Mikael Jonsson, Hedone, Chiswick

Mikael Jonsson, chef-patron of Hedone in London’s Chiswick, is a Swedish self-taught chef who didn’t cook professionally until his forties due to food allergies.  When he did turn from amateur to professional in 2011, it was to immediately open his own restaurant, Hedone. His ambition was rewarded with a Michelin star after just one year followed by an entry into the World’s 100 Best Restaurant list earlier this year. The Staff Canteen chatted to Mikael about his meteoric rise and how a paleolithic diet changed his life. What was it about food and cooking that first interested you? I was interested in food very early on, from before even I can remember. My grandmother was a very good cook, so my interest partly came from that I suppose but it also came on its own and grew into a passion for food. I really wanted to be a chef when I was in my teens but I couldn’t really be in a professional kitchen for more than a couple of days due to very bad allergies like eczema which meant that I couldn’t touch certain things – certain shellfish, certain fruits, certain vegetables. So basically I had to give up on that from my early teens because it just wasn’t feasible to be in a professional kitchen. Did you have any idea about the causes of these allergies? I was tested a couple of times in my early teens and the conclusion was that I was allergic to almost everything – it was impossible to avoid all the things that I was allergic to. I tried using gloves but it actually got worse. The only times it got better was when I was in the sun. I had to use Cortisone off and on for a very long time. Then suddenly it all disappeared a couple of years ago. How did that happen? I started something called the palaeolithic diet where you avoid eating grains containing gluten and lectins as well as man-made oils containing Omega 6 and man-made sugars. My personal interpretation of the paleolithic diet was to eat everything that I thought cro-magnon man ate 20,000 years ago, which basically meant a diet rich in everything they say we shouldn’t eat, namely a lot of fats, red meat and eggs and so on – it worked for me anyway! It must have been an amazing feeling when your allergies first started to disappear. How long was it before you started thinking about getting back into a kitchen? I couldn’t believe it. It took probably three months before I dared to think that they had gone forever. I had an ulcer which disappeared as well and also my asthma so it was really amazing!  I started to really play with the idea of cooking professionally after eight months or so. And you went straight into opening your own restaurant; that must have been very scary? Yes, and a lot of people told me I was totally insane, not least the chefs I knew. But I knew I could cook and more importantly I thought I could develop as a chef so even though it was scary, it wasn’t a hard decision because I knew that even if it wasn’t going to be perfect to begin with, I would have such passion and drive to do it that it would work out. Looking back at it, it was obviously a bit of a kamikaze project that could have gone really wrong, but luckily it hasn’t so far! Before that you were a lawyer and a food blogger both in Sweden and internationally; is that how you became familiar with the UK and London? Not really, my parents lived in London in the late eighties and they used to take me round the London restaurants when I was in my late teens, like Harveys, La Tante Claire, Chez Nico and several others. I also travelled to France to discover wines and restaurants when I was in my late teens so I had already eaten around quite a bit by the time I was 20. At that time there were very few really good restaurants in London but since then there has been such a huge increase in media exposure to food and people’s awareness has increased so much that there has been a real food revolution in this country; that was one of the big reasons that I decided to open a restaurant in here. But I literally came here just to open a restaurant – I had no contacts or friends here so it was hugely risky. What were the biggest challenges to opening a new restaurant in a place where you didn’t know anyone? Everything was challenging! We had to do lots of renovating. Staffing was a huge problem as well – basically nobody applied for the job; also there were so few suppliers we could get credit from so it really felt that everything was against us. However, luckily we got some fantastic reviews early on  - Timeout gave us five stars after only a couple of weeks – and then the phone started to ring every thirty seconds. But that of course led to the next problem, which was that we were always full and didn’t have the kitchen staff to cope! What really made the break in terms of having enough staff was the Michelin star which obviously attracted a lot more chefs. And that was one of the quickest stars ever gained by a new chef; how do you account for that? They say it’s the quickest. I’m not sure but that’s what they say. I think, like anything, you get where you are through hard work and relentless passion for what you are doing, which is what we put into Hedone. Would you ever have imagined a decade or so ago with your allergies that you would be here now, running your own Michelin-starred restaurant in the heart of London? Sometimes I feel like I’m living the dream but I also realise that living the dream takes a lot of hard work! But yes it’s really gratifying when we have great chefs coming here to eat and they genuinely love what we’re doing.