Mark Hix
The brains behind The Ivy brings his magic touch to two new restaurants – and our planes
CUISINE & COUNTRY
AT THE IVY, HE BANGED THE DRUM FOR BRITISH PRODUCE LONG BEFORE IT WAS FASHIONABLE. NOW MARK HIX IS BRINGING HIS MAGIC TOUCH TO TWO NEW RESTAURANTS… AND ON TO OUR PLANES
INTERVIEW | FEARGUS O’SULLIVAN
MARK HIX MAY BE ONE OF BRITAIN’S MOST INFLUENTIAL CHEF-RESTAURATEURS, a man as familiar with hot trends as he is with a hot stove. But in keeping with the perception that cooks are born not made, he fell into the profession by accident. Had his secondary school’s timetable been different, the brain behind such highly rated restaurants as The Ivy and Caprice (more of which later), J Sheeky and Hix Oyster and Chop House might not have made it into the kitchen.
“If I hadn’t hated metalwork, I might never have become a chef,” he smiles when we meet up at Rocco Forte’s Brown’s Hotel, where he is director of food. “When I was at school, it was either that or domestic science, and I thought, well, cooking’s got to be better than fiddling with bits of metal, hasn’t it? It was only after choosing cookery classes that it turned out I was good at it.”
It’s hardly a likely career start, but Mark Hix is hardly the likeliest of cheffy personalities. He is perfectly at ease with the hotel’s patrician plushness in his natty Martin Margiela jacket. But at the same time, he’s low-key enough to turn up to work on a Vespa – plonking his 1960s-style peaked crash helmet and goggles on the chair next to us.
His influence comes despite not having a hugely public profile. (“It’s ‘cos I’m not a TV chef,” he says. “Not all of us have to do telly.”)
A vocal advocate of seasonal British ingredients back when Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall was still just a lowly hand at the River Café, Hix’s restaurants electrified London with their mix of elegantly simple British food and hip, soigné sociability. As chef-director of Caprice Holdings, he helped make traditional English food fashionable again, with restaurants like Scott’s and Le Caprice becoming hotspots for celebrities from the A-list downwards. When I last wheedled a table at Scott’s, for example, I had Michael Caine on one side, and a woman I eventually recognised from Coronation Street on the other. But there was always more to Hix’s restaurants than social buzz: his food is exquisite and surprisingly unfussy.
“I don’t like food that interferes. I think people went for our food so much because it was stuff that everybody wanted to eat, good honest British produce,” he insists.
Hix helped start the now ubiquitous trend for specific menu details about ingredients: his restaurants offer not just generic ingredients but Blythburgh Pork, Herdwick Beef and Lyme Bay Fish Soup. Hix developed these enthusiasms further when he resigned from Caprice Holdings in 2007 to launch his own ventures: Hix Oyster and Chop House in London’s Farringdon and Hix Oyster and Fish House in Lyme Regis, Dorset.
His menus also emphasise sustainability. “We make a point of avoiding anything too over-fished. Down in Lyme Regis especially, we use gurnard and ling and make fish fingers from whiting. And sand eels, which we cook a lot, often just get thrown away – the big ones are used as sea bass bait, but the smaller ones are often dumped, which is a real waste.”
Hix’s passion for British ingredients and cooking styles builds on the food he loved while growing up. Indeed his West Country childhood experience of the English diet seems unusually wholesome for someone growing up in the late 1960s/early 70s; mine tended to involve frozen fish fingers and Angel Delight.
“As a child on the Dorset coast, I used to fish on a line for mackerel off West Bay Pier, and my mum would fry or souse them for us. She wasn’t a fancy cook, but she was a good one, and used to make us stuff like stuffed lambs’ hearts, or salad with tomatoes from grandad’s greenhouse.”
This enthusiasm for home dining has continued throughout his career. The author of several cookbooks and a column in the Independent, Hix is now going further with his own product ranges. He already produces his own ale and smoked salmon, now he is developing a new line of salad dressings and ice cream, which have been exclusively launched on bmi’s midhaul Business Class menus.
“I wanted to try out good classic English flavours, so along with the ‘Credit Crunch’ flavour ice cream [caramel and honeycomb chocolate], we’re making rhubarb crumble, and blueberry and Dorset honey flavours.”
Hix’s fondness for things British doesn’t stop in the kitchen: his modern British art collection reads like a directory of the YBAs. Tracey Emin, Michael Landy, and duo Tim Noble and Sue Webster hang on the walls of his house and restaurants. Surely all this art must cost him a pretty penny, so does he get them at knockdown mates’ rates?
Hix shrugs: “Well it depends really. I often do exchanges with the artists.” So is he like an arty version of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s childcatcher, luring starving artists out of hip East End galleries with the promise of top quality meat?
“Not exactly, I doubt they’re exactly starving by now! We just do a lot of art show dinners at my restaurants – and I’m actually commissioning new work for the dining room here at Brown’s. Tim Noble and Sue Webster have just done me some great line drawings.”
There’s no denying that these are testing times for restaurateurs, but Hix is pushing on through. Beyond his two restaurants and directorship at Brown’s, he’s planning to launch another, still unnamed restaurant in London’s Soho in midsummer, which is expected to have pre-launch bookings. And there’s a possible 60-seater restaurant in a major department store too. His businesses are still, well, busy, but doesn’t expansion take a lot of nerve right now?
He smiles. “My restaurants have generally done really well, but I once lost £100,000 of my own money on a fish and chip shop I launched, so I can take the rough with the smooth.”
Hix Oyster & Chop House, 36-37 Greenhill Rents, Cowcross Street, London EC1, +44 (0)20 7017 1930. Hix Oyster & Fish House, Cobb Road, Lyme Regis, Dorset, +44 (0)1297 446 910, www.restaurantsetcltd.co.uk
