Restaurateur Mark is happiest with a free role

Oct 27 2008 by Karen Dent, The Journal

From tracking cowboys in Wyoming to sniffing out antiques in Saigon, Karen Dent meets the George Best of the Newcastle restaurant world.

ONCE Mark Lagun has an idea in his head, it’s not easy to talk him out of it. In fact, he’s prepared to travel tens of thousands of miles for something he wants.

The serial restaurateur, whose Barn Asia – the fourth in his Barn empire – opened last year, brings out two wooden chairs. One has a cowgirl carved into the back, the other features a cowboy leaping from his horse to wrestle a steer to the ground. These seats and a few dozen like them, sent him roaming around Wyoming in search of the craftsman who created them.

“I was emailing the guy who was making this furniture telling him that I wanted to buy some of his furniture and he never replied to my emails, so I just went with my brother,” he says.

“We drove up all the way through Wyoming. You could go 200 miles without passing anybody in a car, and I remember getting out on the side of the road and experiencing real silence for the first time – absolute deafening silence.”

But after their epic journey, the furniture maker wasn’t there.

“His wife as it turned out was behind the counter, so I said, ‘Look I’ve come to talk to you about some furniture’, and she said, ‘have you been emailing from England?’ and she said – and this is where it gets like Twin Peaks – “Oh, Mike’s not here, because he’s lost half his finger in one of the lathes, but he’ll be back in the morning’.

“So we went back and he came through and he had a cowboy hat on and a moustache, a skinny, little cowboy with a broken nose, and he stuck his hand out to shake hands and it had a bandage on with blood coming out, and I went like ‘ohhhhh!’

“I don’t know if it was a power thing to get the upper hand with me, having this bloody bandage on after he’d lost half a finger, but it was like Twin Peaks.”

The enthusiasm that sent him to the US to track down chairs for barn@ thebiscuit, his second restaurant, has been reflected in the decor of each of his ventures.

Barn Asia in Newcastle’s Waterloo Square, serves south east Asian food and the Vietnamese influence is apparent throughout, from the strings of red star lights to bamboo framed pictures and Viet Cong artwork to the authentic furniture.

“I’m a great admirer of Ho Chi Minh and in the face of what he and his people stood against the might of America,” he said.

“You look at leaders like George Bush, who I see largely as an ignorant man, but Ho Chi Minh was fluent in several European languages and worked under pastry chef Escoffier in London, and then went home to lead the revolution and actually won.

“The idea is of aligning yourself with a small independent nation, as I am a small, independent operation, where you value freedom over the MacDonald’s-isation of everything.”

He points to a poster on the wall, which bears the quotation ‘nothing is more important than independence and freedom’. It is, he says, a mantra he’s determined to stick to.

Before opening for business, he and Barn Asia’s head chef travelled to Saigon for inspiration. He dashes to the next table and picks up a purple silk cushion.

“I found these cushions in an antique shop, there were six different colours. I walked into another antique shop, I loved the cushions but I didn’t know what for, and I saw these chairs. I ran back to the other neighbourhood in Saigon, bought the cushions, ran back threw them on the chairs and said to the guy – ‘ship those home’.

“The thing I went for most importantly was the Viet Cong artwork, that inspired the people of Vietnam to their victory. I think the same sort of quite often random optimism I have ultimately overcomes if you strongly believe in it.”

Although Lagun has worked in the restaurant trade since leaving school at 16 with no qualifications, organising the look and feel of a place is his passion:

“The first restaurant that I ever had had a huge amount of stuff in there that belonged to me. And people would steal things from my restaurant and it was heartbreaking.

“It’s like stealing out of somebody’s house, they don’t understand just how personal that stuff is to me. I love stuff! I absolutely love stuff and I never get sick of it.

“My perfect ideal job would be for people to come to me with a bunch of restaurants and a bunch of money and saying I want to open a restaurant and could you do the interior for me? That would be my dream job.

“I can see it happening. I would love to think, ultimately, once I get into my 50s, I would have the indulgence to do that on a regular basis and actually get paid for it. How fantastic would that be?”

His first job was as a waiter at the Fisherman’s Wharf and Fisherman’s Lodge in Newcastle. He spent 16 years working for other people before opening his own restaurant.

“I realised I had to get my own place if was to stay in the industry because I’d seen those tired old waiters who would reach 55 years old or whatever, and they were trapped working in restaurants and they were too tired to do it from a physical point of view,” he says.

“I thought I’ve got to have my own place and do it well.”

The first, Barn Again, was in a building next to St James’s Park known as the Barn. Nine years later, he closed that and opened barn@thebiscuit at the Biscuit Factory art gallery, which was followed by Barn under a Wandering Star in Jesmond, and finally Barn Asia.

Each one has closed before the next opened, but he is considering opening a second Barn Asia elsewhere.

“I do think that this place, and indeed it has been discussed, is the kind of place that could be replicated in a couple of other cities – not exactly as a franchise but a place that is identifiable as Barn Asia,” he said.

“It would have the same style artwork, the same vibe and feel, but each one would be individual.”

Born and bred in Newcastle’s West End, Lagun is the youngest son of a Geordie mother and a Polish father who settled in the city after the Second World War.

“We were encouraged to read and question things, so in spite of the fact it was a rough area, we managed – myself and two brothers – to get through without really getting into any serious trouble. We were brought up to have good manners and respect people basically.

“Where we lived in the West End, that’s where the Polish club was. We moved around in the area, but it was always within half a mile of the Polish club, miraculously.”

As a child, he spent Sundays playing chess at the Polish club, but says he no longer feels part of the Polish community.

“I had a really old father, he was 56 when I was conceived, so the Polish generation who had stayed in Britain after the war, there is a massive generation gap between them and the new influx,” says Lagun.

“Ultimately, I’m very English. I’ve got a strong feeling about being English and the things that make you English, so whilst I do have a certain feeling for Poland and I do have relatives there, I’m very English.”

Those strong feelings also embrace Newcastle – although he admits the city can be a source of frustration.

“I love my city, I am very much invested in this area. I live in Summerhill Square, as the crow flies, I live 400yds from this door. I’m a West End lad and I want my city to be as good as it possibly can.

“I get very disappointed and frustrated at times, but I’ll always be a part of Newcastle.”

He points to Waterloo Square outside Barn Asia and the flats across the square.

“See this square out here? I did everything possible to get some sort of lively market thing going on once a month throughout the spring and summer.

“But the City said no, no, no, we can’t do that, it’ll compromise the integrity of our existing markets in Newcastle.

“If we’re supposed to be becoming a diverse, interesting place to visit, imagine living in those flats and once a month waking up in the morning, coming out on to your balcony and seeing these little food stalls where they’re selling fare, and they’re also cooking things, there’s nothing like that in Newcastle.”

Like everyone in the leisure industry, Lagun admits the credit crunch is “terrifying”.

“In almost 30 years of working in restaurants, I have never experienced anything quite like what is going on at the moment. There are so many more restaurants than there used to be in Newcastle.

“When I was a young waiter, there were only two good restaurants in the entire city – the Wharf and the Lodge. They had an absolute captive audience and they had old school customers who used to go out at lunch time – big red noses on them, florid old businessmen with suits and ties, sinking bottles of Chateauneuf du Pape, having cheese plates, port, with gout in their big toe – they spent fortunes at lunchtime as well as the evening.

“I will also predict that come January, you will see restaurants slide into the water en masse in this city and in other cities once Christmas is over.

“I always fear it will happen to me, but I won’t allow it to happen to me. I’ve got absolute consummate belief in what we do and what we offer people, and at the end of it, the strongest and the best will survive.”

Barn Asia recently scooped a prestigious Remy Martin restaurant award which Lagun hopes will attract new clientele.

“It’s a massive award. They have four awards in London and then seven awards for the rest of Britain and we’ve won one of the seven. If people in the city say, well if they think it’s that good, maybe we should go and support it. I’m not knocking my city, we’ve got some fantastic customers, but I know there’s a lot more out there who would love it if they came and saw what we do.”

Part of the experience of dining in a Lagun restaurant is the man himself.

“My role on busier nights is to be free in the place, engaging the customers, and I’ve got a bit of a reputation for being a bit of a livewire and quite often people don’t necessarily realise that I’m actually working,” he said.

“They sometimes think I’m a mad customer just wandering about the place and then it dawns on them that it actually is my place. I’ve got a free role to roam free around the dining room – like George Best used to have for Manchester United.”