Episode 50 Steve Groves – Head Chef Roux at Parliament Square

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We’re diving deep into the wonderful world of restaurant kitchens this week.  Watching this chef’s career take off has been an inspiring experience for me, not least because Steve Groves started his culinary life working by the sea in Dorset, where we shared a town, and even a seafront some time ago.   

If Steve’s name doesn’t ring an immediate bell, maybe the fact that he was a winner of ‘MasterChef: The Professionals’, will nudge your memory.  It also gives you an idea of the exacting standards he works to, and why Michel Roux Jr snapped him up as a sous-chef, to join the team at The Roux at Parliament Square.  

For the last six years Steve has been Head Chef at this prestigious restaurant, giving its French classical heritage a modern twist and impressing yet more judges, most recently at The Craft Guild’s National Chef of the Year competition, that Steve impressively won.  

But as you’ll hear, Steve is not one for blowing his own trumpet. He’s more interested in developing the talent of his colleagues, making sure the whole team gels, and that they get to see their families at the weekends.  Yes, every weekend. 

And as it’s nearly Christmas, he reveals what’s replacing the traditional turkey on his  festive dinner table. 

Episode 49 Rob Wilson
CEO Toast Ale – bread into beer!

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Imagine buying a fresh loaf of bread, cutting it in two and immediately throwing half of it in the bin.  You eat what’s left and then you buy another loaf the next day and do exactly the same thing again.  

It sounds crazy, doesn’t it – and not something any of us would do deliberately.  But, across the world, that is what the human race is doing.  

OK, it’s not quite half. It’s actually 44%, which is still an eye-watering proportion.  44% of all the bread we produce is not eaten, at all.   

That is why Toast Ale was born. Set up in 2016, it sells delicious, award-winning beer using surplus bread and its open-source recipe has inspired brewers from South Africa and Iceland to Brazil and New York. Its BHAG – its Big Hairy Audacious Goal – is to convert the whole of the UK’s brewing industry to its way of thinking in the next 15 years. So, whenever we raise our glass, we’ll all be helping to save the planet.  

Rob Wilson is Toast Ale’s CEO. Before he joined the Toast team, he’d already got a serious track record in social entrepreneurship. This includes spending his ‘mega-moon-honey-moon’ in Africa, gathering stories about other inspirational entrepreneurs with his wife.   

Get ready for a life-enhancing conversation, which encourages us all to have fun as we help build a better future for planet earth. 

Episode 48 James Mansfield
Field and Flower – grass fed meat by post

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James Mansfield, is a master at learning on the job. When he and James Flower, a friend from agricultural college, decided to set up their meat box business, both of them had to perfect the art of butchery from a standing start. They also had to scale up their culinary skills very rapidly, so they could serve mouth-watering dishes to 2,000 VIP guests at Richard Branson’s V Festival.  

I was excited to chat to James since with alot of press recently about eating less meat for the sake of planet earth, I was intrigued to explore some issues around what good and bad practise looks like.  Is it a case of eating no meat, or eating better meat.  Caring more about animal welfare and recognising that how the animals we eat are cared for, what they eat and what drugs they take must surely be part of the informed conversation.  These could be tricky things to ask a butcher, but as expected James was engaging, knowledgeable and happy to educate. 

This willingness to jump in at the deep end and learn on the go partly explains why ‘field&flower’  is so successful today. It’s also because they’ve stuck to their principles: only supplying traditionally reared grass-fed beef, along with free range poultry, pork and lamb. It won’t surprise you to know that they’ve designed their own box packaging too, which is more environmentally friendly than the traditional poly box.  

As you’ll hear now, James’ hospitality career began in the same ‘nought-to-sixty’ vein, front of house at one of London’s most famous restaurants. 

Episode 47 Griff Holland
Co-founder of Friska

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Griff Holland, co founder of Friska, epitomises the enthusiasm and energy you all too often find in some of the awesome humans of hospitality.  Spending a couple of ours in Griff’s company was an utter pleasure.  His level of obsession about just the right amount of avocado that should be any one bite of a sandwich reminded me of why a life of hospitality is so all consuming and almost impossible to nail.  So many details to obsess about. 

One of the great things about setting up a food or drink business is that you have the perfect reason to test – and taste – lots of edible things, in the name of market research.    

Griff, took the work of testing and tasting to impressive (possibly obsessive) extremes. Whether it was offering samples of five different types of chai to fellow diners in India or quizzing American tourists in Vietnam about their lunch habits back home,  Griff was relentless in his quest to work out what makes us feel really good when we go out to eat.  

And his research paid off, because, right from the start the ‘Feel Good Food’ vision of Friska has impressed a succession of funders and has gained a loyal following in Bristol and Manchester. 

But, as you’ll hear, Griff, and his co-founder Ed Brown, have learned hard  lessons too – including the importance of serving great coffee and  having something familiar, like a chicken sandwich, on the menu.  

Episode 46 Guy Singh-Watson
Riverford Organic Farmers

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When, in the 1990s, Guy Singh-Watson started delivering boxes of organic veg to neighbours and friends, he realised he was onto a winner. People loved the fact that the vegetables tasted great and were grown locally.   

He probably didn’t realise just how big a winner it was. Today Riverford Organic Farmers supply boxes to between 50 and 60 thousand households a week and have a team of 700.  

I was very excited to get to speak with Guy since I’ve read a number of his blogs about the impact of modern farming and monoculture.  Guy really brings to life the impact such approaches of mass production are having on the soil, and how important soil is for all of us to be able to continue to live on planet earth.  Fundamentally I wanted to learn whether ‘organic’ is really important and how much work should we, as the hospitality industry and the general public, be putting in to thinking about not only where, but how our fruits and vegetables are grown.  To say Guy has an opinion or two on this is an understatement.  But he makes the case eloquently and enthusiastically for change. 

While the business has scaled up, the guiding principle behind it has not shifted, as you’ll know if you’ve ever watched Guy’s YouTube series, ‘Guy’s Rants’. For him, respecting the health of our soil, through traditional mixed farming rather than rigid specialisation, is vital for the health of us all. 

Whether you agree with Guy or not, this programme will definitely make you think about consumer choice, and whether the world has gone mad in allowing us to choose delivery times to within 20 minutes or having little gem lettuces flown over from the States.  

Should the era of getting what we want, when we want it, come to an end? 

Let’s discuss…