Share
The Go To Food Podcast
Only Scrans - Why Food Influencers Need a Licence, His £40k YouTube Gamble & Building LADbible’s 100 Million + Audience
This week, we’re joined by Only Scrans — one of the UK’s biggest and most engaged food creators, with more than 1.5 million followers and one of the most unusual career stories we’ve encountered. Jonny has toured the world as a guitarist, helped build LADbible’s audience past 100 million, launched FoodBible, worked with some of Britain’s biggest celebrities, built his own agencies and turned Only Scrans into a major food platform. Most recently, he has taken the ultimate step from commenting on hospitality to living it, opening his own sports bar and discovering exactly how difficult it is to make money from bricks and mortar.
Jonny reveals why he spent £40,000 of his own money filming a huge long-form YouTube series across America, Canada and Mexico, visiting historic restaurants, Texas barbecue institutions and some of the world’s greatest taco spots. He explains why he refused to compromise the films with intrusive sponsorship demands, why he believes creators must be prepared to invest in themselves and how YouTube videos can suddenly return from the dead and collect another 100,000 views. He also takes us inside the obsessive world of retention graphs, thumbnails, titles and trial reels — while sharing the less glamorous reality of eating at 20 restaurants in a matter of days, including a disastrous final day in Mexico City after weeks of grasshoppers, tripe tacos and relentless filming.
We also get into Jonny’s belief that food influencers should have to pass a test before they are allowed to review restaurants. He explains why somebody tasting their first-ever scallop has no business immediately declaring it a ten out of ten, calls out creators who deliberately attack brilliant independent restaurants to manufacture millions of views and comes to the defence of Bleecker after watching it receive a baffling six-out-of-ten review. At the same time, he acknowledges the extraordinary impact creators such as Eating With Tod can have on small businesses, explains why TopJaw’s combination of beautiful filmmaking and a divisive presenter works so well, and gives his verdict on the recent “shawarma wars” consuming the online food world.
Jonny is equally candid about opening his sports bar, GO. The venue turned over £1 million in its first year, but he explains why that impressive figure looks very different once the money has gone back out again — leaving a profit of roughly ten per cent and nothing yet taken by Jonny personally. He recounts discovering chaotic wiring hidden above the ceiling, air-conditioning containing an illegal refrigerant and renovation costs that more than doubled almost overnight. Despite the financial pressure, he describes the extraordinary feeling of watching supporters stand on tables during England games, the pride of creating memories for customers and his ambition to expand the business rather than simply take the money.
Finally, Jonny takes us back to his previous life in major-label rock band Blitz Kids. He reveals how the band could appear glamorous from the outside while its members were living on riders, drinking from morning until night and earning almost nothing, leaving him with memories of touring Helsinki, Stockholm and the rest of the world that he can barely recall. He speaks openly about alcohol, reaching a dark point and eventually becoming sober in his late thirties — before realising that he genuinely did still love food and football without the drinking attached. We then hear how he walked away from the band while living in his mum’s attic, joined LADbible as its eighth or ninth employee after an interview involving FIFA and several beers, created a viral livestream by melting ice lollies on a roof, used audience data to inform campaigns involving Craig David, and later found himself writing viral social posts for Georgia Toffolo. An extraordinary conversation about food, risk, addiction, creativity, hospitality and understanding what makes the internet click.
Get 2 Months of Blinq For Free - With Code - GOTOBLINQ - https://blinqme.com/
Watch and Subscribe To Our Youtube Videos Here - https://www.youtube.com/@gotofood
More episodes
View all episodes
Lorna McNee - Winning Glasgow’s First Michelin Star in 18 Years, How Great British Menu Changed Her Life & The Night Police Had To Drag Protesters Out of Her Restaurant
42:40|Lorna McNee joins us at Cail Bruich to tell the remarkable story behind becoming the chef who brought a Michelin star back to Glasgow for the first time in 18 years. She takes us from washing pots in a small Italian restaurant and a teenage stage at Gordon Ramsay, to walking into Andrew Fairlie’s legendary two-Michelin-starred kitchen as an apprentice and immediately wondering whether she was good enough. Lorna spent the next 12 years working alongside Fairlie, who became her great mentor, and opens up about the moments she wanted to quit, what made him such an extraordinary teacher and why his death ultimately made her realise it was time to step out and discover what her own cooking looked like.We also hear how Great British Menu transformed Lorna’s career, from the devastation of narrowly missing out first time around to returning and becoming Champion of Champions, before taking over Cail Bruich and winning its Michelin star within just five months. She reveals the bizarre way Michelin broke the news to her over FaceTime during Covid, why the restaurant subsequently became fully booked for two years, and argues that even established head chefs should still disappear for a month to stage, learn new techniques and come back better. Plus, why she hates matcha and hot honey, the night vegan protesters invaded her restaurant and had to be removed by police, and plenty more from one of Scotland’s greatest chefs.
Josh Niland — The Chef Who Reinvented How We Cook Fish, Heston Blumenthal’s Magic & Why Some Chefs Think He’s Crazy
01:33:38|This week we’re joined by one of the most influential chefs of his generation, Josh Niland, the Australian chef who has completely changed the way the restaurant world thinks about fish. Josh tells us why our obsession with ultra-fresh fish may actually be holding us back, how learning to treat fish more like meat transformed his cooking, and why a piece of advice from legendary fish chef Stephen Hodges changed the course of his career. He also reveals the influence of Heston Blumenthal on his thinking, why so many chefs initially thought his ideas were completely mad, and how he went from questioning everything he’d been taught about seafood to building Saint Peter around an entirely new philosophy.But some of Josh’s greatest innovations came out of necessity rather than ambition. He takes us back to the terrifying moment his accountant told him, “You’re not even going to make it to August,” and explains how the financial pressure of running a restaurant forced him to confront just how much valuable fish chefs were throwing in the bin. That obsession with using the whole animal has since produced some extraordinary dishes: tuna treated like beef and turned into everything from ribeye and sirloin to cheeseburgers, sobrassada and Wellington, fish eyes transformed into crackers, and matured kingfish kept for more than two weeks until its skin becomes dry and crisp while the flesh develops remarkable flavour.We also hear about the experiments that pushed even Josh’s philosophy to its limits — from making ice cream from the fat surrounding fish eyes to turning fish fat into soap and candles, and even finding uses for the bones that would normally be discarded. Josh explains why ageing fish can make it better rather than worse, why chefs could effectively be throwing away half their profits every time they fillet one, and why insecurity and convention have made the industry so resistant to change. It’s a fascinating conversation about creativity, failure, waste, money and the extraordinary possibilities hidden inside the parts of a fish most of us have spent our lives throwing away.
An Italian Odyssey, Rumours & Behind-the-Scenes Chaos
37:03|Welcome to a special edition of Go-To Food where Freddy and Ben ditch the guest and get into the industry gossip, rumours and behind-the-scenes stories that normally don’t make it onto the podcast.From the guests we’ve chased for years, the interviews that nearly never happened, awkward encounters with some very famous chefs and what really goes on before and after the microphones are switched on, we’re spilling a few stories from behind the curtain.We also get into the chaos of actually making Go-To Food — the shoots that have gone wrong, unexpected moments with guests, the things people have said off-air, restaurant-world whispers and some of the more ridiculous situations the podcast has landed us in over the last few years.Plus, who’s been brilliant, who’s been elusive, who we’re still desperate to get on and a few bits of gossip we probably should have kept to ourselves.
Jack Coggins - Creating Smash Hits In Goodbye Horses & The Dreamery & Why Food Creators Need to Stop Stealing Recipes
46:41|This week we’re joined by Jack Coggins, the chef behind Goodbye Horses, Stable Wines and The Dreamery, for a brilliant journey through one of the most unconventional careers in London food. Jack started helping out in an East London café at just 12, studied English with dreams of becoming a food writer, then found himself unable to afford the entry-level jobs in publishing and instead earning his living in kitchens.We hear about the moment during lockdown when Jack decided to take cooking seriously, the glorious lawlessness of Hot 4 U, and the extraordinary night out that ended with him having what he describes as “half a fight” with Matthew Scott, only to be offered a job by him the following morning. From there came pop-ups around the country, Papi, and eventually Good Boy Horses, where Jack has built one of London’s most distinctive restaurants alongside the wildly successful ice-cream parlour The Dreamery.Over an outrageous spread of raw beef, tomato tart, cheese toasties, chicken rice and plenty of wine, Jack explains the childhood food memories that still shape his cooking, why hospitality should offer genuine escapism, and why familiar food done brilliantly beats novelty for novelty’s sake. Plus, he has plenty to say about chefs and food creators lifting other people’s recipes without giving them credit. A funny, thoughtful and wonderfully unfiltered conversation with one of the most exciting young cooks in London.
Aktar Islam - Chasing 3 Michelin Stars, How Gordon Ramsay Saved My Career & The Problem With Curry Houses
59:44|Gordon Ramsay told Aktar Islam he needed to break free. What followed changed his life and helped set him on the path to two Michelin stars — and now he wants a third.In this episode of The Go-To Food Podcast, we sit down with Aktar Islam, one of the most influential figures in modern British Indian cooking, for a brilliantly candid conversation about ambition, Michelin stars, Gordon Ramsay, the British curry house and the brutal economics of running restaurants today.Aktar made his name at Lasan, winning both The F Word and Great British Menu, before walking away to build something entirely on his own terms. He went on to open Opheem in Birmingham, the first restaurant in the city to receive two Michelin stars and one of only two Indian restaurants in the country to hold two stars.He reveals the advice Gordon Ramsay gave him at a crucial point in his career, why he believes that intervention helped transform his mindset, and why Gordon remains one of his greatest inspirations.Aktar also explains why Opheem is run almost at cost, claims the government made 90 times more from the restaurant than he did last year, and argues that Britain’s tax system is pushing independent hospitality towards breaking point.We also get into the evolution of British Indian food, why Aktar became frustrated with traditional curry houses, his belief that chefs should be able to cook across cultures regardless of their background, and his extraordinary claim that Indian chefs have been copying his approach for decades.Plus, Aktar opens up about walking away from Lasan, turning down opportunities abroad to remain close to his son, building Birmingham’s food scene, the dish that generated hundreds of complaint emails when he removed it from the menu, and why three Michelin stars remain firmly in his sights.A fascinating conversation about Indian food, ambition, identity, Michelin stars, Gordon Ramsay and what it really takes to build a world-class restaurant.Subscribe to The Go-To Food Podcast for new interviews with the biggest chefs, restaurateurs and personalities in food every week.
Sam & Alicja Bryant: How We Accidentally Created The UK’s Best Burger, Why We Ditched Service Charge & Why Every Restaurant Needs Draught Beer
44:51|After seven years of residencies and pop-ups, Whole Beast have finally found a permanent home on Coldharbour Lane — and Sam and Alicja join us to tell the gloriously chaotic story of how they got there. They reveal how working for other people eventually reached breaking point — from having menus rewritten around them to being asked to start making pastries — until they stood outside one day, said “fuck it”, and decided they were done letting anyone else dictate what they cooked. Now they’ve built one of London’s most exciting restaurants around fire, whole-animal cooking, nostalgia and a Champion of Champions cheeseburger.We get deep into the food: the precise secrets behind that burger, a Sunday roast once described by Pete from the Canton Arms as the greatest he’d ever eaten, cheesy leeks loaded with six or seven cheeses, dripping hash browns with smoked eel and trotter liquor, and why Frazzles, Scampi Fries and Flaming Hot Cheetos have all found their way into serious restaurant cooking. We also hear how Alicja’s upbringing in Poland — cooking with whatever was growing on her grandmother’s allotment, and drinking her nan’s slightly mysterious homemade fruit wine — still shapes the way they think about seasonality and flavour today.But underneath all the fun is a brutally candid conversation about what it actually takes to survive as an independent restaurant. They explain why they refuse to add service charge, why being prompted to tip for a takeaway coffee drives them mad, how the publicity surrounding a new opening can disappear after a few months, and why sometimes “money runs out” and you simply have to pivot — whether that means killing Sunday service, turning Wednesday into one of your busiest nights or ditching a complicated wine list for boxes of St John wine. Funny, opinionated, occasionally filthy and packed with brilliant stories — this is Whole Beast in all its glory.
INSIDE TAVERN - Why Great Restaurants Become Irrelevant, The Problem With Tasting Menus & The Worst Behaved Diners Ever
52:02|This week we’re inside Tavern, one of London’s most talked-about new openings, from the team behind Michelin-starred Restaurant St Barts. After almost a decade of Nest, they explain why they decided two tasting-menu restaurants no longer made sense, why restaurants increasingly seem to need to be either brand new or about to close to get people excited, and how they’ve tried to build something more affordable, energetic and accessible without compromising the cooking. We also hear how a previous Go To Food episode directly led them to a British quail supplier — who then drove from Suffolk to hand-deliver birds and eggs for them to test.Over lunch we get deep into how dishes actually come together: from a pork and cuttlefish idea that was initially so bad it was described as “vile”, before being reinvented as a sausage, to Brendan’s extraordinary days at Silo cooking carrots overnight in compost, salt-baking vegetables in waste coffee grounds and turning leek tops into treacle. There’s also a brilliant conversation about whether British chefs have any business cooking with jerk or tandoori flavours, why modern British food should reflect the multicultural city around it, and whether the great tasting-menu boom is being killed not by price, but by diners simply no longer wanting to give up five hours of their evening.And then come the stories. A customer who spent an entire tasting menu watching other people play computer games on his phone. Another who fell asleep at the table while out with his girlfriend. Diners tutting at chefs across the counter. Someone walking into the restaurant during prep and casually asking for a flat white. A guest arriving with a mushroom allergy so severe she said she’d be hospitalised despite the menu being built around mushrooms. A four-year-old calmly sitting through a three-hour tasting menu without an iPad. And, after all that serious restaurant cooking, we discover what chefs actually want when service ends: pasta, cheap ham, microwaved cheese on toast and the magnificent Welsh creation known simply as “cheese on a plate.”
Marcus Wareing - Part 2 - My 15 Year Feud With Gordon Ramsay, The £1m Lawsuit & Why He Never Won 3 Michelin Stars
54:04|In Part Two of our extraordinary conversation with Marcus Wareing, we pick up his story as his career begins to explode. Marcus takes us inside the chaos of 1998, when he was suddenly fired despite holding a Michelin star, before Gordon Ramsay led a walkout that left the restaurants reportedly losing £15,000 a day and ended in a £1 million lawsuit. He also reveals how a chance walk into a near-empty restaurant led to the creation of Pétrus, and recalls the infamous £44,000 dinner that became one of the most talked-about restaurant bills of its era.Marcus then charts the extraordinary rise that followed, from Pétrus and the Berkeley to taking over the Savoy Grill and helping breathe new life into some of London’s grandest dining rooms. But behind the Michelin stars, the relationship with Gordon was beginning to fracture. Marcus opens up about becoming the “black sheep” of the business, the bitter split that followed and a feud that would ultimately last around 15 years, before an unexpected signed book from Gordon finally began to bring the two old friends back together.Finally, Marcus explains why, despite all the accolades, he has always considered himself a businessman before a chef and why he believes that mindset may have stopped him ever winning three Michelin stars. He reveals why the flame eventually went out at his own restaurant, his frustration with the silence and “fucking tweezers” of modern fine dining, why he never wanted to die at the stove, and why walking away at the top felt like the right way to end one of British cooking’s great restaurant careers.
Marcus Wareing - Part 1: Surviving Britain’s Toughest Kitchens, The Lost Art Of Cooking & Winning His First Michelin Star
01:00:54|In Part One of our exclusive two-part interview with Marcus Wareing, we sit down with one of the most influential chefs of his generation to trace the extraordinary story of how a shy teenager from Southport became one of the defining figures of modern British cooking. Marcus takes us from working in his father’s fruit and veg warehouse as a boy to leaving home at 18 for The Savoy, before literally knocking on the door of Le Gavroche and asking for a job in one of the greatest kitchens in the world.Marcus then takes us inside the brutal, exhilarating kitchens that forged an extraordinary generation of British chefs, and recalls the first time he encountered a young Gordon Ramsay, describing him as a “f***ing machine” who nobody else in the kitchen could come close to. He reveals what it was really like becoming Gordon’s right-hand man at Aubergine, why they gave a young Angela Hartnett just two weeks to survive, and how the relentless intensity eventually pushed Marcus towards burnout.It’s a remarkable insight into a lost era of cooking: kitchens with no recipe books, where everything was done by eye, touch and feel, and where careers were forged through obsession, instinct and sheer endurance. Part One takes us all the way to Marcus winning his first Michelin star alongside Gordon, setting the stage perfectly for Part Two, where Marcus finally opens up about the explosive breakdown of their relationship and the 15-year feud that followed.