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A former managing director opened up about a secret interview test that allowed him to understand whether the applicant was suitable for the job. In a resurfaced appearance on The Ventures podcast, Trent Innes, a former MD for Xero Australia Trent, said he would take the interviewee to a kitchen and offer them a drink. They would then take their drinks back to the meeting room where he would conduct the interview. He explained: "One of the things I’m always looking for at the end of the interview is, does the person doing the interview want to take that empty cup back to the kitchen?" The reason behind the subtle test comes down to attitude, according to Trent. "You can develop skills, you can gain knowledge and experience but it really does come down to attitude, and the attitude that we talk a lot about is the concept of 'wash your own coffee cup.'" Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter He believes there's more to the test than meets the eye, as it demonstrates that the candidate "would actually really drive a culture of ownership," for completing one of the "lowest level" tasks. "If you come into the office one day inside Xero, you’ll see the kitchens are almost always clean and sparkling and it’s very much off that concept of wash your coffee cup, but that sort of led into the interview space," he continued. Trent aimed to hire people who had "a real, strong ownership and a growth mindset." "It’s really just making sure they’re actually going to fit into the culture inside Xero, and really take on everything that they should be doing," he added. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

In Cartmel, a picture-postcard Cumbrian village on the cusp of the Lake District, chefs in their whites are scurrying across the cobbled streets like an army of well-dressed worker ants. Some are heaving wheelbarrows stacked with mounds of freshly picked vegetables, still earthy from the farm; others are dashing from one building to another, precariously balancing enormous stacks of clean pans. They all have one thing in common: they work for Simon Rogan. If they’re the workers, he’s the queen. This well-rehearsed choreography is a typical sight every morning in Cartmel, where the Michelin-starred chef – one of only eight to own a three-starred restaurant in the UK – set up shop 20 years ago. After a decade of working at various levels in restaurants around the country (including a placement under Marco Pierre White and two years at the three-star Lucas Carton in Paris), Rogan was keen to open his own restaurant. Priced out of Hampshire and Sussex, he looked further afield and found a rundown 800-year-old former smithy in Cartmel available to rent. “I didn’t come here for anything as glamorous as the area or the scenery or the people,” he tells me, having just taken me on a tour of said area to meet said people. “It was just for this building. I was desperate for my own restaurant. I felt like I had never really achieved the things that I’d wanted to working for other people. I wanted to make my own mistakes and be in control of our own destiny. I know it sounds cheesy, but it’s true.” He made an offer on his way back from his first visit to the area, and L’Enclume was born. “Once you realise where you are, you think: s***, this is beautiful,” he adds, laughing. Over the next two decades, the ambitious chef transformed the Cumbrian village into a culinary destination unlike anywhere else in the UK. It’s now home to not only L’Enclume – awarded the environmental green star in 2021 and the coveted third star in last year’s Michelin Guide – but also the one-starred neighbourhood eatery Rogan & Co, and Aulis, L’Enclume’s six-seater chef’s table behind the main restaurant. He also put his name to Henrock, a more informal and relaxed offering just a half hour’s drive away at Linthwaite House, overlooking Lake Windermere. The engine behind this mini empire, and the reason I’m here, is Our Farm, a 12-acre plot in Cartmel that supplies the majority of the restaurants’ ingredients. A sustainable, closed-loop growing operation had always been “at the back of his mind”, Rogan says. He was inspired by his father, a fruit and vegetable salesman who would bring home a box of the day’s best produce, teaching him the importance of using every part of the ingredient. When they arrived in Cartmel to get started, though, “the standard of produce”, Rogan says “was absolutely rubbish. The reason we got into farming was my frustration at the ability to buy a perfect radish, which is the easiest thing in the world to grow.” They rented a small plot close to the restaurant, and filled in the gaps with local suppliers. But, back in 2002, it was too expensive to buy organic. “Things were triple the price they are now,” Rogan tells me, taking a sip of his beetroot juice at the Aulis counter. “So we bought little bits and pieces here and there alongside the normal suppliers. Then we had the opportunity to take over the farm. That’s when we thought: ‘Right, let’s start growing radishes.’” What started as a little garden has become something bigger than he could ever have anticipated. A restaurant growing its own produce is not a groundbreaking concept, but a kitchen garden this is not. You won’t find pristine beds and trimmed rose bushes and arty ornaments. But you will find a patchwork of muddy fields growing hardy vegetables, the topsoil painstakingly “fluffed” by hand; a regiment of polytunnels housing the more finicky plants, delicate micro herbs and other culinary experiments (I try something that tastes like pickled onion Monster Munch); and enormous hand-rotated compost bins that process all the food waste from the restaurants into mulch for the farm. All this is surrounded by hedgerows that have been carefully curated to attract birds and other wildlife to act as natural pesticides. None of this would be possible without head farmer John Rowland. Regenerative agriculture might be his trade, but birds are his true passion. During a tour of the farm, he lists off the species he’s seen circling overhead, drawn by the blackthorn, hawthorn, rowan and birch trees he’s been planting on the borders. “We cater for the birds more than the people,” he tells me, in a Welsh accent so bucolic I wonder whether he’s been shipped in specifically for the tour. “Everything on the farm has a use, and not only in a culinary way. The seeds and the berries attract the birds onto the farm. The birds are my pest control, so the more I can attract to the farm, the more pest control I have, and that is fantastic for birdlife. In Britain, we’ve lost 84 per cent of our bird species, but this area is really rich because of these techniques.” While he might prefer looking upwards, it’s what’s beneath our feet that Rowland is really focused on. “The life is in the soil,” he says, grabbing a great fistful of the stuff. “You have hundreds of types of fungus right here. We don’t want to disturb that biome in the ground so rather than rotavating the soil [breaking up the earth with a machine ready for planting] and destroying the millions of organisms that live in it, we build a six-inch layer of compost on top and aerate it with a fork. Once you’ve done that, each year you just top it off with an inch, and that’s regenerative farming,” he says matter-of-factly, clapping the dirt from his hands. Well, that’s the gist anyway, and while it’s perhaps a little more complicated than that, Rowland struggles to understand why more people aren’t farming in this way. “We’re the most nature-depleted country in the world. We’ve lost our wildflower meadows, we’ve lost our insect population, we’ve lost our wild songbird population. They’ve taken the hedgerows away to make the fields bigger. All the natural food in our countryside is being lost to intensive farming.” Regenerative techniques like those Rowland is putting into practice on Our Farm would go some way to reclaiming it, he says, but “it’s a shame that they don’t realise that”. He pauses for a moment, then corrects himself: “Well, it’s not that they don’t realise it. They know. It’s just that they want intensive farming because it makes them money and it’s wrong because we are killing everything.” How this translates to the table at L’Enclume is manifold. Every dish on the menu begins life on the farm, where Rowland will flag what’s in season and at its best, or suggest something new he’s been experimenting with. Or it might start as an ingredient foraged from the countryside or sourced from a local supplier. The idea is then tweaked in the development kitchen at Aulis, before it finally makes its way to the pass at L’Enclume. This results in a transient snapshot of Cumbrian cuisine that changes every time you dine, and a menu quite unlike anything else I’ve come across. When I visit in February, Boltardy beetroot – a variety chosen for its resistance to erratic weather – shines in a bitesize tart with smoked pike-perch fished locally, and perilla, a Southeast Asian herb cultivated on the farm that adds notes of mint and licorice. Elsewhere, there’s lovage and rose hip and lemon thyme, all foraged; there’s Cornish cod and Mylor prawns and potted shrimp and Maldon oysters; sweetcorn and champagne rhubarb from the farm that were fermented after they were harvested last summer so they could be used year-round; and an enormous selection of British cheeses, including Tunworth, which is frozen and crumbled in a palate-perplexing, salty-sweet dessert. It happens to be my favourite dish. Managing a farm-to-fork operation this complex, not to mention the empire, is no mean feat. “I could pretty confidently be a tax exile given how little I am in the UK at the moment,” he jokes. When we chatted in February, the team was preparing to revive their pre-Covid plan for a five-week residency in Sydney, which concluded this month. The punchline, of course, is the delay meant Aussies were given a taste of not a two-star L’Enclume, but all four stars. Given Australia is yet to receive a Michelin Guide and is not particularly well known for its agricultural sustainability, it was an interesting move, but one there is clearly appetite for. Despite the $420-a-head price tag, it was sold out, serving more than 4,000 diners. While the food at L’Enclume, at home and abroad, is clearly special, it’s the people that set it apart from other restaurants in this league. Their hospitality, affability and, perhaps most noticeably, northern accents, are not typically what you find at this price bracket (£250 a head for the tasting menu, plus £100-£290 for a pairing). Stuffiness is neither present nor tolerated. Many of the staff have been with Rogan since the beginning, switched between the restaurants, or left for pastures new only to return. “We get a lot of people coming back – only the ones we want, anyway,” he says slyly. There’s certainly been a few famous quarrels. The “Rogan alumni” is a term thrown around a lot during my visit, and includes Mark Birchall, who was executive chef at L’Enclume during its two-star era before setting up a curiously similar “restaurant with rooms”, Moor Hall, in Lancashire, which also boasts two stars and a further green. Then there’s Dan Cox, who cut his teeth at Rogan’s now-closed Fera in Claridges as well as L’Enclume, and helped him set up Our Farm in the early days. He’s now down in Cornwall, running the farm-to-table Crocadon. But, generally, people are drawn back to L’Enclume for the variety it has to offer. “Look around the country,” says Rogan, “and [other restaurants] haven’t got any staff because they can’t offer as many career progression opportunities for people. I suppose that makes them lucky. “It’s about not spreading yourself too thin. We’re only able to do these things because these guys are really, really hungry.” Acknowledging that hunger, he established the Simon Rogan Academy in 2021 to “nurture aspiring chefs”. It includes paid work across the Cartmel restaurants, and culminates in a week-long placement at his restaurant Roganic in Hong Kong. In the beginning, “we thought that maybe if we had just a third of them left at the end of the quarter, it’d be brilliant,” Rogan tells me. “But almost all of them stayed on! And now they all want jobs” – he comically rolls his eyes – “but really it’s great.” As I drift between the farm and the Cartmel restaurants, everyone hard at work but always smiling, it strikes me that L’Enclume isn’t just a restaurant; it’s a story. And its influence is immense. “Sustainability”, “farm-to-table” and “regenerative agriculture” were mere whisperings 20 years ago. Now they’re affixed to almost every new menu, and you could say they were born here. The people I’ve met could well be the next batch of Rogan alumni, attracting Michelin’s attention with their own restaurants in years to come. If it takes 20 years to craft a legacy like this, then I’ll make sure I come back in 2043. For more information about L’Enclume, visit www.lenclume.co.uk and for more information about Simon Rogan and his other restaurants visit www.simonrogan.co.uk Read More Why I won’t be doing Veganuary this year – or ever again Marina O’Loughlin is wrong – there’s joy in solo dining Michel Roux Jr announces closure of renowned restaurant Le Gavroche to have ‘better work/life balance’ The true story – and murky history – of Portuguese piri piri oil 30-minute summer recipes for all the family to enjoy What to cook this week: Tomato tart, sweetcorn pasta and other summery suppers

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Some restaurants in California are charging an additional fee to customers who throw up in the public space after drinking too many mimosas during bottomless brunch. A restaurant based in San Francisco, Kitchen Story, first made customers aware of the cleaning fee with a sign in the bathroom, as reported by SFGate. In its message, the popular brunch spot – which offers bottomless mimosa for 60 minutes – encouraged customers to drink responsibly, before describing the rules they should follow if they don’t want to be charged extra. “Dear all mimosa lovers,” the sign reads. “Please drink responsibly and know your limits. A $50 cleaning fee will automatically be included in your tap when you throw up in our public areas. Thank you so much for understanding.” Speaking to SFGate, Kitchen Story owner Steven Choi specified that the sign has been up ​​for nearly two years, after staff members had to spend a lot of time cleaning customers’ vomit. “This was still during the pandemic and it became a very sensitive issue for customers and staff having to clean up,” he said. “But this is not unique. It’s there to make the customers stop and think about other people.” Chaiporn Kitsadaviseksak, the co-owner of Kitchen Story, said that the sign has successfully prevented customers from getting sick in public spaces of the restaurant. Although he couldn’t recall the last time that someone was charged with a clean-up fee, there were multiple instances of customers throwing up before the sign went up. “People were scared with Covid. And this was happening a lot. My workers don’t want to do that,” he said. “It got better. Now [customers] know they have to pay. They understand.” Another restaurant in San Francisco, Home Plate, had a similar sign as Kitchen Story, warning customers about the cleaning fee if they vomit. The sign on the wall of the eatery read: “Please Drink Responsibly. $50 Cleaning Fee for any incident incurred as a result of intoxication.” Speaking to SFGate, owner Teerut Boon said that customers vomiting after drinking was an issue in 2021, which is why he instituted “pretty much the same policy” as Kitchen Story. While customers complained about the sign, prompting it to be taken down in July, the fee still applies. In fact, the same warning from the sign is on the bottom of Home Plate’s menu, right under the price of bottomless mimosas per person. The menu also specified that customers can only do bottomless mimosas for 75 minutes. Although it’s not the same rule as Home Plate and Kitchen, a gastropub in San Francisco, The Sycamore, has its own way of making sure that customers drink responsibly. Speaking to SFGate, restaurant co-owner Liz Ryan said that although the eatery doesn’t charge a fee to customers who throw up in the restaurant, there is one staff member who keeps an eye on how much people drink. “We have a staff member who is a mimosa fairy. They bring a pitcher around that they use to refill glasses,” she said. “There’s a [mimosa] station and it says this is for staff use only so please do not help yourself,” She also noted that during the two-hour brunch, the “mimosa fairy” goes to the dining area every 15 minutes or so to pour more of the drink for customers. Throughout the time, workers also examine how customers are behaving. “Our staff is trained to make sure our customers don’t overdo it. Nobody wants to see people throwing up. That sort of spoils the party vibe that we’re trying to create,” she said, referring to a Responsible Beverage Service training from the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. As noted by the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, the service “teaches servers to responsibly serve alcoholic beverages for on-premises consumption and mitigate alcohol-related harm in California communities”. During the interview, Ryan also claimed there have been “ways to cut people off” from drinking without them realising it. “This is the kind of thing they teach you. We practice eye contact and engagement, we come by with a pitcher of water,” she said, before acknowledging that there have been people who step outside to throw up and then come back into the restaurant after drinking too much. “People can get carried away.” Read More How to spend a day in Capitol Hill, Seattle’s trend-setting neighbourhood Film, food and festivals: experience these Maltese must-dos Amsterdam travel guide: Best things to do and where to stay for a 2023 city break Brits pay more for wine when trying to impress guests, survey finds Spice up your life: Three recipes from Nadiya Hussain’s new book that bring the heat Obsessed with Boursin? It’s the perfect way to elevate your leftovers

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