‘There’s a reason there are so many pizza restaurants’: TV chef points finger on hospitality woes | Money News

Every Thursday, our Money blog team interviews chefs from around the UK, hearing about their cheap food hacks and more. This week, we chat to award-winning TV chef Andi Oliver.

It’s very hard to make money in hospitality… People think you are making out like a bandit if you have got a busy restaurant five or six days a week, but just turning the lights on costs a fortune, your business rates cost a fortune, your VAT costs a fortune, everything costs a lot of money. Good ingredients cost a lot of money. It’s also expensive emotionally and physically to deliver really great food. You can’t take your eye off the ball for a second because the standard can drop really easily.

We have had 14, 15 years of quite destructive governmental rule… We are in a bit of a catch-22 situation. It’s got harder for a lot of people but I also think the national living wage has to go up. Getting this country sorted out is going to take some doing.

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If you go to a restaurant and you have to wait an extra five minutes for your meal, just be patient… Have a drink and don’t have a big fit about it. People are doing their absolute best.

There’s a reason there are so many pizza restaurants around… You have to simplify your menu to reduce the financial difficulty. You have to pay people properly and you have to be responsible as an employer. But I think that the best thing to do is deliver something simple and deliver it well and you’ll be able to keep your costs down.

Bad communication is my pet peeve anywhere… particularly in restaurants. It’s okay not to know the answer to a question, but go and find out. Train your staff properly, give them the information they need to be empowered on the floor, behind the bar, in the kitchen, wherever it is because knowledge is power.

Miserable people in restaurants… I can’t bear it.

For cheap substitutes… I’m a fan of things like ox tail, brisket and pork cheeks. They deliver on flavour in the most amazing way. Slow cooking them, layering spice complexity, using things like stouts or dark red wines. These kind of things will really give you depth of flavour.

Put a bowl next to your cooker while you’re cooking… Anything I’m cutting, ends of the onions, carrot peelings, stalks and herbs, goes into the stock pot bowl. I start the stock pot on a Sunday and then throughout the week I’m adding to that all the time, putting a bit more water in, and then maybe I’ll roast some chicken wings and then I can use that stock to make a lovely chicken wing soup. Add a bit of rice to it or noodles and you’ve got a chicken noodle soup. If you’ve always got a stock pot, you have the basis for a sauce, a soup, a broth, and it means you are using up all your endy bits. It’s really easy to do, just chucking in a few coriander seeds, juniper seeds, some fresh thyme, and you’ve got a really flavoursome broth going all week.

People cook too quickly… Time develops flavour. If you are going to roast a chicken, don’t try to do it in 40 minutes – take a good hour and 45 minutes. Make sure you do your shopping the night before. I say this all the time because I think it is a really big thing – people go shopping and then they come home and they have to cook and they get overwhelmed.

Turn the heat down a bit… If you have it up so high, you lose control of what’s happening on the stove. I like gentle cooking.

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If you are boiling potatoes… put a little bit of fresh thyme, a clove of garlic and a bit of onion in the water with the salt and the potatoes. When you come to mash it, they will become infused with a lovely flavour.

I use turmeric ghee all the time… Turmeric Super Ghee I absolutely love. It’s clarified butter with turmeric in it. So at the end of a sauce, you take a spoonful of it and stir it in and then the whole thing becomes silken and golden and lovely.

My favourite cookery writer is a woman called Edna Lewis... She died a while ago, but she was an African American chef and she wrote a beautiful book called The Taste of Country Cooking. It is one of the most beautiful cookbooks I have ever read in my life.

Don’t try to be impressive, try to be delicious… Being delicious in turn will become impressive.

One restaurant that’s worth splashing out on is… The Dorian in Notting Hill – incredible. Max Coen is the chef there and his food is unbelievable. We went there for my daughter’s 40th. And obviously, it’s a very, very special occasion. It’s not cheap by any stretch of the imagination but it’s worth every single penny. He’s a very soulful cook and he is so imaginative and he makes stunning food.

My favourite cheap meal out is… my friend’s restaurant Shankeys in Hackney or The Raglan in Walthamstow. They are amazing and they have an incredible range which is an Indian Irish mix. Sasha in the kitchen is making the most delicious food. He is making things like curry cauliflower cheese paratha and they are crisp and silky and gooey and spicy all at the same time. The most incredible food. I’d order the cauliflower paratha, the most incredible fried chicken and the extraordinary oysters. Get yourself down there and get his chicken and a curried cauliflower paratha, and you’ll thank me for it. At The Raglan, they do this thing called a spice bag where you get fries or you get chicken and you drop them in the bag with a whole bunch of spices and shake it up and it’s absolutely delicious.