If you decided to open a restaurant that focussed on oysters and meat- on-the bone, you probably wouldn’t have done it in 2008.  First there was the financial crisis and credit crunch. Then there was a lingering memory of the meat-on-the-bone ban, triggered by BSE several decades before.  

Mark Hix’s decision was perhaps all the more surprising because the job he was leaving – Executive Head Chef of Le Caprice restaurant group, which included famous venues like The Ivy and J Sheekey – was the sort of plum role other chefs would give their eye teeth for.    

But it turned out very well in the end: his ‘HIX Oyster and Chop House’ marked the start of an award-winning family of HIX restaurants, in London and in Dorset…and put Mark in the forefront of the modern British food movement, celebrating farmers, food producers and fisherman in his menus and in his annual Food Rocks Festival in Lyme Regis.  

Discover how it all happened for a boy who was more interested in golf than food…and then discovered he was rather good at cooking after all…