Unusual suspects

A great boozer isn’t about chorizo pie or big breweries, say the guys behind the successful Kushti chain. It’s about proper British grub and being unique.  By Chris Orr

THE GUYS behind Kushti don’t look very kushti. They look, well… absolutely knackered. But then when you’ve opened three bar and restaurant venues in as many years then you’ve probably earned the right to look a little frayed around the edges.

"It’s funny actually," explains Mark Slade, who with James McDowell, Jamie Polito and Nick Rouse opened Kushti’s first venture, the Highgate, in 2000.  "But now we’re on our third project, The Greyhound, we’re kind of getting used to it all.

I wouldn’t say it was easier but we’ve sort of got the balance right now and we’re pretty up on it."  "Well, we certainly know the pitfalls," adds Jamie, who in a former life was an IT manager but gave it all up and went to work for Bass.

From there he went to the Prince Bonaparte in Notting Hill, where he met Jamie, who was the head chef, and Mark who was part of the management team.

Together with Nick, a childhood friend of James and former manager of the Elbow Rooms, also in Notting Hill, they launched Kushti on a fundamentally selfish premise – they wanted to create a series of venues where they themselves would want to go and drink and eat in.

"With Highgate," explains James, "it was all fairly pressurised.  We knew we had six months rent-free, but at the end of that six months we had to be up, running and basically earning money.

With the Greyhound, it’s not really been so time critical.  I mean, of course you want to be open and earning money, but you can still support it with cashflow from the other sites – you don’t necessarily want to, but you can if push comes to shove.  I mean if the builders go over by two to three weeks it doesn’t matter that much." 

Nick Rouse looks slightly less convinced.  "It always amazes me how right up until the last minute the place will look an absolute bombsite, but the builders reassure you it will all be fine, and then suddenly, within 24 hours it can completely turnaround.

It was like that with the Highgate, like that with the Gunmakers, and it’s exactly the same with the Greyhound. In fact, I’m still not used to that part of it." 

The Gunmakers was the company’s second venue and opened in 2002, quietly slipping into its surroundings in Clerkenwell as if it had been there for centuries.  Which in truth it had, having been various incarnations of a pub over time.

"To be honest that’s exactly what we wanted.  We matched the paint on the walls to what we believe was the original colour found when the building work was done, and spent a bloody fortune on getting the etched glass for behind the bar – we had to get some guy down from the north to do it. I think he might be the only person that actually can still do it.

"Anyway, the idea was to create a traditional British pub – not some pseudo gastropub, or hashed up version but a proper traditional British pub."  "Actually," adds Jamie, "I found doing the menu for the Gunmaker’s quite difficult.

My background is mainly European and French food.  When we decided oysters and prawns could be considered traditional British food I was quite relieved, actually.  I think a lot of people have forgotten what traditional British food is.

"I mean people talk about good British food, and the pub is kind of where you expect to get it but fundamentally never do.  But with us you know, we decided to put a  loughman’s on.  We cure our own ham.  Make our own piccalilli, do a meat terrine, use two different cuts of pork.

In lots of ‘gastropubs’ it’s trendy to have tapas etc, but frankly the British version is a really decent ploughman’s."  "I think it’s that people are scared to do proper British food actually.  I think they’ve forgotten how good it could be," adds James.  "Really. T hey think it’s more clever to put Spanish charcuterie on the menu.  They think it sounds more impressive."

"Do you know that’s funny that is, cos, the other day I went to a pub which is meant to specialise in traditional meat pies.  The whole idea is that it’s trad British food," joins in Mark.

"But when I ordered from the menu they had something like a chicken and chorizo pie. What’s remotely bloody British about that.  I mean I’m sure its lovely and all but it sort of misses the point."

Two things become quickly apparent when talking to Kushti.  First, Mark and James are clearly the talkative ones.  Jamie and Nick tend to be a little more reserved – perhaps because it’s difficult to get a word in edgeways.

Second, "gastropubs" is not a word to bandy about in front of these lads.  "The problem with ‘gastropubs’ is that they’re based on one or two very original versions, such as the Westbourne in Notting Hill or the Eagle in Clerkenwell," says Mark.

"They were done by individuals, rather than big breweries, but the big breweries try to do it now, and it just doesn’t work."  "That’s the problem you see.  When I was at Bass," says James, readying to vent some spleen, "I fought tooth and nail for that individual side of things.

What I saw was an individual pub that an individual had created and had given a unique identity, business and clientele, bought up by a brewery that simply can’t operate that way.  They have to have a rule book – you can do this, but you can’t do that. 

And that means your prices have to be the same as the pub up the road, irrespective of your business.  "There was absolutely no room for flexibility in the corporate umbrella.  I mean, say I want to do this great dish.   Well, can we buy it frozen?  If not, then no.

It becomes a company run by accountants.  I remember saying to the then managing director of Bass, who came down to see our site: ‘I want you to stand behind my bar on a Saturday night and explain to my customers why they haven’t got toilet paper in the toilet or there are some lightbulbs gone, because you’ve told me my budget has to be X and I’ve got to stop spending, irrespective of how much my pub makes or contributes more than others’.

And it was that paradox between trying to be a corporate business, and yet being an individual site.  "Does that make sense?" asks James, mid-rant.  Actually yes.  "You’ve got to find your niche.  You can’t be all things to all men.

Rather than throwing lots of balls at coconuts.  Christ, what an earth am I talking about. That was a really crap analogy wasn’t it." Er.. yes.  "One of the biggest problems the major brewery companies have of course, is that all this isn’t necessarily a question of choice.

They have shareholders to answer to and the City expects a lot.  The shareholders want to know exactly how many peas go onto each plate, exactly how many chips go on to each plate, because if it isn’t the same for every plate then the GP changes, and they can’t have that.

"But what gets me is a lot of breweries have hold of some of the most fantastic sites but don’t seem remotely interested in doing anything with them.  It’s almost impossible to get in with them, because they just aren’t interested.

With some of these properties they could be getting decent rent and their beer run through with minimum investment, but they just don’t seem interested." 

One thing you can’t accuse the Kushti team of is a lack of passion, even if it is partly fuelled by a distaste for the business acumen of their competition.  And it’s a passion that has led to the Highgate appearing in the nominations for Time Out’s "gastropub" of the year, and a string of rave reviews. 

It’s also the reason that it and the Gunmaker’s – and no doubt the Greyhound in the future too – have remained pretty well packed to the rafters since they opened. And packed with customers that, from the wine perspective, are a little bolthole of nirvana.

"What’s amazing for us is the whole wine scene," explains Mark. "I mean, our wine sales outstrip our draft beer, as a percentage of wet sales."  Pretty impressive stuff given that at least two out of the three venues are essentially pub operations.

At the moment, the team use Bibendum and Thorman Hunt as their suppliers but are looking to add a third supplier to that list.  "A bit of competition’s good for you, I think," is Mark’s diplomatic way of putting it.

The question is, of course, what does the future hold? With the Greyhound opening shortly, what is the next project on the horizon? "The idea was always to get the first three up and running as quickly as we could," explains James.

"And then see what happens.  I think the plan at the moment is to sit back for 12-18 months – pay ourselves a bit of cash, perhaps – then look to roll out some other venues sometime after that."

"We think currently with three enterprises we can maintain the quality as it is.  What we don’t want to do is compromise on quality," adds Mark. 

"The last thing we really want to hear is that awful phrase that gets bandied about when things slip, you know the ‘Ah the Highgate, that used to be such a good place’ type comment. We’re trying to be sensible and say let’s get the first three sorted out and then move forward.

"We’re not going to go mass route,  because that wouldn’t work with us.  If you take something like Pizza Express, that works because it’s basically such a simple concept, no idiot could fuck it up.  Ours is more complicated really." 

"And you have to remember," says James with a wry wisdom, "That it’s pretty fickle this business.  There’s a pub in Charlotte Street in the East End.  It’s an absolute shithole, the toilets are disgusting, yet it’s mobbed all the time.

But then, there are other places around there that people have spent half a million on and nobody shows up.  "I tell you what would be really good though," he says finally. "What I hope happens, is that we end up with 10 sites and then Bass comes in and buys them off us."

Mark nods sagely in agreement, Nick rolls his eyes heavenwards and Jamie, being the only chef in the outfit, continues to stare into space and dream of the possibility of a nice comfy bed.

Bizarrely enough, though, you can easily see James’ dream becoming reality in a few years time – by which time they will presumably be even more knackered.