By Chris Avena
We recently had the opportunity to speak with Mike Robinson. Mike is quite the accomplished restaurateur who trained as a professional chef while living in France. He started his career while working as an apprentice in some of the most notable restaurants in the Savoie region of France where he honed his skills and dedicated his time to work his way up through the ranks. All that hard work and dedication has certainly paid off. Today, Mike owns several extremely successful restaurants in the UK. In fact, in 2008 he opened the now famous Harwood Arms in London. Two years later he was awarded a Michelin star rating and he has held that impressive rating, for the past fifteen years.
Mike grew up an avid outdoorsman. His passion for the outdoors and hunting has steered his course throughout his life. His culinary experience, his pallet for wild game and his natural charm has brought him on a journey to host several “Field to Fork” television shows that air on the Outdoor Channel. Mike is the host of Taste of the Wild, Farming the Wild, Wild Game Master Class and Fishing the Wild to name a few. That sounds exhausting to host and produce all of those television shows while running his successful string of restaurants at the same time, doesn’t it?
The one common denominator that Mike’s television shows and restaurants have in common, they focus on wild food. By wild food, he is not only referring to venison. He is referring to free ranging fallow deer, roe deer, rabbit, boar and the like. Mike and his company manage over sixty thousand acres of privately held land taking over one hundred deer per week. With the deer population in the UK at its peak, the numbers are at the highest level that they have ever been in their recorded history. With over four million deer in a country the size of North Carolina, the deer population has to be managed. Mike and his team manage the wild game on these particular properties and much of the time, Mike himself along with his team, are out before dawn hunting the game that will be served not only in his restaurants but some of the more well- known establishments in the UK.
Once the hunt is over, the animals are then brought to his five thousand square foot processing facility where he has professional butchers on staff. Nothing is wasted on these animals. All of the meat is then processed and packaged for consumption. The leftover scraps are ground up and made into dog food. The hides are salted, processed and tanned. These hides are then sold to make leather goods.
Often when Mike is out in the field and he has a deer in his sights, he already has a recipe in mind how he is going to prepare that particular animal on his menu that evening. In fact, during our conversation, Mike describes how he creates his Fallow Deer Wellington. Mike states that his Wellington is more of a work of art while describing it in mouth watering detail. It is not often that we have an opportunity to combine our passions in life. Mike Robinson has found a way to blend his fervor for life through his culinary experience and desire for sustainable living while demonstrating it to the masses through his television shows that air on the Outdoor Channel. As an outsider looking in, Mike Robinson has reached the pinnacle of success beyond any monetary rewards. He is living his best life on his own terms while spreading his message of a healthy rewarding lifestyle.
Mike Robinson | Farming the Wild
Robinson Wild Foods | Mike Robinson | Venison | Game Chef |
Mike Robinson - Outdoor Channel