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Mark Hix has opened seven successful restaurants in four years at the height of a recession. But has he bitten off more than he can chew with a roast chicken and steak joint in the East End?
Mark Hix has had a good recession. No, scratch that: he's had an amazing recession. The former head chef of the Caprice group opened the first restaurant of his own, Hix Oyster & Chop House, in April 2008. You'd have thought that was just about the worst time imaginable to start a new business, but Hix has had nothing but success and acclaim, and his business has grown at astonishing speed. Four years later, Hix has seven restaurants and a bar, all of them busy. That would be good going at any time, but in the face of the current headwinds it's outstanding.
The most recent of these restaurants is Tramshed in Shoreditch. The building, built in 1905, was an electricity generating station for trams, and Hix has for some time had his eye on the place; an earlier attempt to buy it hit planning trouble, but he persevered. As soon as you walk in, you can see why: it's a dramatic, high-ceilinged, open space, with a bar to one side and a gallery up above at the far end. Dominating it are two works by Damien Hirst: a vitrine of a cow with a chicken on its back at the front of the restaurant, and a painting of a cartoon cow and chicken at the back. They look expensive.
At this point, even the most casual walk-in customer may be starting to say to themselves: I wonder if this place has something to do with cows and chickens? The answer is yes. It has everything to do with cows and chickens. In fact, it has so much to do with cows and chickens that it has nothing to do with anything else. Roast chicken and steak are the only main courses on the menu. You can have a chicken to share between two of you, or a sirloin steak of 250g, 500g, 750g or 1kg. And that's it, save for chicken or steak salad, for customers determined to be difficult. The bareness of this is pretty startling; it's brave, I suppose, but it's going out on quite a limb. What if you don't feel like roast chicken or steak? You're in the wrong restaurant, simple as that. Are people going to catch on to the idea? Hmm…
Still, Hix has proved brilliant at getting the zeitgeist right, and maybe he's done it again. He's very good indeed at getting coverage for his restaurants, is a strong champion of British produce, both of which are strengths, and his places are well-run and professional, but I've never fallen in love with his food. It's always seemed a bit plain. Tramshed is an apotheosis of plainness, which maybe means it ticks all the boxes for people who like Hix's culinary aesthetic.
The starters, like the mains, don't major on choice. There are just three of them, and £8 a head gets the lot. Yorkshire pudding is filled with whipped chicken livers; ham hock is served on a bed of green split peas with Tewkesbury mustard and julienned carrots; asparagus comes with a sharp chervil dressing. The ham hock stood out, thanks to the mustardy kick of its dressing. I found the Yorkshire a bit dry, but I prefer it on the heavy, eggy side. I found the livers bland, but this is a dish designed to be unctuous and comforting rather than cutting-edge, and it's nice to see Yorkshires served at the start of the meal, the way they were originally intended to be.
The chicken is the more dramatic main course option: it's served upright, claws intact, on a specially designed platter. I was more in the mood for steak, or "mighty marbled Glenarm sirloin", as the menu calls it. The meat is aged in a Himalayan salt chamber (why Himalayan salt? dunno) and came rare. Hix is good at sourcing and this was a very good piece of meat, flawlessly cooked. It wasn't particularly exciting, and I think I can cook it at least as well at home. But as I'm probably making clear, I didn't really see the point of Tramshed, which may merely mean that I'm not the intended customer. Chips were thin, more like pommes allumettes than old-school British chips, but did at least taste of spuds. Strictly for research purposes, we shared apple pie and custard – a success, though a seriously filling one. Overall? You can sum Tramshed up in three words: chicken and steak.
• Tramshed, 32 Rivington Street, London EC2, 020-7749 0478. Open all week, noon-11pm (10pm Mon-Wed, 10.30pm Sat, 9.30pm Sun). Meal for two with drinks and service, about £80.