Fay Carlos Brown fell into hospitality at the age of 15, working as a waitress in pubs and restaurants before gradually making her way into back of house, joining the baking team at Pollen around four years ago. Lockdown brought a longing for life by the sea, and so she moved to a bakery in Newquay, ‘basically just biking around loads of bread, which was actually quite nice’. A brief stint in London followed, helping set up a bakery in a restaurant, and then working at Pophams, before returning to Pollen in summer 2021 as Head of Pastry. Alongside friends Scott Shannon and Niall Harley, also Pollen alumni, she recently set up Primo Bagel, which is currently popping up at Cloudwater Tap Room. She’s also an illustrator and poet.

We had a chat over coffee at Batard on all things hospitality - the value good hospitality has, the darker sides of the industry, the cooking of her childhood, and what she’s most excited about in the Manchester food and drink scene right now.

I have always loved hospitality. I kind of got into it by accident, but ended up really falling in love with it.

What do you love about it? 

I like people. I like that you can make people feel really special through how they’re treated. And there are a lot of characters working in the industry. A lot of maybe not ‘normally’ functioning people. It attracts a lot of mental people, in a great way. Proper little misfits. Which is why I ended up quite liking it - because it felt like none of us fitted in anywhere else but we sort of fitted in together. 

I like that you can use food and drink and hospitality to show people that you care, in a way that maybe a lot of other people just say in words. But some people just can’t express that properly, so instead you can make them their favourite food. I think I’ve realised that there are a lot of small things you can do to make someone’s day and that’s a lovely thing to be a part of. 

Obviously it’s about the product, and it’s really great to come across places doing really interesting things with food, but with all of the places that I go to, it’s just about how you feel when you’re in there. Places that create an environment where people feel comfortable, and like it’s a second home, and a little community. I’ve only ever really lived in cities and it’s quite hard to come across really tight-knit communities. That’s the really nice thing about hospitality, and the biggest thing for me - creating and finding little pockets of community. 

How do you find the hospitality community in Manchester? 

Great, and I think it’s definitely got better here. I’ve been here for nearly 10 years (with a little break in between), and I think there are more places popping up that are of higher quality. Obviously nothing against what was here before, but the more places that are here of higher quality, the more space it gives for other people to also be doing that. I think it’s obviously good because there’s demand for it. It’s a relatively small city, which is really nice because everybody does sort of know each other, and people seem less competitive and more supportive, which is great.

Does that support pre-date Covid, or do you think that because hospitality took such a beating, we’re coming out of the pandemic with more support within the industry?

In my experience, as an industry, hospitality has always been really supportive. There’s obviously a few exceptions, but I think generally if you’re in it, and you really love it, you want to help people, you want to be supportive and you want the industry as a whole to do well. Particularly bakeries, because it’s a bit more niche, there’s less of them than there are restaurants and you get to know everyone. But I guess Covid has changed a lot of people’s perspective on the industry. Especially if you own your own business, I imagine that’s been massively stressful. 

Back to the baking community, do you face the same issues as you do in restaurants and bars, e.g., bullying, drug/alcohol misuse? Is it even possible to go on a coke-fuelled bender the night before?

It’s definitely possible… I thought it was going to be a lot more wholesome, and in comparison it definitely is. Just the nature of it being daytime does help with that. But I mean it’s still hospitality, it’s still full of complete nut jobs. And also you’re basically just awake when it’s dark.

But I think personally it kind of helps to chill me out a little bit. When I was in restaurants and bars, I wouldn’t say I had a problem, but I struggled with a couple of things that had happened in my personal life, and I think it’s such an easy road to go down, because you’re already in it all of the time. It’s not so much stressful, but rather very adrenaline-fuelled shifts, so when you finish at 1am or 2am, and you have a beer after work to chill out, it’s just very easy to carry on. It could be a very slippery slope. And you don’t really realise because everybody you’re around is doing that and it’s completely normal. 

Whereas going into baking, firstly you have to get up at ridiculous hours, and secondly you finish your shift at a normal time and you’re awake in the daytime. And for me the repetition of it is quite good for my mental health. It’s one of the reasons I found it really fascinating, and I guess it’s one of the reasons it is quite niche, because I think a lot of people would find it quite boring, just literally doing the same thing every day. But I find it really interesting because it's something that’s quite changeable depending on really small things, like if you get a new bag of the same flour because it’s a slightly different yield, or a degree in temperature can make quite a big difference. It’s very temperamental. It is technically exactly the same every day, but it’s slightly different too. That repetition was really good for me, because it was a constant thing in my life. And up until that point a lot of things were quite unpredictable and sporadic. I quite liked it like that, but it wasn't particularly great for my head. So I think since I've been baking it’s been a lot better for me personally. I don’t think I realised that until quite recently, and I've had conversations with other people recently and they’ve said the same thing. 

In terms of drug and alcohol abuse it probably still attracts the same people but I don't think it’s anywhere near the same kind of problem. One of the biggest issues with hospitality is that there’s no higher up regulatory bodies. HR isn’t really a thing, which is kind of a problem. It does create environments where people are like, ‘that’s so lame, why do you wanna go to HR’. I’ve definitely been guilty of doing that before, even though I know I don't agree with it. I’m very much on board with things like: not working ridiculous hours, getting a break, eating properly. They’re quite basic things, but it’s almost like the amount of hours you work are worn like a badge of honour, as if that’s not really detrimental to your health. 

I think when everybody went on furlough, you just had time to think, 'do I actually want do that? What am I doing with my life? I’m not doing anything I enjoy doing because I don’t have time to do it.'

I know there’s a lot of stuff going on in hospitality that has come out over the last year or so - bullying in kitchens, really toxic environments etc. I think the reason it’s coming out is because everybody’s been kind of forced to have a bit more time alone and think, ‘why am I in that environment?’. When I was on furlough, I had so many conversations with people about having no idea what to do with our time. We were used to going into the kitchen early in the morning, working all the way through, doing 15/16 hour shifts, mostly underground if you’re in a kitchen, but definitely not really near any windows. You don’t really have any great interactions, and it’s really stressful. Then you probably go out afterwards, go home and sleep for two hours and then you just do it all again. And you either go out and get absolutely spannered, or you just sleep. I had loads of conversations with people who were like ‘yeah i don’t think hospitality’s for me anymore’. Or going back into an environment that they were very much used to before, and just being like ‘why are we putting up with this?’. It’s really really good that there’s loads of people coming to that conclusion. Maybe they wouldn’t have done that if it wasn’t for the pandemic.

I recently had a conversation with one of my best friends who has also been in hospitality for years about the stuff that’s come out about top chefs. I do think it’s good that people are calling it out. Because that’s not something that would have happened, maybe even five years ago. Or if it did it wouldn’t have been taken that seriously. And yeah maybe the pandemic has a lot to do with that, because people have had the time to think ‘why is that acceptable?!’ It's good because it’s going to help change hospitality. I don't really know how yet though. It’s such a massive conversation.

I’m not saying the perpetrators of these terrible environments shouldn’t be held accountable because they absolutely should, but I think if you’re a young chef who started in a kitchen when you were like 15/16 years old, and had to go through the classic bullying, pans being thrown at you, dealing with loads of shit… when you grow up and you’re head of a restaurant, that’s all the experience you have, so it’s kind of what you’re going to base yourself on, even if you’re not meaning to. I can totally get how that happens. 

Obviously you're still making choices along the way, but a lot of people who get into cheffing don’t necessarily come from the greatest background and don’t have a great foundation, so I don't think it’s that hard to imagine loads of people ending up as knobheads. There’s nowhere really that exists to help people like that. There are things out there, but it's difficult as well when you think that the kind of people who you're trying to get through to are not the kind of people who would go to classic therapy. And also, they’re not environments that would respect someone going to a therapist, which is sad. The people who are probably the biggest problems are probably the ones who need most compassion, and obviously the worse you are to people the least likely you are to get that from anybody. But it's great that people are talking about it. If there's a break in this crazy loyalty and idolising of ridiculous behaviour then that’s definitely really good.

How have you found being a woman in the industry? 

Generally it’s been alright. When I first started in hospitality, I spent a lot of time in teams that were obviously all guys, and I grew up with a brother who was very close in age to me, so I think I’m quite used to guy energy, which meant being one of the few women wasn’t as hard. 

But I also  have loads of stories of just… knobheads in the kitchen. And it is mostly kitchens, maybe because it is more male-dominated. I’ve also worked with loads of unbelievable guys and chefs in kitchens, but there’s been a  couple of incidents. There was one guy who was actually the general manager of a place, and although the team there were already quite strong, he came in and kind of took over and tried to change a lot of stuff, and was very misogynistic. At that point I was in the management team, and he would make comments about the staff, like that one of the women was ‘just slagging around’. He actually just meant she was just chatting, maybe being a bit lazy. And he’d do it quite a lot and do it in front of people. He’d make comments about what people were wearing in front of other chefs who’d rise to it, and I think because he was the general manager that changed the tone quite a lot. But to be honest I was going to say I’ve been quite lucky, and I haven’t had any really bad experiences, just the ‘standard’ stuff. But it’s kind of depressing to say that. 

As an industry I don't think it’s actually worse than any other industry. I don't know if that’s just my personal experience. I did a brief stint in an office quite a few years ago, and it was a very different tone. But I think with hospitality, because there’s so many different types of people, maybe more so than other industries, I think it’s also a lot more accepting on the whole. You’re forced into an environment where you're around lots of people and you have to work with them and get on with them. To be honest most of the problems have come from customers. You see lots of different types of people and all different sides of them… it’s definitely a journey. 

You were saying earlier how cooking for someone is an act of love. Did you grow up around food? 

My mum’s a great cook - she’s very good at making things out of nothing. Me and my brother used to have a day a week where we would have to cook for everyone. My mum and dad both worked when we were younger so there were a few times where we had to cook for ourselves. But she would always encourage us and show us how to make the classics, like a roux or tomato sauce. Nothing crazy, but I guess not everyone had that when they were little.

I wouldn’t say my parents were foodie people at all. But they were quite heavily involved in the church when I was younger, so we used to have loads of people come round to the house all the time. My mum’s best friend was British Caribbean, and another one of her best friends was Indian, and they used to come round or we’d go to theirs and they’d cook for us. I was quite lucky in that I was aware of a lot of different types of food growing up, and that just seemed quite normal. It was great to have lots of influences from lots of different people as a base. 

But when I started working in restaurants, I could see the level of attention and care and passion that people had for making things, that I guess a lot of people wouldn’t think twice about. I really fell in love with the fact that people were so passionate about one plate of food that might take 24 hours to make, and somebody would eat it within two minutes - but they loved it, they really loved it. Just taking simple things like a carrot, and turning it into something mad that just had all this crazy flavour and didn’t look anything like a carrot… it just seemed on a completely different level to everything else. 

Your description of hospitality as community makes sense if that was your childhood. Have we lost that sense of community that religion can sometimes provide? 

Again, it’s something that I didn’t really realise until I was a lot older, but I think probably the best thing about my childhood was that me and my brother grew up around all these different types of people. There were so many different influences from the people who were around our house all the time. Having that community is really really important.

As I've gotten older, it’s one of the things that I’ve really tried to be better at. Because I think I'm naturally a much more introverted person. I think hospitality has made me much better at social interactions. I do really love people but I think being forced to be around lots of different people at different ages really did help a lot. And maybe Covid has helped as well, because it’s made a lot of people appreciate community more. I really enjoy my own company, but even just having people check in on you, which has happened a lot more over the pandemic, has been really lovely. It’s been quite an eye opener as to which people really do care, which has been really nice. 

Talk to us about your writing and illustrations. 

I started painting when I was a teenager, and I did Art at school. I used it as what people would call meditation, because I find it really hard to just not do anything. It’s one of those activities that I’ve found I just get really lost in, and I won’t think of anything else. I did it quite a lot when I was a teenager and in my early 20s, and had a few paintings in bars around Leicester where I grew up. My mum was supportive and she knew quite a lot of people so she’d help me get them out and make me charge more. I’m not very good at self promotion so that was great. I’ve since had a few commissions but it’s always just been a bit of a side thing, which has been quite good because it means I can just do whatever I want with it. 

Then I got Covid over Christmas, so I had the whole flat to myself for 10 days. I felt sad for like a day, and had a little pity party. But then realised I’d kept going on about how I'd love to have more space for myself. I had some watercolours, so started doing little postcard-sized things, doing 5 or 6 a day, and started posting on Instagram. Every time I do it I'm like, ‘ I should do this more’.

Poetry’s one of those things that can seem a bit wanky. But I’ve found loads of poets that I really love, a lot of whom are spoken word poets, a lot from around the Midlands where I grew up. And they just chat about things that are very normal and use normal vocabulary. It’s not like Shakespeare - those poems where you're like ‘this is really intellectual but I actually don’t know what’s going on’. I do really enjoy old school poems as well, but I’ve always done it for fun, because I enjoy it. Then I started doing Christmas cards and Valentine's cards. It still really blows my mind that people enjoy them. I wrote a poem for my best friend’s wedding and loads of people came up to me asking to buy it. Every Valentine’s Day I put it up on Etsy and every year someone buys it and every time I’m like ‘oh my god!’. It’s just nice to be part of that community, and around people who love the same sort of stuff.

Which food & drink related projects are you most excited about?  

I’m very excited about a lot of people coming out of the pandemic deciding to start their own thing. That's only going to be good for the city, having more variety, and more people from the industry who are doing great things. Obviously nothing against other people who aren’t from the industry doing things, but you can tell the difference between somebody who came from a hospitality background doing their own thing, and somebody who hasn’t. I guess that’s the same as any industry - there’s a level of professionalism and knowledge and savvy-ness about them. Lots of people that I've spoken to have been working for other people for years and have been forced into doing their own thing just to make money, but are now doing it and realising it’s actually easier than they thought. Obviously it comes with its own struggles, but just the fact they’re doing it is exciting.

There’s a girl I used to work with who’s launched her own Italian, Ornella’s kitchen. She used to work at Pollen, and she made, on the fly, the best carbonara I’ve ever had. She’s great. 

Another girl I know who’s Portuguese Angolan, who’s doing her own stuff as well.

The guys from Flawd. When I first left Manchester I felt a bit deflated about food and drink here, just because there was nothing that was super exciting. There’s lots of good stuff, but then when I moved back Flawd had just started doing popups at Pollen, so I obviously got to know them pretty well. They’re doing great stuff and they’re so good at hospitality. The food’s banging, the wine’s great, but the big thing is that they’ve brought hospitality to a new level. You go in there and you’re like ‘god these are professionals’. Them being in the city is great.

The boys from Tine also brought a new level of ‘oh, this is new and exciting’. 

However you feel about Mana, I do think the fact that that restaurant got a star is a good thing for the city, just because it makes space for a lot of other things in between to come up to that level. 

Schofield’s as well - again, they’re absolute pros. When you you go in, the way that they treat you… it makes you feel like you need to be a better person. You just feel amazing. Like an absolute queen walking in there, being treated so well. I don’t know how they do it. Having places like that popup is very exciting, especially because it’s making space for other places like that to exist as well, and not be one-offs. 

I know it’s not new but I just love Chinatown. I love all the places there, and I love that there’s more people going, and more people being a bit more willing to try bits and pieces. It's one of my favourite places in the city. The amount of skill in those places is unbelievable and so overlooked a lot of the time. My top recommendations are: Jade City, No. 8 Hot Pot, the little supermarket that’s just off the park, if they’re sill doing coconut buns, and One Plus, which technically isn’t in Chinatown but is also great. 

Also Rise! 

Last but not least, I’m quite excited there’s a lot of bakeries popping up as well. Pollen is an institution, but I think it’s really good that there’s other bits and pieces popping up. It seems like more competition but I think that’s actually good. It just proves that there’s space, and the demand is there too. 

The more Manchester tries to be London the shitter it is. Because it isn’t London. It’s a different city with different people and different things to offer. The areas that seem to be the most exciting are people who are quite excited about the city, and who live here and know the place and know the people.