Rufus Thurston launched Oli’s Thai with his wife Ladd in 2013, and followed up with tapas bar Arbequina, which he opened with Ben Whyles and Ben Bateman three years later. Harden’s caught up with him as he prepared to unveil a second branch of Arbequina in Oxford Covered Market later this spring.
HARDEN’S: Oli’s Thai was a hit almost as soon as you opened it, and along with Arbequina is regularly the highest-rating restaurant in Oxford in the annual Harden’s survey – an extraordinary achievement over more than a decade. Most people with restaurants permanently booked to capacity hit the expansion trail, but you’ve done things differently.
Rufus: Well, Arbequina was the expansion from Oli’s Thai – but we didn’t want to just do the same thing again. And we realised that Oxford is a tricky market – unlike London or Bristol or Manchester, it’s not full of people who want to try out the latest restaurants; it’s quite separated, with people tending to stick to the area they live in. So Arbequina took a good few years to establish itself.
We did expand Arbequina after a couple of years, taking over the shop next door. That gave us room to create a bar with great cocktails, and make the place more comfortable for guests. The difference was exponential – almost overnight, it became a restaurant where you could go for your night out.
As for Oli’s Thai: we’re always on the lookout for new premises – mostly to give us a bigger kitchen. But it’s got to be new premises in the right place, and they don’t come around very often.
It seems a big leap to follow up a successful Thai restaurant with a Spanish tapas bar (hidden behind an original vintage shop front – see photo). How did that come about?
My brother had opened Morito in Exmouth Market for Sam and Sam Clark, and I used that as a model for Oli’s Thai – if not in terms of cuisine. Then, discussing the site that became Arbequina with Ben Whyles, my co-owner, we agreed that we both loved Morito and Barrafina, so we took what we liked from those and added our own elements.
You also restrict your opening hours (Oli’s: Tues dinner, Wed & Fri lunch & dinner. Arbequina: Thur & Fri dinner, Sat 12-10pm), which means all tables are booked months ahead. So it seems that scarcity is itself a selling point. It also means that each restaurant can run with a single team.
Our opening hours have ebbed and flowed over the years, but at Arbequina it became apparent that we could do more covers while being open less often – which obviously helps with the running costs. And at Oli’s, it doesn’t seem to matter when we open, we’re always fully booked.
But we’ve never opened on Sundays, and it’s nice to have a team who work together and always have a weekend, with Monday off. We always take a long break at Christmas, too. It just seems a good way to run a restaurant from the staff point of view.
This helps with staff retention – people stay a long time. We’ve had the same head chef and same general manager at Arbequina since it opened: that says a lot.
The other key to keeping good people is allowing them the freedom to suggest changes. Ben Bateman, the general manager at Arbequina, has the freedom to do what he wants within reason, and the two general managers we’ve had for any length of time at Oli’s have both left their mark with changes that have been positive.
Both Oli’s and Arbequina have evolved a lot over the years, responding to customers as well as staff suggestions. You have to be aware of the need to keep changing constantly, you can’t just do the same thing week after week. And the cooking gets better all the time.
The main drawback of having small team is that you don’t have any backup if somebody is ill or on holiday – which means I have to be always available to pick up shifts when needed!
It sounds as if the new Arbequina in the Covered Market, in the centre of the city, is going to be very different, possibly with seven-day opening for lunch and dinner.
To start with it will be Tuesday to Sunday, lunchtimes only, because we want to bed in properly, beginning with just the ground floor. It’s a two-phase renovation and we hope to have the upstairs finished in time for Christmas, although that depends a bit on whether the market’s new plumbing will be ready for us.
Style-wise it’s still very much tapas, with some additional larger dishes for an all-in-one lunch. Downstairs will be dominated by a long bar, where guests sit and watch their food being prepared by the chefs, like at Barrafina. The bar seats will all be walk-in, although there will be four or five tiny tables you can book. We’ll also serve takeaway food to eat at the communal tables in the market.
Upstairs will more or less double the size with about 35 seated at tables, with potential for private dining. It will be great in the evening, looking out over the market.
The menu and décor will be pretty similar to the original Arbequina, so while the demographic will be different – a lot of tourists as well as people who work in the city centre – we’ll also get regulars from north Oxford who’ll find it easier to get there than to the original branch in east Oxford.
Ben Bateman will be moving over permanently from the original Arbequina – he’s coming in as co-owner with me and Ben Whyles.
Winding back, can you tell us how you started in the industry before opening Oli’s?
I worked in various restaurants in Bristol and London after leaving uni, then I spent eight years in publishing. We moved back to Oxford, my home town, when we had kids, and while we both had office jobs we used to cook for events. Then we ran the café at Worton organic gardens outside Oxford, and that gave us the confidence to start our own place.
Funnily enough, it was working at Pizza Express in Bristol in the late ‘90s that taught me most about how to run a restaurant. I’m not sure how it is these days, but back then the operation was meticulous, staff were incredibly well trained, the menu was very simple and straightforward.
I followed that approach when we opened Oli’s Thai. We keep the menu very short and simple – although there’s always a good choice of fish and vegetarian dishes. Too many restaurants these days try to please everybody, so they over-complicate by offering too many dishes but not particularly well.
We don’t do all those ‘classic’ Thai dishes you see on every menu – there’s plenty of other Thai restaurants if that’s what you want. We hardly ever have a green curry, we’ve had prawn toast once. We just serve the Thai food we like, and that is what sets us apart.