Mark Hix

Mark Hix is an English chef, restaurateur and food writer, known for traditional British cooking built on local, seasonal and foraged ingredients. He made his name as chef-director of Caprice Holdings, then built the HIX restaurant group in London and Dorset, which closed in 2020. Since then he has rebuilt his career in his home county, first with a fish truck and the Oyster & Fish House in Lyme Regis, and today with a small pop-up restaurant. He was awarded an MBE in the 2017 New Year Honours.

Biography of Mark Hix

Chef Mark Hix was born on 10 December 1962 in West Bay, a small harbour town on the Dorset coast near Bridport, and grew up in the same part of the county. Different sources give slightly different details: Wikipedia and his own biography point to West Bay and 1962, while a trade profile in The Caterer says he was born in Weymouth in 1960. This article follows the Wikipedia dates.

Mark Hix's Youth

Hix has described a childhood built around simple country food. His grandmother cooked cheaper cuts such as lamb hearts and pork belly, and his grandfather grew tomatoes, a smell he has named as a favourite food memory. At school he took domestic science rather than metalwork. He has joked that he and his friends chose it because it seemed a good place to meet girls, but he soon found he had a talent for cooking and won a cooking award. He considered becoming a professional golfer before choosing catering instead.

He studied at Weymouth College, where he completed City & Guilds qualifications. The college later named its culinary programme the Hix Academy in his honour. At 18 he moved to London, where his first job was in the staff canteen at the London Hilton on Park Lane.

Parents

Hix's parents divorced when he was six. According to Wikipedia, which draws on Telegraph interviews, his father had custody of him while his brother Kevin lived with their mother, and his father was often away. Hix spent much of his time with his paternal grandfather, who was a chrysanthemum gardener, a mayor of Bridport and a bar owner. The Mark Hix chef profile on Great British Chefs describes him as raised by his grandparents, so the two accounts overlap on the grandparents' influence while differing on who he lived with.

Mark Hix's Restaurants

Over about 17 years Mark Hix opened or ran a large number of venues. The table below lists the main Mark Hix restaurants and venues, with dates from Wikipedia and trade press. Sources disagree on some opening years, for example HIX Mayfair and HIX Belgravia, so treat the years as approximate.

The 2020 administration

The Mark Hix Soho restaurant, HIX Soho, had already closed on 22 December 2019 after ten years, with Hix citing rising rents and difficult market conditions. In April 2020, shortly after the first COVID-19 lockdown began, the rest of the group's restaurants were put into administration. Hix had gone into business with the hospitality group Westbury Street Holdings (WSH) in 2016 as a minor shareholder; one report puts his stake at 25%. He said the administration happened without his consent, input or knowledge. Before the closures, HIX restaurants employed about 130 staff. The closures included HIX Oyster & Chop House, Bankside, Tramshed, Mark's Bar, HIX Soho and the Lyme Regis Fish House. Hix has said publicly that he was against the decision.

The Fish Truck and the Oyster & Fish House

About two months later, Hix started the HIX Oyster and Fish Truck, selling local fish from a converted Chevrolet ambulance he found on eBay for £8,000. It helped local fishermen sell catches that hotels and restaurants could not buy during lockdown. In July 2020 he reopened the Lyme Regis restaurant as The Oyster & Fish House, after buying back the lease from the administrators. Hix has said he restarted from scratch and cashed in his pension to do it.

The original Mark Hix Lyme Regis restaurant had a notable moment in September 2009: the television chef Keith Floyd lunched there hours before he died of a heart attack. A menu special called "Keith Floyd's Last Lunch" was seen by some as a tribute and criticised by others.

The decking and the closure

The Mark Hix decking dispute began during the pandemic, when Hix used relaxed planning rules to build a £20,000 wooden deck at the restaurant. In early 2023, local councillors voted for it to be removed, even though a petition called "Save Mark Hix's Decking" collected more than 6,500 signatures. In November 2024, Hix announced the closure of the Oyster & Fish House on 7 December 2024, after 16 years of trading. Mitch Tonks's Rockfish group took over the site, and Hix said the team would move across to the new restaurant. The Mark Hix restaurant closure was his own decision. He cited the pandemic and the growing pressures on the industry, and said he had no plans to open more restaurants.

Mark Hix's pop-up in Lyme Regis

Today the Mark Hix pop up restaurant, known as "Mark's", runs at The Pop Up Kitchen in Lyme Regis. The Mark Hix pop up Lyme Regis evenings are small and informal, with set menus and two-hour sittings at 5.30pm and 8pm. His website lists themed nights for November and December 2026 at £55 to £65 per person, including steak, Asian, Italian, and Spanish and Portuguese nights. He also offers Catch and Cook Days and Wild Food Experiences in Dorset. Anyone searching for a Mark Hix restaurant Lyme Regis should check the official website for dates, since this is no longer a full-time restaurant.

Mark Hix's Career

Hix spent about two decades working for other people before opening restaurants under his own name, and today combines cooking with writing and broadcasting.

The Beginning of His Career

After the Hilton canteen, Hix worked at the Grosvenor House Hotel and The Dorchester, where his kitchen education came under chefs such as Anton Edelmann and Anton Mosimann. He then joined the small group Mr Pontacs as sous chef, and aged 22 he became head chef of its Candlewick Room restaurant in the City of London. One profile credits him with helping that restaurant win a Michelin award.

He later joined Caprice Holdings, the owner of The Ivy, Le Caprice and J Sheekey, and became its Chef Director in 1999. In 2005 he opened The Rivington Bar and Grill while still at Caprice, operating it anonymously until Caprice bought it. After 17 years with the group he left in 2007 and opened HIX Oyster & Chop House near Smithfield market in 2008.

Television, Radio and Writing

• Great British Menu (2007): Hix won the South West England heat, beating the reigning champion Michael Caines. His main course was a crayfish and rabbit stargazy pie, and his dessert a perry jelly with summer fruits and elderflower ice cream.
• TV appearances: he has appeared on Saturday Kitchen, This Morning and other programmes.
•  Radio: in March 2021 he began hosting Soul Kitchen on Lyme Bay Radio.
• Columns: he wrote for The Independent from 2002 to 2016, has written for The Telegraph since 2020, and has also contributed to Esquire, GQ and City A.M.
• Groucho Club: in November 2022 he became director of food and beverage at the Groucho Club in Soho, where he had been a member for more than 30 years. The sources reviewed do not say how long he held the post.

Mark Hix's Books

Hix's own website says he has written 12 cookbooks. The titles listed on Wikipedia include:

• Eat Up: Food for Children of All Ages (2000)
• Simple Ways to Success: British (2003)
• Fish etc. (2004, revised 2011)
• British Food (2005)
• British Regional Food (2006, with later editions)
• British Seasonal Food (2008)
• Easy Everyday British (2009)
• Hix Oyster & Chop House (2010)
• Mark Hix on Baking (2012)
• Mark Hix: The Collection (2013)
• Hooked: Adventures in Angling & Eating (2019)

He also co-wrote The Ivy: The Restaurant and its Recipes with the critic A. A. Gill. Hix's cookery books are available digitally through the ckbk service.

Art and Collaborations

Hix has long been close to the art world. He collaborated with his friend the artist Damien Hirst on Pharmacy 2 in Vauxhall, and Tramshed in Shoreditch held a Hirst installation. He set up the annual HIX Award, an art prize for emerging artists, which Hauser & Wirth sponsored in 2019. In 2020 he was hired as director of food and drink and art curator for the reopening of 1 Lombard Street. He is also the driving force behind the annual Food Rocks festival in Lyme Regis, and has been a brand ambassador for Clarence Court eggs.

Mark Hix's Recipes

Mark Hix recipes are rooted in British cooking, fish and game. Dishes and recipes closely linked to him include:

• Fish pie: a signature dish of his Fish House cooking, published in his magazine recipe pages with a breadcrumb and cheese topping.
• Smoked haddock kedgeree: his version uses natural smoked haddock, a curry sauce with turmeric, cumin and fennel, and hard-boiled eggs. A kedgeree recipe also appears in The Ivy cookbook.
• Braised beef short ribs: also known as Jacob's Ladder, cooked low and slow in red wine, then the sauce is reduced to a rich, gravy-like coating.
• Stargazy pie: the crayfish and rabbit version from Great British Menu.
• Roast goose: Country Life published a Christmas goose recipe from him, and his Telegraph column has covered game dishes such as pheasant Kiev and roast grouse.
• Oyster & Fish House dishes: house-smoked salmon, Dorset oysters, whole local fish served on the bone, cockle popcorn and Korean fried monkfish.

At the Groucho Club he said he would add some of his signature dishes to the club's simple British menu, including its shepherd's pie.

Mark Hix's Personal Life

Hix keeps his private life low-profile, and most details come from press interviews.

Mark Hix's Wife

No public record of a marriage was found, so the answer to "is Mark Hix married?" appears to be no. Searches for a Mark Hix wife lead to relationships rather than marriages. Wikipedia names his ex-partner as Lara Cazalet, with whom he has a daughter. No current girlfriend or partner is publicly named in the sources reviewed. Some online profiles say he once dated the businesswoman Elisabeth Murdoch for about nine months. That claim comes from a secondary, low-reliability source and does not appear in his own biography.

Mark Hix's Children

Hix has three daughters, according to Wikipedia: twin daughters from an earlier relationship, and a daughter with Lara Cazalet. Two of them, Ellie and Lydia, are named in interviews. Lydia is an illustrator, and in an interview with Drakes he said the two were working on a children's book called The Alliums. Hix has said that his daughters grew into keen cooks themselves. Information about Mark Hix children and his wider family comes mostly from interviews, and he has also described his grandparents, Bill and Ellen, as the people he would most like to share a meal with.

Mark Hix's Net Worth

No reliable figure for Mark Hix net worth has been published, and this article does not give one. What is known is that he lost his London restaurant group in the 2020 administration, in which he was a minority shareholder, and that he has described restarting with his own money. His income today comes from the pop-up restaurant, foraging and fishing experiences, his Telegraph column and book sales.

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