Chef’s Table: An Exclusive Chat with Mike Robinson

Dish Cult: When did you know you wanted to become a chef?

Mike Robinson: Relatively late, I came to it in a strange way. I was about 22. I’ve always been a passionate cook, since I was about 11, but it wasn’t until later on in life that I realised I loved the cut, thrust and buzz of a restaurant kitchen.

DC: Were there any chefs that you looked up to at the start of your career?

MR: Well, quite interestingly I started cooking in France in the Alps. I arrived moneyless and got a job washing dishes in a restaurant, and after about two or three months of learning French and whatnot I realised I was fascinated by the kitchens and the restaurant and how it works. So I started working as a chef there and learned in that kitchen. For the first two or three years, I had no exposure whatsoever to British cooking. And then when I left France I went and lived in Australia, and I just cooked there for a year and a half, so I wouldn’t really say I looked up to any chefs at that time, I just found the whole thing completely fascinating.

DC: Is Australia where your love for cooking meat on open flame came from?

MR: No, I think that happened when I came back to Britain. I realised I wanted my own restaurant, so I bought my local village pub, The Pot Kiln, and I turned it into a sort of foodie place. I started thinking about what I wanted to do with my cooking career and so I decided I wanted to use sustainable wild ingredients and to be honest, that original sort of thinking has never left, it’s still the same.

DC: Thinking about the different restaurants you have around the country today, what is it you like most about each of them? Is it the different locations they’re each in, in terms of local produce that’s readily available?

MR: I have a great team around me, we all share this passion for wild food. My business partner at Harwood Arms is Brett Graham from The Ledbury fame, and he runs it day to day. We have an amazing head chef there called Jake Leach, who is also ex-Ledbury.

For The Woodsman in Stratford Upon Avon, I kind of had this idea of a big wood oven and a big wood grill. The building sort of dictated how things work there. It’s a very old building, 15th century.

At The Elder in Bath we knew we couldn’t have a big wood open kitchen because of the nature of the building, it’s in a series of Georgian houses. So that’s more old school, that’s my most old school restaurant. It’s simple food, but it’s very classic and it’s got a hint of fine dining about it.

I look at the buildings we’re in and try and create restaurants that sit well within them. But the ethos is still the same, the mainstay dish on our main course on our menu right now, in all the restaurants, is wild fallow deer. That comes from land we manage.

DC: So are you purposefully avoiding London and seeking out other locations around England to kind of draw attention to the land space there?

MR: Yeah I think so, I am a total country boy. I still go out and harvest deer personally for the restaurants. I still oversee the management of lots of pieces of land to make sure that the current overpopulation of deer doesn’t get completely out of control. The other thing of course which I’m very invested in is Deer Box, which is our sustainable venison business. That is an integral part of the restaurants, and I set up Deer Box to supply not just our restaurants but others too. We manage about 40,000 acres of land and we have full time deer managers. I don’t know if you’re aware but the pandemic meant that basically the number of deer culled in Britain went down to very little for an entire year, because there were no restaurants open, export got stopped because of Brexit, so we found ourselves in a situation where the deer were allowed to effectively breed for an entire season without any control and we were already overpopulated. There’s a real coming issue with the impact on biodiversity and impact on the land and impact on agriculture, so I’m very keen to see this resource being properly used. Even though we only ever have one or two dishes of venison on the menu at any given time, it makes up the best part of 50 per cent of what we sell.

DC: Have you noticed that as a growing food trend?

MR: Absolutely. Massively. I’m great friends with Tony Parkin at The Tudor Room and after he came out with me stalking, he put venison on his menu not thinking much of it, and phoned me up the following week saying it’s gone mad, I need four deer for next week! Wow. He’s now going to have it on his menu from now, right the way through till April because as far as he’s concerned it’s best red meat on the planet.

DC: What is it that makes England such a great place for foodies as a destination?

MR: I honestly think people here aren’t afraid, I think it’s because we don’t have much. We don’t have a rigid food culture of our own historically. England has always been a melting pot of cultures, because of our colonial past and now with immigration. I think that we really embrace new things and so I think no one’s afraid to push boundaries.

DC: Which dishes are you most proud of on your menus?

MR: The biggest selling dish is a really simple, classic one; we have it at both The Woodsman and The Forge. It’s a Pave steak or haunch steak if you like, a big round fat haunch steak cooked over charcoal, slowly roasted so it’s glorious. We serve it with what we call dirty mash, which has a crumb and venison jerky.

DC: Which three ingredients do you enjoy cooking with most?

MR: Fallow deer. Turbot. And you know what, I absolutely can’t resist the first few seasons of purple sprouting broccoli. I get really excited by that, I like to cook them directly on the charcoal.

DC: What kitchen utensil could you not live without?

MR: A microplane. I always love them.

DC: What’s the most exotic thing you’ve ever eaten?

MR: I’ve tried fermented shark in Iceland and I wouldn’t really call it food. I think in the old days they ate it to stay alive, but I think that’s about all we can say for it. I would always say to people, if they want to try something that will really change their mind about wild food, try wood pigeon. It’s utterly common, it’s vastly available and it’s highly sustainable. When I put a pigeon, bacon and black pudding salad on our menus – which is one of our staple classics – everyday people will will buy it over everything else on a starter menu. If in doubt, try wood pigeon.

DC: What would you say are your favourite restaurants to go to if you’re dining out?

MR: I live near Cirencester in the Cotswolds. We have a very, very favourite place near us that’s absolutely amazing. It’s called The Rectory, it’s a small hotel and restaurant in a village called Crudwell. It should be massively recognised, the food’s sensational. When I’m in London I love going to Gymkhana, just the classiest Indian food ever. They used to buy my muntjac gear off me!