Mark Hix: Creativity Thrives Under Restriction

What happens when a top restaurateur sells his own name… and then buys it back for £7,000?

In this episode of Who’s Elvis Around Here, Chris sits down with legendary chef and restaurateur Mark Hix to unpack the highs, lows, and lessons from a life in hospitality.

From running multiple restaurants and leading hundreds of staff, to losing everything overnight during the pandemic, Mark shares the unfiltered reality of entrepreneurship — and what he’s learned about creativity, leadership, and starting again.

We also dive into:

The story behind selling (and reclaiming) his name
How he developed chefs using his “Challenge Hix” method
Why creativity thrives under restriction
The pressures of running restaurants vs the freedom of a portfolio life
What he’s building next (including the return of Mark’s Bar 👀)

This is a candid, funny, and insightful conversation about reinvention, resilience, and doing things differently.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

So uh welcome to the Who's Elvis Round here podcast. This is where I get uh hang out with some of the br most brilliant leaders on the planet and find out what makes them tick. And I'm really delighted. I've got one of my best mates here today. This is my new theme. I just I just bring people along who I hang out with. So Mark Hicks, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. So for those people who don't know Mark, it is about time, isn't it? I want to make sure we had something to talk about first. So we've we've had some problem. So um for those who don't know uh you, uh, can you explain who you are?

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Yeah, so I am an ex serial restaurant, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

That's the best way to describe it. Uh at one point I had sort of six restaurants on the go, one of the all set five in London. Uh and then what happened interestingly is I I was the majority owner of the business.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

And every time I opened a new restaurant, it was more exciting than the last one. Uh, and then as life goes on, I thought, oh, maybe I need to sort of I've never really made any money, so maybe I need to cash in. So I brought in business partners who replaced my 70.5%, and I became 70-25%. So that went on for a couple of years, and they had to pay me uh a six-figure sum to buy my name in order that I could keep my name above the doors of the restaurant, whether it was six or choppies, six or restaurant fish, whatever. So that happened and then two years later it was the pandemic.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

So I got this phone call, no board meeting about two days before lockdown. And so we've decided to put your restaurants into administration. So, of course, I took 120 staff about this, you know, not being my fault, obviously. And uh the interesting thing that happened is not only did the restaurants go into administration, but my name. Your name too. Yeah, so they paid me a big six-figure sum for my name, H I X, and I bought it back off the administrator for seven grand. For seven grand, what a deal! That's the that's the only profit I've really ever made out of restaurants.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

So you sold your name and cooking isn't it? That's fantastic. That's fantastic. So, um, who'd have thought a name could be so valuable and then you get it back? Um, so so uh you you've obviously you know you've run lots of restaurants, you've had lots of people working for you. Um some stuff has worked brilliantly, some stuff has a bit more of a struggle, as it is with any entrepreneur. Um what is it do you think that is the secret of bringing out the genius of your people? Because you've had so many staff over the years. What what what's your trick?

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Yeah, I mean, I I think after a while what happened was I thought, okay, I need to make this more interesting. You know, you can't just wander around the restaurants and talk about the good stuff and the bad stuff. So I was lucky enough when I had a tram shed, which was you know the famous chicken and steak restaurant. I had a room upstairs, this lovely room with a counter that was seat about 12. I had all my 2,000 cookbooks there. Yeah, so once a week, I think it was a Tuesday. Um, myself and the head chefs in the restaurant, sometimes the sous chefs, uh I would put a couple of baskets of ingredients that are seasonal and uh would sort of work on the menu, and it was up to them to produce one dish, sometimes two dishes. I would also do some dishes with the same ingredients, and occasionally those dishes would get on the menus, which was great. You know, I'd often gift them a cookbook or something for getting it on the menu. I just found that that you know, all the head chefs together, plus me cooking together for you know something that's potentially going to go on the menu, yeah, was a great way to develop their skills, uh work out that you know simplicity is important, yeah, yeah, yeah. And how you know not to mess around too much with ingredients, which they didn't anyway, that wasn't really my philosophy. And yeah, it was it was a good thing, and we continued that for you know a few years.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Well, I so I was lucky enough to come to one of those some years ago, and I remember it vividly. So it was the it was upstairs in the library, uh, there were ingredients everywhere. We had puff balls when I was in that they were they were in season at the time, and what what I liked about it was obviously there's a development thing, so you're doing it with your chef so you learn from each other as you go, which is great for capability. Um I I loved the fact actually that people became heroes and heroines while they were doing it. What I liked is you you never really won in these things.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

No, I let the chefs run.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Well, I think this is a really cool thing, right? Because as leaders, often we you know we think we should be the best, we have all the answers. But you were really celebrating your skills. And I remember vividly, uh, the one that won that everyone was most excited about was Kimchi Mackerel. Yes, and it was Fabrizio.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

And it went on a menu.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Yeah. So there's there's a lot of kind of help helping each other along the way, learning, celebrating success, and actually and it gave them confidence. Loads of confidence, loads of confidence, yeah. So so it's it's uh incredibly simple thing to do, and you know, you at that point you had what six restaurants? Yeah, so feeding the menus is quite hard work, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you know, at one point, and one of the reasons actually that I started doing it was because you know, not many of the chefs were coming up with new ideas that were quite suitable. So I I was the person that was coming up with the ideas and telling them what to do, whereas I suddenly thought, you know, let's get some input from you know, and I I sat at one point that sometimes they were scared to suggest something or create a new dish. So this was a great way in front of all the other head chefs to produce something that was good and suitable for the menu, and not do something that was, you know, rather than me say it, one of the other chefs would say, I don't think that's going to work.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're overcoming that kind of barrel.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

There's too many ingredients on the plate, or it's too complicated for what we do.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

I I like that, and I think you also adopted a principle which I've seen at um at the do lectures. At the do lectures, if you go and speak, you know, I spoke for a living. I wasn't allowed to speak about anything I'd ever spoken about before, but it had to be new. And I think there was a rule you couldn't cook something you'd cooked before.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, because you know, the thing with food, there's always derivatives of something. If you've got a macro dish with a you know, squash salsa, for example, you could do a scorgette salsa, you know. Okay, but so that you know, every dish, you know, from his historic, you know, when when I was at catering college and all the really classical French stuff you did, you know, we don't do that anymore. But there's a few things that sort of were important at that point.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Got you.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Sometimes they were techniques, sometimes they were combinations, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

Yeah, I like it, I like it. And what I couldn't quite uh get over was the kind of the speed of it all, because uh when you were doing can actually, I know you you were being relatively modest and saying, well, we might do one or two dishes, I've seen you do more than that in that half hour, and and therefore you're thinking ahead, you're cooking you know, three things at the same time for actually different dishes. So I guess it gets you very good at thinking at speed, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Thinking on your feet because when I do um food festivals, I I always do a demo with Mitch, Mitch Thomps. And Mitch said, Oh, I'll bring this and I'll bring that. I said, Man, why don't we do use one ingredient or two ingredients and we do as many dishes. So I always remember the time when I did the the the padstow festival with Rick, and he for a few months after it he was saying, What should we do? What should we do? I said, Cuttlefish. So he said, Okay, and what else? I said, No, no, cuttlefish.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

There's cuttlefish.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

So between you and I, let's cook as many cuttlefish dishes. So he was shitting himself because normally, you know, if he's if he's doing TV stuff, he has things put in front of him.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

And he, you know, just shakes a pan a bit or chops something up.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Very good at doing it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

So I thought it's a good challenge, and he he was very nervous. His guys in the kitchen said, Rick's a bit nervous about this demo with you. Yeah, but you know, what happened was we ended up cooking, you know, 15 dishes between us. All sorts of different, you know, you could take a little bit of prep, like a half-cooked risotto or something. Yeah, and so Mitch and I do exactly the same. We did one that actually the Paddo Festival this year, we did tin fish. Tinned fish, that was all you did. And we did about 12 or 15 dishes. We were making pakoras from the tin crab, nice, uh sort of ragu from the sardines, yeah, uh Nisswa salad from the mackerel, you know, that sort of stuff. So, you know, rather than people just think, oh, tin fish is just to go on toast. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, of course. You can be creative with it, it's reasonable, it's always in your larder. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you want to lock something up quickly, then it's ready to go.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

And look, I've I've always had a a belief which is uh creativity is often fuelled by restriction. If you can choose anything, you don't have to be that creative.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

Yeah, that's exactly right. I I I love just looking at something, or people say, where do you get your inspiration from? And they they're expecting me to say cookbooks or magazines. And I, you know, quite often it's from a food market.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

And the advice I give people if they're doing a dinner party, don't plague through your cookbooks and write a list of ingredients because you'll you'll be disappointed when you get to the supermarket or market. Yeah. Go shopping, find your main ingredient first, and then you work it out. Work left or right, and and then it's it's you know it's seasonal and it's it matches, you know, it doesn't overlap with other stuff. Because some people go shopping with a big, huge list, they're gonna make a Thai Kae or something, and they can't get half the ingredients.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

So I think you know, just cook with what you see in front of you, or you know, you've what's fresh will get your imagination, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

What's your seasonal? So I I heard somebody recently say that's the difference between uh British cooking and continental. I thought it was slightly disparaging, but but they were saying we just go, we do go to the supermarket, gary ingredients, whereas they do go and get things fresh and work it out. Um well look, I so look, a wonderful thing to do. What I what I really enjoyed about the Challenge Hicks thing was there's an energy and a buzz, and what you're doing is the the most kind of senior people in the business are practicing their craft together, but with a bit of fun without pressure, yeah. But actually, not only will you grow yourself, it's RD. You're coming up with new stuff for the business. So actually, everybody wins in that particular case.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

And you know, they they would say, like, you know, a month later or weeks later, oh, do you think that dish would fit on the menu now? Because it's like the end of autumn or whatever. And I say, Yeah, absolutely, let's make it again next week with some you know more seasonal ingredients. So those those dishes revolve, you know, sort of revolve around the seasons. Yeah, you know. So if it's a cheesecake with I'd I'd I'd recently be doing a squash cheesecake sweet. Oh, okay. Like you know, bits of squash and cooked in a sugar syrup, but like almost every month of the year you can have a different topping, you know. So when it comes in berry blueberry as well, with wild strawberries, if you're lucky, sea buckthorn, anything like nuts, nuts and honey, you know, all that sort of stuff. So you can actually have a you know a different cheesecake every week or every month.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Got you. Very nice too. And I also remember one thing from it. Um, sorry, it's just coming to my mind. Every now and again you'd invite somebody along who wasn't the most senior, and it would be like a big deal for them, right? Because they get to hang out with like the head chefs.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Yeah, so that was really important because the head chefs couldn't always make it, so they'd send their sea chef along or they'd accompany them. Uh, so that was a good insight. Because otherwise they're wondering, yeah, what do these guys get up to? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

And it'd be aspirational, right? I mean, I I I'd be going, I've I've finally been invited, it's quite a big deal.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

Yeah, yeah. And we quite often used to get guests, uh, it would have been fun to various people.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

And I remember Jay Raynor actually came and did a film about it.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

Very cool. He did. Well, I I like that a lot. Uh, Challenge Hicks. So um we've got an idea for how you get the most out of your people. I mean, I love the business story about buying a name back. I really enjoyed that. Well, um, slightly more hippie question. What gives you hope? Hope.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

Well, do you know what I enjoy now? People say to me, Do you miss the restaurants? Of course you miss the restaurants.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

You know, but attached to the restaurants, there's a lot of other pressures, financial pressures, mental pressures, and the hospitality business has be it's got sort of worse and worse from you know, sort of post-lockdown. Um, you know, working from home, I think, is a not that you would do that in a restaurant, but I think generally working from home it's it's the kiss of death.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

You know, because people get into that mentality of you know, they don't have to go to the office, so what are they doing? They they got their laptop on the lawnmower, and you know, just so restaurants are slightly different, but I think the skill set getting the staff front of house and back of house changed an awful lot, and I think people's mentality about drive and expertise and reliability really changed a lot, and that's one of the things that drove me mad having a few restaurants. And what I do now is I wake up in the morning, I know that I I'm not gonna get phone calls or I'm gonna be on a Zoom meeting with my staff. Uh I've got people calling in sick, none of that, I've got no staff anymore.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

So you have a freedom, no headaches, no pressure.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

So everything I do, whether it's private events, Mark's kitchen table at home, Mark's kitchen table at Sugaroo Vineyard in Sussex, uh, stuff like that, working with Mitch, doing his um videos online, all that sort of stuff is really quite interesting without the pressures of running a day-to-day business in a restaurant. Uh, so I I can kind of work around that, you know, a bit of writing and that sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

So yeah, well, so I mean the freedom, you know. I mean, how many how many staff did you have when you have six restaurants?

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Oh, 150 or something.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

Yeah, so a lot of people to manage. Um, and obviously with lots of staff, things go wrong as they naturally do. So you're always kind of baking.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

Daily basis, hourly basis.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

It's just but it's just what happens, and then yeah, you have problems with suppliers, and then oh, the heating's gone in one, you know, so there's a lot there. So it's never ending. I can I can understand it must feel rather nice to to have the freedom. But what what I um I also quite enjoy is that that's that's given you a chance to be a bit of a minister with portfolio, right? You can try lots of different things, and that gives you different energy.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

Yeah, you know, I I was I I I I found myself autumn time, you know, picking lots of mushrooms, you know. So in the past I just go for by the way, crazy amounts.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

I saw I I saw how many.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

Yeah, amazing. So me and my friend Nick were there one day with about 50 kilos of CEPS in the back of his little Pilaris truck, and we're sat in the pub having a sat in the pub having a pike, and everyone I found the other our competitive competitors, foragers, um, had already been. So we were left with all this stuff, and then suddenly I thought, oh, maybe I should phone um a couple of farm shops. Yeah, yeah. You know, so that's what we ended up doing, and then giving away some mushrooms.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

I did I did get a little punic myself, I was very grateful, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

So, yeah, and and that, you know, it's there's not loads of money in it, but actually it's quite satisfying.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

Going for a walk and picking some mushrooms, having some time and some space, it's a rather wonderful thing. So I've looked I've just been I I told you I was reading um Jeremy King's book recently, which I've I've really enjoyed. He seems like a man who can't escape restaurants.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Yeah, I mean he was you know, Jeremy and Chris were really the big inspiration for me, you know. Going to work in their restaurant, the Caprice at the time, and then doing the Ivy and J. Cheeky and um opening Scots. Uh that their philosophy about you know restaurants, customers, all that sort of stuff, um, really sort of stuck in my mind and sort of changed everything and developed me for what was to come, I think.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

Yeah, yeah, well what's interesting from my point of view with him is you know they've gone through the ringer quite a few times, but they keep going again. Well, he keeps going again, doesn't he? But you're through that now by the sound effects. Out the other side.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

But when people say to me, um, would you open another restaurant? Yeah, I say no, big mo, and no capitals, but I would open a Marks Bar. Uh so Marks Bar, for those of you that remembered, was the basement of my Hick Soho site.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

A very dangerous place, as I recall.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

Yeah, and I opened that with Nick Strangeway, and our philosophy was the same as the food, really. We would use as many British ingredients as we could, all the spirits, because back then, you know, there were there weren't really as many um British spirits as there are now, yeah. Um, but we used to use as many as possible, and we would use stuff that had been foraged, um, seasonal stuff, making fusions, and yeah, we got you know a good reputation for Marks Bar. It was a naughty underground bar.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

It really was. I mean, any time of day it felt like you know about two in the morning, and um and there's lots of reprobates in there.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

I'm I'm actively looking at the moment to do Mark Bar.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

Ah, so a mark a Mark's bar could be with Nick, the old team back together.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Yeah, so it could be a basement site somewhere that no one knows what to do with. It could yeah, it could be anything.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Okay, well we we will see. I'm sure the world will welcome it back. So Mark's bar is something that's exciting in the future. What other stuff you got coming up?

SPEAKER_00 17:51

Uh well, quite a few events and stuff. Um, I've just got my new book that I've launched with Metty Wakefield. So years ago, I used to have this Andy Warhol cookbook, which was um quite a big thing, quite a valuable thing, and I had to sell it during lockdown, sadly.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Right.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Uh, and I always thought to myself, maybe I should do my own version. So it's basically it was called Wild Raspberry's, it was his uh grandmother's recipes and his illustrations. Oh wow, okay. So about two years ago, um I hooked up with Nettie Wakefield, who did my illustrated my hooked book, yeah, and I said, should we do this sort of warhole-esque project together? So we got to work on it and we did um 28 species of fish handwritten. Netty did the illustrations, uh, so they sell as sort of A3 prints, and then I thought, okay, let's do uh a book, coffee table book. It's not it is a cookbook, but it's very abbreviated recipes. Uh so Netty loved that idea. We self-published it, and gorgeous, you know. So all of the 28 images are in the book, which you can see. You buy these for our website, and uh yeah, so these are 90 pounds. The uh prints vary in price, really, depending on the additions, but they're about 350 quid.

SPEAKER_01 19:25

Yeah, very nice, but again, so you know, with a bit of time and space, more creative opportunities. So something you might not have done if you were running restaurants, and you've always loved your art, right? So an artistic part of your art.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

So this is a good um a sort of record of Netty's drawings and our sort of abbreviated recipes.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Ver very nice, very nice too.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

And um I bought you a little present. Oh we got some panforte.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

Well, look at this.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

Every so often I have a couple of times a year, I I clear out my cupboard of nuts and dried fruits and that sort of stuff. Oh, fantastic! And I think this is a perfect thing to make, really, because it's um it uses up all that stuff so you can start again. And this is great with a cup of coffee and before.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

Well, I'm looking forward to getting into that. You know, a lot of time I have to do people remotely. I invited you face to face just in case. Exactly. Well, look, it's been fantastic having you here. Um, for those people who want to get a bit more into Mummark, Substack.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

Substack, yeah. So I've um I've stopped writing for the telegraph now, sadly. That was a sort of three or four-year project. Yeah. Uh so yeah, I'm on Substack, so you can join Substack uh as a paid subscriber for five a month, which is much cheaper than four newspapers. Um or you can just follow the blurb, but if you if you join for five quid a month, you get the recipes every weekend as well.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

Excellent. And uh what's the hottest recipe for this time of year?

SPEAKER_00 20:54

Well, um I've been doing pies because it's pie week coming up. Yeah. So I did the famous Stargazy pie but with lobster and chicken. Oh, very nice. Which I'm doing at Three Horseshoes. Okay. Uh next uh when is that next week? Yes. Uh with Margot Henderson. Oh, lovely, yeah. And then yes, I've done a couple weeks' worth of pies. Excellent. Sweet savoury, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

So for those people who want to get into the creativity that Mark is now flourishing in with this freedom, check out his substack.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

But quite a few events. So we're going, I'm doing an event at Trazillian House.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

Oh, very nice, yeah. Done in Cornwall.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

Yep. So Johnny used to work for me, so you can get tickets online for that. Uh, we're doing our uh tonics on tour with various events, and the main one is Portugal, so it's a two night visit to Quinta de la Rosa. Amazing with Mitch.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

And that's a yeah, I think there might be a few tickets left for that.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

So, yeah, lots going on dinners, wine tastings, all that sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

Well, uh, it sounds like the portfolio is a lot of fun. It sounds like it's it's suiting. Very well. Well, it's been great having you in today. Uh, actually, to have somebody in the studio with me is is quite a joy. Um, so uh thank you for everything you shared, and um, obviously, uh, tune in to the next podcast coming soon. Uh, it might not necessarily be in person with a with a fabulous celebrity chef, but uh you know, we'll do our best to follow that. Uh, thank you, Mark Hayes. Pleasure, thank you.