Chef interview: Gary Rhodes

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.

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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After shutting down for 15 months just on the total refurbishment, the restaurant opened its doors in October 2014. Rhodes exclaims that he is “absolutely delighted with all of those changes”.

Describing the extent of the refurbishment, he says he wanted to “hold on to that British edge” while making a bold statement. And he has done so, with the interiors being the first to showcase the extent to which the restaurant has moved on. The entrance features gold and white butterfly-adorned doors, with a bar and terrace inspired by a traditional English conservatory.

Faux grass-adorned walls and a honeycomb-inspired reception lead into the main restaurant, reminiscent of an English garden setting. Casual yet sophisticated, the base palette of white is complemented by dashes of yellow and green. Light wooden tables, creamy white chairs, and butterfly-inspired chandeliers complete the look.

The menu is equally refreshing, with British favourites including Welsh rarebit with a fresh tomato and chive salad, braised oxtails with creamy mashed potatoes, and warm eccles cakes with homemade stilton ice cream.

The terrace is now open as the bar, having stayed shut during the Rhodes Mezzanine era. Rhodes adds: “It’s the only restaurant in the Grosvenor House Tower One that has beer on tap. So you can go in there and get a Guinness or lager on tap, and that’s attracted some people just coming in, sitting in the bar and having a drink. That’s what I wanted. I wanted to become more of a bar with restaurant, whereas Mezzanine was more restaurant with bar.”

While Rhodes still loves going to fine dining restaurants — he mentions Le Gavroche by Michel Roux Jr as one of his favourites — he says the casual twist was definitely needed for Rhodes W1.

He muses: “We are in the entertainment business, we’re all here to entertain. And certainly you’ve got to have some of the best actors in the world who are in that restaurant to keep drawing everybody back. People go and see The Mousetrap in London; it’s still running after 60 years, but people go back time and time again. So each performance has to almost outdo the other, it has to be that good. I look upon us as being a theatre, that’s exactly what we are.”

It’s not always been smooth sailing in the region. His restaurant Rhodes 44 at St. Regis Abu Dhabi closed at the end of August 2014. While the venue was successful according to the chef, the hotel owners took a call to rebrand the restaurant to an all-day dining venue.

They asked him to stay on, but Rhodes says: “Because it was the main restaurant of the hotel they wanted it to be a 24-hour operation, and with that they would have preferred to have the style of food that we were creating — but in a buffet style. Buffet style is just not me.”

Rhodes reiterates he left on “really good terms” with the hotel. “I just chatted with them and said, ‘this is just not me’, but I can understand why that hotel needed a restaurant that was open from early hours till late at night.”

He adds that Abu Dhabi, while a different market from Dubai, has potential. “It’s going to do nothing but grow there and I would love to go back [to Abu Dhabi].”

In addition to his restaurants, Rhodes is heavily involved in CSR activities. He is working on a programme to promote healthy eating among school children, launched with Foremarke School in Dubai, in 2014, where he works with catering companies to provide healthy school meals. It all came about in conversation with a friend whose children attend the school.

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He says: “The story grew and I was getting involved in creating the food for them. It’s not about doing cookery lessons for them, we don’t do that at present; we may do it long-term. We have Kings School now, and there are other schools we are hoping to link up with, which looks very promising.”

He asserts it’s not about dieting, but giving children the essential nutrients they need in their daily meals. “It depends on what you mean by dietary food. The only diet we’re looking to do is give children what they need, and that is protein. They need some fat content, they need all of that protein, and at the same time we want to make sure there are lots of fruits and vegetables included. We make sure there are no additives in any of our food at all.”

In addition, Rhodes also is one of the supporters and a guest lecturer of the ICCA Dubai Continuing Education Award, an annual 100% scholarship programme for 30 young industry chefs. The initiative will train and certify talented but financially underprivileged young chefs in the UAE hospitality industry.

The reason behind this, he reveals, was the education he received at Thanet Technical College. “Education for me, back in the 70s, was so important. They were some of the very best years of my career in some respects.”

He cites his tutors as being some of the best in the industry, and here breaks off to pay respects to Peter Barratt, one of his tutors who passed away recently.

He continues: “Many young people come directly into the industry which is not a bad thing, because I still feel like if somebody has got drive in them we would still be able to tutor him or her. But they would just be learning what I want to show them. The great thing about going to college in that era was that I was very lucky to have fantastic tutors. The reason I believe in education is because of what Peter Barratt provided for me.”

With a newly refurbished restaurant, are there more venues on the horizon for the inimitable chef? He says honestly: “There are many chefs out there — and I’m certainly not going to mention them — whom you are reading about every six months opening a new restaurant, and they’ve got endless [venues] across the world. Which is great, good luck to them. I don’t think like that, I don’t work like that. If I take on a project, I will not start moving on to another until I think I’ve got that one right.”

And so, while he believes Rhodes W1 has had a great start, the chef is already looking at ways in which to tweak a few things. He scoffs at those who say there are no seasons in this region, and is thinking about how he will change the menu on a seasonal basis.

He says: “I want to start introducing something a little bit lighter, I want to maybe even change our style of service slightly. I’m not being set in my ways with this restaurant, I’m willing to look and change to see how we can please the customer.

“Again it’s about entertainment, it’s not just about the waiters — we need to entertain with what we’re putting on a plate. The show begins when the food arrives.”

Rhodes continues: “That keeps me very lively. Hence, not taking anything else on. However, there are a couple of other projects on the horizon which I cannot disclose at the moment because until I’ve signed a contract I can’t. They are in Dubai — not restaurants, but all within the industry. So keep watching!”

In addition, Rhodes is looking to confirm details of a new TV series based in the Middle East around the regional cuisine (see pg 6).

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He is also continuing his work with Visit Britain, and will be in Japan this April promoting British food. “I’ve done many things with Visit Britain around the world; we did it last year and it was a huge success. It’s great but it’s hard work.

From the moment you arrive till the moment you leave, you’re working. It’s no gloss. I’m proud of being British, and I’m particularly proud of British food; what it stands for and what it’s about. So I love doing that, and that takes up a lot of my time as well.”

He adds: “I’ve always said this: I began in the kitchen, I’ll finish in the kitchen in this industry. I don’t believe I’ll ever retire. That’s why I don’t open things every five minutes.”

Over the decade or so that Rhodes has been coming here, the dining out scene has changed dramatically — a topic already touched on.

In addition to more casual dining options, the trend of international celebrity chefs opening a roster of restaurants in the region has increased dramatically over the last few years.

Rhodes says: “You can never ignore that kind of competition, but I think at the same time it adds another dimension to Dubai. My only worry is that I think a lot of these people who are coming over feel that they are coming to another London.

Ten million people a day visit London, working there and so on. There’s certainly not even one million people in Dubai every day. We have a smaller market; it is becoming a greater market, but it is still small... how are we going to fill every single restaurant eventually?”

But he’s staying put. When I ask what his plans are for the next five to 10 years, he says: “I hope I’m still in Dubai.”

He pauses and says: “It’s probably one of the most difficult questions for me because if you’d asked me that when I was leaving college at 19 years of age, I’d probably have said I would be lucky enough if I was chef de partie by then.

These days at 21 you’ve got many young head chefs. Those days it was different, you had to climb your way up that ladder. And there I was at 26, the head chef of a Michelin-starred restaurant. I would never have imagined that it would take seven years to get there. As you move on, I think what is next?

“I feel very privileged to be where I am now and I’ll never ignore that. There’s been some good luck along the way, and I’d like to think there’s something I do that is right. Put it this way, I won’t be on some glossy island sunbathing all day. I like to think I’ll still be here and still drawing in customers who want to eat Rhodes-style food.”

Rhodes smiles and concludes: “The only thing I really look for and hope for — and it probably won’t ever happen — is when I pass away eventually, because we’re all going to... I’d like to think if my name ever came up in conversation, all I’d want to hear people say is: ‘he can cook’. And I’d look down and think, ‘I did alright’.”