Three years after the Michelin-starred chef moved to the Middle East, Gary Rhodes talks to Caterer Middle East about his journey and new projects on the horizon, and sets the record straight about his decisions over the years
I met Gary Rhodes for the first time while working on the Caterer Middle East Recipe Book project — and was struck by how down-to-earth he was. People might imagine a Michelin-starred chef, by all rights a celebrity, to be just a little bit snotty. He’s not. Charismatic, gregarious, candid, and measured are adjectives more applicable to him.
Rhodes moved to the Middle East three years ago, and the industry wondered why a Michelin-starred chef, enjoying a high degree of success in the UK, would pack his bags and leave. It was a strategy, Rhodes says, that he applies to everything he does: to leave when he’s on a high.
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He says: “What happened is I found things were growing faster for me here in the Middle East than perhaps in London.” So after 10 years with Restaurant Associates, Rhodes called it a day, even though the business was going “really well, nice and busy”.
“I would only do maybe two or three trips when I first took on this project [Rhodes 44, St. Regis Abu Dhabi]. Then it got to about six to eight, and I thought, this is just getting ridiculous and I’ve got to make a big decision here.
“And one thing I’ve always wanted to do and always liked doing: whenever I’m in restaurants I never ever leave because things are on a negative. I like to leave places when they are on a positive. I had two Michelin-star restaurants; Rhodes 24 the busiest of them all — it was packed in there still.
It was coming to the end of the 10-year contract and I said, ‘I think we should call it a day’. The restaurant was due for refurb anyway, so it suited all and we decided to go out on good terms,” says Rhodes honestly.
Rhodes first came to the region with guest appearances at food festivals hosted by Jumeirah Group. It was during these trips that Rhodes met Pam Wilby, complex general manager of Grosvenor House Dubai and Le Royal Méridien Beach Resort & Spa. Out of these meetings, Rhodes Mezzanine at the Grosvenor House was born.
He says of the decision to open his first Middle Eastern-based restaurant in September 2007: “I loved it because I was working with a company who believed in what they were doing. It just took off and we [him and Wilby] formed a great relationship, and it’s fantastic.”
In the year of its 7th anniversary, Rhodes Mezzanine was reborn as Rhodes W1, with a completely new look and menu. Rhodes says the decision for the rebrand was indicative of the region’s eating habits as a whole.
“In the days when I first started coming over here, 12 years ago, there really weren’t many independent restaurants at that time. It was predominantly within hotels, and eating then was a little bit more reserved than it is today. In fact, it’s been really quite rapid in the last 12 months or so, where eating habits were changing so you started to have a limited audience, and that I don’t like.
“I don’t want to go into a restaurant and say, ‘yes we have 22 people tonight’. You can’t break into a sweat even if you run around the kitchen all night. And sometimes it’s that pressure building up, thinking, ‘goodness me, we’ve got 90 booked tonight, I can't wait’. You’ve got something to get your teeth into. That’s what I love. So consequently I found that we had to change,” Rhodes explains.
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