Matt Mawtus, Director of Food & Beverage at Hide
“I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
Have I chosen the wrong path? I often deal with this internal battle myself; great angst and anguish regarding the reaching of some ‘unmeasurable potential’. Leaving my highly academic university with a 1st Class Honours degree, no one expected me to fall in love with restaurants. Aha, no! Not the culinary side, but the customer-facing side. Service became my thing, not chef whites and soignée cuisson. My friends were shocked, and my parents were cautiously intrigued. Sometimes, certain people remind me of that glimmering delight, that wholehearted desire to make guests feel completely astonished by the little details, the forward-thinking, and the knowledge.
Today I talked with Matt Mawtus, the Director of Food and Beverage of The Hedonism Group. This symbiotic group has a few members: Hide (a 1 Michelin-starred restaurant), Hideaway (a boutique cafe), Hedonism Wines, and The White Horse (a pub with a great focus on wine). Matt currently directs at Hide, Hideaway and The White Horse. Previously, he ran the opening team of Berners Tavern, and was also General Manager of Pollen Street Social. Before that, he worked at Hilton Hotels and Gordon Ramsay Restaurants.
Tremendously passionate and utterly professional, the beginnings of his career path eerily echo mine (hotelier school aside), as he went against the grain too. Dedicating his life to hospitality, he left school to pursue vocational education at the Scottish Hotel School and the University of Strathclyde. Matt has now won awards such as Winner of UK Young Waiter of the Year 2007 and GQ Front of House Personality of the Year 2017 - what a mentor!
“Service is what you do for somebody; hospitality is how you make them feel”
As a chef, your main role is to create delicious food. You prep all day to provide your guests with the concrete and real objective of your hard work. However, as a waiter, your roles and responsibilities are relatively intangible. Yes, you must ensure your guest is happy, note allergies, and turn your tables on time. Yet, in your subtly lies great skill, and this cannot be quantified. Your ability to read body language, to secretly eavesdrop on conversation at the correct moment, to overhear a celebration, to book a taxi so that they don’t need to wait outside and potentially miss the start of their West End show, to provide a handwritten list of all your recommendations for their next trip abroad, to rejoice at someone moving to London alone for their job promotion, to make people feel less lonely. To fall asleep at 2 am and start service 10 hours later, greet and connect with hundreds of guests all over again.
As our world becomes driven by AI and computer technology, people will yearn and crave connection more. We are a species that thrives from socialising.
I’m Stella, and I’m gonna take you out for dinner.
Find me!
Follow the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and me on Instagram @stellagent for the latest updates.
Mentions:
Matt Mawtus, Director of Food and Beverage at Hide
Tori Slater, The Herd Collective
The Quality Chop House, Farringdon
Gordon Ramsay RestaurantsGabor Papp - Front of House Director at Woodhead Restaurant
Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Mayfair
Pollen Street Social, Mayfair (permanently closed)
1 Lombard Street, City of London
What do I use to make this podcast?
Recording Equipment:
Zoom H5
ZDM-1 Podcast Mic Pack (x2)
Reaper Audio Editing Software