Interview: Dom Hamdy, HAM Restaurants

A year into his first ever collaboration project, Dom Hamdy of HAM Restaurants speaks to Tristan O’Hana about influencers, positivity and partnering with Mason & Fifth.

Chances are you won’t have heard of one of the two focal businesses that this lead interview centres on. I’d wager you know HAM Restaurants, or at least one of the sites within its glowing portfolio. But how about Mason & Fifth, the boutique guest house operator that runs three swanky outposts around town? Maybe. Maybe not. 

HAM is the brainchild of Dom Hamdy, whose modest beginnings of running a Soho market stall in 2014 (he sold very popular scotch eggs) have gradually transformed into leading one of London’s most admired little restaurant groups. Within the HAM estate you have modern European-focussed Crispin in Spitalfields; the wine-orientated Bar Crispin in Soho; the much-lauded Bistro Freddie in Shoreditch; and Crispin at Studio Voltaire in Clapham. If you check the HAM Restaurants website, those are the businesses that you’ll find. 

What you won’t find, however, is a link to Canal, the waterside restaurant offer that sits alongside Mason & Fifth’s third and most recent property in Westbourne Park. This is either because Hamdy wants to keep HAM’s core restaurants clear/separate or he’s got a lazy web developer – I’m guessing it’s the former. What’s interesting is that Mason & Fifth make no mention of HAM on its website either, so it’s clearly a conscious decision from both parties to portray Canal independently. Canal is another ‘Britain meets European’ effort from Hamdy and his team, but one that has been delivered in collaboration with the guest house business. When the partnership began a little over a year ago, it was the first time that HAM had worked with another hospitality organisation on a project. So how did it come about? Was it something Hamdy had always thought of doing?

“Canal and the partnership with Mason & Fifth came out of nowhere,” he says. “I was introduced to the founder [Ben Prevezer] by a friend, a really great chef called Diarmuid Goodwin, who we’ve worked with on and off for a number of years.

“He introduced us because Ben Prevezer was looking for a food and beverage partner, someone to run that part of the business for them. Westbourne Park was the third building in their estate, and it was the only building that had a number of amenities that they hadn’t managed before. So, rather than taking on the food and beverage themselves, they decided it’s not a bad idea to partner with someone. They did the same with their wellness centre, event programming and recording studio. We weren’t looking to do a joint venture with anyone; we just spoke the same language and it felt like a good fit.”

Al fresco at Canal

Obvious location, hard to find

As the name suggests, Canal sits unassumingly alongside the Grand Union Canal in Westbourne Grove. If the sun’s out, it’s an unbeatable setting for a leisurely lunch. However, despite the direct indicator of a title, when you arrive at Mason & Fifth, it’s not immediately obvious where the F&B offer is within the building. That’s because, technically, it’s not in the building. Guests at the 352 private studio-business have to head back out of the main entrance and down some stairs to the waterside to access the fifth (4.5th?) restaurant from HAM.   

“It’s a real destination spot and that presents some challenges,” says Hamdy. “You can’t really please everyone, but the success of a restaurant is trying to figure out what people want. We have the same ethos across all of the sites in that we use the same suppliers, we have real integrity when it comes to all of our sourcing and what goes in our wine glasses and what ingredients we cook with, and those things stay the same. Canal is ultimately a hotel restaurant and it sits within a bigger organisation, so rather than seeing that as a barrier, we really want to lean into it.”

What does that mean? How does the menu differ from what he does at the other sites? 

“So a good example is, if you’re in a hotel, you have to have a burger of some sort. We have this menu that, if you take out the burger, it probably looks like it could belong to the HAM Restaurants family, but then you add in the burger, and it kind of indicates that you might be somewhere else. Rather than shying away from it, we just used the same ethos, got some great beef and buns and anything that goes into the burger, and let it stand out on the menu with its own section.”

What Hamdy means here is that sat very clearly on the menu, separated between the small and large plates sections, is ‘the table cheeseburger’. This psychological placement seems to subconsciously prompt guests to either order it for the table alongside other dishes, or take its position on the page literally and have it between courses. Such an approach can lead to a wildly misleading label for the humble item. 

“We encourage everyone to have this ‘inter course burger’,” says Hamdy. “If you’re a table of four, you just get one for the table. If people staying in the hotel just want a burger and chips, that’s totally fine, but how can we add to the experience? There has been a slightly different approach from a menu standpoint.” 

A different approach doesn’t mean an unenjoyable one, though. While Hamdy admits there have been some challenges along the way in “managing relationships and expectations, and trying to understand where to push and where to decide not to die on the hill with an idea”, it genuinely seems that working under shared autonomy has been beneficial to him and his team.

“There are bigger stakeholders and other things at play that we needed to consider that we hadn’t had to before,” he says. “It was kind of fun seeing how a bigger organisation works. I’ve just been driving this business from a small market stall in 2014 to where we currently are now, and hadn’t really worked for anyone else before. It was quite exciting to work with lots of other people. Dylan Murray, for example, the ops director at Mason & Fifth, used to be the ops director for Soho House. It’s a real opportunity to try and learn from someone who’s been in hospitality at a very successful level for many decades.”

Inside Canal, Westbourne Park

Freddie again

When I ask Hamdy how the HAM-only restaurants are currently performing, like a proper parent, he doesn’t single out a favourite. He’s proud of the fact that his brands, if you can call them that, have remained true to their initial conceptions, with Crispin Spitalfields perhaps being the only exception, as it has been through a few iterations over the years. When pushed slightly, though, he does land on the evident popularity of Bistro Freddie.

“If you were to ask people generally, I think Bistro Freddie is probably the restaurant that resonated with the biggest number of people the quickest,” he says. 

I ask him how much social media phenomenon TopJaw has to do with that. Hamdy has been quite open in the past about how, within 24 hours of TopJaw featuring Bistro Freddie in a ‘best new openings’ video, 800 bookings came in for the Shoreditch restaurant. Can a site’s success be attributed to such exposure? 

“Bistro Freddie objectively is a very good restaurant that we work very, very hard at keeping consistent,” says Hamdy. “TopJaw can give you kind of a leg up, but the success of a restaurant is down to its merit as a restaurant. We’re very grateful to the TopJaw guys, but if you don’t have a great product, then it won’t last.”

Can that be said about all influencers then? The problem with running a cool restaurant group – and HAM Restaurants is a very cool restaurant group – is that you will always attract a brigade of Eating with Daves or Dining with Karens hellbent on capturing the latest hype in the most annoying manner possible. Whether they know much detail about the food on offer or the business behind it almost doesn’t matter, because they have over a million followers planning their next proud post on what Dave or Karen has shared. Gordon Ramsay recently said that influencers are now more important to restaurants than national critics. Given Hamdy has hosted both sets of documentarians in all of his sites, what does he make of that?

“No restaurant can be objectively perfect or loved by everyone,” he says. “Restaurants are, in their nature, quite subjective, a subjective pursuit. I’d say you might be running into a bit of danger if you’re creating a restaurant for influencers or for critics. I think they have to be honest places that are really trying to deliver whatever the vision is behind them. Trends and what people like one minute might change the next. 

“We’re totally accommodating to anyone, really. If you’re a writer, if you’re an influencer, a journalist. All voices are important, and they all reach differing audiences, none of which is more important than the other. But I think the more important thing is just trying to find your loyal audience, and if you’ve got them coming back, that’s really the main thing. The reach of some of these people is absolutely astronomical and that can’t really be underestimated, but you just need to do what you need to do.”

The Listening Lounge at Mason & Fifth

Stay positive 

Staying on the topic of social media, before our conversation comes to an end, I ask Hamdy if he heard a recent Go To Food Podcast interview with Ed McIlroy, founder of north London businesses The Plimsoll and Tollingtons Fish Bar. In that chat, McIlroy criticises any operator who is complaining about the current difficulty of doing business in the hospitality industry, saying “bollocks” to those who claim it’s too hard, and citing professions such as healthcare and law as also pretty hard work. What does Hamdy make of that? Does he agree that there are too many people complaining about how tough it is out there?

“Yeah, I would agree, to a certain degree, to be honest,” he concludes. “I’m a real advocate for a positive outlook. I’m not advocating for toxic positivity, but it’s not all doom and gloom. People are out there spending and enjoying themselves. Crispin has been open for eight years and the Valentine’s just gone was the busiest night we’ve ever had at all of the restaurants, all on the same night. People are still valuing this analogue experience that doesn’t really exist anywhere else. 

“All of the best operators that are busy, I would hesitate to say that they’re doing anything but well. Super 8 [Smoking Goat, Kiln], JKS, David Carter [Oma, Smokestak] and Ed McIlroy. These are some of the best operators and the best restaurateurs. They have teams that are fully focused and doing the best that they can, and they’re all great businesses. 

“Of course, it’s tough. Your business models don’t necessarily stack up in the way that they used to, and you’re trying to find half a percent here and there and whatnot. But that’s kind of part of it, isn’t it? If it were too easy, everyone would be succeeding at it, and that would be no fun at all.”

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