Issy Cox: “If you can be a chef, you can pretty much do anything.”
I recently had the pleasure to sit down and chat with Issy Cox, a Bristol-based chef and the former head chef of Sonny Stores in Bristol. We discuss how she found her way into the world of cheffing, her experiences as a head chef at the popular Italian restaurant in the south of Bristol, the downsides of working in the industry, and her next steps following her successful time in restaurant kitchens.
Firstly, can you give us a quick introduction of yourself and where you currently are?
My name is Issy Cox and I’m living and working in Bristol. I worked in Sonny Stores as a chef for the last three-and-a-half years, then took a few weeks off and moved into a new role at another restaurant, before quite quickly realising that I had suddenly fallen out of love with the industry a little bit. I think it’s more a case of us being on a break than this being an actual break up, and I still want to immerse myself in cooking in other ways, but when it comes to the traditional sense of being a chef in a restaurant kitchen, I’ve grown quite tired with it. When I realised this, it was an awkward conversation to have with the head chef of the new place, but they took it really well. And so this is where I am now.
Let’s go back a little bit, did you grow up in Bristol?
Yes, I grew up in Keynsham, a little place between Bristol and Bath. My family have all done quite classic 9-5 jobs, and the culture at my school was also very much like, you go to university, you get a good job, you get married, you get a mortgage, you have kids, and that’s what you have to do. So after finishing school, I went straight to university down in Plymouth to do events management. It was a fun three years and I met some of my best friends from it, but I wouldn’t say it was what I wanted to do.
After university, I moved to London where I worked in the media sector for around five years. At one point I did move back to Bristol briefly and ended up working at a butcher’s in Bristol for a few months which was amazing. I learned loads, and it gave me my first real experience working with food. Then when I was twenty-eight, I went off to do the whole Superyacht thing, where I basically worked on a big boat as a stewardess. I lied a bit on my CV, saying that I had more experience than I probably did in these things, but I got the job and was then also starting to help out in the kitchens and cover chefs. So that’s how I got some experience in cooking and it made me realise that this was something I enjoyed and wanted to do more of. I thought to myself, if I can do it on a boat in the middle of the ocean for rich people, then I can do it in a kitchen back in Bristol. So I decided to do a month of cookery courses in Ashburton in Devon, quite a traditional cooking school environment just to learn some of the basics. I did go back to the Superyachts briefly, but I soon realised that the money wasn’t really worth working this hard for and not seeing family and friends for months at a time. So I came back in December 2020 and decided that I’m going to try and be an actual chef. I basically just emailed – bombarded – all the places in Bristol that I liked to eat at, asking them if they wanted to hire a chef with absolutely no experience. And luckily, Pegs from Sonny Stores did. And that was that really.
So how were you initially involved and hired as at Sonny Stores?
So at the time it was just him working towards opening the actual restaurant site, and I think he just thought, all I need is an extra pair of hands, that’s it. If they’ve got hands, it’ll be fine. So I remember I came in, did a trial shift, and he literally called me straight after asking me to come work at Sonny’s, and I just thought oh my god yes, I’d love to. It had definitely been very anxiety inducing going into a trial shift of something I didn’t really know anything about. But it worked out well and they took me on, and in May 2021 we opened our doors as the restaurant Sonny Stores.
So you started with – in your words – absolutely no experience, but you were the acting head chef for most of the time you were there until you left in November last year. That’s a really quick progression you could say.
Yeah absolutely, and I think that still makes me stall a bit these days because I very much have impostor syndrome to the max and there are so many gaps in my knowledge. So while I worked hard and I’m probably an alright chef, I think it was also a case of being at the right place at the right time as Sonny Stores was evolving. Learning the skills was very much a natural process. Pegs was also really good at making sure that people weren’t just assigned one particular section, he wanted everyone to do everything. Naturally sometimes that can be a bit challenging, especially when someone’s just started and they get thrown in at the deep end, but it worked. And as such, growing into my role as a head chef never felt forced or scary in any way.
Would you say that this is your preferred approach, to get everyone to work as soon as possible and push them to do the best?
I think so, and I think it works really well at Sonny’s. Everyone knew each section like the back of their hand, and it also got rid of the air of hierarchy which was really nice and also not exactly traditional in the industry. There was obviously still a level of respect but not necessarily towards me being the head chef, just more as a mutual respect towards everyone in the team. Everyone was always working at their best and that’s part of the reason why I stayed there for so long because everyone there was a diamond, and it was like a little family. And I think it helped as well that a lot of them were women, that made a huge difference I’d say.
It was interesting, despite Bristol being generally such a forward-thinking and progressive city, Sonny Stores being a fairly women-led restaurant was a surprisingly talked about fact in the industry, and I guess showed that this was indeed still considered a comparatively rare case.
You’re so right, and it’s true. In the beginning it was quite nice and we were quite proud when people were commenting on how there were mostly women in the kitchen. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still very proud, but when we started to get known for that, it also brought up the question, well, why is this such a big thing? You don’t go into other kitchens and exclaim: Wow, look at this all-male kitchen! A lot of people would also ask Pegs whether he had purposefully only hired women, and he always said, honestly no, not at all, it just fell into that. When we were hiring new staff, we’d have all kinds of people come in, from seasoned chefs who had been in the industry for years to complete newbies, and it just so happened that on some of these occasions the best fit would be a woman. So that was it really.
Naturally having worked in this environment, you may have been less affected, but were there things and maybe challenges you’ve noticed as a woman working as a chef?
I was definitely quite lucky being part of a kitchen with a majority of women, so we just all had a lot of mutual respect and everyone just got on with it. But that isn’t to say that there weren’t any challenges. We’d always laugh about it really, but the amount of times that people came in to help fix something or clean the windows and they’d call you “Darling” and then ask to speak to a chef when they’re already speaking to one, or telling me that I must just be confused when I explained to them what the problem with the dishwasher was. There was one time when we did a pop-up at a festival, and one of the guys running it only introduced himself to the one male chef in our team, dismissing the rest of us as front of house and asking us to wait in the tent in the meantime. When we corrected him and told him that we’re all chefs and that it was in fact me who was the acting head chef, the guy seemed genuinely shocked. So there were several instances like that, and many of the guys in question were generally quite old school. While I’m not justifying or excusing their behaviour, it was really more funny than anything else.
Looking back now, what was it that originally motivated you to get into cooking?
Well, I’ve always been somewhat obsessed with food from a young age, and I probably got some of my passion for it from my dad. He never professionally worked with food, but he loves cooking, he always has a new cookbook to try out recipes and would ring me up every other night and tell me to try this new Ottolenghi recipe and all that, so I think I probably got it from him. Apparently, my idea of a bedtime story was asking for cookbooks and flicking through them. So I think I’ve always wanted to do it, but I’ve also just always been pushed back to do the “normal” 9-5 job, the more responsible choice, and realistically, the options with more money [laughs]. And I think Covid then had a considerable impact, as I think it did for all of us, where I just thought, fuck it, if this is going to happen again and again, I’d rather be doing something I actually want to be doing.
I think there are quite a few people who worry about cheffing as a career choice, seeing it as not a very responsible or sustainable option, but then I tend to argue that working as a chef offers a lot of valuable experiences across the board. What would you say are valuable skills and experiences cheffing has given you?
I definitely think it’s a super valuable experience. It shows you how hard you are willing and able to work which I think is a good life lesson to learn. And if you have a passion for it and you’re willing to put in the hours, the rewards you can get back from that are amazing. It gives you an affirmation beyond anything. If people like the food and you know you’ve really put in the work, it’s just such a nice feeling and probably one of the main reasons we all get into it. Showing up, being able to work hard and work hard within a team is a great discipline to have. Plus, it gives you such a purpose, and it’s also such a nice thing to tell people. I loved telling people I’m a chef because people are just so genuinely interested. And they’re right to be, because it is a bloody cool thing to do. So I think if you can show up and be a chef, then you can pretty much do anything.
What would you say are some of the challenges of working in the restaurant industry?
If I’ve learned anything over the last three-and-a-half years, it’s that it’s not an easy job at all and it’s exhausting on so many different levels. Physically, yes, but mentally it’s really hard as well. I would just be thinking about it 24 hours a day, especially when you take on more responsibilities. As a head chef at Sonny’s, it wasn’t just my job, it was very much my whole life, my lifestyle. For example, as a chef, working 48 hours a week is considered good hours, but the average working week in the UK is around 37.5 hours. So we do an extra 11 hours - if not more - and we just kind of have to accept that.
In addition, it is so difficult for independent restaurants to survive, with the cost-of-living crisis and how people can or want to spend their money eating out. There is a lot of pressure to maintain quality but to keep the prices affordable for customers, and you have to be really clever about sourcing products. So while it’s already a hard job - coming in, getting your mise en place ready for service, doing the service, and cleaning down - you then add in all the other factors and pressure of maintaining the business, coming up with new menu ideas every week, making sure you did all the ordering, and the constant pressure of EHO hanging over your head, and I would often take these worries home with me at the end of the night. One time I panic-ordered cheese at 2am because I couldn’t sleep thinking that we wouldn’t have parmesan in an Italian restaurant – only to come in the next morning and seeing that we already had loads of cheese [laughs].
Would you consider continuing cheffing in restaurants if there was a little less responsibility involved and you were able to do fewer hours?
Maybe. I didn’t mind the lifestyle of cheffing at the time, but I’m 31 now and in the next few years me and my partner would like to try for a family, and unfortunately, the industry is still not very much set up for that. I’d wondered about that while I was head chef, what would I do if I had kids, because I really don’t know. I would probably need to be in an industry that pays maternity leave, I wouldn’t be working every evening, I wouldn’t be doing two doubles in a row, and hospitality is not really set up for that way of life. I wouldn’t be able to bring my child to work. Imagine breastfeeding, trying to pump in the toilet, create a whole EHO sheet for the breastmilk [laughs].
It’s true, it still feels like an industry that doesn’t really allow you to not go all in. It may not be officially frowned upon, but if you do less than everyone around you, even if you have a perfectly good reason like having a child, you simply don’t really feel fully part of it anymore.
Absolutely. Imagine you’re a mum and you have to work part-time, and you get given all the good hours – I’d feel awful. Because as much as everyone would be understanding, someone’s also going to be pissed off because they also have a life, and why should we respect their life and hours less just because they haven’t got a child? And while in other industries it’s easier to go part-time or work from home, with cheffing it really is 0% or 150%. So for me now it’s hard to find another sector and finding an option where I could potentially have the best of both worlds. It’s tricky.
Do you think there’s a solution to these challenges of providing more of a work-life balance to hospitality workers?
I think it is really difficult, and I think hospitality doesn’t give very many straightforward routes to go down if you want to stop working in kitchens. There are so many young chefs in their early twenties who are working every hour under the sun and it’s their whole life but when they want to take a break from it or do something else it’s not really clear where they can go. And I think most restaurants, particularly independent ones, simply cannot afford to accommodate for people to dip in and out to suit their lives more. Fundamentally, it is either you’re in or you’re out. So we definitely still have a lot to work on.
Do you want to continue cooking?
Definitely, I never want to give that up. Just not necessarily as a head chef in a restaurant. Maybe more in things like pop-ups or catering or working more in the supplier side of things and jobs which I can do on my terms, even if we do have a family in the future. I still want to stay in the industry and know what restaurants are getting up to, even if that means not cooking every day. Also hopefully I’ll be able to go out to eat at restaurants more, because it’s actually surprisingly hard to go and eat out as a chef sometimes. On those precious days I would have off, do I really want to go and sit in another restaurant, hear the same noises, the extraction fan, and get shudders when I hear the chef call out “Check on!”? [laughs]. So it will be nice to go to a restaurant and not constantly look into the kitchen thinking, oh that’s how they do things.
Do you have any favourite restaurants at the moment?
Whenever someone asks me what my favourite restaurant in Bristol is, it’s always Bokman, it’s always been Bokman, and it will always be Bokman. I think Duncan, the head chef, is a genius, and everyone working there is really good, and it’s so different to what I was used to cooking as well. I also really like Tomo No Ramen in Old Market and I’m super excited for the opening of Wangs in Montpelier.
Finally, I know there are a lot of people who are super interested in cheffing, they love the idea of cooking professionally and want to get started but are worried because they haven’t got the training or experience. Do you have any advice for these people?
Don’t worry about any of that! You can do all the training in the world, and it won’t prepare you for an actual day of being a chef or a busy Saturday night service. If you genuinely love it, you want to get into it, and you don’t mind the hard work, then you’ll be great. I would say, work somewhere where you genuinely believe in the product. You have to love what you’re cooking, otherwise you won’t want to spend fifty hours a week there. Trust your gut, and if you’re keen, do it. Just don’t expect it to be light work.
Since completing the interview, Issy has taken on a position at a Bristol-based fish supplier which sources sustainable fish and seafood and supplies several independent restaurants in the Bristol and Bath area. All the best to her in the new position and her onward journey in the food and hospitality industry!