The Ribchic Story
Hi There! I'm Mark and the founder of Ribchic Piranha.
But long before Ribchics, there was my mum.
Growing up in a household dominated by South African-inspired cooking approaches -that had been passed down through generations- was a real privilege. Yes, I was thoroughly spoilt.
Mums pies, roasts, and BBQs & desserts set the bar high making staying in considerably more appealing to my dad than going out to eat. Mum had become a victim of her own success in the kitchen.
She credited much of what she knew to watching her father cook at weekends and to her grandmother Dina whom had run a restaurant in Kalk Bay, South Africa, with her partner Albert Foley—the earliest restaurateur we’ve found in the family.
COOKING RUNS DEEP IN OUR FAMILY
This is our own proprietary sauce, by the way..
IT STARTED WITH A SAUCE
About 5 years ago I started to recreate the sauces I’d grown up with.
There was just one problem. Some of the original recipes had been forgotten. Others had gradually evolved around convenient commercial ingredients like stock pots, gravy granules, and ready-made powders.
So, I started working backwards from the Flavors I remembered often getting it spectacularly wrong until I had reconstructed those childhood sauces from their underlying raw ingredients.
And once I started, I continued to recreate the truly memorable flavors i had encountered on the road while working as a management consultant for 30 years
Whenever I encountered something exceptional, I wanted to understand why it worked and to recreate it adding it to my growing collection of Ribchic sauces, marinades, and dishes.
If it's was delicious, it had my attention.
FAST FOOD. NOT FAST FOOD.
There’s another influence on Ribchic that sounds rather less romantic: McDonald’s.
I worked there while studying at university in Canterbury and absolutely loved the hustle.
The busier it became, the more I enjoyed it and i imagined how much more of a feeding frenzy there would be were my mums flavors infused into the food
That idea stayed with me: to take the speed and efficiency of fast food but put the flavor first; not food designed around speed, but seriously good food, served seriously fast.
There are plenty of places where we can eat "Filler food" cheaply and quickly in response to hunger - akin to filling your petrol tank when the fuel gauge indicators is on "Low"
And there are plenty of places where spending considerably more money and time doesn't guarantee you a truly satisfying experience
We couldn't see why those had to be your only choices.
Ribchics was created to deliver a satisfying experience at speed at competitive prices and inclusive.
So we use Halal meat exclusively from a local supplier
SO WHY THE BUFFET FORMAT?
Because, rather unexpectedly, the buffet is what makes the whole idea work.
Our kitchen lives inside a 115-year-old former oil tanker right here at Gloucester Docks.
It’s compact & Trying to cook and individually plate a large menu to order from a galley that size would mean reducing your choices or slowing everything down.
We didn’t fancy either option and a buffet turns the problem on its head.
Instead of constantly stopping to produce individual plates, our kitchen can concentrate entirely on doing what matters: cooking each batch properly from scratch.
You don’t wait for the kitchen, and you don’t wait for a waiter. You see something you fancy, you put it on your plate.
For Ribchic, the buffet isn't a shortcut—it’s the engine that delivers great food fast.
AND OUR NAME?
Lets just say it was Inspired by observations of my daughters' early feeding sessions while cradled in my ex-wife's arms when she was a baby
Yep................ truly eye-watering
