Avinash Shashidhara, Pali Hill Head Chef, on Surviving the Challenges of Covid

Born in Bangalore, chef and restaurateur Avinash Shashidhara (or just Avi to most people) is one of London’s rising culinary superstars. Cutting his teeth at several leading restaurants, including Hibiscus in Ludlow and the capital’s glamorous River Café, today he runs Pali Hill in Fitzrovia.

Winning critical pundits left, right and centre for its fantastic service, cooking and vibe, Avi tells James Lawrence about the challenges of lockdown, and why he’s (mostly) sanguine about an unknown future.

The UK’s hospitality industry has had to endure three lockdowns over the past 18 months – how has your business survived?

It has been one of the hardest times in history to open a new restaurant in between lockdowns, and it has been a very tough journey, as you can expect. We’ve had to firstly rely on the furlough scheme for those who qualified and the rest were paid by the investors for a few months. We’ve had to let some of our staff go to stay afloat, which was very sad. The hardest bit was keeping the team motivated and staying positive to relaunch the restaurant all over again.

Pali Hill interior, headed by Avinash Shashidhara
Pali Hill interior, Avinash Shashidhara’s respected restaurant.

Since you reopened, have you seen any changes in the behaviour of your diners?

I think the diners have been a lot more cheerful and happy to be allowed to be back at restaurants and able to socialise with their family and friends. I do think they value what we do as an industry a lot more than before.

Do you feel the UK government has done enough to help businesses like yours?

The answer is yes and no. Yes, because of the furlough and other financial schemes that helped us stay afloat, but they also indirectly blamed the hospitality industry for the spread of the virus and penalised us by not allowing us to reopen sooner. There has been no support with finding more workforce from the EU or Commonwealth countries to fill the massive gap in the hospitality sector.

Have you had any issues with sourcing staff?

It has been one of our biggest challenges since we reopened. There is a huge shortage of chefs and front-of-house staff who may have moved back to their country of origin after Brexit or are still stuck in countries that may be on the red list.

Looking ahead, are you sanguine or pessimistic about the future prospects for UK hospitality?

Well, we don’t really have a choice but to be sanguine as we have definitely seen business picking up and people returning to offices in central London. We hope that the borders will soon open up, bringing both tourism and manpower pouring back to London.

James Lawrence
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