The long road back

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

Chef Mark Hix is starting over

The summer heat may be fading, but hospitality continues to overheat. And when it boils over, some people get burnt. A local café/bakery in Lyme was recently caught up in a spat with a large group of customers who were furious when told there was no room to fit them in at short notice, and so took to social media and ratings sites to vent their spleen with a series of zero grades.

We haven’t had it quite so bad, but it continues to amaze me how, in the middle of the most intensive lunchtime or evening rush that businesses like mine have ever known, people will turn up and expect us to magic up a table for six or eight or 10. When we politely explain that we are fully booked and have been for several days or weeks, they will then point at an empty table or chair or stool, and ask, often angrily, why can’t we sit there?

What we have been forced to learn are all the different ways of saying no, firmly, but non-confrontationally. The best results we find are produced not by saying, ‘So sorry, we are fully booked.’ That can just be a red rag to a bull. Instead, we’ve been opting for something more heartfelt: ‘We physically can’t do it. We have three chefs trying to cook for 160 covers.’ That sort of maths usually takes the heat out of the situation.

In one sense, of course, we are lucky that we can fill our tables and get the business back on its feet after three lockdowns. At the same time, though, I am acutely aware of the toll a small, aggressive, rude minority of customers takes, especially on our front of house staff. I can, to an extent, rationalise their bad behaviour: the frustration after not being able to go out for so many months, and the lingering uncertainty that we are not done with Covid yet, and that the shutters may come down again.

Yet there have been far too many reports of late about staff left in tears, depressed and at ‘breaking point’ because of angry customers. No wonder we are finding it hard to recruit. You don’t go to work to be verbally abused and threatened.

And, on the subject of being fully booked, here is another curiosity of these strange times. The number of no-shows we are getting is crazy. We are losing over £1,000 a week because people who book tables don’t turn up. We give them 20 minutes, then call them. They don’t reply and by that time it is usually too late to squeeze in someone else and then be ready for the next booking.

Talking to fellow restaurateurs, what seems to be happening is that holiday-makers are booking several places for the same night and deciding on the day or at the last minute where they want to go. One solution would be to take deposits from everyone, but that would mean taking on a new staff member to do all the admin for it, but the recruitment crisis means we are already eight people short at the Fish House.

Over at The Fox Inn, we’re currently lacking another vital ingredient of our offer. Since we first reopened after lockdown, the old military-style saloon tent, with side flaps, that we have been using as an outside dining room has proved hugely popular. But at the moment, there is only a rectangle of brown grass where it stood. Its owners, my mates at Black Cow over in Beaminster, have taken it back for their own festival last weekend. Only temporarily, they stress, and any day now it will be back to see us through shortening days, chillier nights and the onset of autumn.

I am not giving up on summer quite yet, though. There are a few more jaunts to fit in. My old friend from London days, Miles Irving, author and forager extraordinaire, has invited me along for a day at Ewhurst Park near Basingstoke, once the property of the Duke of Wellington, where we will take a party of 20 guests out foraging for ingredients, before bringing them back and cooking lunch together.

I happened to be passing close by on another outing last week, so took a diversion to have a check around the woods there for what was available and in season. There were lots of different mushrooms, which will go a long way. No need now for any nerves about that day.

No wonder we are finding it hard to recruit. You don’t go to work to be verbally abused