Episode 75 Vegan food - Is this it?

with Alter London owner & head-chef Andy Hogben

JM: Andy it would be awesome to get started with a little bit of your your personal journey into the world of veganism what's what's kind of brought you here?

AH: yeah um well i'm a chef um i came to chefing like quite late in my career but um at the point i went vegan i was actually working in um samsara in east london um which is a thai restaurant that specialises in very authentic in the kind of David Thomson mould um regional thai food and that basically involves a lot of smoke a lot of animals a lot of um a lot of all that stuff a lot of wok cookery um and so i came at it from very sort of a you know working very carnivorously i would say and eating very carnivorously i would also say um and then for me the the decision to go vegan was not not a sort of long slide into it it was very much an overnight like snap um i basically went home or had a day off one day um and watched a documentary called carnage by Simon Amstell yeah um which was not really a documentary this was a mockumentary um and it was kind of uh first of all Simon Amstell was like was before then my own personal guru of wisdom um he he was the guy for people who don't know used to present uh never-mind the bus got never find the bus cox um and uh pop world before that but anyway he he sort of um became a stand-up comedian very much after that and uh is the funniest the wisest the most uh clever person at kind of pulling on strings of things that we think are normal that are not necessarily normal and he um expanded on a segment in in one of his stand-ups um which basically kind of like where he talked about wanting to be someone who kind of looked back at a time where we used to eat meat and do all of these various things that um maybe in the future won't make sense and he expanded on that idea um by making a film called carnage um which is basically as i said a mockumentary uh set 50 years in the future um and it was basically a sort of yeah 2067 utopia where um i think the opening lines are something like uh you know violence has been cured with compassion and uh depression has been cured with intimacy and just the central conceit that which you would like to go on to explain that you know going vegan is essentially um being empathetic to so many issues that are completely at this stage with all the information that's out there undeniable um so at this point you you have to consider now if we all and this is purely hypothetical because you know it won't happen but if we all snapped a vegan overnight what would the the roll-on effect that be what would the effect be of everyone on the planet saying no no no i i recognise that my needs are not as not as important as everybody's needs and i recognise that my enjoyment of my life maybe isn't quite as important maybe i need to sacrifice some things that i like doing in order that other people could do them for longer um and all of these things so it kind of really came out of a lot of the questions that were posed in that that mockumentary um it also is packed full of um you know all those kind of hard hitting things if you want to go there as well but for me the thing that stuck was what kind of culture would we be what kind of world would we be what kind of Britain would we be um if we chose to put others needs first and um kind of yeah i think it was that really it was that sense of and all of this was like i think it came out in 2017 so that's you know coming off the back of 2016 which we all know uh you know i'm not sure everyone's politics but whatever your politics are 2016 was was a heavy year um and what it meant to be British was a lot in the news and you know what we was very apparent is that Britain is very polarised and very down the middle and um you know there were a lot of ideas about it was kind of wrestling for its identity um and i guess i was wrestling around the same time with um what my place in that was and how i felt about kind of being part of this this new brand of britain that was being served up and the honest answer was i wasn't keen i didn't relate to this idea that we don't want to be part of things that are shared between people and that we we are uh scared of uh jobs going to people um you know from from other parts of the world potentially or you know we i didn't relate to any of this idea of this sort of conservatism to use not just the word of a political party necessarily but this idea that i want to conserve what i have this is mine this belongs to me um i didn't relate to that i've always sort of wanted to to you know open doors and be part of this wider conversation of of all admitting that we're part of one place um so for me it's a very long answer to a very short question but um it was you know it was a combination of all the things that i'm sure you know everybody talks about with the the combination of the science we can no longer deny with regards to the environment um not so much for me the the squeamishness of you know the animal animal um side of things obviously big factor but for me i was a chef so not that i was desensitised to that but i have i still have to an extent an attitude that for some cultures for some contexts um living that way is it is is a sustainable method within their um within their culture i don't feel that way about british culture um so for me it was it was a combination really of the undeniable science but much more more so i'd say 80 of my reasoning was um wrestling with this idea of um are we the good guys i don't know if you've seen the Michelin web sketch they're very famous where two SS officers are sat next to each other staring at the skulls and on their their hats and saying just just considering the idea that maybe they're maybe we're not the good guys i i don't feel like we are the good guys anymore i used to sort of feel like Britain was a sort of bastion of centrist central thinking and sort of weighing up both sides of an argument and jumping in when something happened over the other side of the world that you know affected people who couldn't you know were marginalised and i i used to feel a sense of social responsibility and i think this year of all years especially um that that views slid in further in terms of the sort of national identity that we seem to be adopting um and i find that very sad and for me veganism is a step in the direction of um choosing to not make choices that are purely about me um especially in this city which can be incredibly self-focused incredibly about lots of independent people um climbing their ladders rather than um a culture like i don't know you know a Japanese culture wherein everyone sort of sees this themselves as part of this bigger machine um and you know there's a lot of benefit to be said in in being part of something shared rather than all sort of clambering over each other uh in a you know endless race to the top um so it was it was that for me in in brief summary it was that it was sort of stepping away from this this race of me me me me um and i liked that it was kind of counter to cop you know british culture as well and that's um what i would later find is that our food is so made up of yeah we talked about the conservatism there's also part of british culture is this nostalgia and this sort of always going back to this um this this this nostalgia of how things are supposed to be what our parents cook what our parents cooked and um when you trace that nostalgia back far enough you realize that that it all came from like everything um you know came from like the second world war and you know after the war there it was a period of um well during the war of dig for victory campaign and everything was vegetables and um being sustainable and growing your own all that stuff and then come the 50s i think it took 12 years after the end of world war ii for rationing to fully end um and meat was then suddenly considered a luxury and that really set the tone for the next 60 odd years of like meat is this this meat is the thing meat is the thing you want on your dinner plate it's it's um it's the ultimate destination of of luxury um and it's all traceable back to history at the end of the day what we consider normal is always traceable back to what history has given us um and when we understand that that's not just an inbuilt thing but it's circumstantial we can challenge where we want to head in the future i think yeah the the point about and i want to come back to sort of you you know from your standpoint the the practical elements of having made that decision because having gone so far ideologically but before i do just because we're on the the subject and you mentioned this this harking back this nostalgia and it sounds like you did but do you see the them quite intrinsically linked the consumption of meat or the over consumption of meat this kind of identity of being british almost the conservatism the the the brexit mindset if you like the whole piece do you see that there's a a link almost uh i suppose it's sort of intersectional thinking that these oppressions are all or all linked in some way or another

yeah um yeah i mean i do i think that yeah it i just think that a lot of the things that were handed to me is a british identity i've i've you know unraveled and now want to challenge and i think that i mean the dawning of the sort of the netflix era or whatever we're in we're we're bombarded with information and documentaries and interesting things and um you know you can you can learn about so many things at the click of a button now and once that information is there and maybe it's you know my personality type is one of seeking information and being very curious about things i don't know um and that's not necessarily going to be for everybody but when that information was out there i i was really interested in in in learning about all of those things and again maybe it's a sort of personality type thing of um i'm quite comfortable with very radical change in my life i guess i mean i haven't always been a chef as i mentioned i i was an actor for the first eight years out of graduation um and then became a chef after eight years of being an actor so in a career since i had a big shift um my background i used to be very very involved in in christianity in the church and stuff and uh no longer am um and very used to kind of those big shifts and i think my big kind of conceit um with christianity i felt the time was this idea of um the central premise of the great commission which essentially is kind of the mission statement which is that we we go forth and make disciples of all nations sort of thing um which you know once i did some digging of my own i sort of didn't like the interpretation that formed this idea that we should all essentially be homogenized into us into the same belief system and um that there was a right answer and all of these things and i think moving to london and uh being immersed in all of these um intersecting lines of culture and um being exposed to the likes of anthony bourdain's works and writings and tv programs and um you just get a sense of the idea you know i didn't want to to live in a homogenized culture where we all believe the same thing i like discussion i like disagreement i like learning i like finding solutions to problems and um i really like challenging the idea of patriotism and the idea that um you know why be proud of where you're where you come from it has nothing to do with you you didn't choose it it was pure chance and the true joy surely the true joy is learning about other cultures and understanding what you can bring back from them and you know bring into your own life and your own culture if you like and um i think that's been one of my biggest confusions over the last couple of years of this sense of um britishness of um we have our culture and we want to stick to it and we don't want to have any interference and this kind of drawbridge up mentality yeah my attitude has always been drawbridge down and and going getting amongst it so i think the sense of sort of not feeling um at all bonded with my imposed nationality um had a huge kind of effect on on wanting to sort of seek a more kind of very Anthony Bourdain nationality-less existence where we go out and explore and and are interested in in the other side of the world and what other people's ideas are do you think that's almost like the biggest so sometimes see is the biggest sort of almost because i'm very much the same viewpoint uh the drawbridge down approach the uh you know the richness of of sort of life's melting pot if you like but do you almost see it as the success of the kind of the and we've gone deep quick here i appreciate it sorry it's good it's good i love it but but the the success of the messaging of the quote unquote right is that it's simplistic you know you can there is no need for grey it's you know we belong here we eat beef and Yorkshire puddings and we go to church on a Sunday or at least say we're going to and you know all these sort of you know we watch coronation street you know all of these things that sort of make up this british identity is easy to communicate whereas communicating uh lots of complex ideas that you should debate and is is more is more challenging for people to get behind do you think do you think that's almost like a a failing in a way of the of the left is the messaging isn't as simplistic i do and i think that sort of coincides with with the social media aspect and what we've seen in the last four or five years um since 2016 and the sort of rise if you like or at least you know balancing out of the right in terms of the majority in this country is that it's um very possibly translates to social media a bit easier um it's it's essentially you know hard-hitting slogans and proper propaganda but you know very sort of shock value very heart-ishing information um that is is probably chiefly trying to inspire shock anger um you know all of those emotions which for the left and i think um i was listening to a podcast really recently where um it was the central conceit was the left basically haven't cannot or haven't um utilized social media as well because we've almost the reason you know the left tarnish with you know accusations of being snowflakes and this that and the other is because they're they've they basically fought fire with fire and you know we've gone totally the other way and you know have gone very sort of fluffy and and we're not really representing that kind of central ground and i think for for me with um with with cooking at alter and the sort of central premise of it all was was essentially to kind of tap into that idea a little bit more and say that um if i'm going to offer a vegan uh brand into the universe if i'm gonna step into the industry and and throw something up that will always be in any is very much um totally vegan um i don't want to approach it from this this kind of um exacerbated kind of frustrated left position um it's got to for me completely occupy the central ground where we're not trying to recruit people to to veganism we're not selling it to vegan people it's not there's not vegan propaganda on the wall um we we need to rethink totally our idea of what a vegan chef is and looks like for me i go on social media and what a vegan chef looks like is someone with a great body very young standing in front of a blender um very quick editing and serving me up something that is totally western vegetable lead um and talking about health a lot and i don't relate to any of those things at all so i would like to serve up a sort of version of of veganism if you like that is in the center saying um hey here is a product that is uh great first and foremost and uh isn't pandering to sort of the sympathy vote and um you know people walking in saying it was it was great for vegan food it was oh it's a really good vegan restaurant like for me those are failures if that is our legacy or that's what people walk out saying um i'm i'm gutted because i want it to stand on its own two feet and and be um equal to all of the restaurants i look up to and um aspire to be you know alongside one day um so we have to sort of adopt a more kind of reducetarianism um ideology uh for me which my latest theory is that perhaps reducitarianism is is probably the better movement than veganism which is a bit of a strange thing to say coming from you know a vegan chef that has a vegan concept but for me we can bark and moan and yell and shout and scream about why people are why more people aren't going vegan and why don't more people come over to our side but we know from the last five years that we're living in a very polarized uh country with people's colors nailed to the wall and we need to stop trying to recruit each other and insult each other and maybe for me the term vegan won't be in our vernacular in 10 years i think it will just be seen as something we do uh alongside you know other sustainable things that we do in our lives turning out lights when we leave the house and you know changing our boilers to become more sustainable and insulating roofs and i think it will just become part and parcel of being a sustainable person um and i think legislation will will follow with that and i think laws will come into place in the next 15 20 years that ensure that we have to move more towards those choices i think menus and restaurants will absolutely shift becoming more 50 50 and this idea that the meat is the star of the plate will diminish um and that's where i want to want to take things i don't want this to be a vegan thing it has to be a brand new exciting attitude that we will live in tandem with these things in the future and here is an opportunity to to come to a restaurant where you won't be having the saddest thing on the menu that is cooked by chefs that don't care and pulling something out of the freezer once a day because no one else orders it which was my experience of going vegan i was going to you know pubs and restaurants with friends and ordering the last thing on the menu that was clearly the most sarcastic sort of last minute idea that a chef had um because he'd been schooled in kind of french cooking um and yeah anyone who comes to alta will not feel that way is is the vision you know it's about exciting stuff that um meat eaters will love because for me um i'm i'm not particularly um obsessed with with vegan food being seen as the healthy alternative or um being about all this nutrition nutrition doesn't turn me on um what i'm turned on by is really exciting great food and that falls into the same category as normal in advertise cooking with you know the whole salt fat acid heat that balance those hitting those five um sensors all at once in the palette sweet salty bitter sour spicy you know um i very much trained in thai food and chinese food and um love japanese food and very much like asian leaning in my in my training and um it it's superior food it taps into more areas of the palette it's more multi-sensory um and so i felt like i had a kind of weapon with which to kind of throw at people that would normally get those kicks from meat food i knew how to hit those areas of the palette that they may never have had before with vegan food which can be quite two-dimensional in my experience um so yeah that i don't know what even how we even got onto this i think it was the question about the left and the right right yeah but yeah there's a how do we get here but this idea essentially i'll bring it back to the question which was this idea that yeah so alter was basically formed out of um being annoyed and frustrated with this endless left right squabbling and um pushing more towards a place that could be occupied by both camps and occupied enjoyably um and for me it's always been about challenging one side call it you know the meat eating side challenging them and saying hey you know you know if we all did what you if we all ate meat every day of every week if we if that was our diet you know very bad things would happen very quickly we can't we know we can't all do this the science is out there the documentaries are out there this is not sustainable if we all do it so at some stage 50 of us say have to say i'm i'm going to do the totally opposite thing because i'm going to be a responsible person and who are those 50 gonna be and for me it was oh you know i'll definitely be one of those um and but it's also very much about challenging the other side challenging the vegans and saying look i i arrived into this scene and you served me jackfruit burgers and told me seitan was nice and i don't think it is at all and i don't understand why you like selling vegan junk food to me which basically is pretending to be meat and your vision for an exciting food future is to replace meat dishes with basically substitutes which taste mainly of nothing they're just there to fill space and fill an imaginary kind of gap where the meat would be and i don't think that's a path forward i think we are basically floundering and treading water um and that bores me so it was about introducing a kind of new way of thinking about vegan food that yeah challenged vegans as well and said is this you know is this what you've been happy with all this time because i'm not and also yeah very much challenging the other side and saying look we can't all do this so you can't and if you come over here i'll give you some things that will not be what you think they will be um and yeah be exciting that that point around um the vegan junk food and the sort of you know the the marketing of veganism almost at the i would say almost trying to use the same uh tropes from a food point of view as sort of the omnivorous community have been targeted with more recently in sort of the sort of junk food mainstream kind of culture the kind of you know burgers and so on um do you think that's born out of uh i suppose a lack of formal training for chefs in in veganism like is there is is there a link there for you that those there isn't enough folks who are learning how to cook vegan so they're almost taking what they see as popular you know the the fast food restaurants and so on and then trying to transpose it into veganism and thinking well that will that will work i think that's absolutely it i think um the vast majority i would even say of um what you would think of to be sort of vegan restaurants and vegan um um you know food vans and food trucks and pop-ups and things like that and mainly people that have gone enthusiastic about uh veganism but not necessarily professional chefs or or even you know chefs um so i think that is largely the makeup of the current climate within vegan the vegan food scene and i think yeah there aren't really ways to to train um plant only if you like vegan food only um in a in a kind of formal setting i mean i've having said that i don't know if that's entirely true i haven't sort of gone on bali malou's website or um looked at cordon bleus you know latest uh kind of uh course but um i don't think there is necessarily that but i don't think that should be an excuse either i think for me um i don't think you you necessarily need formal training because i don't think we've really defined yet what vegan food is um which goes back to my my point about this the british food thing i think what we've what i think what the current state of vegan food is is that it's the same food replaced with you know filler essentially and i think we need to be a bit more ambitious and i think we need to be a bit more curious about uh if we're saying that we empathize with the fact that uh we alongside non-human animals are just animals that happen to be here and we don't necessarily occupy the top of the tree or at least you know if we do occupy the top of the tree that we may choose to rule a little bit more empathetically and if we say that we all believe we're part of one uh rock flying through space with the same shared problems rather than tribalistic cultures that stay within their own moats um then maybe we should also be empathizing with the idea that our culture might not necessarily our culture's food might not necessarily have all the answers in terms of um a way forward and um certainly british food is just not made up to be vegan um and there were people that would disagree with that and will love meat substitutes i'm not adverse to them at home at all i'm my freezer's full of linda mccartney sausages um but in working in restaurants i think we need to say no we need to raise the game we need to not accept that um we just tread water and just replace things and i think we need to be more curious about cultures particularly that do veganism as the norm i'm thinking of areas in india like the gujarati um community in in india um entirely sort of vegetarian and vegan in some places as well i'm thinking about various buddhist cultures throughout the world and the sichuan region of china you know and in thailand as well these are places that have the answers and these are places that great dishes live um and the food we serve at alter is is all about seeking dishes and cultures um out that offer dishes that could live alongside each other cohesively you know it's not we're not sort of it's not world food i hate you know anyone's coming in and sort of label us as world food um but they're they're small plates that um are cohesive enough that they can live next to each other without it being you know abundantly clear that that one is japanese and that one is english and that one is french and that one is chinese and one earth dude that they do living next to each other you know the the things that we choose that we curate even uh are very much designed to be eaten in tandem despite the fact they might be from very different places um i think that represents sort of the vision if you like of um of veganism and the sort of sense of perspective that you you you have bought into by buying into the fact that you're not as important as everybody else is um and it's kind of important it's in the name as well it's very much sort of uh very much again so going back to the idea of that you know naming a vegan brand and everything like my my working title for alter was was meadow like very green very british and just like i'm so glad that i snapped out of that because it's just the opposite messaging to everything that i could possibly want to sell um but alter came along and what that was about for me was was was a few things um also fundamentally basically meaning to change course based on sort of new information as you would maybe a ship that has seen an iceberg you would change course you would alter course um an altar being a place uh in sort of a religious setting maybe where you would give away something in sacrifice perhaps a previous version of yourself or be relieved of a sin if you like um and for me that was about sort of being relieved of this this burden and being relieved of this previous version of myself and stepping into something new and that had a clean slate and um i could forge my own new identity within um and then the word altruism is kind of hidden and implied in there as well this idea of doing something for other people with no reward and seeing your place in the world as one of service sometimes um i think that's really important and then something more physical was the sort of idea i mean a lot of our food is based on on um kind of bar culture in tokyo and that kind of very small plates very bustly loud drinky venues that's the sort of spirit we're trying to evoke in in the sight um so i quite like the idea that the item was built up was the sort of you know the bar that you sat at and drank and ate from um it was a place where you went i like the idea that people could say you know should we go to the altar tonight and stuff um so there's a few things in in the name that that kind of um tackle that element as well again i've forgotten what the question was but i swear this was relevant somehow it was all it was all absolutely relevant i i love this idea that you've uh that that almost the formal training isn't necessarily required we almost need to get out of that mindset and get into a more creative space because the rules haven't yet been defined more training but but i think it's a fantastic idea and um i suppose my question and it's not so much a challenge but more of just a thought you know trying to put myself in in your shoes fantastic idea you've got uh sort of the mainstream vegan culture being portrayed through new media if you like through social media in a certain way that is perhaps a little contrary to everything that you described there how how do you get that message out there because i think it's a i think it's a really valid one and and a very interesting perspective that i don't see representative represented within the community so much but how with the current rules of engagement when it comes to gaining momentum and popularity for an idea like that do do you know do you see uh the the sort of the brand of ulta the restaurant of ulta becoming almost a a blueprint for others you know yeah i i mean i hope i hope that is the sort of pattern of events to an extent i mean for me yeah i mean we i could have there were so many ways to approach alter from from its kind of inception and um from the get-go for me it was about completely no compromise at all and no amalgamation to um the current sort of vegan culture and um i mentioned the meadow thing that the original name and everything and like not rejecting this notion that veganism is is green uh if you're vegan you you have um a little leaf next to your your handle on instagram so everyone knows that that's the really important thing in your life um and all of these things so for me it was it was about sort of nailing that to the wall straight from the off um that we won't amalgamate to this this established vegan culture and that we would go a different way um and i think yeah how do you get that miss that message out there i think i i think it's just about not not compromising on what your values are and i don't think that necessarily we should be exacerbated by the fact we should have more of an audience more metis should be listening to us listening to us like i don't think they're the problem i think that we are the problem i think that we have kind of hijacked the term and ideology of veganism to become this sort of absolutist cult wherein like you're either vegan or you're not and if you fall off the wagon you've fallen off the wagon you're this or you're that this kind of polarization and like we talked about tribal tribalism essentially i think we need to again find the middle ground and say um we don't need to label people but perhaps what we might need to do is adopt a more juicitarian diet where we kind of say okay well we ate meat at the weekend when we had that roast dinner maybe monday and tuesday we might balance it out a little bit and not do that i think that would i think that's where we need to be sort of going and i think the other thing is that food is food is fashion essentially and currently vegan food is is fashionable and it's it's in the kind of vernacular of people's understanding um but fashion fade at the end of the day and i think i've already seen sort of friends who have adopted the the vegan diet kind of fall away because of the sort of permanency of that term that sort of pressure to always do that thing and i don't think it should be like that i don't think we should once you're vegan you you're a vegan i think the permanency of the terminology is is toxic the shaming culture even is toxic um i think we need to do away with it completely um the other thing in terms of you mentioned about how to sort of approach it with with a with a business and stuff how do you attack it i think the other great thing about food the real equalizer with food is it's a meritocracy you can't fake things you can't kind of um yeah you can't fake it forever so if your gimmick is is is more uh established than your food is then you'll get found out eventually and um it's it's it's a meritocracy the best dancer wins and so you've gotta we've gotta be out more ambitious as i said we've got to be thinking of ourselves as not vegan restaurants and in a sort of um a sub genre um we've got to think of ourselves as as going shoulder to shoulder with with everybody else and for me that's about quality of food and not um marketing or gimmicks or um being a sort of charitable sympathy case um we're not we've got to we've got to put the work in and the graft and we've got to be interesting we've got to be sexy we've got to be something that uh you know a product that people want to buy you can't just um have the world's most uh green car that runs on uh carbon dioxide as it's breathed out by the driver if it looks horrendous and no one wants to drive around in it you've got to make the product something people want and it's no different with food it's no different with any brand um and so my job has always been to to make ulta a place people want to go to want to share want to um you know send their pictures of the food and their excitement about what was on the menu that they've never seen before that's that's where it lives it's an it's almost an entertainment medium rather than it being a sort of um it's as much an entertainment medium as a food medium restaurants i believe and getting even more so since the dawning of the you know the instagram era and um us sort of telling everyone where we went and where we'd like to go and compiling lists and all these podcasts that you know people talking about that you know desert island meal and what restaurants they they love and where they go to and it's um food tourism is is big business and um essentially you've you know if you want to be in the conversation you've got to be you've got to push and so i think yeah i think it's been about basically that we've we've considered ourselves a sub-genre for too long and i don't understand it i think yeah i think we have to sort of try a bit harder i think we've been a bit lazy and i think we've relied on the gimmick and the labeling of being a vegan cause um rather than uh the product being the star what's the reaction been like in those sort of in the restaurant business because i'd imagine you know i'm thinking there's a i think we've just had off you know the vegan there's been the first vegan michelin star restaurant in france uh in paris i think it is a couple of months back and you know you mentioned that food is fashion and so on and that you know you sort of live and die by the quality of the the food by the you know the the quality of the um of the offering at alter what's the reaction been like from within the sort of restauranteur and chef community around and about you you know i imagine you've still got many links uh with with your with your sort of previous um previous roles before alter came about so what's that reaction been like i think but it's been it's been really positive um it's been really people have been really interested and um i've met a lot of people that i would you know have dreamed to cook for um some people that have maybe reached out on on social media or some people that have seen their name on a booking sheet and freaked out or um some people who've just like shown up out of the blue um maybe it would be sort of um bad tonight no i'll name names um so obviously like uh for anyone who knows us um we we started out as a as a pop-up and still to an extent are a pop-up but a bit more of a kind of semi-permanent one now um but one of the first pop-ups we did was in a wine bar and tooting um and i knew uh robin gill who is the owner of um uh the dairy in clapham which is now uh berman's in lada in in burmensi um and uh sorella and derby's and lots of restaurants that are very much in the culinary landscape of london and hughes have been a long time hero of of mine um very much kind of uh again controversially for this podcast trained in the kind of st john mentality of um nose-to-tail uh cookery and using everything and that very kind of um coming from that almost like countryside um attitude to cooking and he comes from ireland i come from somerset like we relate to that kind of idea of using what you have and using everything and using it all and finding a use for everything that would otherwise go in the bin so he's a big hero of mine anyway i knew him for a friend of a friend and so um i he he had a venue in uh clapham at the time called counter culture which was a sort of small 13-seater um restaurant uh it used to be a butcher's which is hilariously ironic and obviously it was the sister restaurants of the dairy which is also hilarious and ironic um but it was it was very much like the breeding ground for um for great great places and great chefs and i really might my the tip of my my personal mountain and ambition for alter was to do a stint at counter culture and i invited him along to to the residency at uh the wine bar in tutting and um it gave him everything on the menu basically and uh he totally totally got it and it's been the case i think with with a lot of the chefs i've since met and cooked for that they totally get that this is uh not out not out there in terms of sort of a chef's interpretation of where vegan food could be headed a sort of very much vegan food that's gone through the prism of anthony bourdain uh and that sense of escapism and uh you know isn't available maybe in this country or it's something that i've found from a very obscure video blog of a person walking around a market in thailand um of which there are many things on the menu that i found that way um he totally related to it and he offered me that stint in counterculture uh and that's where uh we were when when everything kicked off uh last year at the beginning of last year um and during that time um a chef called neil rankin um came and ate at counter culture i don't think he booked i think he showed up or uh yeah it was very last minute i was certainly surprised when i saw him um and his background is very much in sort of barbecue cookery and um i remember watching him on great british menu growing up and he was you know serving huge sort of sides of beef and everything and barbecue was barbecue meat was his thing and his jam and since in the last year or two he has totally shifted um to much more of a plant-based outlook uh and runs simplicity now uh who are sort of uh they're a burger company essentially in shoreditch i believe um serving up totally plant-based things and he's just totally came to that uh which is rare and chefs come to that sort of understanding that yeah we won't be doing this in a few years time and we do need to start thinking about laying the seeds for a culinary landscape that is much more balanced than it currently is and he's he's headed much more in that direction and become a bit of an activist in in terms of that which from where he came from was it was a big deal um and then another chef who i wanted to cook for in fact the chef that i'd been like done a trial shift for when i was starting out um uh joe at the naughty piglets a little restaurant in brixton and they've got a uh another restaurant now in the victoria theatre um the other north uh naughty piglet um i love that place love their i uh that sort of sense of um that venue that small drinky eaty uh wine bar venue that's totally like my jam and um i remember sort of approaching him with my cv years ago shaking and um and suddenly he's i think he was basically the final guest at counter culture before we we all got locked down um and i it was wonderful and it was just absolutely wonderful to have someone like that come along and totally get it so um yeah that's enough like names there have been a lot of people who um in in the industry names that i you know would be known and and um names that would have freaked me out and still to this days do freak me out who who come along and totally get it and i really think that that is indicative of the fact that um they recognize that uh yeah the landscape will shift and um maybe perhaps their their background and their training going back to the training question um hasn't necessarily sort of given them the tools um to to sort of know how to balance their menus out in a more kind of balanced way um which i think will be the solution rather than everybody becoming vegan overnight out of guilt and shaming um so yeah so yeah it's it's been really really positive and really really wonderful um and i think yeah i think it will represent a change in the future in the in the london uh restaurant scene certainly and beyond that's incredibly refreshing to hear i i just i the last thing i expected you to say really was that you know chefs of that of that repute in the sort of mainstream uh classically trained uh ilk would would get it i almost thought there'd be some so almost a sense of sneering or skepticism of like you know really so it it it's it's kind of brilliant to hear that there there is a sense of actually this is where things are going to go and you know we we should be prepared and getting on board with it yeah the sneering thing is like that was there has been sneering there's been a lot of sneering and certainly i remember um when i was uh banding the idea before i had sort of the really fully formed idea of what altar would be beyond the vegan thing um you know all those other layers that i've talked about um there was a lot of sneering and there was a lot of sort of um people would sort of say yeah you know okay good luck um and all of those things and i think um the the method of attack with that is is going back to nostalgia um if you um play to what they think they will be served when they sit down yeah they'll they'll they'll have something to compare it to yeah which will undoubtedly be as have been a superior version than what you are serving because they food is nostalgia as well you know everything we eat links back to you know the best time that we had that dish or the version of it our mum used to make that was so good or you know it all links back but if you serve something people that they've never tasted before then they've got no point of reference and you have the element of surprise which is another huge part of food is is and certainly restaurants is you know food is theater as well it's um it's it's an entertainment medium it's about uh exciting people and um yeah giving them something they've never had before an experience they've never had before that's what was all sort of wanting i think when we go out for dinner sometimes and certainly in that food tourist kind of culture that i talked about earlier um so i think um yeah it's not just about sort of um you know doing doing vegan food and uh trying to sort of make it interesting and exciting but it's it's very much about um realizing that you have the element of surprise uh because people do not expect when they sit down at a vegan restaurant to read the words uh you know fermented nem het with vietnamese herbs and blue tongue jiao dressing because they don't know what that is and they don't understand that it's basically a take on a sort of uh nemu which is a fermented pork sausage in thailand but we use leftover jasmine rice and oyster mushrooms then we ferment them for five days with garlic and a bit of salt and sugar and what comes out is this amazing thing that we can deep fry um and you get all of these sour and salt and sweet vibes all at once and then it's dipped through this blue tongue dressing that has tamarind and blue tongue chilians um you know it's that salty kind of soy sauce vibe and every area of the palette that we talked about earlier is hit and they did not expect that they were expecting yeah a jackfruit burger or you know if we're talking fine dining maybe a really lovely perfectly al dente cooked carrot with a beautiful something glaze um and it's just not interesting to me i think it's also reduced to this idea that aha here's another point i did i did a collaboration once with another chef whose name you would be known um and we were talking about ordering because you know i had to order food through his supplies and stuff um and i remember him saying um you know at least you know it'll be cheap because you won't be ordering fish and meat you know you'll just be ordering loads of vegetables and i remember thinking and which is very much the case that i don't really don't really cook with vegetables it sounds weird because i'm a vegan chef but um it's it's much more for me about um yeah i don't approach my cooking from a western point of view i don't approach it approach it from carrots and potatoes i approach it from um how do we hit those five areas of the palette at once using a addressing a kind of funky herb from maybe vietnam they do the best ones or thailand um a real kind of punchy um yeah punchy flavor of textures that excite people um or you know sometimes there's a few dishes on there that are designed to kind of make people laugh even and make people smile there's a sort of playful take on um instead of doing a bread course which is in every [ __ ] fine dining restaurant in london um including the vegan ones um i do not understand why we as british people um deify this this dry kind of beige um thing that is just like claggy and stodgy and brown and just why so for me it was about coming up with a bread course that was um the complete antithesis um one hopes which was a take on on pizza essentially um but was all more than that a kind of nostalgic take on the dough balls you'd get a pizza express which were everyone's actual favorite of course the pizza express but it basically is dough dough uh pizza dough that is cut into shards and deep fried and so they come out in pointy triangles like a slice of pizza is um and then it's dusted in kind of all the flavors of the tomato ragu but in dry form so you know tomato powder and onion powder and smoked powder and all of the seasonings and stuff um goes into it and then it's dipped through this akko blanca which is an andalusian kind of garlicky almond soup um and it's exciting and people get that it's there to make you laugh and it's supposed to be like pizza and it's and people get that it's supposed to be a middle finger to kind of sourdough culture um it's it's got more to offer so yeah i think well i think how do we get back to the question i think we get back to the question by saying yeah i think it's about offering something people have never had before and that is where people will get excited and um buy into what you are what you are selling and feel part of it because ultimately i think when you you're starting your brand and you're starting a restaurant um you know instagram suddenly has made it important for people to to buy into and sort of see themselves as belonging to that kind of way of thinking and that that that team if you like um and we want people to buy into this this team and sort of see that we've got some ideas about doing things differently um so yeah it's it's it's so uh incredibly exciting i think to hear vegan food talked about in that way i i can honestly say i've not i've not had anybody you know i've spoken to some vegan chefs and so on but i have have not heard anybody talk about the the level of creativity and the the passion for uh for the almost the plate before the the cause if you like you know the the the the the what you produce is is more important you know in in its own way than the the the statement is making ethically which which i think is it is a fascinating viewpoint and one that i've i've just not come across so more power to you it'd be remiss if i didn't ask um what lockdown's been like a you know at an incredibly um creative restaurant like yourself in in london during a global pandemic when you've had to close your doors for for so very long you know how how has that been what's the adaptation process been like and i suppose you know we've got some light at the end of the tunnel now so how do how's that sort of shaping up as well it's been a total roller coaster um both in terms of like me personally and and mental health and all of those important things um but also very much in terms of alter and its health um and the sort of path forward uh for for a pop-up with big ambitious ideas that had really only got started and potentially could be one of the ones that would be cut adrift by the lack of following the lack of history the lack of anything that the momentum um that would all be stunted by a pandemic that has lasted well over a year now um so i mean it's been an absolute roller coaster like i said i was in counter culture um and the first kind of whispers were happening about this thing that was coming over um and very much the attitude was that um it would be a not something that would close restaurants that'd be ridiculous it's never happened before since the second world war um and b be something that would blow over in two weeks even if that happened um little did we know um but i think first and foremost i have been so lucky and my gratitude for the way in which robin and his team looked after me upon um us all having to close uh in march um and the other subplot within that um so obviously you know furlough was a wonderful wonderful thing which was a very near miss because um every other thing i've done with ultra has been self-employed so um you know i don't have the the comfort uh if you like or the safety net of a of a contract necessarily um i i invoice my time if you like um after the fact and get paid for it um there um but within this setup which i was very lucky uh to to to to be there um it was it was i was basically under contract i was part of the team um my job was just to you know fill that venue with alta which was great so i i was very lucky to fall under the furlough scheme um which was not a given and would have been disastrous i would say both personally and professionally if if i hadn't um the other subplot within this is that in july um the dairy as it was in clapham um closed its doors and said it wouldn't be reopening um due to other reasons other than the pandemic um but also because very much the pandemic which meant that the whole team kind of would cut adrift to an extent um we were all kind of re-homed to to an extent in other sites within the group um so for me i i jumped in and did eight weeks at derby's and vauxhall um and was part of the team there very much you know mucking in and being part of that team um and then uh within that time um conversations were continuing with with robin and um his business partner dan uh who runs his operations about an opportunity to work within um a hotel in east london that was opening up um and at the very last so i went and went and saw that site it was in in dolston it was part of the new um lock hotels that were opening up um and at the very last minute they decided that um they didn't want that a vegan uh offering in that site would be too big a risk and not broad enough um for the audience which um is is arguable i have no business or anything otherwise for that um but it was it was pretty shell shocking and i kind of pinned all of my hopes and all the way through working those those eight weeks at derby's which were really hard you know but they're 80 hour weeks um which for an old boy let me know it was was it was tough um to kind of get back in that groove after working for yourself and stuff and and managing your own time in that way um so that fell through which is a bit of a bit of a shocker and then um luckily it was only a couple of weeks later that another opportunity uh came up in the same groups hotel in all gates east um which is basically their yeah big hotel in organic same company um and in the first floor of this place was a restaurant that was was empty and had been empty for over a year um and basically uh was looking for someone to come in and steer the ship with their own concept so uh robin gail basically completely opened that door to me for which i am eternally and will always be grateful for and incredibly um humble just not the word it's it's it's it's humbled as too accepting of a word to understand how you know it it's it's madness that he would entrust that opportunity to someone like me and i am very very thankful that he did and so um i moved into into that site in maybe september um and was very lucky that um things were running a bit high in terms of getting things started so i really spent the first month there um costing the entire menu of everything i'd ever worked on to the penny which i just never had time to do before i'd never had time to kind of make alter not just a concept but a business that existed on a spreadsheet that could prove it was a valuable business model um and i had that time which again i'm so grateful for that i could sit down and work out that um you know veganism can be a vegan restaurant can can be an incredibly uh profitable uh place if the food backs up uh the product then then your margins are much smaller than because meat and fish is expensive quite simply and um vegetables and dry products are not as expensive um so if you you know if you're careful and understand your costings it's a business model that people want um which is great so anyway we opened up um in october um and i think we should maybe strung about three or four weeks together before the next sort of set of restrictions came in and um we were closed for another stint and then i think we opened up again for about two weeks uh and then the whole christmas lockdown happened which we are still as we speak currently to an extent in um so yeah it's been a real roller coaster the deposit i mean the negatives are very much yeah the i think the mental health thing for me hasn't been too much of an issue in that i i like i'm quite comfortable in my own company and with empty space in front of me i generally will dive into something and tear it to pieces and find you know lots of valuable things that can be used which for me uh how that was basically when i when lockdown happened in march i maybe had 15 dishes that i was happy with and that would kind of come in and out of the menu at counter culture um which isn't loads and certainly was not enough to um you know step forward to maybe an investor in the future and say hey you should you should invest in me i've got this great idea uh how many dishes have you got 15. um it's it's not necessarily enough so i really uh took time to do some real deep diving throughout the first lockdown um and went through all the rabbit holes and found some really cool and interesting dishes which then found their way onto the menu when we opened at uh lehman lock and all gates in october which was really pleasing but you know i still have it in me to find things and come up with things and um pull on strings of maybe three or four four dishes and bring them together into one thing and it be something original um and so yeah i think yeah i've had the time i've had the time to recuperate because being a chef is exhausting it's very physical and the hours are long um and i've had the time to get my concept into a business which um has been really valuable i think um where we are currently is that uh since the christmas lockdown came in um we're all kind of furloughed and floating along which is um still relatively in the circumstances quite lovely um however before we closed um a a couple of people came and dined with us in the restaurant who turned out they introduced themselves at the end as being the founders of a online platform called dispatch which is basically a platform for um a select group of restaurants um to uh kind of give their give their food to people within their homes um so it's basically a sort of like an ingredients box essentially but way more kind of ready to take out of its packaging and serve once it's been warmed up so basically there's minimal prep that anyone would have to do everything is is packaged and ready with instructions um and basically it was a complete plug-and-play opportunity for us to to um stay open and stay floating and get an income also reach people which people would never reach before because it's a nationwide platform where you know people in manchester are sending me pictures every friday of their food which is wonderful uh and beyond beyond manchester um so yeah we've been on that platform since january really which initially was supposed to be the ganuri thing they wanted you know a vegan uh brand um that hopefully could stand alongside the other sort of you know restaurants that were on there which was a very intimidating list i have to say and it continues to be even more so now the likes of uh your hand yeah yes matalangi are on there now and my old restaurant samsara have just joined as well like we're in scary company now and it's um a battle to stay in there and um where was i sorry um yes so we're on dispatch which has been fantastic for us it's kept us afloat and um we have as of today as of tonight in fact as i speak um launched our second menu um which is much more of a japanese focused menu so as i said yeah we we were supposed to be just a sort of a ganury thing but um the feedback was really positive so they extended us um through into february wonderful and then they uh at the end of february i was thinking they're going to cut us loose they're going to cut us loose we've had our moment in the sun um they came back and said hey we'd really like to extend further um can you come up with a brand new menu for us um so i did which was a scary thing because the first menu um was kind of made up of dishes that we were in the restaurant they were kind of established dishes um that had a long history and i was comfortable with um but really because of the medium it's such a different medium to to to serve food in people's homes and make it kind of viable for takeaway um you know we're still a restaurant that likes plating things in quite a nice way and stuff that doesn't translate to those boxes so really i was at the end of the my dishes that could just about be squeezed into that format um and so i kind of had to go back to the drawing board on the second menu and really think about what would work within the medium um but still be um true to us obviously and true to the central message which is that you know we want people to enjoy escapist fruit escapist food from places that they uh very much at the current moment cannot visit um and so i've gone with a japanese menu uh because i think i mentioned earlier like alta owes a lot of its identity and um sort of sense of self to that kind of bar culture and particularly kind of tokyo culture of uh drinking holes and uh you know izakaya bars with with traditional dishes and small plates and sharing and loud and drinking um so i've kind of written a menu that's a love letter to japan and tokyo and um has got some things that people recognize maybe some things that people won't um and i think it's a really cool menu and people can order it on dispatch's website um have a look we'll be on there um it's 50 pounds for two people it's delivered to your door anywhere in the uk um it comes every friday um if you wanted to you can order every week it comes every friday uh it's delivered to your door and um it's been fantastic for us to stay afloat and reach a new audience and it's fantastic for people as well it's been so convenient and the quality um is fantastic the the on a purely nerdy kind of like um level my big problem well one of my many problems with sort of serving takeaway food was um the packaging side of things and what compromises i would have to make on things like um you know some things do need to be vacuum sealed and i'd only ever come across um you know plastic pouches for that but they have um they've got versions that i've made from you know starch and things i don't fully understand but it's very much made out of potato starch i think and does the exact same thing as a vacuum seal would do and um compostable things and combustible lids and all these things so all my worries with like we're going to completely kind of um be hypocrites and yeah maybe the antithesis of of our message have not been the case so they've been fantastic for that as well um yeah very very lucky but yeah as you say looking forward to um the positive um change that will hopefully happen in uh on the 17th 17th yeah and being back in the restaurant and uh truly sort of doing what we what we like to do which is that kind of theatrical kind of event an immersive experience of being there and the music's loud and it's you know the drinks are kind of uh craft beers and natural wines and you know it's not formal there are no tablecloths it's rough it's ready but it's confident and that's that's where alta lives and that's where i'm happiest um so yeah looking forward to seeing people's faces again and seeing people's reactions again i love standing by the past when uh you know a table receives its food and seeing like reactions to things and that that's where um again from the mental health standpoint that's where i get that sort of sense of yeah this is the right thing to be doing with my life and you know all of those hours nerding away uh on youtube for these obscure recipes and obscure kind of um techniques and cultures and ingredients are worth it to to watch someone's face light up and as i'm walking past maybe delivering another dish then call me over and ask me a million questions like that that is what truly excites me and gets me out of bed and um it's been a long time uh since since well it's it's been since december but even in december because of the regulations you know it was it was only same households and stuff and that affects how busy your restaurant can truly be so it'd be nice to see it kind of nice and full again in a safe way um and we can sort of make it yeah event food again rather than just sort of being a a yeah a cause restaurant i can't wait to to book in sort of mid mid-may i'll be i'll be hopefully one of the first in the queue that sounds incredible you've certainly uh inspired me to get involved i love it absolutely awesome i think uh dispatch may be the the way to go in the short term though just to get a fix but uh so just just uh to wrap us up because it's been it's been uh awesome chatting with you andy but uh sadly tom's got away from us it'd be good sorry no no it's been just been brilliant i've learned an incredible amount it would be it'd be great to just uh tell folks whereabouts they could go about finding a little bit more about alter where they could perhaps prepare themselves to book and then obviously dispatch as well just in the in the short term as well absolutely so um the instagram is uh alter with an e uh underscore ldn like as in london um so yeah also underscore ldn and the website is alterldn.com um you can find everything there all the gun for the videos all the information um the instagram is probably where where i truly live and can interact with people and where the content gets shared and uh in the link in the bio uh you have links to all of the interesting things very much including um where to get the dispatch boxes and where to book once you can just taking a look at the the tokyo dive bar feast that's one word that looks incredible thank you that looks amazing i've i've got to get hold of one of those amazing stuff oh thanks andy it's been a pleasure i'll pop all the links in the show notes as well so folks can check those out afterwards but it's been awesome chatting with you and uh hopefully i'll see you on if not may 17th pretty soon afterwards let's do it thanks man thanks for having mecool so andy it would be awesome to get started with a little bit of your your personal journey into the world of veganism what's what's kind of brought you here yeah um well i'm a chef um i came to chefing like quite late in my career but um at the point i went vegan i was actually working in um samsara in east london um which is a thai restaurant that specializes in very authentic in the kind of david thompson mold um regional thai food and that basically involves a lot of smoke a lot of animals a lot of um a lot of all that stuff a lot of wok cookery um and so i came at it from very sort of a you know working very carnivorously i would say and eating very carnivorously i would also say um and then for me the the decision to go vegan was not not a sort of long slide into it it was very much an overnight like snap um i basically went home or had a day off one day um and watched a documentary called carnage by simon amstel yeah um which was not really a documentary this was a mockumentary um and it was kind of uh first of all simon amster was like was before then my own personal guru of wisdom um he he was the guy for people who don't know used to present uh nevermind the bus got never find the bus cox um and uh pop world before that but anyway he he sort of um became a stand-up comedian very much after that and uh is the funniest the wisest the most uh clever person at kind of pulling on strings of things that we think are normal that are not necessarily normal and he um expanded on a segment in in one of his stand-ups um which basically kind of like where he talked about wanting to be someone who kind of looked back at a time where we used to eat meat and do all of these various things that um maybe in the future won't make sense and he expanded on that idea um by making a film called carnage um which is basically as i said a mockumentary uh set 50 years in the future um and it was basically a sort of yeah 2067 utopia where um i think the opening lines are something like uh you know violence has been cured with compassion and uh depression has been cured with intimacy and just the central conceit that which you would like to go on to explain that you know going vegan is essentially um being empathetic to so many issues that are completely at this stage with all the information that's out there undeniable um so at this point you you have to consider now if we all and this is purely hypothetical because you know it won't happen but if we all snapped a vegan overnight what would the the roll-on effect that be what would the effect be of everyone on the planet saying no no no i i recognize that my needs are not as not as important as everybody's needs and i recognize that my enjoyment of my life maybe isn't quite as important maybe i need to sacrifice some things that i like doing in order that other people could do them for longer um and all of these things so it kind of really came out of a lot of the questions that were posed in that that mockumentary um it also is packed full of um you know all those kind of hard hitting things if you want to go there as well but for me the thing that stuck was what kind of culture would we be what kind of world would we be what kind of britain would we be um if we chose to put others needs first and um kind of yeah i think it was that really it was that sense of and all of this was like i think it came out in 2017 so that's you know coming off the back of 2016 which we all know uh you know i'm not sure everyone's politics but whatever your politics are 2016 was was a heavy year um and what it meant to be british was a lot in the news and you know what we was very apparent is that britain is very polarized and very down the middle and um you know there were a lot of ideas about it was kind of wrestling for its identity um and i guess i was wrestling around the same time with um what my place in that was and how i felt about kind of being part of this this new brand of britain that was being served up and the honest answer was i wasn't keen i didn't relate to this idea that we don't want to be part of things that are shared between people and that we we are uh scared of uh jobs going to people um you know from from other parts of the world potentially or you know we i didn't relate to any of this idea of this sort of conservatism to use not just the word of a political party necessarily but this idea that i want to conserve what i have this is mine this belongs to me um i didn't relate to that i've always sort of wanted to to you know open doors and be part of this wider conversation of of all admitting that we're part of one place um so for me it's a very long answer to a very short question but um it was you know it was a combination of all the things that i'm sure you know everybody talks about with the the combination of the science we can no longer deny with regards to the environment um not so much for me the the squeamishness of you know the animal animal um side of things obviously big factor but for me i was a chef so not that i was desensitized to that but i have i still have to an extent an attitude that for some cultures for some contexts um living that way is it is is a sustainable method within their um within their culture i don't feel that way about british culture um so for me it was it was a combination really of the undeniable science but much more more so i'd say 80 of my reasoning was um wrestling with this idea of um are we the good guys i don't know if you've seen the michelin web sketch they're very famous where two ss officers are sat next to each other staring at the skulls and on their their hats and saying just just considering the idea that maybe they're maybe we're not the good guys i i don't feel like we are the good guys anymore i used to sort of feel like britain was a sort of bastion of centrist central thinking and sort of weighing up both sides of an argument and jumping in when something happened over the other side of the world that you know affected people who couldn't you know were marginalized and i i used to feel a sense of social responsibility and i think this year of all years especially um that that views slid in further in terms of the sort of national identity that we seem to be adopting um and i find that very sad and for me veganism is a step in the direction of um choosing to not make choices that are purely about me um especially in this city which can be incredibly self-focused incredibly about lots of independent people um climbing their ladders rather than um a culture like i don't know you know a japanese culture wherein everyone sort of sees this themselves as part of this bigger machine um and you know there's a lot of benefit to be said in in being part of something shared rather than all sort of clambering over each other uh in a you know endless race to the top um so it was it was that for me in in brief summary it was that it was sort of stepping away from this this race of me me me me um and i liked that it was kind of counter to cop you know british culture as well and that's um what i would later find is that our food is so made up of yeah we talked about the conservatism there's also part of british culture is this nostalgia and this sort of always going back to this um this this this nostalgia of how things are supposed to be what our parents cook what our parents cooked and um when you trace that nostalgia back far enough you realize that that it all came from like everything um you know came from like the second world war and you know after the war there it was a period of um well during the war of dig for victory campaign and everything was vegetables and um being sustainable and growing your own all that stuff and then come the 50s i think it took 12 years after the end of world war ii for rationing to fully end um and meat was then suddenly considered a luxury and that really set the tone for the next 60 odd years of like meat is this this meat is the thing meat is the thing you want on your dinner plate it's it's um it's the ultimate destination of of luxury um and it's all traceable back to history at the end of the day what we consider normal is always traceable back to what history has given us um and when we understand that that's not just an inbuilt thing but it's circumstantial we can challenge where we want to head in the future i think yeah the the point about and i want to come back to sort of you you know from your standpoint the the practical elements of having made that decision because having gone so far ideologically but before i do just because we're on the the subject and you mentioned this this harking back this nostalgia and it sounds like you did but do you see the them quite intrinsically linked the consumption of meat or the over consumption of meat this kind of identity of being british almost the conservatism the the the brexit mindset if you like the whole piece do you see that there's a a link almost uh i suppose it's sort of intersectional thinking that these oppressions are all or all linked in some way or another

yeah um yeah i mean i do i think that yeah it i just think that a lot of the things that were handed to me is a british identity i've i've you know unraveled and now want to challenge and i think that i mean the dawning of the sort of the netflix era or whatever we're in we're we're bombarded with information and documentaries and interesting things and um you know you can you can learn about so many things at the click of a button now and once that information is there and maybe it's you know my personality type is one of seeking information and being very curious about things i don't know um and that's not necessarily going to be for everybody but when that information was out there i i was really interested in in in learning about all of those things and again maybe it's a sort of personality type thing of um i'm quite comfortable with very radical change in my life i guess i mean i haven't always been a chef as i mentioned i i was an actor for the first eight years out of graduation um and then became a chef after eight years of being an actor so in a career since i had a big shift um my background i used to be very very involved in in christianity in the church and stuff and uh no longer am um and very used to kind of those big shifts and i think my big kind of conceit um with christianity i felt the time was this idea of um the central premise of the great commission which essentially is kind of the mission statement which is that we we go forth and make disciples of all nations sort of thing um which you know once i did some digging of my own i sort of didn't like the interpretation that formed this idea that we should all essentially be homogenized into us into the same belief system and um that there was a right answer and all of these things and i think moving to london and uh being immersed in all of these um intersecting lines of culture and um being exposed to the likes of anthony bourdain's works and writings and tv programs and um you just get a sense of the idea you know i didn't want to to live in a homogenized culture where we all believe the same thing i like discussion i like disagreement i like learning i like finding solutions to problems and um i really like challenging the idea of patriotism and the idea that um you know why be proud of where you're where you come from it has nothing to do with you you didn't choose it it was pure chance and the true joy surely the true joy is learning about other cultures and understanding what you can bring back from them and you know bring into your own life and your own culture if you like and um i think that's been one of my biggest confusions over the last couple of years of this sense of um britishness of um we have our culture and we want to stick to it and we don't want to have any interference and this kind of drawbridge up mentality yeah my attitude has always been drawbridged down and and going getting amongst it so i think the sense of sort of not feeling um at all bonded with my imposed nationality um had a huge kind of effect on on wanting to sort of seek a more kind of very anthony bourdain nationality-less existence where we go out and explore and and are interested in in the other side of the world and what other people's ideas are do you think that's almost like the biggest so sometimes see is the biggest sort of almost because i'm very much the same viewpoint uh the drawbridge down approach the uh you know the richness of of sort of life's melting pot if you like but do you almost see it as the success of the kind of the and we've gone deep quick here i appreciate it sorry it's good it's good i love it but but the the success of the messaging of the quote unquote right is that it's simplistic you know you can there is no need for grey it's you know we belong here we eat beef and yorkshire puddings and we go to church on a sunday or at least say we're going to and you know all these sort of you know we watch coronation street you know all of these things that sort of make up this british identity is easy to communicate whereas communicating uh lots of complex ideas that you should debate and is is more is more challenging for people to get behind do you think do you think that's almost like a a failing in a way of the of the left is the messaging isn't as simplistic i do and i think that sort of coincides with with the social media aspect and what we've seen in the last four or five years um since 2016 and the sort of rise if you like or at least you know balancing out of the right in terms of the majority in this country is that it's um very possibly translates to social media a bit easier um it's it's essentially you know hard-hitting slogans and proper propaganda but you know very sort of shock value very heart-ishing information um that is is probably chiefly trying to inspire shock anger um you know all of those emotions which for the left and i think um i was listening to a podcast really recently where um it was the central conceit was the left basically haven't cannot or haven't um utilized social media as well because we've almost the reason you know the left tarnish with you know accusations of being snowflakes and this that and the other is because they're they've they basically fought fire with fire and you know we've gone totally the other way and you know have gone very sort of fluffy and and we're not really representing that kind of central ground and i think for for me with um with with cooking at alter and the sort of central premise of it all was was essentially to kind of tap into that idea a little bit more and say that um if i'm going to offer a vegan uh brand into the universe if i'm gonna step into the industry and and throw something up that will always be in any is very much um totally vegan um i don't want to approach it from this this kind of um exacerbated kind of frustrated left position um it's got to for me completely occupy the central ground where we're not trying to recruit people to to veganism we're not selling it to vegan people it's not there's not vegan propaganda on the wall um we we need to rethink totally our idea of what a vegan chef is and looks like for me i go on social media and what a vegan chef looks like is someone with a great body very young standing in front of a blender um very quick editing and serving me up something that is totally western vegetable lead um and talking about health a lot and i don't relate to any of those things at all so i would like to serve up a sort of version of of veganism if you like that is in the center saying um hey here is a product that is uh great first and foremost and uh isn't pandering to sort of the sympathy vote and um you know people walking in saying it was it was great for vegan food it was oh it's a really good vegan restaurant like for me those are failures if that is our legacy or that's what people walk out saying um i'm i'm gutted because i want it to stand on its own two feet and and be um equal to all of the restaurants i look up to and um aspire to be you know alongside one day um so we have to sort of adopt a more kind of reducetarianism um ideology uh for me which my latest theory is that perhaps rejucitarianism is is probably the better movement than veganism which is a bit of a strange thing to say coming from you know a vegan chef that has a vegan concept but for me we can bark and moan and yell and shout and scream about why people are why more people aren't going vegan and why don't more people come over to our side but we know from the last five years that we're living in a very polarized uh country with people's colors nailed to the wall and we need to stop trying to recruit each other and insult each other and maybe for me the term vegan won't be in our vernacular in 10 years i think it will just be seen as something we do uh alongside you know other sustainable things that we do in our lives turning out lights when we leave the house and you know changing our boilers to become more sustainable and insulating roofs and i think it will just become part and parcel of being a sustainable person um and i think legislation will will follow with that and i think laws will come into place in the next 15 20 years that ensure that we have to move more towards those choices i think menus and restaurants will absolutely shift becoming more 50 50 and this idea that the meat is the star of the plate will diminish um and that's where i want to want to take things i don't want this to be a vegan thing it has to be a brand new exciting attitude that we will live in tandem with these things in the future and here is an opportunity to to come to a restaurant where you won't be having the saddest thing on the menu that is cooked by chefs that don't care and pulling something out of the freezer once a day because no one else orders it which was my experience of going vegan i was going to you know pubs and restaurants with friends and ordering the last thing on the menu that was clearly the most sarcastic sort of last minute idea that a chef had um because he'd been schooled in kind of french cooking um and yeah anyone who comes to alta will not feel that way is is the vision you know it's about exciting stuff that um meat eaters will love because for me um i'm i'm not particularly um obsessed with with vegan food being seen as the healthy alternative or um being about all this nutrition nutrition doesn't turn me on um what i'm turned on by is really exciting great food and that falls into the same category as normal in advertise cooking with you know the whole salt fat acid heat that balance those hitting those five um sensors all at once in the palette sweet salty bitter sour spicy you know um i very much trained in thai food and chinese food and um love japanese food and very much like asian leaning in my in my training and um it it's superior food it taps into more areas of the palette it's more multi-sensory um and so i felt like i had a kind of weapon with which to kind of throw at people that would normally get those kicks from meat food i knew how to hit those areas of the palette that they may never have had before with vegan food which can be quite two-dimensional in my experience um so yeah that i don't know what even how we even got onto this i think it was the question about the left and the right right yeah but yeah there's a how do we get here but this idea essentially i'll bring it back to the question which was this idea that yeah so alter was basically formed out of um being annoyed and frustrated with this endless left right squabbling and um pushing more towards a place that could be occupied by both camps and occupied enjoyably um and for me it's always been about challenging one side call it you know the meat eating side challenging them and saying hey you know you know if we all did what you if we all ate meat every day of every week if we if that was our diet you know very bad things would happen very quickly we can't we know we can't all do this the science is out there the documentaries are out there this is not sustainable if we all do it so at some stage 50 of us say have to say i'm i'm going to do the totally opposite thing because i'm going to be a responsible person and who are those 50 gonna be and for me it was oh you know i'll definitely be one of those um and but it's also very much about challenging the other side challenging the vegans and saying look i i arrived into this scene and you served me jackfruit burgers and told me seitan was nice and i don't think it is at all and i don't understand why you like selling vegan junk food to me which basically is pretending to be meat and your vision for an exciting food future is to replace meat dishes with basically substitutes which taste mainly of nothing they're just there to fill space and fill an imaginary kind of gap where the meat would be and i don't think that's a path forward i think we are basically floundering and treading water um and that bores me so it was about introducing a kind of new way of thinking about vegan food that yeah challenged vegans as well and said is this you know is this what you've been happy with all this time because i'm not and also yeah very much challenging the other side and saying look we can't all do this so you can't and if you come over here i'll give you some things that will not be what you think they will be um and yeah be exciting that that point around um the vegan junk food and the sort of you know the the marketing of veganism almost at the i would say almost trying to use the same uh tropes from a food point of view as sort of the omnivorous community have been targeted with more recently in sort of the sort of junk food mainstream kind of culture the kind of you know burgers and so on um do you think that's born out of uh i suppose a lack of formal training for chefs in in veganism like is there is is there a link there for you that those there isn't enough folks who are learning how to cook vegan so they're almost taking what they see as popular you know the the fast food restaurants and so on and then trying to transpose it into veganism and thinking well that will that will work i think that's absolutely it i think um the vast majority i would even say of um what you would think of to be sort of vegan restaurants and vegan um um you know food vans and food trucks and pop-ups and things like that and mainly people that have gone enthusiastic about uh veganism but not necessarily professional chefs or or even you know chefs um so i think that is largely the makeup of the current climate within vegan the vegan food scene and i think yeah there aren't really ways to to train um plant only if you like vegan food only um in a in a kind of formal setting i mean i've having said that i don't know if that's entirely true i haven't sort of gone on bali malou's website or um looked at cordon bleus you know latest uh kind of uh course but um i don't think there is necessarily that but i don't think that should be an excuse either i think for me um i don't think you you necessarily need formal training because i don't think we've really defined yet what vegan food is um which goes back to my my point about this the british food thing i think what we've what i think what the current state of vegan food is is that it's the same food replaced with you know filler essentially and i think we need to be a bit more ambitious and i think we need to be a bit more curious about uh if we're saying that we empathize with the fact that uh we alongside non-human animals are just animals that happen to be here and we don't necessarily occupy the top of the tree or at least you know if we do occupy the top of the tree that we may choose to rule a little bit more empathetically and if we say that we all believe we're part of one uh rock flying through space with the same shared problems rather than tribalistic cultures that stay within their own moats um then maybe we should also be empathizing with the idea that our culture might not necessarily our culture's food might not necessarily have all the answers in terms of um a way forward and um certainly british food is just not made up to be vegan um and there were people that would disagree with that and will love meat substitutes i'm not adverse to them at home at all i'm my freezer's full of linda mccartney sausages um but in working in restaurants i think we need to say no we need to raise the game we need to not accept that um we just tread water and just replace things and i think we need to be more curious about cultures particularly that do veganism as the norm i'm thinking of areas in india like the gujarati um community in in india um entirely sort of vegetarian and vegan in some places as well i'm thinking about various buddhist cultures throughout the world and the sichuan region of china you know and in thailand as well these are places that have the answers and these are places that great dishes live um and the food we serve at alter is is all about seeking dishes and cultures um out that offer dishes that could live alongside each other cohesively you know it's not we're not sort of it's not world food i hate you know anyone's coming in and sort of label us as world food um but they're they're small plates that um are cohesive enough that they can live next to each other without it being you know abundantly clear that that one is japanese and that one is english and that one is french and that one is chinese and one earth dude that they do living next to each other you know the the things that we choose that we curate even uh are very much designed to be eaten in tandem despite the fact they might be from very different places um i think that represents sort of the vision if you like of um of veganism and the sort of sense of perspective that you you you have bought into by buying into the fact that you're not as important as everybody else is um and it's kind of important it's in the name as well it's very much sort of uh very much again so going back to the idea of that you know naming a vegan brand and everything like my my working title for alter was was meadow like very green very british and just like i'm so glad that i snapped out of that because it's just the opposite messaging to everything that i could possibly want to sell um but alter came along and what that was about for me was was was a few things um also fundamentally basically meaning to change course based on sort of new information as you would maybe a ship that has seen an iceberg you would change course you would alter course um an altar being a place uh in sort of a religious setting maybe where you would give away something in sacrifice perhaps a previous version of yourself or be relieved of a sin if you like um and for me that was about sort of being relieved of this this burden and being relieved of this previous version of myself and stepping into something new and that had a clean slate and um i could forge my own new identity within um and then the word altruism is kind of hidden and implied in there as well this idea of doing something for other people with no reward and seeing your place in the world as one of service sometimes um i think that's really important and then something more physical was the sort of idea i mean a lot of our food is based on on um kind of bar culture in tokyo and that kind of very small plates very bustly loud drinky venues that's the sort of spirit we're trying to evoke in in the sight um so i quite like the idea that the item was built up was the sort of you know the bar that you sat at and drank and ate from um it was a place where you went i like the idea that people could say you know should we go to the altar tonight and stuff um so there's a few things in in the name that that kind of um tackle that element as well again i've forgotten what the question was but i swear this was relevant somehow it was all it was all absolutely relevant i i love this idea that you've uh that that almost the formal training isn't necessarily required we almost need to get out of that mindset and get into a more creative space because the rules haven't yet been defined more training but but i think it's a fantastic idea and um i suppose my question and it's not so much a challenge but more of just a thought you know trying to put myself in in your shoes fantastic idea you've got uh sort of the mainstream vegan culture being portrayed through new media if you like through social media in a certain way that is perhaps a little contrary to everything that you described there how how do you get that message out there because i think it's a i think it's a really valid one and and a very interesting perspective that i don't see representative represented within the community so much but how with the current rules of engagement when it comes to gaining momentum and popularity for an idea like that do do you know do you see uh the the sort of the brand of ulta the restaurant of ulta becoming almost a a blueprint for others you know yeah i i mean i hope i hope that is the sort of pattern of events to an extent i mean for me yeah i mean we i could have there were so many ways to approach alter from from its kind of inception and um from the get-go for me it was about completely no compromise at all and no amalgamation to um the current sort of vegan culture and um i mentioned the meadow thing that the original name and everything and like not rejecting this notion that veganism is is green uh if you're vegan you you have um a little leaf next to your your handle on instagram so everyone knows that that's the really important thing in your life um and all of these things so for me it was it was about sort of nailing that to the wall straight from the off um that we won't amalgamate to this this established vegan culture and that we would go a different way um and i think yeah how do you get that miss that message out there i think i i think it's just about not not compromising on what your values are and i don't think that necessarily we should be exacerbated by the fact we should have more of an audience more metis should be listening to us listening to us like i don't think they're the problem i think that we are the problem i think that we have kind of hijacked the term and ideology of veganism to become this sort of absolutist cult wherein like you're either vegan or you're not and if you fall off the wagon you've fallen off the wagon you're this or you're that this kind of polarization and like we talked about tribal tribalism essentially i think we need to again find the middle ground and say um we don't need to label people but perhaps what we might need to do is adopt a more juicitarian diet where we kind of say okay well we ate meat at the weekend when we had that roast dinner maybe monday and tuesday we might balance it out a little bit and not do that i think that would i think that's where we need to be sort of going and i think the other thing is that food is food is fashion essentially and currently vegan food is is fashionable and it's it's in the kind of vernacular of people's understanding um but fashion fade at the end of the day and i think i've already seen sort of friends who have adopted the the vegan diet kind of fall away because of the sort of permanency of that term that sort of pressure to always do that thing and i don't think it should be like that i don't think we should once you're vegan you you're a vegan i think the permanency of the terminology is is toxic the shaming culture even is toxic um i think we need to do away with it completely um the other thing in terms of you mentioned about how to sort of approach it with with a with a business and stuff how do you attack it i think the other great thing about food the real equalizer with food is it's a meritocracy you can't fake things you can't kind of um yeah you can't fake it forever so if your gimmick is is is more uh established than your food is then you'll get found out eventually and um it's it's it's a meritocracy the best dancer wins and so you've gotta we've gotta be out more ambitious as i said we've got to be thinking of ourselves as not vegan restaurants and in a sort of um a sub genre um we've got to think of ourselves as as going shoulder to shoulder with with everybody else and for me that's about quality of food and not um marketing or gimmicks or um being a sort of charitable sympathy case um we're not we've got to we've got to put the work in and the graft and we've got to be interesting we've got to be sexy we've got to be something that uh you know a product that people want to buy you can't just um have the world's most uh green car that runs on uh carbon dioxide as it's breathed out by the driver if it looks horrendous and no one wants to drive around in it you've got to make the product something people want and it's no different with food it's no different with any brand um and so my job has always been to to make ulta a place people want to go to want to share want to um you know send their pictures of the food and their excitement about what was on the menu that they've never seen before that's that's where it lives it's an it's almost an entertainment medium rather than it being a sort of um it's as much an entertainment medium as a food medium restaurants i believe and getting even more so since the dawning of the you know the instagram era and um us sort of telling everyone where we went and where we'd like to go and compiling lists and all these podcasts that you know people talking about that you know desert island meal and what restaurants they they love and where they go to and it's um food tourism is is big business and um essentially you've you know if you want to be in the conversation you've got to be you've got to push and so i think yeah i think it's been about basically that we've we've considered ourselves a sub-genre for too long and i don't understand it i think yeah i think we have to sort of try a bit harder i think we've been a bit lazy and i think we've relied on the gimmick and the labeling of being a vegan cause um rather than uh the product being the star what's the reaction been like in those sort of in the restaurant business because i'd imagine you know i'm thinking there's a i think we've just had off you know the vegan there's been the first vegan michelin star restaurant in france uh in paris i think it is a couple of months back and you know you mentioned that food is fashion and so on and that you know you sort of live and die by the quality of the the food by the you know the the quality of the um of the offering at alter what's the reaction been like from within the sort of restauranteur and chef community around and about you you know i imagine you've still got many links uh with with your with your sort of previous um previous roles before alter came about so what's that reaction been like i think but it's been it's been really positive um it's been really people have been really interested and um i've met a lot of people that i would you know have dreamed to cook for um some people that have maybe reached out on on social media or some people that have seen their name on a booking sheet and freaked out or um some people who've just like shown up out of the blue um maybe it would be sort of um bad tonight no i'll name names um so obviously like uh for anyone who knows us um we we started out as a as a pop-up and still to an extent are a pop-up but a bit more of a kind of semi-permanent one now um but one of the first pop-ups we did was in a wine bar and tooting um and i knew uh robin gill who is the owner of um uh the dairy in clapham which is now uh berman's in lada in in burmensi um and uh sorella and derby's and lots of restaurants that are very much in the culinary landscape of london and hughes have been a long time hero of of mine um very much kind of uh again controversially for this podcast trained in the kind of st john mentality of um nose-to-tail uh cookery and using everything and that very kind of um coming from that almost like countryside um attitude to cooking and he comes from ireland i come from somerset like we relate to that kind of idea of using what you have and using everything and using it all and finding a use for everything that would otherwise go in the bin so he's a big hero of mine anyway i knew him for a friend of a friend and so um i he he had a venue in uh clapham at the time called counter culture which was a sort of small 13-seater um restaurant uh it used to be a butcher's which is hilariously ironic and obviously it was the sister restaurants of the dairy which is also hilarious and ironic um but it was it was very much like the breeding ground for um for great great places and great chefs and i really might my the tip of my my personal mountain and ambition for alter was to do a stint at counter culture and i invited him along to to the residency at uh the wine bar in tutting and um it gave him everything on the menu basically and uh he totally totally got it and it's been the case i think with with a lot of the chefs i've since met and cooked for that they totally get that this is uh not out not out there in terms of sort of a chef's interpretation of where vegan food could be headed a sort of very much vegan food that's gone through the prism of anthony bourdain uh and that sense of escapism and uh you know isn't available maybe in this country or it's something that i've found from a very obscure video blog of a person walking around a market in thailand um of which there are many things on the menu that i found that way um he totally related to it and he offered me that stint in counterculture uh and that's where uh we were when when everything kicked off uh last year at the beginning of last year um and during that time um a chef called neil rankin um came and ate at counter culture i don't think he booked i think he showed up or uh yeah it was very last minute i was certainly surprised when i saw him um and his background is very much in sort of barbecue cookery and um i remember watching him on great british menu growing up and he was you know serving huge sort of sides of beef and everything and barbecue was barbecue meat was his thing and his jam and since in the last year or two he has totally shifted um to much more of a plant-based outlook uh and runs simplicity now uh who are sort of uh they're a burger company essentially in shoreditch i believe um serving up totally plant-based things and he's just totally came to that uh which is rare and chefs come to that sort of understanding that yeah we won't be doing this in a few years time and we do need to start thinking about laying the seeds for a culinary landscape that is much more balanced than it currently is and he's he's headed much more in that direction and become a bit of an activist in in terms of that which from where he came from was it was a big deal um and then another chef who i wanted to cook for in fact the chef that i'd been like done a trial shift for when i was starting out um uh joe at the naughty piglets a little restaurant in brixton and they've got a uh another restaurant now in the victoria theatre um the other north uh naughty piglet um i love that place love their i uh that sort of sense of um that venue that small drinky eaty uh wine bar venue that's totally like my jam and um i remember sort of approaching him with my cv years ago shaking and um and suddenly he's i think he was basically the final guest at counter culture before we we all got locked down um and i it was wonderful and it was just absolutely wonderful to have someone like that come along and totally get it so um yeah that's enough like names there have been a lot of people who um in in the industry names that i you know would be known and and um names that would have freaked me out and still to this days do freak me out who who come along and totally get it and i really think that that is indicative of the fact that um they recognize that uh yeah the landscape will shift and um maybe perhaps their their background and their training going back to the training question um hasn't necessarily sort of given them the tools um to to sort of know how to balance their menus out in a more kind of balanced way um which i think will be the solution rather than everybody becoming vegan overnight out of guilt and shaming um so yeah so yeah it's it's been really really positive and really really wonderful um and i think yeah i think it will represent a change in the future in the in the london uh restaurant scene certainly and beyond that's incredibly refreshing to hear i i just i the last thing i expected you to say really was that you know chefs of that of that repute in the sort of mainstream uh classically trained uh ilk would would get it i almost thought there'd be some so almost a sense of sneering or skepticism of like you know really so it it it's it's kind of brilliant to hear that there there is a sense of actually this is where things are going to go and you know we we should be prepared and getting on board with it yeah the sneering thing is like that was there has been sneering there's been a lot of sneering and certainly i remember um when i was uh banding the idea before i had sort of the really fully formed idea of what altar would be beyond the vegan thing um you know all those other layers that i've talked about um there was a lot of sneering and there was a lot of sort of um people would sort of say yeah you know okay good luck um and all of those things and i think um the the method of attack with that is is going back to nostalgia um if you um play to what they think they will be served when they sit down yeah they'll they'll they'll have something to compare it to yeah which will undoubtedly be as have been a superior version than what you are serving because they food is nostalgia as well you know everything we eat links back to you know the best time that we had that dish or the version of it our mum used to make that was so good or you know it all links back but if you serve something people that they've never tasted before then they've got no point of reference and you have the element of surprise which is another huge part of food is is and certainly restaurants is you know food is theater as well it's um it's it's an entertainment medium it's about uh exciting people and um yeah giving them something they've never had before an experience they've never had before that's what was all sort of wanting i think when we go out for dinner sometimes and certainly in that food tourist kind of culture that i talked about earlier um so i think um yeah it's not just about sort of um you know doing doing vegan food and uh trying to sort of make it interesting and exciting but it's it's very much about um realizing that you have the element of surprise uh because people do not expect when they sit down at a vegan restaurant to read the words uh you know fermented nem het with vietnamese herbs and blue tongue jiao dressing because they don't know what that is and they don't understand that it's basically a take on a sort of uh nemu which is a fermented pork sausage in thailand but we use leftover jasmine rice and oyster mushrooms then we ferment them for five days with garlic and a bit of salt and sugar and what comes out is this amazing thing that we can deep fry um and you get all of these sour and salt and sweet vibes all at once and then it's dipped through this blue tongue dressing that has tamarind and blue tongue chilians um you know it's that salty kind of soy sauce vibe and every area of the palette that we talked about earlier is hit and they did not expect that they were expecting yeah a jackfruit burger or you know if we're talking fine dining maybe a really lovely perfectly al dente cooked carrot with a beautiful something glaze um and it's just not interesting to me i think it's also reduced to this idea that aha here's another point i did i did a collaboration once with another chef whose name you would be known um and we were talking about ordering because you know i had to order food through his supplies and stuff um and i remember him saying um you know at least you know it'll be cheap because you won't be ordering fish and meat you know you'll just be ordering loads of vegetables and i remember thinking and which is very much the case that i don't really don't really cook with vegetables it sounds weird because i'm a vegan chef but um it's it's much more for me about um yeah i don't approach my cooking from a western point of view i don't approach it approach it from carrots and potatoes i approach it from um how do we hit those five areas of the palette at once using a addressing a kind of funky herb from maybe vietnam they do the best ones or thailand um a real kind of punchy um yeah punchy flavor of textures that excite people um or you know sometimes there's a few dishes on there that are designed to kind of make people laugh even and make people smile there's a sort of playful take on um instead of doing a bread course which is in every [ __ ] fine dining restaurant in london um including the vegan ones um i do not understand why we as british people um deify this this dry kind of beige um thing that is just like claggy and stodgy and brown and just why so for me it was about coming up with a bread course that was um the complete antithesis um one hopes which was a take on on pizza essentially um but was all more than that a kind of nostalgic take on the dough balls you'd get a pizza express which were everyone's actual favorite of course the pizza express but it basically is dough dough uh pizza dough that is cut into shards and deep fried and so they come out in pointy triangles like a slice of pizza is um and then it's dusted in kind of all the flavors of the tomato ragu but in dry form so you know tomato powder and onion powder and smoked powder and all of the seasonings and stuff um goes into it and then it's dipped through this akko blanca which is an andalusian kind of garlicky almond soup um and it's exciting and people get that it's there to make you laugh and it's supposed to be like pizza and it's and people get that it's supposed to be a middle finger to kind of sourdough culture um it's it's got more to offer so yeah i think well i think how do we get back to the question i think we get back to the question by saying yeah i think it's about offering something people have never had before and that is where people will get excited and um buy into what you are what you are selling and feel part of it because ultimately i think when you you're starting your brand and you're starting a restaurant um you know instagram suddenly has made it important for people to to buy into and sort of see themselves as belonging to that kind of way of thinking and that that that team if you like um and we want people to buy into this this team and sort of see that we've got some ideas about doing things differently um so yeah it's it's it's so uh incredibly exciting i think to hear vegan food talked about in that way i i can honestly say i've not i've not had anybody you know i've spoken to some vegan chefs and so on but i have have not heard anybody talk about the the level of creativity and the the passion for uh for the almost the plate before the the cause if you like you know the the the the the what you produce is is more important you know in in its own way than the the the statement is making ethically which which i think is it is a fascinating viewpoint and one that i've i've just not come across so more power to you it'd be remiss if i didn't ask um what lockdown's been like a you know at an incredibly um creative restaurant like yourself in in london during a global pandemic when you've had to close your doors for for so very long you know how how has that been what's the adaptation process been like and i suppose you know we've got some light at the end of the tunnel now so how do how's that sort of shaping up as well it's been a total roller coaster um both in terms of like me personally and and mental health and all of those important things um but also very much in terms of alter and its health um and the sort of path forward uh for for a pop-up with big ambitious ideas that had really only got started and potentially could be one of the ones that would be cut adrift by the lack of following the lack of history the lack of anything that the momentum um that would all be stunted by a pandemic that has lasted well over a year now um so i mean it's been an absolute roller coaster like i said i was in counter culture um and the first kind of whispers were happening about this thing that was coming over um and very much the attitude was that um it would be a not something that would close restaurants that'd be ridiculous it's never happened before since the second world war um and b be something that would blow over in two weeks even if that happened um little did we know um but i think first and foremost i have been so lucky and my gratitude for the way in which robin and his team looked after me upon um us all having to close uh in march um and the other subplot within that um so obviously you know furlough was a wonderful wonderful thing which was a very near miss because um every other thing i've done with ultra has been self-employed so um you know i don't have the the comfort uh if you like or the safety net of a of a contract necessarily um i i invoice my time if you like um after the fact and get paid for it um there um but within this setup which i was very lucky uh to to to to be there um it was it was i was basically under contract i was part of the team um my job was just to you know fill that venue with alta which was great so i i was very lucky to fall under the furlough scheme um which was not a given and would have been disastrous i would say both personally and professionally if if i hadn't um the other subplot within this is that in july um the dairy as it was in clapham um closed its doors and said it wouldn't be reopening um due to other reasons other than the pandemic um but also because very much the pandemic which meant that the whole team kind of would cut adrift to an extent um we were all kind of re-homed to to an extent in other sites within the group um so for me i i jumped in and did eight weeks at derby's and vauxhall um and was part of the team there very much you know mucking in and being part of that team um and then uh within that time um conversations were continuing with with robin and um his business partner dan uh who runs his operations about an opportunity to work within um a hotel in east london that was opening up um and at the very last so i went and went and saw that site it was in in dolston it was part of the new um lock hotels that were opening up um and at the very last minute they decided that um they didn't want that a vegan uh offering in that site would be too big a risk and not broad enough um for the audience which um is is arguable i have no business or anything otherwise for that um but it was it was pretty shell shocking and i kind of pinned all of my hopes and all the way through working those those eight weeks at derby's which were really hard you know but they're 80 hour weeks um which for an old boy let me know it was was it was tough um to kind of get back in that groove after working for yourself and stuff and and managing your own time in that way um so that fell through which is a bit of a bit of a shocker and then um luckily it was only a couple of weeks later that another opportunity uh came up in the same groups hotel in all gates east um which is basically their yeah big hotel in organic same company um and in the first floor of this place was a restaurant that was was empty and had been empty for over a year um and basically uh was looking for someone to come in and steer the ship with their own concept so uh robin gail basically completely opened that door to me for which i am eternally and will always be grateful for and incredibly um humble just not the word it's it's it's it's humbled as too accepting of a word to understand how you know it it's it's madness that he would entrust that opportunity to someone like me and i am very very thankful that he did and so um i moved into into that site in maybe september um and was very lucky that um things were running a bit high in terms of getting things started so i really spent the first month there um costing the entire menu of everything i'd ever worked on to the penny which i just never had time to do before i'd never had time to kind of make alter not just a concept but a business that existed on a spreadsheet that could prove it was a valuable business model um and i had that time which again i'm so grateful for that i could sit down and work out that um you know veganism can be a vegan restaurant can can be an incredibly uh profitable uh place if the food backs up uh the product then then your margins are much smaller than because meat and fish is expensive quite simply and um vegetables and dry products are not as expensive um so if you you know if you're careful and understand your costings it's a business model that people want um which is great so anyway we opened up um in october um and i think we should maybe strung about three or four weeks together before the next sort of set of restrictions came in and um we were closed for another stint and then i think we opened up again for about two weeks uh and then the whole christmas lockdown happened which we are still as we speak currently to an extent in um so yeah it's been a real roller coaster the deposit i mean the negatives are very much yeah the i think the mental health thing for me hasn't been too much of an issue in that i i like i'm quite comfortable in my own company and with empty space in front of me i generally will dive into something and tear it to pieces and find you know lots of valuable things that can be used which for me uh how that was basically when i when lockdown happened in march i maybe had 15 dishes that i was happy with and that would kind of come in and out of the menu at counter culture um which isn't loads and certainly was not enough to um you know step forward to maybe an investor in the future and say hey you should you should invest in me i've got this great idea uh how many dishes have you got 15. um it's it's not necessarily enough so i really uh took time to do some real deep diving throughout the first lockdown um and went through all the rabbit holes and found some really cool and interesting dishes which then found their way onto the menu when we opened at uh lehman lock and all gates in october which was really pleasing but you know i still have it in me to find things and come up with things and um pull on strings of maybe three or four four dishes and bring them together into one thing and it be something original um and so yeah i think yeah i've had the time i've had the time to recuperate because being a chef is exhausting it's very physical and the hours are long um and i've had the time to get my concept into a business which um has been really valuable i think um where we are currently is that uh since the christmas lockdown came in um we're all kind of furloughed and floating along which is um still relatively in the circumstances quite lovely um however before we closed um a a couple of people came and dined with us in the restaurant who turned out they introduced themselves at the end as being the founders of a online platform called dispatch which is basically a platform for um a select group of restaurants um to uh kind of give their give their food to people within their homes um so it's basically a sort of like an ingredients box essentially but way more kind of ready to take out of its packaging and serve once it's been warmed up so basically there's minimal prep that anyone would have to do everything is is packaged and ready with instructions um and basically it was a complete plug-and-play opportunity for us to to um stay open and stay floating and get an income also reach people which people would never reach before because it's a nationwide platform where you know people in manchester are sending me pictures every friday of their food which is wonderful uh and beyond beyond manchester um so yeah we've been on that platform since january really which initially was supposed to be the ganuri thing they wanted you know a vegan uh brand um that hopefully could stand alongside the other sort of you know restaurants that were on there which was a very intimidating list i have to say and it continues to be even more so now the likes of uh your hand yeah yes matalangi are on there now and my old restaurant samsara have just joined as well like we're in scary company now and it's um a battle to stay in there and um where was i sorry um yes so we're on dispatch which has been fantastic for us it's kept us afloat and um we have as of today as of tonight in fact as i speak um launched our second menu um which is much more of a japanese focused menu so as i said yeah we we were supposed to be just a sort of a ganury thing but um the feedback was really positive so they extended us um through into february wonderful and then they uh at the end of february i was thinking they're going to cut us loose they're going to cut us loose we've had our moment in the sun um they came back and said hey we'd really like to extend further um can you come up with a brand new menu for us um so i did which was a scary thing because the first menu um was kind of made up of dishes that we were in the restaurant they were kind of established dishes um that had a long history and i was comfortable with um but really because of the medium it's such a different medium to to to serve food in people's homes and make it kind of viable for takeaway um you know we're still a restaurant that likes plating things in quite a nice way and stuff that doesn't translate to those boxes so really i was at the end of the my dishes that could just about be squeezed into that format um and so i kind of had to go back to the drawing board on the second menu and really think about what would work within the medium um but still be um true to us obviously and true to the central message which is that you know we want people to enjoy escapist fruit escapist food from places that they uh very much at the current moment cannot visit um and so i've gone with a japanese menu uh because i think i mentioned earlier like alta owes a lot of its identity and um sort of sense of self to that kind of bar culture and particularly kind of tokyo culture of uh drinking holes and uh you know izakaya bars with with traditional dishes and small plates and sharing and loud and drinking um so i've kind of written a menu that's a love letter to japan and tokyo and um has got some things that people recognize maybe some things that people won't um and i think it's a really cool menu and people can order it on dispatch's website um have a look we'll be on there um it's 50 pounds for two people it's delivered to your door anywhere in the uk um it comes every friday um if you wanted to you can order every week it comes every friday uh it's delivered to your door and um it's been fantastic for us to stay afloat and reach a new audience and it's fantastic for people as well it's been so convenient and the quality um is fantastic the the on a purely nerdy kind of like um level my big problem well one of my many problems with sort of serving takeaway food was um the packaging side of things and what compromises i would have to make on things like um you know some things do need to be vacuum sealed and i'd only ever come across um you know plastic pouches for that but they have um they've got versions that i've made from you know starch and things i don't fully understand but it's very much made out of potato starch i think and does the exact same thing as a vacuum seal would do and um compostable things and combustible lids and all these things so all my worries with like we're going to completely kind of um be hypocrites and yeah maybe the antithesis of of our message have not been the case so they've been fantastic for that as well um yeah very very lucky but yeah as you say looking forward to um the positive um change that will hopefully happen in uh on the 17th 17th yeah and being back in the restaurant and uh truly sort of doing what we what we like to do which is that kind of theatrical kind of event an immersive experience of being there and the music's loud and it's you know the drinks are kind of uh craft beers and natural wines and you know it's not formal there are no tablecloths it's rough it's ready but it's confident and that's that's where alta lives and that's where i'm happiest um so yeah looking forward to seeing people's faces again and seeing people's reactions again i love standing by the past when uh you know a table receives its food and seeing like reactions to things and that that's where um again from the mental health standpoint that's where i get that sort of sense of yeah this is the right thing to be doing with my life and you know all of those hours nerding away uh on youtube for these obscure recipes and obscure kind of um techniques and cultures and ingredients are worth it to to watch someone's face light up and as i'm walking past maybe delivering another dish then call me over and ask me a million questions like that that is what truly excites me and gets me out of bed and um it's been a long time uh since since well it's it's been since december but even in december because of the regulations you know it was it was only same households and stuff and that affects how busy your restaurant can truly be so it'd be nice to see it kind of nice and full again in a safe way um and we can sort of make it yeah event food again rather than just sort of being a a yeah a cause restaurant i can't wait to to book in sort of mid mid-may i'll be i'll be hopefully one of the first in the queue that sounds incredible you've certainly uh inspired me to get involved i love it absolutely awesome i think uh dispatch may be the the way to go in the short term though just to get a fix but uh so just just uh to wrap us up because it's been it's been uh awesome chatting with you andy but uh sadly tom's got away from us it'd be good sorry no no it's been just been brilliant i've learned an incredible amount it would be it'd be great to just uh tell folks whereabouts they could go about finding a little bit more about alter where they could perhaps prepare themselves to book and then obviously dispatch as well just in the in the short term as well absolutely so um the instagram is uh alter with an e uh underscore ldn like as in london um so yeah also underscore ldn and the website is alterldn.com um you can find everything there all the gun for the videos all the information um the instagram is probably where where i truly live and can interact with people and where the content gets shared and uh in the link in the bio uh you have links to all of the interesting things very much including um where to get the dispatch boxes and where to book once you can just taking a look at the the tokyo dive bar feast that's one word that looks incredible thank you that looks amazing i've i've got to get hold of one of those amazing stuff oh thanks andy it's been a pleasure i'll pop all the links in the show notes as well so folks can check those out afterwards but it's been awesome chatting with you and uh hopefully i'll see you on if not may 17th pretty soon afterwards let's do it thanks man thanks for having me.