Newmarket and Ely Living Aug - Sep 2021

Man of the sea
Mitch Tonks
Mitch Tonks
Image courtesy Steve Haywood
Sally Thomson was delighted to catch
up with chef and entrepreneur - Mitch
Tonks who she has known for over 25
years....
SALLY: HOW ARE YOU DOING?
Mitch: We are doing great! We are looking
forward to finally getting the restaurant
open. I think we are going to have a nice
bounce back, but what a strange time.
I’m one of the people that has benefited
and enjoyed it to be honest. Getting to my
age and not really taking any time off, I’ve
had lots of time to spend with the kids and
rethink things to make things better.
I’D LIKE TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT YOUR
BEAUTIFUL BOOK - THE DISHES LOOK
MOUTH-WATERING. MY FIRST QUESTION
HOWEVER, IS HOW HAVE YOU ADAPTED TO THE
LOCKDOWN?
I must say that the first 2 weeks were
scary; I didn’t really know what was going
to happen, I knew how much money was
in the bank and how long that would last.
I had some truly beautiful and humbling
experiences where my children took care
of me, cooked for me and said: “Dad, you
just concentrate on work and we are going
to look after you and cook for you.” My son
Ben is a chef and works in The Seahorse
and so does my daughter along with Ben’s
partner who is now the general manager.
FANTASTIC, WHAT A LOVELY FAMILY AFFAIR!
It is, and it was lovely being at home with
them. When we started to think about
survival, “I thought this is it we are going to
survive this” We had 274 staff and I thought
we are going to get through this and I’m
going to take care of every single one of
16 | www.minervamagazines.co.uk
you and come out the other
side.
There was a lot to think about
and we really took care of
people. During the time we
thought about, “How can we
make this business better”
and we started pulling apart
everything that was wrong
and thought how can we
make it better? These are
things that we couldn’t do
when we were open, so we
did a whole lot of things like
shortened inventory, better
shift patterns, closed the
restaurant for an hour in the
afternoon, went down to a
4 day week in the winter,
all the kind of stuff that we
didn’t have the foresight to
do previously.
WHEN SOMEONE IS SO ENGROSSED IN
MANAGING A BUSINESS IT’S SOMETIMES
HARD, THIS MUST HAVE GIVEN YOU THE
OPPORTUNITY TO CREATE A NEW VISION?
I think it was a bit of that, but I’m always
very outward looking with my business any
way but I think one of the challenges was
trying to get people to go along with it as
they would be like we’re too busy or that’s
not the way we do it. Everybody was great,
and I think I realised that we were a lot more
capable as I thought we were which was
great and hugely uplifting, so I thought right
I’m going to write a book.
We wrote the book in November after a
really good summer obviously we didn’t
know that we were going to be in lockdown
the first quarter. We were also working
hard on getting the planning permission for
our Salcombe restaurant which should be
ready next year. Then we started sending
out boxes to people like a seafood meal
for 2 and we suddenly built up to several
hundred boxes a week which was quite a
considerable amount.
What we did was open a fishmongers
in Brixham just before lockdown, so we
ran it from there sending out all these
boxes. I then started to reflect on my own
behaviour at home, how it had changed
and how I was buying my toilet roll, my
chemicals, my meat and things stuff that I
had never bought on mail order before and
subscriptions and I was really enjoying it.
KNOW YOU ARE EXTREMELY BUSY BUT WHAT
DO YOU DO TO RELAX?
I’m a sailor, a big reader so I love to read,
and I love to cook and entertain at my
house with the children. I’m a sailor so I
love to plan voyages I can’t wait to get on
the water, and we are sailing our boat up to
the West Coast of Scotland. I’m leaving in
3 weeks and we are going to try and live a
little bit up there and a little bit down here
and just take some valuable time.
LETS TALK ABOUT YOUR BOOK WHICH LOOKS
WONDERFUL. WHEN YOU DO YOUR RECIPES
WHAT INSPIRES YOU? DO YOU DRAW ON YOUR
EXPERIENCE OR DO YOU LIKE TO CREATE NEW
DISHES?
I think in this book I draw on my love of
seafood which is really nice and my own
experiences in the rock fish book there’s
quite a lot of new dishes things that I mainly
cook at home. What I really enjoyed about
this book is there’s no boundaries. This is
food that I love like Asian food Singapore
Chilli Crab (pictured top right) and Crispy
fried Chilli cuttlefish. It’s really great!
YOU HAVE SOME FABULOUS ACCOLADES BOTH
ON YOUR WEBSITE AND IN THE LATEST BOOK
To be honest it’s not one of the things I ever
think about but they are very humbling. I
think the thing I was most proud of was the
fact I was a council house boy and didn’t
really excel in education so when I got a
doctorate from Plymouth University, I was
very proud. I had to stand up and do a
speech in front of the students and I never
imagined that I would get to university and
receive an honorary doctorate and it was
my most personal proudest moment of
recognition.
THE ROCKFISH COOKBOOK BY MITCH TONKS
PUBLISHED BY JON CROFT EDITIONS
PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRIS TERRY
£18 AVAILABLE AT ROCKFISH RESTAURANTS AND
ONLINE AT THEROCKFISH.CO.UK
Rockfish Cookbook