Breakfast With Bristol24/7: Josh Eggleton

Josh Eggleton arrives at Brunel’s Buttery soon after 9am on a recent Saturday morning with his mate Jack, a builder who can also double up as a chef when The Pony & Trap become outside caterers at large events.

Before the end of service last night the pair went for a few drinks at the Michelin-starred Chew Magna pub and later The Kensington Arms, both owned by Josh, and are still a little delicate.

Jack gets a bacon butty and a cup of tea to take away. He is off to Josh’s house in Totterdown that needs work finished before the imminent arrival of Josh’s first child with his girlfriend Meg, who he has known since they were at school together.

Once he says his goodbyes and is out of earshot, Josh praises Jack’s work on fitting out the nearby Salt & Malt in Cargo 2, another of Josh’s businesses that takes him full circle back to his first job working in a fish and chip shop in Whitchurch.

Another of his first jobs as a chef was at The Olive Shed only a few hundred yards away, and that’s why we are here today at the Buttery, where he used to regularly visit for a bacon butty in the days when Olive Shed was a fish and vegetarian restaurant.

Josh collects our sandwiches when our numbers are called, returning to our table carrying a huge bottle of tomato ketchup which he squeezes liberally over his bacon and eggs. Waving his arm to shoo away an over-confident seagull, he tucks into his food and cup of tea.

While the Pony & Trap remains his key priority, since taking over the pub in 2006, Josh’s business interests have grown to include Salt & Malt, Root and Bristol Beer Factory, as well as consultation work at Ashton Gate Stadium (where the Pony & Trap is hosting a pop-up restaurant when Bristol City take on Manchester United in the quarter final of the Carabao Cup on December 20) and the future Redcliff Quarter, and appearances on The Great British Menu on BBC Two.

“There’s a lot of amazing chefs in Bristol,” Josh says, namechecking Wilson’s and No Man’s Grace on Chandos Road, Adelina Yard on Welsh Back, and Box-E at Cargo 1. “A lot of them say to me, ‘I don’t know how you have the time to do all these things.’ I don’t really know the answer to that question either. But it’s a privilege to be able to do what I do.”

And it all started at that fish and chip shop in Whitchurch. “Back then I wanted to own my own chip shop. Everything I have always done I have always wanted to do it for myself. I think that’s come from my parents. I never lost that ambition to open a fish and chip shop.”

Josh sees his latest steps into divergent businesses as the “changing face” of his career. “Because Redcliff Quarter is not going to be built until 2021 you have to be prepared to change it based on what is happening.”

He is obviously adaptable and open to change. Take Chicken Shed, which opened with little fanfare in October 2016 serving fried chicken from organic birds, but which changed to Root specialising in vegetarian cuisine in August this year after Josh could not be fully content with the food he was serving.

“It’s just like a dish,” he explains while sipping his tea. “You work on it and work on it, refine it and refine it. Make it better. You tweak it, you taste it. We’re constantly assessing everything to make it better. We’re still doing it at the Pony & Trap. How can we make the service better? How can we improve it? How can we improve the restaurant? What’s the next step?”

Josh says that he was not happy with the way Chicken Shed was going. He didn’t think the product was good enough and only ever “got it close to working”, with the organic element forced to be toned down. So he changed the restaurant completely. “It occurred to me that another message was eat less meat. We should all eat less meat. That’s what I do at home.”

Chicken Shed transformed into Root in less than a month and now Josh says he is “over the moon”, especially the job that head chef Rob Howell, formerly at the Pony & Trap, is doing.

Josh’s businesses now employ some 150 people, many of who have worked for him and his family for years. “What I have come to realise recently is that it’s about surrounding yourself with people who are better than you at what they do. Don’t get egotistical about it, you being the best, because you’re not. What I am good at is getting these people working together and getting the best out of them.”

Does he miss working in the kitchen? He still works behind the stoves and was at the Pony & Trap last night. “If I was on the sauce section, I wouldn’t be able to have that over-reaching creative input. I actually quite like what I do now. I like the diversity from it. You need to evolve. I don’t see It as an evolution. I just see it as fun. I love it.”

Can he imaging doing anything else? “No,” he answers immediately through a mouthful of sandwich. “Not a chance!”

Illustration by Anna Higgie

Read more: ‘Bristol’s food and drink scene is just glowing’