The long road back Mark Hix’s journey from restaurant tycoon to fish truck (and back again)

Chef Mark Hix’s journey from restaurant tycoon to fish truck (and back again)

Seeing what havoc Covid has caused in friends’ restaurants in London, and watching my own small chain in the capital go up in smoke as the first lockdown hit, I knew the risks in starting all over again down here in Dorset. I put it at 50/50 whether we were going to be locked down when I opened my second outlet at the Fox Inn in Corscombe just before Christmas.

Being one of nature’s optimists, I saw that numbers of cases down here have been relatively low compared to the rest of the country. So I was still hoping at the very end of December that we’d be all right.

The Fox was busy on the day the official announcement came through – as it has been every day since it opened, with some people coming back two or three times, and making reservations well into the New Year. I had buried myself in work to avoid listening to the radio. Not because I didn’t care, but because I couldn’t quite bear to listen.

And then there it was: Tier 3 for Dorset. We had to close by midwe’d night. All the stuff bought to cover the New Year bank holiday would go to waste.

Then the bigger picture came into focus. The Fox and my reopened Oyster & Fish House in Lyme Regis are shut for the foreseeable future. The only money I’ve got coming in is from my fish truck in a converted ambulance – enough to keep me going, but not the business.

The whole of the country is in the same stop-go-stop scenario, if not worse, so I am not going to moan. Yet,

I know that our customers are loyal, even after so short a time. They will be back

I can’t help mentioning, one half of me does think that these rules are a bit unfair. There is no evidence that hotels and restaurants, where they have rigorous distancing standards in place, as we have, contribute to the spread the virus. Yet you can still go into a supermarket, handle all the fruit and veg on the stands, and then put it back for the next person to touch. Wealldoit.

Enough. The only thing now is to regard this as the first obstacle to navigate on the long road back. Luckily, having been so badly bitten last March, when I negotiated my two new leases this time I insisted on rent-free clauses if there was another lockdown. And most of the staff will go on furlough. So there isn’t too much money going out.

And I know that our customers are loyal, even after so short a time. They will be back. It is a question of when, and whether can we survive that long. If it is months on end, there are going to be a load of casuincluding alties me – again.

I am not allowing myself to think that way right now. Instead I am counting the positives. I am in a betthan ter place I was nine months ago – physically, having moved back to Dorset, and emotionally. In fact, I am in the place I want to be, and I have a future here.

The challenge, then, becomes how to keep going. I could do takeaways under Tier 3 rules, but I’m in two minds. The gain you make for the effort that goes into them isn’t very much. By the time you have staffed it and then delivered it, especially in a rural area like this, it is hard to make a profit.

Perhaps I will give it a try with something simple – oysters and smoked salmon – but I am taking my time finally to decide. I am going to have a bottle of wine, and a good brainstorm with myself.

What I have found, even in dark moments, is that inspiration is never far away. Trish, a friend and supporter, who makes delicious Somerset membrillo and introduces me to new cheesemakers, came into the pub the day before the announcement and told me about a local garden where they had put cardboard over the grassed area, then compost and manure, and turned into a no-dig vegetable garden.

That sounded like my sort of garden, I thought. I have got all the cardboard boxes that are now empty because the planned Kitchen Library at the Fox was completed just in time for lockdown. All 2,000 of the old cookery books that I’ve collected are on display round the walls of what will be a private dining room.

So the cardboard is going down on the flat section of the garden behind the pub’s skittle alley. The compost is on order and the horse manure is being provided by Kim, assistant manager at the Fox, a horsey type. When we get going again, there will be a ready supply of veg trimmings, which means we will soon be able to grow our own supply of vegetables, herbs, salads and other things.

Next on the to-do list is some new ideas for the fish truck to boost income there. And I have enough set aside to get on with redoing the bedrooms above the pub. When we reopen, they will bring more money back in. It’s an investment in Covid being defeated.

That’s what I tell myself when I am out fishing on Lyme Bay for sea bass with old friends. We set off at first light and it can take eight hours – plenty of time to reflect, with the winter sun on the calm sea surface. Despite these latest problems, I know I have made the right decision in taking the plunge down here. I am happy, and I just need the world to catch up with me.