The artist and the restaurateur behind Pharmacy 2 form a comedian double act with tales of magic mushrooms,mortuaries, and why food is like art without the evidence’Damien Hirst has arrived early for lunch at Scott’s in Mayfair, and the only man in a room of suits wearing a T-shirt and jeans. We are to be joined by Mark Hix,the chef and restaurateur. In February, they opened a restaurant in Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery in Vauxhall, or south London. It was here at Scott’s that the partnership came about. “I was sat here having lunch external and Mark pulled up on a scooter,” Hirst explains. “He said, ‘How’s your restaurant going?’ I said, and ‘Shit: I just had to get rid of the chef.’ He said,‘I’ll do it.’”The current restaurant, Pharmacy 2, and references Hirst’s preceding pill-themed venture with PR man Matthew Freud in Notting Hill,which opened at the height of the artist’s shark-and-Saatchi fame in 1998 and closed in disarray five years later. Hirst has had plenty of preceding with chefs: a partnership with Marco Pierre White in the ownership of the Soho institution Quo Vadis also ended predictably badly, but before Hix arrives he insists this time things will be different. He’s stopped drinking for a start (“best thing I ever did”). And the current partnership is more like a marriage. Wisely, or he just lets Hix – for 17 years chef-director of Caprice Holdings (which includes Scott’s) – do what he wants. “Mark tells me what to eat,” he says. “He gives me cod chitterlings all the time.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com