Michael Carr had been heading for a career as a professional boxer but in a twist of fate it's his food that's become the knock-out. At the age of 30, the talented chef has worked the gamut of Michelin-starred restaurants before settling in Nottinghamshire to take two country pubs to the next level.
Ten years ago he was plunged into the fast-paced, high pressure world of cooking at Gordon Ramsay's London restaurant at five-star hotel Claridge's, rising through the ranks to become the company's youngest ever sous chef. Stints at Petrus, Royal Hospital Road, Maze and helping to open the celebrity chef's Bread Street Kitchen Dubai drove him further on the path to success.
More recently Michael was overseeing London's Sky Garden, which attracts 900 diners a day to the skyscraper's 37th floor fine dining eatery Fenchurch, a brasserie and two other restaurants. But this isn't a chef with his head in the clouds - he's grounded, ambitious and determined to give Nottinghamshire food lovers an experience to remember at the Old Vol in Caythorpe and The Reindeer in Hoveringham.
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As the pubs' newly-appointed executive chef, Michael is upping the culinary game. The Reindeer's menu has everything you'd expect in terms of pub grub, such as pies, fish and chips and bangers and mash. It's good, honest food - simple but elevated to taste and look incredible.
Michael said: "What we are trying to achieve at The Reindeer is bringing back something for the local area that is comfort, that is homely, delicious and served with effortless style. It's so quaint and so beautiful. It's not made to be pretentious or made to feel like you can't walk in here with your dog.
"When I say simple I don't mean it to sound underwhelming or basic but simple in the fact what we try and buy, what we produce and what we serve is amazing. We get the simple or cheaper cuts of meat, things a lot of people don't use so much. We use venison chuck for the pies and it's bringing things down to the basic level to show people actually that can be made gorgeous and tasty."
Starters include scotch egg with homemade HP, then there's wild sautéed mushrooms with soy cured duck yolk and truffle, and Shetland Isle moules mariniere and sourdough. Among the classic mains is Highland game venison bourguignon pie served with smoked mash, braised red cabbage and walnut ketchup. Monday is designated pie night with a choice of three fillings for £15, instead of the usual £20. Both The Reindeer and Old Vol offer a loyalty scheme for villagers in the NG14 area with 20% off all food Monday to Wednesday.
Bangers and mash with bone marrow is another main, along with line caught haddock and chips and Richard Taylor's dry aged 10oz sirloin steak. Soon local pheasant breast is coming to the menu.
Forget cheese and pickle or ham sandwiches. At The Reindeer there's hot beef cobs, hake dogs, Colston Basset Stilton with balsamic red onions or a Cornish crab toastie. Delicious desserts include sticky toffee pudding with candied pecan nuts and spiced caramel tart with torched bananas and brown butter ice cream.
Michael said: "It's bringing us into that line of that sort of gastro pub but just that simple, beautiful place that people are like 'you must go and eat at The Reindeer, it's absolutely stunning, when the fire's on at night and the locals are in drinking, it's got an atmosphere, it's got a vibe'.
"That's what we want for this place and we'll see where that takes us. I'd like to think this could be within the top 100 of pubs to visit in the UK."
Although London presented so many opportunities it wasn't home for Michael. Nottinghamshire was the ideal compromise between his family in Yorkshire and friends in the capital. Since his arrival the village pub has also had a makeover. Gone are the dark green hues, replaced by a contemporary light-toned country pub look.
The bar has been relocated and one of the best spots - if you don't count near the cosy log burner - has to be a table for two right by the window looking out on to Hoveringham's cricket ground.
General manager Jo Connors said: "All the seats are in the same places. The bar has been moved. It was very dark. It was still my local and I still loved it and have very fond memories here so I'm not slating it.
"It's uplifted it. We have '21st centuried' it. The villagers and everybody had very fond memories of this pub and how it was and we didn't want to take that away from them. We've put a lovely window in to get the light in. We have just modernised it without changing too much but keeping the soul in it."
In the small kitchen, head chef Andy Goodbourn and sous chef George Castles make a formidable team alongside Michael, who said: "George has worked with Andy before in the past so the familiarity within the team is really tight and it feels like a family and for me that is probably the biggest part of why I moved up here. That's the way I operate in a family environment and keep everyone close and tight-knit."
Over at the Old Vol, just three minutes drive away, plans are in hand to build on the success of its two AA rosettes. Diners are treated to dishes such as Lake District hogget three ways, with chestnut emulsion, braised shallot, sheep's curd and Duroc X Iberico Pork Chop with BBQ leek and parmentier potato.
With it's impressive outdoor area Michael says it's almost like two separate entities. "It's something I have never come across before in my career - it's a venue like no other. The team are really young, they are hungry. Jack (Pearce), the head chefs has big career aspirations.
"He's a very talented chef and everyone around him are feeding off that same trough. Front-of-house are fabulous, two young talented managers who complement each other.
"It's really exciting. Food and dining for me is about excitement and that's what excites me the most - it's a good area for a different client base for both sets of food and now we're offering that it's wonderful."
Michael is dedicated to giving the team the same opportunities he had and pushing them towards it. His own career path is a story within itself.
He wanted to be a professional boxer in his teens, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, a member of the Royal Tank Regiment and super middleweight champion in the Army. Michael was well on the way with a number of professional fights under his belt and sponsorship by Umbro. At 14 he took a job as a pot washer at a pub near his home to earn cash to buy new gloves and training gear.
He was hooked straight away, loving the camaraderie in the kitchen and seeing how the chefs moved to make things happen for a deadline. It wasn't long before he graduated from pot washing to cooking at the busy 200-cover pub.
His big break came the day the head chef and other staff called in sick. He said: "It was basically me and a sous chef and I was running Sunday lunch at the age of 15."
It just so happened Stephanie Moon, who was executive chef at Rudding Park Hotel, in Harrogate, was there with her family for a roast. "She walked through the kitchen and she said 'did you honestly cook my Sunday lunch?' And I was this 15-year-old spotty teenager."
She poached him and as soon as he passed his driving test he was working at every Micheliin-starred restaurant within a 50-mile radius. Next he joined a kitchen in Cornwell, where his boss set him up with four back-to-back trials at top London restaurants. After an 18-hour shift he slept on a university friend's floor, and did the same again for four days in a row.
"It was like another level. I was wowed by it - I needed to be there. I got offered all four jobs, so I must have impressed them." Just turned 20, he decided to work for Gordon Ramsay at Claridge's.
Michael said: "I did a lot for Gordon and he really looked after me. He was phenomenal as a boss. He reminded me a lot of Sean [Reddington, who owns The Reindeer and the Old Vol].
"He was always thinking about the next step, always wanting to see what we could do that was different to everybody else. Always trying to reimagine what the food industry should look like, very driven, very hard-working as you can imagine and when it came down to what his business was, it was very much if you don't do it properly there's the doors.
"He had that cut-throat side but what you see on television is not the Gordon Ramsay that I know. He's a very family-orientated man, a really down-to-earth bloke. He's worked very hard to get where he's got to in his career and that's something you can never take away from a chef.
"In this industry you have to work tirelessly to make sure you can get to that next level. Simon Gregory, his right-hand man, he really saw what I was about and he was like this kid needs to push on and I was given an amazing opportunity and I took it with both hands. That's where it all properly started for me."
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