It’s been a busy 12 months for the Gladwin brothers. Having just opened their latest restaurant The Black Lamb in Wimbledon, a fleeting six months after launching The Fat Badger in Richmond, the trio now runs a six-strong line-up of restaurants across London (including The Shed, Rabbit, Nutbourne and Sussex).
Such is the success story of Richard, Oliver and Gregory Gladwin; three brothers who grew up on a vineyard in Sussex. The siblings all, one way or another, fell into the world of food (becoming a restaurateur, chef and farmer respectively) and ended up armed with the skills needed to launch a major restaurant business.
In the blood
Fortuitous as it sounds, their tale isn’t exactly one of chance. To say they came from a foodie family would be an understatement; both their parents are professionally-trained chefs with mutiple businesses to their name, including a catering company, English vineyard (Nutbourne) and a family farm. During our chat, Richard and Oliver speak highly of their upbringing and attribute a great chunk of their food-trodden path to their parents.
‘My mother was a Cordon Bleu diploma chef so she had great ability’, recounts Oliver. ‘I remember making bread using a bread machine with mum when I was 10 years old. She gave me that autonomy in my growth’’.
‘They didn’t push us at all. I think they just always wanted us to work hard and they taught us that from a young age, from working on the land. As we grew into the industry, they were very encouraging and still are very supportive of what we do’, explains Richard.
Growing up on an English vineyard came with its own set of culinary keys as well, instilling the boys with a nuanced understanding of the land and where things come from, even if at the time it merely seemed simplified as every child’s dream. ‘The vineyards were on a big slope that goes towards the lake’, recounts Richard. ‘We built a ramp where we could ride a bicycle down the hill, up the ramp, do a flip, and then jump in the lake. It was just so much fun.’
Still, the idea of one day owning a restaurant was planted in their minds from a young age. ‘I would talk about owning a restaurant from 12 years old’, says Richard. ‘There wasn't any question that I was going to do anything else. All through school and on the weekends, I was working in a local restaurant at front of house and Oliver in the early days was even in the kitchen on the weekends. And, you know, that's just what we did.’
Of course, they did other things before opening The Shed. Richard spent time launching various restaurants, from helping to open Bunga Bunga in Battersea to setting up a catering and restaurant business in New York. While Oliver dabbled in a couple of high-profile kitchens, working at The Oxo Tower and Launceston Place. He always knew that something was missing though.
‘I was a farm boy, knowing that an animal is whole, and wanting to know that.'
‘I was a farm boy, [and grew up] knowing that an animal is whole, and wanting to know that. All those different kitchens gave me a great scope of what it took to become a chef... [but] what I love about cooking is what none of them really showed, which was quite interesting at the time for me. I was running the meat and fish section in the Oxo Tower and we were serving 300 lamb rumps or 400 pieces of fillet a day. And the question was, what happens to the rest of the animal? I wrote a letter to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall down at River Cottage in Devon. Gill Meller wrote a letter back saying, well, come on down. And I did.’
Fast forward to 2012 and we arrive at The Shed, the brother’s first restaurant in Notting Hill, which they opened at the tender ages of 26 (Richard) and 24 (Oliver). ‘The shed was a huge hit from day one. It was during the boom of the restaurant industry for what was probably eight years pre-covid, with everybody opening restaurants all the time. It was a really good industry to be in.’
The success of their first venture was about more than just right place, right time though. Their ethos was one that captured the hearts of many at a time when sustainability wasn’t the buzzword that it is today. It was this farm-to-table concept, and sourcing everything as locally as possible, that marked the beginning of their Local & Wild restaurant group.
Fresh, local, seasonal
It would be impossible to discuss the Gladwin brothers’ restaurant empire without touching on sustainability. Nowadays, the word can get bashed round a lot, but for Oliver it’s the only possible approach to the food he serves in his restaurants.
‘Sustainability has become a big tagline and one can overuse the word. If we drop down from that, it has to be seasonal, it has to be local, it has to be small production. It needs to be all the things underneath that bracket and however good you are at cooking, if you don't have really delicious fresh, local seasonal ingredients, then it's not going to be wonderful.’
This focus on serving diners the freshest local and seasonal produce, the fodder of their childhood, has become the shop front for their brand – they even have a catchy tagline (what goes together, grows together). But the Gladwin brother's commitment to sustainability runs deeper than that. ‘We really want to give the rotas for the chefs for a 50-hour week, rather than the 60, 70, 80 that they might be pushed to work in other places’, explains Oliver.
‘We do have this amazing procedure in our restaurants, where we analyse what food waste comes back on each plate. If the course was too big, then it's spoken about, reported and therefore changed or challenged the next day. So, there's this wonderful consistency of improving every day, and acknowledging the processes and the offering.’
The Black Lamb
This sustainable mindset extends to their newest venture - The Black Lamb - which has just taken over what used to be The White Onion in Wimbledon. ‘Our business specialisies in neighbourhood, community restaurants and that's part of the sustainability of it’, explains Richard. As for the question about whether opening a new restaurant so close to The Fat Badger might be too much? Richard’s enthusiasm kicks any doubts to the curb.
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‘It was fortuitous that an agent sent me across The White Onion literally the week that we opened The Fat Badger. We went to help our dad cook the Lord Mayor's banquet towards the end of November - I think we were week one into The Fat Badger and I was standing in this enormous kitchen about to cook, with my dad and Oliver, for about 800 people. I said, ‘'Dad, guess what, I’ve found the next restaurant already!''.
‘We wanted to take [The Black Lamb] on despite it being so near to The Fat Badger and the added pressure that comes with that. It's exciting!’’
Our final question: are there any plans for a seventh restaurant? ‘Absolutely not!’, exclaims Richard, only half-joking. ‘There might well be but we're not looking’, he explains. ‘The industry is in a very difficult place right now. So, it's about holding on. It's about remaining profitable and seeing what gets thrown at us. We've just had our big expansion and not in the climate that we were necessarily expecting. So, it's now to build on from there.’
What was the last great meal you ate?
Richard: My lunch at Lisboeta by Nuno Mendes was outstanding. Every dish was really, really good. By far the best restaurant meal I’ve had this year.
Oliver: The megrim sole I ate about an hour ago from here (Sussex)! Made with paprika fish stock and a buttery seaweed sauce - as fresh as it gets. It's probably the most delicious thing I've eaten.
What is your favourite restaurant in the UK?
Richard: I love a trip to Barrafina. But I also miss the days where we used to go down to Whitstable and just eat oysters off the seawall.
Oliver: It might be boring but my go-to celebratory seafood restaurant would be Le Colombier on Dovehouse Street in Chelsea.
If you weren’t a chef or a restaurateur, what would you be doing?
Richard: I've always wanted to be landscape gardener. We moved into our house recently and it came with no garden at all, so I'm planting banana trees and tree ferns and I have a real vision for it.
Oliver: Tree surgeon.
Read our interview with the Selby's for another brotherly tale about the trio who opened a Michelin-starred restaurant together.