity of places to go and see? And, okay,

you've got every possible area of the spectrum on there in terms

of quality and integrity, probably in some instances

as well. But nevertheless, it's just such

a ripe and ready place to London is ready

for whatever experience you want to, to bring into the fold.

It's wonderful. It is wonderful. And going back to locally, so

not so London centric, Hastings and St Leonard's also has all

sorts of varieties of cuisines. We have lebanese restaurants,

we have west african restaurants, we have local family restaurants,

we have farm led restaurants, we have organic. I mean, we have everything. We

have arabic grocers also in St Leonards, which is lovely because, I

mean, I go and I step into an arabic groceries and the produce is just

so lovely, all the herbs and spices and you get that fabulous instant hit

smell that you get in a continental grocers or

delicatessen. So I get my fix of that half an hour from here. It's

fabulous. Really, really great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So back to the restaurant

first achieved and what is your involvement in, at this

point in time? So, initially it was part

time working, helping out at weekends, and then when daddy

sort of realized that actually three stars was the pinnacle of what he should

be achieving, we came together as a family and we realised

that one of the best ways of achieving this goal would be as a

family. So you come together, my sister,

myself, my parents, and no one

will work longer, better, harder, stronger, faster than your family.

So we came back together. I gave up any

sort of dreams of working in history, of art or design or

anything like that, which actually, within hospitality, I was able to come

back to many years later. So it wasn't. It's not all lost, because

hospitality is so enormously varied.

There is room for that. If that's the way that your mind

works, you can find that niche. Yeah. So we came

together and then at that point, so

rather like my father, don't do anything by halves if you're going to do

it properly. So threw myself in all in

front of house. Go for it. My big thing was

reception and organizing reception, and

my mother was still, at that point, in front of house. And then when she

stepped back we had a restaurant manager, so basically just running and

managing everything, making sure that it's the best that it can possibly

be. Yeah. And then eventually we got our

third star. So that was great. Brilliant. Yeah. And so how

describe then, I guess, when the third star comes along, because, as you

say, that's not something that's handed out just for the

crack. You know, there has to be,

I suppose, a sustained devotion to

excellence across, you know, quite a long period of time before you're kind of, I

suppose, even considered. It's rare that somebody just goes straight in at three. I think

Heston did it, didn't he, when he reopened the fat duck? But it's, you know,

he had years of history of three stars before that. Yeah,

but so, yeah, describe the feeling then when. Because this was something

that you, as a group, as a family, were actually meaningfully

focused on trying to achieve. Yes, yes, absolutely. So when it happened,

what was that like? It was. It was quite extraordinary

because for my father, it was the absolute pinnacle

of working so long and so hard

and being an absent father, probably an

absent husband, an absent everything, which we didn't specifically feel.

But I think parents feel that more than the kids very

often, that they didn't do enough or they weren't around enough or

whatever. So for him, that was fantastic for my mother,

obviously, because she was 50% of that. Without her, it would never have

happened, because having, you know, a

flamboyant chef who's always loud and, you know, letting

off a fair amount of steam, you

need someone grounded and quiet

who just runs the business and makes sure that it keeps ticking over,

so runs the family, makes sure the girls are okay, looks after the

dogs, make sure they're fed and watered, looks after the finances of

the business, looks after the staff, looks after the pay. So that was her role.

So it's between the two of them. That's how it happened. It was

also fantastic for all of his boys. He always had

extraordinarily strong, loyal brigades of

boys who followed him from restaurant to restaurant and

worked with him for very long periods of time. Our first head chef, Paul

Flynn, was with us nine years before he moved back to Ireland to

open his own restaurant. Our front of house team stayed for many years. Our metre,

Dan Luc, was with us, and I always forget this. So either ten or 15

years he worked with my mother and then he became the

Metra D and took over from her. So it was a

reward for all of the hard work that everyone had put in.

And I know it's Cheyney Ko is the one that

carries the three stars, or my father's name has the three stars associated.

But without this whole package of people, it would never have happened. It

doesn't happen in a vacuum. And his mantra was always,

it always said, consistency, consistency, consistency.

He wasn't one of these people who had a dish of the day every day.

And right, what we got today, let's have a look and see what we can

do. He would perfect his food

over years, if necessary, to make each dish

as perfect as it could possibly be. And a lot of our boys have

taken that with them, and they are very strong,

very consistent. They have strong businesses. They

understood the ethos of running a proper business,

as well as just being able to give good food and good service, that it's

the complete package. And I think they learned that from my parents as well. Very

much. Yeah. Well, I suppose that's a major part of

anybody who is devoted to a life in hospitality. At some point, I

think it comes to us all whereby you feel almost this

outpouring of desire to give back, to make sure that the people who are

coming through are getting the skills that they need to be successful

and so on and so forth. I can't imagine that that's any different than

somebody who, like your father, who devoted so much to the industry.

But I also like the fact that he was, I suppose, humble enough to understand

that he could be producing the greatest food on the planet. But

without the rest of it, there's no three stars.

There's no business, probably. And this is the intricacies of

business I find really, really fascinating, especially when you're in an operation

that is so people focused. You can't

deliver excellence without everybody being on the same page and without all

pulling together in the same direction. The fact that you had such length

of service and key components of the team speaks volumes as

to how you're actually able to achieve consistency. I'd say absolutely, yes.

Absolutely it does. You know, he always had a reputation for being sort of very

loud and very shouty and very outspoken and very this and very loud and very

difficult to be around or be with or work for. But, I mean, if that

were all true, then we wouldn't have had this consistency, as

you say, this backbone of staff who stayed with us.

And also, to get to the top of your

profession, you do have to be very focused and single minded, and if you're sort

of flappy, hysterical, shouty and loud, you're not going to get there.

So behind the sort of

face of his larger than life personality,

there was also a very, very meticulous, dedicated person.

Yeah, I think the thing about the shoutiness is something

that gets a lot of kind of focus now, isn't it, that, you know, nobody

wants to be in shouty kitchens, and I completely understand that. But I

think sometimes there's. Shoutiness can be

misrepresented. I think none of us are perfect and we all have our moments

where we lose our marbles over something. And actually, if your

devotion is to excellence and really what you're trying to do

is get everybody to get up to that standard and maybe somebody delivers a

sauce to the past which is not quite perfect, or, you know, the mise en

place is just a couple of millimeters out or wherever on your veg prep or

whatever it is. Actually, if you. I suppose the key thing with

leadership in that respect, if you are. If you're kind of susceptible to little

moments of shouty weakness, let's call them, if people are

aware that that's part of it, but the intention behind it is actually,

it's a positive intention because we want this place to be the best it can

be. We want you to be the best you can be. And sometimes people

just need a little bit of a kick to get there. And I think, you

know, it's not something that I advocate in any shape or form.

You know, I think bullying is just, you know, is unacceptable. But

actually raised voices are just

part of life, you know? And, yeah, his

voice was very often raised because he had a loud, raised voice. His

kitchens technically were very quiet, very

organized. No shouting, no,

he had very colorful language, but there was

no bullying or intimidation in the way that there has been in some

kitchens. He would never have stood for any of that. Yeah. His

anger was very often aimed at either customers

or media and journalists who didn't understand what he was

doing. And he

would get angry on behalf of his

teams because he was standing up

for perfection and excellence. Because what we do

is a profession. It's not a job, it's not a hobby,

it's not something you do, because there's nothing else you

can do or you can. What he was

standing up for was the hospitality profession.

Yeah. And people who denigrated it or made fun of it,

he wouldn't put up with. He wouldn't put up with

people who. So, as I said earlier on, journalists who

made fun of what we did for a living, customers who

wouldn't turn up no shows, for instance, was a huge thing for

us. The thing is that we're still talking about these problems now. We

are still talking about these things. Absolutely. But now if you

think of how much more conscious people are of restaurants and

hospitality going back a few years, going to a

restaurant, not going to a restaurant, turning up three when you book for

six, not a big deal. Not. People just did not

care. And it is perfectly true.

People always say, is it an apocryphal story? Is it true? It's absolutely true.

When we had no shows. And remember, these were very small premises

and therefore small amount of customers, small amount of

covers, very tight margins. So if you have a table of four who don't

turn up, you know, that's it. Your whole day has been a waste of

time. So he would go through the service, carry on as

normal, and then either when he got home or before, just before

closing the restaurant, he would ring those people. So we're now talking 02:00 in the

morning, he would ring them and he would say to them, would you like

us to keep your table? Are you still coming? Or shall I send the staff

home now? Right. And of course they would get very,

very irritated. But he had then had the final word, so

he was happy. And of course, all of these boys used to find that very

funny. Yeah, but I like that. I think that's a really

good tactic, actually, because, you know, the people who. Stuff

happens. Of course it does. And, you know, think plans change and all of that

kind of stuff. Totally respectful of the fact that that can happen. It's happened to

me before. But the, the respectful position

is, is that if something happens, you just call ahead and say,

look, this has happened. I respect your cancellation policy, whatever it is,

because, you know, these are things that restaurants have to have now. Yeah, but

I respect you. I respect your trade, I respect your establishment.

I will cancel my dentist, I will counsel my doctor. If I have an appointment

with my kids head of year or

school teacher, I will cancel that if I can't make it. Well, why

wouldn't you accord us the same respect and cancel your

table with us? That's all we need, a phone call. Yep. I call ahead if

I'm going to be ten minutes late. Oh, yes, yes, I know.

Yeah. That's how paranoid I am about. I don't want to lose the booking. Just,

you know, I have to make you aware that I'm just running behind. But anyway,

yes, we digress. But it's really, really interesting. It's very. It's

also. It's interesting because I come back to that, the point I was making about

the shoutiness. The shoutiness has come from

passion for the craft. Yes. And actually, as you say, is kind

of protecting the craft, protecting

the, the industry in some respects, I guess, against

disrespect, really, ultimately, yeah. But back

to your story. Where. Where are we? Right. Where are we

now? How long are you then involved in this phase of the

operation? What happened next? So we are. So

we're now in Park Lane. So over the course of 30 years, the

restaurant, because it was a small family

venture, we moved several times over the years. Nowadays,

it's not uncommon to open great, big, gleaming, beautiful

restaurants in fabulous locations right from the go get world. That

wasn't how it happened in our day, and certainly not any way that we could

ever afford doing that. So we started off in Dulwich, and then

we moved to Battersea, and then we moved to Victoria, and then

we moved to great Portland street, and

then in great Portland street. At that point, we had two stars

and we moved the restaurant from great Portland

street into the Grosvenor House Hotel. And that's where I met Searchl,

because he was director of food and beverage and banqueting at the Grosvenor house. And

along with his then GM and another person called

Gerald Lipton, they put their heads together and thought, there's an

empty shop in the Grosvenor house. The X restaurant,

which, in fact, had been in its heyday, 90 park lane, had been the

first restaurant within the forte organization to get its Michelin

star. And in fact, that was under Sergio. That was his thing. Even though he's

a hotel man at heart, he had been very focused on the

restaurants within the hotel operations and he had got them their first

merchant star. So this shop was now empty.

And someone had the bright idea to invite Cheney

Cook to move into the Grosvenor house. And at the time, that was totally

unheard of. No one had done that before. Nowadays, it's

quite normal for big hotels to have named chefs, and

in fact, they go out of their way to bring in and

attract multi Michelin starred chefs into their

premises. At the time, everybody thought that we had gone crazy. They

thought, oh, well, you know, Cheyne was obviously not doing well. They

obviously need help and support. They obviously need to be under somebody else's

umbrella. It was the absolute total contrary, because

we had been invited in, because we were who we were to

add to that property, and that's what we did.

So once again, groundbreaking moved to Grosvenor house. And in effect,

that's why we got our how, when and why we got our third

star being in that bigger environment. Yeah.

So I was working there, running there, and

I said to you earlier on, I was able to find ways to sort of

channel my creativity. And that was in doing things like the flower arrangements.

We used to have fabulous flower arrangements, and that was my big thing going to.

As if I didn't sleep few enough hours in the day,

I ended up. I used to go to Covent Garden first thing in the morning,

buy enormous amounts of flowers and decorate the restaurants for

all the. When we did all the functions, we did weddings, we did parties with

things like that. So that was one way of doing it. And then later on,

interior design, when we got our third

star, daddy had done his thing. He

had achieved his goal. He'd done. He got to

the three. There are no more to do. So he thought, that's it, I'm

off. And he retired. Really. Right. Well, you know, leave

your audience wanting more, you know. Absolutely, as well.

But that's great as well, though, because there

is almost nowhere to go apart from sustaining it then. Right. I mean, that's

the. That's an achievement in itself, without question. Yeah. But, you

know, everybody's wired differently. Right? And if that's what was focused on, it

is very difficult sometimes when people achieve their dreams, for them to figure

out what the next dream is. That was his challenge, to get the three.

He got the three. I think we did it. We lasted, kept them up for

a couple of years or so. And then he said, our lease. We only

had a ten year lease at Grosvenor House. So when the lease was up, he

sort of went, okay, I'm out of here. I'm off. Done my thing.

So we're like, oh, okay. Are you sure? He's like, yeah, that's

it. Nowadays, I mean, yesterday, or was it a couple of days ago, there was

the launch of the. The Michelin Paris. We had

the launches all over the. In February, there was the launch of the british

mission in Manchester. And it's a

huge song and dance and everybody, there's a party and there's an. On

stage and it's a whole. It's become like the oscars, and you get a plaque

and you put your plaque and you photograph yourself in front of your plaque and

you're on Instagram and you're this. And in our day, we weren't even

allowed to write on our menu, you know,

Chez Nikolt, and put the three Michelin stars, for instance,

or on your. Not on your website, because we didn't have websites in those

days we had letterheads. Oh, how quaint. Old fashioned paper

and pen. So we had a, you know, on the cheney called Letterhead, you couldn't

write underneath three stars. So things have changed an awful lot and evolved.

But anyway, he got his stars. He went to live in the south France,

or my parents went to live in the south France. But meanwhile we had

decided to open a brasserie, if you like, a

sort of slightly more informal restaurant, typically

french brasserie, that worked along the lines and the principles of classic french

food, but in a lighter style. And some of our boys

came and started that off. I was running those. Sergio came

and then at that point, retired from hotels and came and worked with us

and we did all of those. So in its heyday,

Incog was an absolute fantastic brushstroy in the West

End, in the heart of theatreland. So we had to learn a whole

new skill, which was the pre theatre. Oh, yeah. Oh,

yeah. To add to the rest of your service. And there I

was able to do another one of the things that I loved, which was interior

design, and David Collins designed that restaurant for

us and I was able to work with David Collins

and he was fantastically inspirational and

it was a way of

expressing my creativity by getting involved in that, because at the end of the

day, I've discovered that the thing I really loved doing at the time was

opening restaurants, because opening restaurants is fantastically

exciting. Everything from sort of designing

extraction and I tell you, even all of the

technical stuff, all of the plants, all of the kit that you need, I find

as fascinating as what colour curtains you're going to have. And should we have

carpet or should we have marble? And all of this sort of stuff,

it's really, really fun, hard work,

but I couldn't have done it with anyone more brilliant than David Collins

because he was also groundbreaking within the hospitality industry. He is the

first designer who became a

household name within our industry, within the interior design

world. Everyone wanted him to do their businesses up.

He brought glamour and beauty and

designing spaces as well as

we created the food and as the front of house created the

service. So that was also became part of the package,

having an interior designed restaurant. And nowadays that's, again,

that's par for the course. But at the time. And it was in fact Pierre

Kaufman who gave David Collins his first break within

restaurants when he designed dark Clare for him. And

then everybody wanted David Collins to design their restaurants. Of course they

did, yes. Good enough for Pierre Kaufman. It's good enough for me.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. My goodness.

Yeah. This is the glorious thing for me about running this little

podcast is the stories of things that are just

out there that you don't, maybe you know a slight bit about, but

don't know much about. I had no idea about

the history of you, really, and what you've been

able to kind of get involved with over your career to

date. It's quite magical, some of the things that you've.

And I also love the fact that it's family business. I mean, I

hail from a family business myself. Granted, not at a three Michelin

star level, but nevertheless, my mother and father were very, very devoted

to ensuring that they were delivering consistency for the things

that they loved. Yes. And that I think that coming from that place of

authenticity, of if you kind of do

things in the eye of what you enjoy,

I don't. There's. There's many people out there who will be exactly the same, who

will enjoy what you enjoy as well.

And so, yeah, I love. I love the family

element of your story, as well as the kind of the devotion to

excellence. Thank you. Well, you see,

now, when I look back from where I am now,

I know so many people in the industry. I know now

so many young people. So every year, we meet at least

200 new young people who enter our competitions,

and some of whom we get to know very, very well and

become very close to. So we know so many people in

the industry, Xiaoju and I, that that's one of the big things we do, that

we are able to put people together or to bring

people together who might need each other or help each other out or things like

that. So that's a very big part of what we do and that

we enjoy so much. I mean, having all of this knowledge, you can't keep it

to yourself. You have to give it back and share it. That's surely.

Why do you accumulate all of this knowledge during a lifetime? It's

not to sit in your armchair in front of the telly and go, look how

clever I am. Look at the number of people I know. Oh, look at the

number of prime ministers I've met in my lifetime. Oh, great. Share

it. It's all important information that you need

to help other people with. Absolutely. You

know, you've mentioned it a couple of times through your journey

as well, that the importance of evolution in all of this as well,

the industry has evolved immeasurably. The way that people behave has

evolved immeasurably. So it stands to reason that the industry has

to continue to keep evolving. But you do that from having a

really, really sound base of knowledge for the moment that you're in. And

then, you know, so there's always something more to learn. There's always,

you know, but we're. Here's a. I got through, what, about

50 minutes on this? And here's a cliche. We are stronger together, right? I mean,

you know, that. That's just a fact. Absolutely.

Totally stronger together. It's one of the hashtags that I very often

use, not in my hospitality role, but in one of my other

roles at, because I work. I'm a director of and

work with our local paper in Rye

News, and I am working on getting together

a media partnership currently between the Rye Chamber of

Commerce, the Rye Jazz Festival, which is an international, big festival

every year that comes to Rye, and the Rye Arts Festival. And the hashtag that

I use is stronger together. Rye is a very small town.

We want it to stay beautiful, keep thriving,

growing, encourage the hospitality, because it's very much a

tourist town. We need fabulous restaurants. We need brilliant hotels.

We need to be able to employ the young people around

here that they don't end up straying or lost or not

within careers. We can give them all of that here. And one of the ways

of doing that is by working together. We are stronger together. All of

this individualism and fighting against the

system and not wanting to be part of a group is just ridiculous,

because at the bottom of. At the end of the day, what's the

thing that keeps us in hospitality going is

teamwork. Whether you're in the kitchen or front of house

or back of house, wherever you work, you work in a team.

You can't do it on your own. You have to have your colleagues around you.

You have to get on. You have to. You have to be best friends. You

have to get on in a professional sense, I have to be able to rely

on you. I know that you can do this. I can't do that. You can

do this. But together, this is what we can achieve. And teamwork

is behind everything that we do in hospitality.

Absolutely. I've utilized a phrase on this show a few

times, and in other establishment things, forums and

panels and all sorts of stuff. Is that unite the clans? Is what I say.

Yes. There you go. Absolutely. We have a bit of

a propensity to. It's almost like this. All

the ideas are amazing, but my idea is the best, but rather

actually having a melting pot of just ideas flowing all the

time, where everybody. We have this massive collective of people that exist

in this industry. Imagine if we got all those ideas together

under one roof and really, really forged forward, because

there are challenges that we need to fight together. We need one united

voice as opposed to pockets of many

voices. And I think if we do that, then we've

got a chance of really having a proper seat at the table.

But until then, I think we'll probably still be having the same

conversations for years to come. Yeah, I agree

with you. I mean, we do need better representation at higher

levels. We need to be a louder, stronger

voice. We need to be able to lobby government more than

we do. I know. We try. I know Kate Nichols does an amazing job.

Kate Nichols, who's someone I'd love to meet. I've never had the chance to meet

her. So far, the biggest thing that she has achieved

for our industry, I think, from my point of view, was during

lockdown, when she lobbied constantly for the hospitality

industry. Now we know what we do for a living, all of us. We all

in our little silos, we all do our thing. We know and understand what

we used to call catering, we now call hospitality. But it wasn't so

much in the public consciousness at all. Because of her,

the word hospitality appeared in virtually every

single news bulletin throughout the entire day.

During the 18 months to two years of the pandemic,

every single time you turned on the television or the radio, you heard the word

hospitality and it became. It

went into the national consciousness in a way that it hadn't done before.

And that is an amazing first

step towards putting us out there and making us

better known, better understood, better appreciated. And

she now has a platform and a near

within government which I'm sure she will carry through and

keep growing lobbying on behalf of the now

renowned hospitality industry. Here. Here.

Absolutely. You mentioned competitions that you

run, so let's talk about those, because you

are actually very, very kindly this year. And in fact, the previous year, but I

couldn't make the previous year, invited me to the gold service scholarship this year, which

you're heavily involved with as well. I was just blown

away by that event and, you know, especially because it was invite only as well,

so I felt very special. But, yeah, that

that's one thing that you're involved with, but you also have other awards that you

actually are right behind and kind of responsible for. So talk to me about

everything that you do in that. Okay? All right. So basically,

I've been there and done that. My time is gone, but there are

loads of young people coming through the industry currently and

in the future, loads more. We have to keep our industry going.

And so Sergio has been. He's part of

the Royal Academy of Culinary Arts and he has been running the annual

awards of excellence and the Master of culinary arts for over 40 years now.

So that's one of the. Those are two of the competitions that we run. And

then when the gold service scholarship was started, it was initially an

idea that Willy Bauer had. Willy Bauer was

big at Forte and then he was big within the Savoy

organization, Savoy Group, and he wanted to

highlight front of house. And he took his idea to Alister's

story, and Alister's story was obviously very impressed with the

idea, took it, ran with it. So Alistair's story, Baxter story,

as was. And he also thought that this was a

brilliant idea and made it happen. So Alistair's story made the gold

service scholarship happen with the founding trustees,

who are people like Silvano Shiraldin, and obviously

Sergio. And Sarah Jane Staines was one of the founding

trustees, so they started the gold service scholarship. Edward

Griffiths came on board, Thomas Cox came on board,

and Knut Wilde from the Berkeley is

now on board, as well as Lydia Forte. So there's full circle for

Sergio, who's one of Lord Forte's old boys. And all these

years later, he's working with Lord Forte's granddaughter, Lydia.

So Sergio now runs all three of those competitions,

obviously not single handed. He is. Edward is chairman of the judges for

the gold service scholarship. He works very closely with someone called John

Cousins, who's an amazing person, who runs both competitions with Sergio,

who we couldn't do without. And John Couzens, he

writes one of the sort of bibles of hospitality, food and beverage service, I think

it's called, which is a very dry title, John, by the way, but it

says what it does on the tin and it's what young people need

to read to have a strong understanding of

the principles and techniques of hospitality. So each

competition is very different and it spans

the age groups. So the first one that you enter

is the annual awards of excellence, the Royal Academy competition.

And that's from your earlier stage in hospitality, which is

generally about 18, I suppose, that sort of age. And that goes up to

18 to 26, and that's

their competition. Then the second to the mid range age

group. So that's a slightly, a fairly technical competition. The Gold survey

scholarship focuses more on personality and personal

skills and that sort of intangible that you bring

to hospitality. And that goes up to the age

of 28, I think, 2022 to 28 in that

age range. And then the final one is the master of culinary

arts. And the Master of culinary arts isn't age specific, but you

need to have had at least ten years managerial, a ten year

managerial role within the hospitality industry before you can enter the master of culinary

arts. So that has its challenges because

you would say, oh, well, you know, they've been managers for ten years now. They

know it's all fantastic, easy peasy. When you've been a manager for ten years,

chances are you spend a lot of time on a computer or in

an office or sitting down and in fact going

back to the floor and remembering how you carve a salmon

perfectly or how you prepare fruit with a,

with a fork and knife rather than, you know, carving it properly rather than

using hands. They have to identify ingredients,

identify cheeses, identify. So in fact,

there's a lot of study involved in doing that at their

age. So we help with that. And when you've achieved the

master of culinary arts, it's like a master's degree in any other

profession. So it is a master's degree, hospitality,

and you are at the peak of your profession and from

then on you can then teach all of those coming behind you

within your establishment the skills and

techniques of hospitality. Yeah,

there's a few things in play here for me. One, I'm going

to come back to the gold service scholarship as an example. I haven't been to

your other awards yet. Maybe we'll rectify that in the

future. Absolutely. Well, the annual awards have just started, so. Yeah, yeah.

Excellent, excellent. Is that, you know, if ever you were in any

doubt that the future of the industry is in safe hands, you just need to

go along to that event because, you know, the devotion to

excellence from what is essentially a group of young people, you

know, I suppose you could argue the much maligned. Youth of today, as

it were, it drives me mad. Oh, they don't do this. Oh, they don't do

that. Or in my day, they did this. Well, it

is so not true. Absolutely. Could not agree more.

Absolutely extraordinary. Absolutely. Yeah. So that to me

was just a wonderful reminder that we have such amazing talent

coming through all of the time, every year. Yeah, there's always, you know, there's new

and even the people who don't, who don't win, you know, there to make it

to that final list is just an amazing achievement in itself,

even to just be nominated, I think it's just a wonderful achievement in itself. It

is amazing and we try, we want to encourage and

build and grow these people. So when you enter the annual awards, when you

get through, you become an achiever. You have achieved the annual awards of

excellence. When you go through the gold service, if you're a

semi finalist, you get prizes as well. You don't have to go all the way

through quarter and semis, I should say. And

when you get down to the last eight, those last eight at the gold service

scholarship are all winning finalists. They are the eight winners

of that year. Now, within that category, of the eight winning finalists,

a scholar will be named. So each year will be represented by a

scholar. But they have all achieved, and they are all winning

finalists at the gold scholarship, which is something that we

try to promote to encourage people

so that they don't feel deflated or let down, if they feel that they haven't

done well or got through. It's all part of the giant

learning curve. And if you didn't succeed the first time by

getting as far as you want to, you try again the next year. There's nothing

stopping you until you get to that age limit, obviously. You keep going and

going and going until you become an achiever or a winning finalist. It's there for

you to take if you want it. There's that feeling of

coopetition with it as well, which is a wonderful word to use. And

I think that we are, as an industry, especially brilliant at this. You only just

need to look at a great british menu, which is currently running. Yes.

Whereby, yes, it's a competition, but the minute somebody

is in the mire a little bit, then somebody else steps up to

help. That, to me, is just absolutely.

That's a hospitality mentality, 100%. And

you get the sense from the gold service scholarship that there's that same camaraderie that's

being built amongst competitors that ultimately, when all said and

done, we're all winners and we're all here to support each other. And actually, we're

all here to just make sure that this industry continues to flourish and be the

best that it can be. And I will play my part in that wherever I

can. Well, one of the big things that we like to try and do is

support them all, all the way through. I definitely

feel. I could feel that at the event. Thank you.

That's so important to hear, that there are no

tricks. You just have to learn some

basic things. And if you can't or don't know

how, or we will show you, we will help you. We do

seminars before the events, before the final, for instance,

we show them the food, the drink, everything. We're not there to

trip you up or catch you out. We are there to help you be the

best person you can be. And you can see one of the

most moving things for me is we have something called Team gold,

where as long as you get to the semi finals, you are part of Team

gold forever. And they run events and look after each other and speak to each

other and keep in touch and all of this sort of stuff. But the final

eight within the gold service scholarship become

such a strong unit because of what they've been

through during the course of the competition. Every year,

group remain friends for life. This is.

We're glad that it's happened, but it's not anything that we said, you know,

you will form a WhatsApp group, you will speak to each other regularly, you others

will. It just happens organically and you can see just before

the scholar is actually announced, that happens every year

that they all sit holding hands together, the front

row, because it's the sort of the group

together waiting to find out who is the scholar. And when the

scholar is announced, the other seven are just as happy as the scholar

for that person to have won, and that's a natural thing that happens,

which is quite wonderful. I could not agree with you

more. It's just a fabulous, fabulous thing. And I felt incredibly privileged

to be there this year. It was a stunning event. It's

just, you know, in a world of doom and gloom, it's just, I think

these things are so essential in reminding us all that there's so much brilliance goes

on on a daily basis and having awards to kind of recognize that the

gold service being won and all of the other ones that you do as well

are so, so important about reminding people that

we are watching and we are listening and we are seeing what you're doing. And

it's important that we mark these moments of positivity in people's lives to

help keep them elevated and keep them wanting to push

on and do more. Well. And one of the big things of

all, well, the annual awards and certainly the gold survey

scholarship, is that the prizes that they all

get are all educational prizes that keeps pushing

them forward. You don't just have the great party at Claridge's. And I didn't

have much time to talk to you on the night because I sort of spend

my life running around. I know so many people

and all the fabulous food that they prepare for us at Claridge's. And everybody says

to me, oh, have you had the lobster roll? I've got this. I'm like, yeah,

yeah, in a minute. In a minute. All of a sudden it's 10:00 they're clearing

down and like, I've had nothing, but we've just had the most terrific night because

for us, it's a huge showcase every year. But

the. What the kids get from these competitions, again, which makes

them different to any other competition, is obviously the care and

nurture and the following that they

will have and the umbrella and the love and the protection that we will give

them going forward and the team gold friendships that they make

between themselves. But it's the educational programs that

they are given. I mean, one of the prizes at the gold service scholarship

is a week in Lausanne, the Ecolotelia de Lausanne,

which is the most prestigious hospitality

university in the world. And that costs an absolute fortune

to go to, equivalent to if you're going to Harvard or

Yale or something like that. Financially, our eight winning

finalists get a week at Lausanne. That's part of their

prize. So they all get to experience that, apart from

just visiting vineyards, visiting

Michelin starred restaurants, doing stages at the Ritz or

at Core, or at the Waterside Inn, attending a

banquet at the Royal household. I mean, who the hell ever gets to

garden parties? Great within the Branson, Buckingham

palace, but a state banquet being part of that, I mean, that

is a unique, totally unique, once in a lifetime experience.

That's one of the prizes you get. It is all geared

around education and encouraging them to

learn in the present, giving them

experiences that they can take into the future, grow their careers, and then they

will be in a position to give back at a later date in the way

that we do not. Yeah, totally. And

it's just. It's just absolutely wonderful. What a way to

start what we are not. It's a Wednesday today, isn't it, that we're recording

this just a wonderfully positive piece of

work that you are doing and have done all the way through, it

seems, your career to date. Thank you. And I don't

mean that in a patronizing way. I mean, they really, really thank you

for everything that you do within that. And I'm so, so,

so grateful that I think even without this show, I don't even

know if our paths would have ever crossed. So it's kind of, for

me, I feel really privileged that I've been able to meet you and have this

chat with you. That's such a sweet thing to say. Thank you so much.

I mean, that's one of the lovely things about our industry that I always say.

I don't understand why people don't view hospitality as the

extraordinary career it is. I mean, it is just.

You can be any size, any shape, any colour, any

sex, any sexuality. You can walk in

almost off the street into any job, and you will

be picked, paid to learn a trade which you can then grow

and to develop into whatever you want it to be. There is

so. There's so much variety within hospitality. There's what

you do, there's what I do. There is so much. And why we

can't sell this. I just don't understand. No, I

know. Yeah. Well, we keep trying. I think that's the thing.

We have to keep trying. Yeah. Yeah. And

stronger together, unite the clans. Stronger. Absolutely, totally,

totally agree. Brilliant. Natasha, thank you so much for

your time. I feel like I could talk to you all day, to be honest,

but we can't do that. In fact, we

should. I think we should. Absolutely. Yes. Well, we'll have a coffee

or a wine or something like that at another time. Very good. And set the

world to write and. And hospitality especially.

Absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much and have a wonderful day ahead.

Thank you, Phil, so much. Take care. You, too. See you soon.

Bye.