Meet the Chef - Max Rocha

The Café Cecilia founder tells us about his perfect dinner party dish, that time he set the kitchen on fire, the one food he’ll never eat, and why he still asks himself: what would Ruth Rogers do?

Max Rocha is the founder chef of critically acclaimed East London restaurant Café Cecilia, which he founded in August 2021 after working at The River Café, St. JOHN, and Spring. The restaurant quickly became a hit with fashion-forward locals and it wasn’t long before the UK’s top food critics followed.

Co-designed with Max’s dad John, Café Cecilia is housed in a white-walled, grey-marbled space, featuring floor to ceiling windows, with elegant black and white photographs all around.

The food on Rocha’s menu leans on his Irish heritage, courtesy of his mum Odette, and is served by staff in uniforms designed by his sister Simone. Cecilia was named after Max’s grandmother. From inspiration to execution it’s quite the family affair (and it’s a pretty well put together family).

Once you’ve heard from Max, check out his book Cafe Cecilia Cookbook and visit Café Cecilia.

Café Cecilia. Photography: Matthieu Lavanchy

What was the first meal you made? Making the Guinness bread that’s in the book, my mum’s (Odette Gleason) version. I’ve changed it a lot now to be more restaurant friendly. My mum used a lot more treacle than we use! I liked that feeling of accomplishment and thought I could do it for a living.

Who inspired you to cook? Skye Gyngell at Spring was a huge inspiration for me in deciding I actually wanted to do this as a career. Cooking gave me a sense of purpose in the workplace which I’d never really had before. Being part of a kitchen team really suited me.

What was Café Cecilia’s opening night like? We opened the restaurant for lunches first and we opened on my birthday because I was anxious nobody would come. I thought if we open on my birthday my friends and family will have to. It was a mixed bag of emotions, stress, celebration, and relief that I got the gas working. But it was busy that day and it continued to be busy.

Biggest culinary disaster? Thinking that making shepherd’s pie in my flat for a hundred people on a catering shoot was a good idea. That was an absolute disaster.

What’s your dinner party go to? When I cook at home it’s always a mess, so my girlfriend is usually the one that cooks for us. But my go to safe place for a dinner party would be a chicken and leak pie, because it can be made in advance. I started making that before I was into cooking. I’d make it with all the leftover turkey meat from Christmas Day, so it’s tried and tested. And I have an amazing pastry chef in the kitchen, so I can take some puff pastry home with me.

Guinness Bread. Photography: Matthieu Lavanchy

One song that goes well with any meal? With or Without You by U2. I play U2 in the café when we finish service. I know it’s not trendy to say it, but I love U2. Adam (Clayton, bassist) is a family friend and is such a lovely, supportive person. I’m very proud to be Irish and there’s a lot of Irish influences in our food – it kind of brings it all together.

Have you ever set the kitchen on fire? Yes. It was in our first couple of months of Café Cecilia and Grace Dent (UK food critic) had just walked through the door and we were all very nervous. I took a tray of pigs’ cheeks and put it in a hot pizza oven, thinking they would crisp up nicely. The fat hit the bottom and the whole thing went up in flames. We had to use a fire blanket and the hose. I don’t know if she realised. We got a really positive review from her and no mention of any fire!

Goat’s Curd & Blood Orange Pancakes. Photography: Matthieu Lavanchy

What food wouldn’t you eat? In the restaurant I’ve got some really weird rules. I don’t like coriander on my menu, and I don’t like mushrooms with fish. It just makes me feel weird. And I don’t like ginger in my cooking. Coriander does sneak its way into the kitchen and I’m like: Who brought this in! They always say it’s for a staff meal!

What would your last meal be? My mum’s pork ragu which is in the book. It's pork shoulder slow braised with onion, parmesan, and rosemary. I remember suffering with exams during university and she would make that for me, and it would alleviate the pressure.

What’s the best restaurant – aside from your own - you’ve eaten at recently? I really like The Quality Chop House, it’s one of my favourite restaurants. It’s crazy how some restaurants in London have Michelin stars and they don’t. It’s knockout.

Tagliatelle with Girolles. Photography: Matthieu Lavanchy

What do you know now that you wished you’d known then? You’ve got to be pretty crazy to open a restaurant and I wish I had known what toll it was going to take on my body. If so, I would have gone about the first year differently.

I don’t think anyone is ready for their first business. I’m lucky I had my dad (fashion designer John Rocha CBE) who coached me along it. He started from nothing and had a beautiful career. But at the end of the day you’re on your own in your flat with a lot of panic.

So I changed my whole life. I don’t drink or do any drugs anymore - two years last week - and I exercise every day. I run, go boxing, and have boundaries with how much I work. I had to hire more people, so I don’t burn out. You can’t do it all yourself. Our food gets better the more help I get.

Raspberry & Almond Tart. Photography: Matthieu Lavanchy

Restaurant Instagrammers – good or evil? People taking pictures of my food is a compliment to me and a compliment to the chefs. I have no problem with it whatsoever. It might be different if I was doing a different kind of cuisine, but I love that people are so happy with the aesthetic that they take a picture.

It’s great for the chefs too to realise that they’re connecting with the customer. To an extent people can do what they want at Café Cecilia. If they want to take a picture or bring their dogs or even their cats in, it’s fine.

What’s the most ordered dish in your restaurant? Deep fried bread and butter pudding. We sell a lot of that. Some people just come for desert in our restaurant which I think is cool.

If you could cook for anyone, living or dead, who would it be and what would you make for them? Living it would be Thierry Henry. And my dead one would be Johnny Cash.

Globe Artichokes. Photography: Matthieu Lavanchy

Most common unusual request from a customer? Those birthday candles that catch fire then kind of explode. They seem unsafe and are always a worry, but I don’t know how to say no!

How do you get ‘you’ onto the menu and into the atmosphere of Café Cecilia? When I write a menu I try not to compensate it with what the trendy food is at the moment or what I think people will want. I try to make it what I think is most true to me or my mum. I often think, what would Ruthie Rogers think of this? Or what would Skye Gyngell think if she came in and ate it.

I think that makes it more ‘me’. I choose all the music in the café; I choose the flowers. I’m very particular about hiring people. I have to make sure they suit the culture because how I live my life and how I run the restaurant needs to work with them. If I’m happy and they’re happy then the customer is happy.

With the no alcohol for myself it has to be a very non-party kitchen as well. Treat it like you would if you were working at Google. You wouldn’t go into Google hungover. We’re all working hard but we can make it really nice if we all turn up on time without hangovers. In the beginning that was happening to me, and it really affected other people because then they’re carrying extra weight.

I love cooking and I try to get my chefs to love cooking. To cook for a living in a city like London we try to enjoy it as much as we can. There are hard days, but I think that a big part of it is the team creating the atmosphere for the guests is something that you can’t really beat. I feel very lucky that’s it’s such a nice vibe in there at the moment.

Café Cecilia team. Photography: Jacob Lillis Back row, left to right: Dom Goring, Maggie Walker, Max Rocha, Dilan Cruz, Jessica Ordoñez, Sarah Saleh, Sophie Pignatelli, Clare Geraghty. Front row, left to right: Bianca Bruni, Lily Hadfield, Kate Towers, Darren Healy, Lucy Webster, Jack Scollard

Why should readers buy Cafe Cecilia Cookbook? Because it’s a very accessible book made for home cooks. One of the things I love about the book is that you can buy everything in Tesco and make it. Or if you have someone over you can go and buy the fancy version and really impress them. But you can buy all the basics of it all in a supermarket.

It was really important to me to make it accessible and not too complicated. It’s not full of mad ingredients. Simple home cooking done to our best. Aesthetically it’s a lovely book to have in the home. We put a lot of effort into the design and the portraits so it’s a lovely gift for people.

I worked with my dad on the design of the café and Eibhlín (Albert-Doran) on the design of the book. They both respected what I wanted, and I respected what they thought.

If you went into my parents’ house or my sister’s (fashion designer Simone Rocha) house they look exactly how the restaurant looks. It’s how we’ve both grown up, so the restaurant is kind of an extension of my family life.

For the book I wanted that idea of less is more. The more frills there are the more it takes away from the guts of the book. There are portraits of the staff because they are the beating heart of the restaurant. I didn’t know I was ready to make a book until Phaidon wanted to do it. I couldn’t say no. From reading the Rose Bakery book as a kid and getting the Fäviken book as a present, being with Phaidon was a dream come true.

It was like when Danny Meyer came into the restaurant, and I had the thought in my head: 'Oh my god I'm setting the table for Danny Meyer.' If we’re on these kind of people’s radars we must be doing something right.

Get your copy of Cafe Cecilia Cookbook here.