In this week s column Mark Hix is beginning to feel the lockdown bite
28 January 2021 • 11:00am
Mark Hix: There is something very English about finding someone whose situation is worse than yours when you are in trouble.
Credit: Nicholas J R White
One consolation in lockdown for those in the hospitality industry is that we haven’t been short of public sympathy. Customers who come to my fish truck, parked up on the A35, are generally full of commiserations about my pub at Corscombe and my restaurant at Lyme Regis both being closed.
Sometimes, on the bleak days, it can feel like being back to square one, when my London restaurants went into administration at the start of the first lockdown. After getting on for a year of starting over, my staff are on furlough and it’s just me left working the fish truck three mornings a week. But the solidarity of customers, who range from passing builders to local gentry, keeps me going.
PLANS for nine luxury homes on a former council depot site at Redbridge Lane, Crossways have been refused planning permission. Dorset Council has decided the one hectare site would not be sustainable as it lies outside of the defined development area which would mean residents having to rely on cars for all their needs. A council decision notice also mentions the lack of a biodiversity plan and a potential flood risk and says the proposals do not make efficient use of the land. Applicants, LPC Construction, had asked for nine four and five-bed homes on the former depot which has a number of dilapidated caravans, storage sheds and shipping containers on it. The site is opposite the Crossways solar farm and is surrounded by woods on three sides with the site protected by security fencing.
Mark Hix
Credit: NICHOLAS J R WHITE
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.
Last modified on Sun 3 Jan 2021 04.56 EST
Let’s start with the good news. For the UK’s restaurant sector, 2021 will be better than 2020. This is only because, short of your actual Godzilla rising from the depths just off Folkestone at the same time as a chunky asteroid wilfully redirects itself to slam into, say, Birmingham, laying waste to everything within a 500-mile radius, it’s hard to imagine it being worse. And even then, it will only be better for the ones who have survived. A recent survey by various industry bodies found more than 70% of hospitality businesses expected to close, if the current Covid-19 restrictions stayed in place unchanged. We have already seen a number of casualties. Michel Roux Jr’s restaurant at Parliament Square has gone, for example and, as reported here recently, chef Mark Hix has seen his whole London restaurant group close.
Marx Hix: In
hindsight,
losing
everything
was a
blessing
in disguise
Credit: Nicholas J R White
For someone whose restaurant empire collapsed just as Covid-19 hit, Mark Hix is looking surprisingly content with his lot, sitting in his faded blue Guernsey jumper and battered jeans, on a pub window seat deep in the lanes of his native Dorset. ‘In hindsight,’ he says, ‘it has all been a bit of a blessing in disguise. Forget the money and investment that I lost. And, yes, there were a few months of sitting there scratching my head. But now I am starting over.’ He grins cheekily, like someone who can’t quite believe his luck. ‘It feels like a new beginning.’