The long road back Chef Mark Hix is starting over

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

Agroup of regulars in good spirits stopped me outside the pub the other day. ‘Looking forward to when you can eventually reopen fully?’ they asked, adding, ‘You are going to have to take on more staff.’

When I started shaking my head, they thought I was joking because I do like to have a laugh with the customers. But this time I wasn’t.

‘When we reopen fully after this latest delay,’ I explained, ‘you are going to be allowed to get up and go to the bar to buy a couple of pints yourself rather than someone come out here to take your orders, get them from the bar, and bring them.’

It was banter and, as it happens, we are keeping staffing levels the same, but it brought home to them that these past few months, with fewer customers served by more staff than is usual, have been costly to a business trying to get back on its feet.

On which subject, the other question that keeps cropping up is, ‘Have you been putting up your prices because of Covid?’ The answer is no, but had I wanted to inflate them, I could have made a good economic case around the cost of the extra staff bringing pints from the bar in The Fox to the outside tables.

That, though, would have gone completely against the spirit of what I am trying to build here in Dorset. I want the pub in Corscombe and The Fish House in Lyme to be part of the

I have been called oldfashioned for trying to keep things local. I say we’re looking to the future

community, and that means treating it with respect. Too many pubs I know that serve food have been hoicking up the tariff during Covid because they think people are just so desperate to get out they won’t object. It will have a long-term negative consequence.

In the comments that some of you post about these columns, there was a related debate recently about me charging London prices in rural Dorset. Again, the answer is we don’t. They are lower than in my London restaurants before they went into administration for the simple reason that the rent I pay here for the premises is lower than it was in the capital.

One recent customer even suggested that there may be a premium added in because I am a ‘celebrity’ chef who writes in The Telegraph. That’s another no. I take a lot of time and trouble to compare our prices with those of others round and about – and not just in restaurants but also the sort of pubs that serve what are effectively frozen ready meals.

And I have found it pretty standard to pay £15 for a Sunday roast. We charge £19, but the difference is that we use locally reared sirloin, while they mostly serve topside (which costs about one third of the price) with no provenance. In other words, the reason we may cost a bit more is that we are committed to using locally and ethically sourced ingredients.

And that’s not just food, it is drinks too. ‘Why don’t you have Guinness on tap?’ I keep being asked. And I keep replying that we have a very nice stout brewed by Gilt & Flint, an organic brewhouse in the village of Musbury, half an hour from here.

I wait until the questioner has sampled it – it’s really good – and then ask who they would rather support – a multinational or a local company run by local people putting money into the local economy, whose product gets from them to us with a minimum of carbon emissions?

I have been called old-fashioned for trying to keep things local. I say we’re looking to the future. This is the way that food and drink must to be made and sold if the planet is going to have a future.

It may sometimes cost a little more, but not always. At the pub, we have a bar menu with toad-in-thehole or bangers-and-mash for under a tenner that is well liked by the local builders and farmers. Same price as elsewhere but ours is made with gluten-free sausages from pigs raised to the highest standards by John Summers at Bellair Haye Farm just down the road from my home.

Eating well, eating seasonally and eating green can be done on a budget. At the fish truck, if customers suggest my home-made smoked salmon is a bit pricey, I have to hand a packet of ready-sliced, polythene-wrapped smoked salmon from a well-known high-end supermarket. More waste, more food miles but mine tastes better and fresher, though it costs exactly the same. What’s not to like?