The Hix fix -

Mark Ernest Hix, MBE was born in West Bay, Dorset in 1962. He moved to London in 1981 for his first job, cooking staff meals at the London Hilton. He then moved to Grosvenor House, before joining Caprice Holdings, where he was promoted to chef director of the group and remained for 17 years. On leaving, he opened Hix Oyster and Chop House. He currently also owns Hix Soho, Hixter Bankside, Mark’s Bar and Tramshed in London, as well as Hix Oyster and Fish House and Hix Townhouse in Lyme Regis. He runs Food Rocks festival and is a mainstay at Dartmouth Food Festival.

There aren’t many chefs who have a tighter grip on the pulse of the London food scene than Mark Hix. Synonymous with fish, fine dining and fine art, he’s been at the vanguard of restaurants for over 30 years, and is arguably the man who defined the canon of ‘modern British food’ we know today. He championed seasonality before it became a buzzword and was driven by produce long before today’s chefs became produce-driven. He’s seen trends come and go, watched restaurants open and close and, meeting him on a bright autumn morning as crisp sunlight splays through the wall of windows in his Soho restaurant, discussing the litany of restaurants that have recently ceased trading, it’s perhaps fair that he exhibits a modicum of malaise for the industry as he finds it today.

‘I wouldn’t open another place in London,’ he says, calling up a ginger beer.
‘The rents here have become ridiculous. The landlord literally doubled the fee on this place a year and a half ago and it’s become beyond a joke.’ Hix Soho resides on Brewer Street, next to a venue that has changed facade six times in the past two years. It’s seen the full gamut of fascia, from Japanese food to barbecue, and wine bar to salvaged homewares.

‘Everything seems to be against the London restaurateur at the moment. Last week I had a stroll up to Berwick Street Market. There were about30 street traders serving lunch, all quite good quality, with prices ranging from £5 to £8. It’s a struggle to compete – they just rock up and put their tent up and take in the cash – they don’t have to comply with the health and safety standards that we do. This summer has been a tough one. There’s been a host of factors against us. The hot weather was bad news for restaurants, the World Cup doesn’t do us any favours. Customers want to pay less; staff want to be paid more.’ A long pause follows. It’s hard to know what to say when a person bemoans an industry they clearly love. A conciliatory pat from a journalist is going to do little to improve his mood. So instead, we sit in silence while I sugar my coffee.

CODE OF CONDUCT

The door slams. In bursts fellow chef Mitch Tonks with three members of his lively-looking brigade. Tonks and Hix embrace. Tonks heads straight to the bar. ‘Glass of bubbles, Mitch?’ asks Hix. ‘I’ll have a glass of red, if I may?’ It’s barely 11am and the stupor is officially broken. Hix, the convivial host I’d heard so much about, springs into gear. Tonks pulls up a chair and the pair begin to chat animatedly about a lunch they’re preparing together with Angela Hartnett to celebrate the ten-year anniversaries of their respective restaurants, The Seahorse, Hix Oyster and Chop House and Murano. It strikes me that while looking to the future has the potential to be grim, for someone so immersed in ingredients it only takes the thought of a good meal to snap back into the present.

Almost on cue, Hix’s head chef Elliott Grover appears in the doorway with a plate of tempura mackerel with pickled shiitake mushrooms and a seaweed broth. Spoons are dispensed and we stand slurping the restaurant’s latest new creation. ‘This tempura is awesome. You should try it with the kimchi mayonnaise we had at the weekend,’ suggests Tonks. ‘Bloody right. Great idea.’ I can only imagine that this is how the best menus are forged.

This double act of Hix and Tonks has been playing out for years. They have been working together on the Dartmouth Food Festival (19-21 October) for a decade, collaborating on the producers to feature and the ingredients to use. ‘I think we were the first chefs to do a collaboration dinner, actually,’ claims Tonks. ‘Nowadays they’re all the rage, but back then chefs tended to work on their own.’ ‘The customers love it,’ confirms Hix. ‘Some people naively think that there’s rivalry between chefs but there’s actually not. There’s huge camaraderie in what we do. Maybe there’s rivalry in the higher-echelon restaurants where they are fighting for stars, but we don’t think like that. We just want our customers to have a good time and eat some nice food,’ he continues. Hix had a front-row seat in some of the higher-echelon restaurant rivalry he alludes to.

Through the Eighties he was chef director of the Caprice restaurant group, which
meant manufacturing the menus for the likes of Scott’s, Le Caprice, The Ivy and Daphne’s. While Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White squabbled over stars, Hix was quietly establishing the restaurant powerhouses that form the backbone of London’s sophisticated yet understated quality restaurants today. ‘I learnt a lot from Chris [Corbin] and Jeremy [King]. Those two and Terence Conran were the key guys that brought about the revolution in quality British food. Their large, bistro-style restaurants hadn’t been seen here before and they carved the footholds for how we all eat out in London today.’

After working with the group for 17 years, it was high time for a shot on his own. He left Caprice on good terms and opened Hix Oyster and Chop House in Farringdon. Eschewing the crisp linen and starched collars of his previous employers’ businesses, he covered his tables in disposable brown paper and pioneered the exposed brick, rustic aesthetic that so many restaurants now choose to follow. Even though it was in a down-at-heel part of town next to infamous nightclub Turnmills, it opened to rave reviews and maintains the strength in its simplicity today. Similarly zeitgeist-defining was Tramshed, which opened as the final flourish to the seven restaurants Hix opened in four years in 2012. ‘I was a bit nervous about that one because of the size of the space [150 covers] and had

a few sleepless nights in the run-up to opening. But once we were up and running I knew it would be fine. I looked at the industry and thought it was crazy that no one had opened a chicken-focused restaurant as it had been the nation’s favourite protein for years. I was the first to build a restaurant around it. Except Nando’s and Kentucky Fried, obviously.’

FIRE IN THE HOLE

Hix now splits his time between London and the South West, where he has Hix Oyster and Fish House and B&B Hix Townhouse in Lyme Regis. Having grown up on the coast, fish has always been a mainstay on his menus and the sea in his blood. ‘We’ve had the best summer ever down in the South West. The weather’s been amazing, the fishing has been good and the prices are up. It’s great being so close to the fishermen, being able to take the catch straight off the boat.’ Our interview falls at an interesting time for the fishermen of the British coast. Last week saw swashbuckling in the North Sea as French fishermen boarded British boats in a scene generally reserved for ships sailing under the Jolly Roger. ‘It’s a very odd situation down there at the moment. The French are allowed to fish in our waters but we’re not allowed to fish in theirs. Something was bound to kick off. It’s almost like the Cod Wars in the Fifties and Sixties. It’s only a matter of time before our fishermen start fighting back and Brexit hasn’t even happened yet.

‘We have open and closed seasons here. For example, on the Devon and Dorset border there’s a rule in place saying that you can’t fish in both at the same time. It allows the scallop breeding grounds to regenerate so we don’t ruin the fishing in the future. The French will just come in the middle of the night. There’s meant to be a 13km limit but I’m sure you can see the French boats closer than that. You hear all the real stories from them in the pubs down here – the fishermen are smart and enterprising people; they’ve had to cope with all sorts of changes in legislation and still manage to make a reasonable living. Everyone should have a fisherman as a mate.’