With 20 years’ experience and a wealth of projects under his belt, TV chef Mike Reid has ridden the highs and lows of the hospitality rollercoaster. He shares his insights on the industry.
Mike Reid has the kind of laugh that’s infectious. Within minutes of sitting down to chat with the British chef we are in fits of laughter; his moniker as The Laughing Chef is wildly accurate.
His easy-going, friendly, and comforting charm is the perfect blend for daytime TV, which is clearly a contributing factor to his success on programs such as Ready Steady Cook, My Market Kitchen, and Everyday Gourmet. Most recently, Mike’s judged alongside his mentor Michel Roux Jr and pastry chef Ravneet Gill on Netflix’s Five Star Chef, in which up-and-coming chefs battle it out for the opportunity to bring their fine-dining concept to London’s iconic Langham Hotel.
“Five Star Chef is such a great project to be part of. It’s different to a lot of other cooking competitions in that the contestants not only have to be able to cook but also have to come up with a bulletproof business plan and marketing strategy,” says Mike.
“It’s like MasterChef and Dragon’s Den rolled into one. In week one they had to pitch their business ideas and then present an incredible plate of food.”
The chef’s unconventional route into the industry makes him an ideal judge for a cookery competition that values budgeting and profitability as much as knife skills and presentation. Unlike many chefs who go straight from school into the kitchen, Mike first completed a degree in Business and Marketing before pursuing his passion for cooking.
“As an industry, hospitality puts so much focus on the trade skills that the business skills are often an afterthought – it’s not something young people in the industry are taught. Having a background in business has been a huge advantage for me,” he says.
“After cutting my teeth in Michelin-starred restaurants, I knew I had a really good base level of cooking, but I hadn’t mastered the art of business. I moved away from fine-dining and took a role at Gaucho Group [a collection of contemporary Argentinian restaurants based in the United Kingdom (UK)] to grow my skills in the other side of the restaurant trade.”
Alongside his TV career, Mike has launched and run multiple food and drink venues in Australia and the UK, between which he spends his time. Among his many projects, spanning fine-dining establishments to restaurant groups, he’s also dipped his toe into the world of specialty coffee.
“In 2022, I opened a coffee shop in London’s Canary Wharf under my flagship M Group restaurant. I’d always wanted to open a café and it did amazingly well, but unfortunately the restaurant didn’t. We served specialty espresso, beautiful drip coffees, and pastries,” says Mike.
“I’ve long been interested in reducing food waste, so wherever possible I tried to use the spent grounds from the café in the restaurant above. One of the most memorable dishes was pan-fried halibut served with a celeriac and coffee puree flavoured with the coffee that would have otherwise gone to waste.”
Mike’s interest in coffee goes back to the early days of his career in London, when he would prepare mammoth flasks of black coffee to power him through the long shifts at Michelin-starred restaurants such as Le Gavroche and Restaurant Gordon Ramsay. It was purely a source of energy – rather than enjoyment – until he met his Australian wife, Megan, and was introduced to antipodean coffee culture.
“When I first came to Australia in 2009, I was blown away by the difference. My wife introduced me to the idea of the boutique café and I quickly became a coffee snob,” he says.
“I soon started channelling this interest in coffee into my restaurant businesses, and since then I’ve always looked after the coffee purchasing. I recently went back to serving specialty barista coffee at all my venues after using Nespresso machines for the past five years.”
Although Mike believes interest in finishing a meal with an espresso has dwindled during the past 10 years due to increased interest in wellbeing and reducing caffeine before bed, he’s still eager to offer a high-quality coffee to those who want it.
“While coffee results in minimal sales for us, we still need to hold it to the highest standards. We first turned to capsule coffee machines to try and improve consistency, but in fact it just lost the magic of the coffee experience,” he says.
Opening a coffee shop in his home city of Melbourne is a long-held dream for Mike but, between juggling his TV work and heading up restaurant group Rare Restaurants, he’s yet to find a moment to realise the ambition. He’s also conscious of the challenges currently facing the hospitality industry.
“It’s a very challenging time for hospitality in Australia – I feel like we’re on a bit of a cliff edge,” Mike says.
“We need government intervention with certain things, such as helping to stabilise certain costs like rent. We also need to ensure the wage system is fair and equitable for everyone. Australia is one of the few countries that still implements additional rates of pay on weekends and public holidays, and that’s a real burden on the industry.
“That doesn’t mean I want to take money away from the staff: we need to give them a better base salary and look at how we deal with service charges and tips.”
Comparing the Australian and British dining scenes, Mike says the UK has a lot to learn from its Aussie cousins in terms of creativity and championing independents.
“When I first moved to Australia, I did stages in some amazing kitchens such as Attica and Cuttler & Co [both in Melbourne] to assimilate myself into the local food culture,” he says.
“One of the things I love about the restaurant scene here is that we love a family-owned, independent restaurant. Whereas in the UK and America the big restaurant groups and chains are more dominant.
“I genuinely believe that Melbourne, for the size of the city, is producing some of the best quality food in the world. Australia is very good as a whole, but I think Melbourne is a little bit special.”
This article appears in the October/November 2024 edition of BeanScene. Subscribe HERE.
