Now whilst to your average human Restaurant Associates is not particularly a consumer facing brand, you will certainly know many of the venues that David Simms and his team operate, from Somerset House, to Edinburgh zoo, to Michelin starred restaurants like Jason Atherton’s City Social and Michelle Roux’s Parliament Square.  

I chat about David’s history in the podcast, so I’m not going to list it here, but fundamentally just be reassured  that I was really excited to get to chat to David because I knew the diversity and depth of his experience across the hospitality sector.

We touch on chef development and training, the changes in kitchen culture, both positive and negative, and how to get the best out of a brigade.

David has some great advice about the complexity of re-opening the doors, why to keep the offering simple, and some of the operational considerations of having less people to do tasks.  That leads us on to the impact of supply and the need to be clever and efficient to stand any chance of making a post covid profit.

David has some great thoughts on sustainability and the supply chain and our obligation as an industry to help educate, but not lecture the consumer on food, where it comes from and its environmental impact.  We may even start a joint campaign to making eating strawberries in December a criminal offence!

After a rollercoaster of a chat with many highs and lows, we try to end positively around the nature of such a creative sector and where it may end up on the other side of the pandemic.

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