Passion players

It may be tucked away in the Mendip Hills, but the Vobster is a destination food pub that specialises in the fruits of the sea. Mark Taylor reports

A quick glance at the list of daily fish and seafood specials at the Vobster and you would be forgiven for thinking that you were in a coastal Cornish restaurant and not a rural pub in leafy Somerset.

Since Chris and Lizzie Matthews took over the freehold of the Vobster six years ago, they have transformed it from a drinking pub serving freezer-to-fryer pub grub into a smart destination gastro pub, although Chris shudders when he hears the term.

"I struggle with the gastro pub label, because I don't really know what one is," laughs the Hampshire-born chef/proprietor. "I've been into lots of pubs that serve great food, but I never know if they're gastro pubs ­ I look at them as pubs that do good food and keep it simple.

"There's two types of food pubs. There's the I don't have a chef so I'm buying in stuff I can microwave or deep-fry' pubs, or there's places like ours where we take the food seriously. If you're going to do food, then put some passion into it ­ it doesn't have to be complicated."

Nobody could accuse the Matthews of lacking passion when it comes to food and they have made the Vobster, at Lower Vobster, near Bath, one of the best food pubs in the West Country.

With fresh fish and seafood being delivered from Cornwall five times a week, locally-produced meat and an award-winning cheeseboard, the pub is big on provenance and on supporting local suppliers.

"When we took over, it was quite a successful pub," says Chris. "It did a huge amount of covers, but serving crap. It was all freezer-to-fryer, they had 10 different jacket potatoes, scampi and chips, mixed grills­ they had eight microwaves. When I took over the inventory on the day of exchange, the freezer was full of frozen vegetables."

The Vobster was one of 160 potential pubs viewed by the Matthews when they arrived in Britain from Australia in 1999.

Neither had run a pub before and both had come from very different backgrounds ­ Chris was the managing director of a plc and his Australian wife was marketing director of a medical publishing company.

After several years of living and working in Australia, they decided it was time for a major career change. "The stress levels were such that I used to buy whisky by the case," confesses Chris.

"We had a nice lifestyle and the weather was stunning, but it was stressful, our daughter rarely saw us together and I just thought at this rate I won't reach 50. My office was a three-hour drive from where we lived in Sydney and I used to talk to Lizzie on the mobile for the entire journey home just to keep me awake. We just thought there must be more to life."

The first year at the Vobster was tough for the couple and it took a while for them to settle in.

"We'd never done it before and the business basically ran us for 12 months. We were running around like headless chickens, but we decided not to change anything, not even the menu. When we did, the customers voted with their feet!

"They literally told us to p*** off back to Australia' because they didn't like what we were doing and the fact that we knew about the licensing laws and weren't prepared to let them stay drinking until two in the morning. When we took over, the wet:dry split was 60:40 in favour of drink. Now it's 65:30 in favour of food."

The biggest turning point, however, was when the chef they had inherited decided to resign on a busy Friday night. Until then, Chris had only cooked at home, but with no chef and a pub full of customers, he had no option but to get behind the stoves himself.

"It nearly killed me! I did 80 covers on the Friday, 120 covers on the Saturday and 100 for Sunday lunch. It was at that point that we decided we had to make big changes on the food side."

Having eaten great fish and seafood in top Australian restaurants, Chris decided that as most of the pubs in the area were all doing the same sort of food, the best way forward for the Vobster was to specialise in fish.

A chance meeting with Bath-based restaura-teur Mitchell Tonks brought Chris into contact with Cornish fish suppliers and he hasn't looked back since.

Eighty per cent of the Vobster menu is made up of fresh fish and seafood dishes, with the pub now doing 500 covers a week, with an average spend of about £23. Last year, turnover was £350,000 net and Chris says he's aiming for £50,000 more this year.

"On a Friday night, we do up to 98% fish. Last Friday, we had 72 covers, of which only four were non-fish. People actually phone up now and ask me to get a piece of turbot or a lobster, which is great.

"I'm working to a GP of 58%, but if you're buying great fish, you can't always get your margin and I'm prepared for that. It's all about provenance and quality. When I started cooking here, I tried to complicate it too much and tried to do fussy things. Now, I realise that simple is good when it comes to great produce."

Apart from its fish and seafood, the Vobster has also gained a reputation for the cheeseboard created by Lizzie. A separate menu for cheese lists the week's selection of truckles ­ all of them from the West Country.

"I think the range and quality of cheeses in the UK is better than anywhere," she says. "Originally, we were just doing a cheddar, a blue and a brie, but I went to a wine and cheese event in Dorset and met Juliet Harbutt of the British Cheese Awards and she inspired me to specialise in West Country varieties.

"Our cheeseboard has five different cheeses, which we sell for £6.50 with crackers or bread, and it has become as popular as the desserts."

Five best-sellingmain courses

Chunk of Cornish monkfish with crispy chorizo and red wine jus ­ £14.50

Cornish cod in beer batter with chips andmushy peas ­ £8.95

Whole Cornish sea bass chargrilled with rosemary, lemon and garlic ­ £14

Pan-seared Scottish scallops with crème fraîche and sweet chilli ­ £7.50/£14.95

Chargrilled 10oz rib-eye steak withblack pepper sauce ­ £13.95

A question of taste

What have been the most successful promotions at the pub in the past year?

Our themed food evenings have been very successful and always sell out. We did aFrench-bistro evening to coincide with the arrival of the first Beaujolais Nouveau. We just servedbig pots of boeuf bourguignon, coq au vin, bouillabaisse and cassoulet with hunks of good bread. We did 60 covers.

How do you promote the pub?

Word of mouth is still the best marketing tool in this business. If you're buying and serving great quality fresh fish, then a customer may come back 30 times a year, and he or she will tell their friends, too.