Some career conversations happen in boardrooms. Chris Dyke’s happened on a riverbank.
In just his early twenties and working as second chef at the French Horn in Sonning, Dyke was a keen pike fisherman. On his break one afternoon, he walked down to the Thames to scout the water. Marco Pierre White was already there, rod in hand. What followed was an hour-and-a-half conversation that would send Dyke to London within three months.
“We got chatting and he just said, ‘What are you doing with your life?'” Dyke recalls. “I said, ‘I’m a bit lost, I don’t really know where I’m going.’ He said, ‘You need to go to London.’ I said, ‘Okay, all right, I’ll consider it.’ And then about three months later I got my first job there, a four-star hotel right in the middle of Park Lane. I was still only 22.”
It’s the kind of story that belongs in the margins of a chef’s CV, the random encounter that changes the trajectory. But it also speaks to something Dyke values now as Head Chef at Dart Marina: the importance of guidance at the right moment. “When you’re young and you’re a chef, you need your direction,” he says. “It really helps if it comes from people who have good experience within the industry.”
From Newbury to Rules
Dyke’s route to Dartmouth wasn’t direct. He left school in Newbury, Berkshire, “not with very many qualifications, like a lot of chefs,” trained at catering college for two years, and landed his first job at a three-star hotel. From there, he worked under John Burton-Race at a two-Michelin-star restaurant pushing for its third, then spent time at the French Horn – “an incredible place on the River Thames” run by a family of passionate wine merchants whose cellars held treasures like Rothschilds from the 1940s.
London brought scale and pressure. At Rules in Covent Garden, the oldest restaurant in London, Dyke worked in a basement kitchen doing 500 covers a day. “It was completely different to anything I’d ever done before,” he says. “It was learning about mass restaurant catering. The brigade was massive, the kitchen was so well set up and so well organised. We would do busy lunch all the way through from 12 till probably around 11. I’d try and catch the night bus home.”
Later, he bought a small restaurant in Tavistock, sold it, and went to work for Alex Polizzi at the Hotel Endsleigh. “She taught me all about keeping it real and keeping things very authentic,” he says. “She’d also worked with Marco, so she kind of knew her onions.”
Now, at Dart Marina, the shoes are on the other foot. “I’m Yoda now,” Dyke says, in jest. “I’m the one giving out the wisdom.” The hotel runs an apprenticeship programme; their last apprentice, Rosie, a local girl, came in straight from school not knowing what she wanted to do. She competed, won, went to college, stayed for two and a half years. She’s since stepped back from kitchens, “she’s at that age where a lot of people want a little bit of a life” but the foundation is there if she needs it.
The Southwest Food Scene: Exceptional Produce, Structural Challenges
Ask Dyke about the Southwest food scene and he starts with the conspicuous: “We’re really lucky down here. We do have a lot of phenomenal produce.” Dartmouth crab from Tracy’s Crab. Local cheeses. Porthilly oysters. Dartmoor venison. Mussels so good they’re exported to France.
But there’s a tension underneath. A lot of that produce doesn’t stay local. “A lot of it does go to London, where it claims top dollar,” he says. “It’s sold on all around the country and it’s even exported.” The region grows exceptional ingredients, but the economic pull is elsewhere.
Sustainable fish is another case study. For years, species like gurnard, hake, and pollock, fish that local boats catch in abundance, were hard sells. “It was like, ‘What? I’m not eating that,'” Dyke says. “We’re very traditional.” But attitudes are shifting. “People are getting into it more and more. We’re seeing probably a lot more sustainable fish as people’s attitudes change towards it.”
Health-conscious choices are driving some of that shift. Venison, for instance, is growing in popularity, not just because the Dartmoor venison industry has matured, but because diners are making decisions based on health. “It’s super lean,” Dyke says, “as long as you cook it properly.”
The challenges, though, run deeper than consumer tastes. The past decade has brought a real shortage of chefs, and skill levels have dropped. “It’s everywhere,” Dyke says, “but smaller towns, like Dartmouth, Salcombe, they struggle because people can’t settle. House prices are ridiculous and they’ll come for a short period of time and then they tend to move on.”
On top of that, food costs have shot up dramatically over the past four or five years. “Businesses have had to adapt,” he says. “They’ve had to change what they do and rethink how they’re going to do things.” Dart Marina has managed the shift well, he says, but the external factors; economy, chef shortage, rising costs, are constant.
The culture of the industry is changing too. When Dyke trained, “it was pretty hardcore.” Now it’s more about mentoring, looking after people, letting them go on to do their next thing. “It’s not so regimented now. Not quite so strict as what it was.” The rewards are there, he says, but the lifestyle is still difficult, working weekends, balancing a career in hospitality with family life. “If you want a family, it’s quite difficult. But the rewards are definitely there.”
Soul Food at Zephyr
At Zephyr, Dyke and his team have settled on a philosophy they call “soul food.” “We’re cooking from our passion and from our heart,” he says. “Obviously, presentation is important, but we’re more about the flavours and the ingredients and the comforting factors of the dishes.”
The menu at Zephyr hasn’t changed much since day one. “We got together with a circle of brains, thrashed things out, came up with all sorts of ideas, discounted this, didn’t do this, did this, didn’t do this, and then we settled on the menu.” A couple of starters have been introduced, a salad, for instance, to give people a lighter choice, but the core has held.
Part of that stability comes from practicality. “The difference between hotels and restaurants is that whereas in a restaurant they can focus all of their attention on one thing, we are 24/7, non-stop. Busy breakfast, busy lunch, functions, afternoon tea, the bistro, room service, sandwiches, all sorts of things going on.” The menu has to be doable.
If Dyke had to choose one dish off the menu, it would be the lemon tart. “It’s a bit of an obscure choice,” he admits, “but when you look at it, you think, ‘That’s just lemon tart.’ But the work that’s gone into it to get it just right, from the idea to conception to actually serving our first portions, it’s really quite technical and really quite difficult.” Every step has to be exact. The result is crumbly pastry, citrusy custard with a lovely mouth feel, served with raspberry sorbet. Simple to look at. Not simple to do.
Looking Forward
In March, Zephyr is hosting an evening with Mitch Tonks, Mark Hix, and Dyke. It sold out quickly, 45 covers, three chefs collaborating on a three-course menu.
“With Mark, what we’re looking forward to is he was never scared to keep things really simple,” Dyke says. “He had no fear of saying, ‘Actually, no, I’m not going to pile 50 things on the plate and make a fuss. I’m just going to let the ingredients lead and keep things really authentic and really simple.’ It’ll be nice. A breath of fresh air. Good for the team as well.”
When asked what defines a quintessentially Devon dish, Dyke pauses. “Quintessential is a funny word.” He settles on two: fish and chips, or a Devonshire cream tea. “That lovely clotted cream, fresh jam and those lovely scones. In the afternoon with tea, when the sun is shining. Really nice.”
It’s a revealing answer, not the most complex dishes on the menu, but the ones that feel right in the moment. Soul food, in other words. Cooked from passion, grounded in place.
