Aiden Marsh has stopped at nothing when it comes to chasing his dream
A half-deaf chef has thanked his local community for its support after realising his dream of selling artisanal food. Aiden Marsh, 30, of East Dulwich, woke up one morning to realise he was deaf in his right ear.
Weeks of deeply uncomfortable injections into his eardrum bore no fruit, and the then 27-year-old was forced to accept he had to readapt to life with half his hearing. But this only motivated the lifelong hospitality worker to chase his dream of running his own food business.
The Half Deaf Chef sells artisan vegetarian sandwiches and salad bowls. It’s found in Camberwell’s Ruskin Park, by the Denmark Hill entrance, open from 11am to 5pm, Thursday to Sunday. Aiden has three mouthwatering options: the first being the BMT, which consists of black olive tapenade, mozzarella, and tofu bacon.
His second choice is the smoke stack, which is filled with smoky oyster mushrooms and tempeh, romesco sauce, and cashew creme. Finally, there is the rainbow catch, consisting of neri-crusted halloumi, butter bean tartare, and carrot lox.
Aiden’s journey has not been easy, with the legendary chef having invested his entire £3,500 in life savings to chase his dream. Losing half his hearing ‘changed everything’ for him, so the Half Deaf Chef embodies his fight against being defined by his ordeal and his efforts to seize control of his new life.
“I wanted to build something positive from losing my hearing, so it’s me taking a step back into hospitality on my own terms where I can cope,” he told us. He added: “I worked in hospitality for over a decade in every corner from bars to kitchens to management front of house.”
‘One day I answered the phone and I couldn’t hear’
Aiden said he’d woken up after recovering from the flu with ‘awful tinnitus ringing’ in his ear.
Having received a normal phone call, he found it weird he couldn’t hear, eventually realising he could only feel the vibrations of the sound. Aiden said: “I quickly moved the phone over to my left ear and I could hear. It suddenly dawned on me that I couldn’t hear anything out of my right ear.
“When it happened, it took a while to start engaging with people the way I did before. I didn’t have a hearing aid for about eight months.” He was eventually diagnosed with sudden sensory neural hearing loss and underwent treatment of steroid injections into his right eardrum in order to stimulate the affected nerve.
One of the toughest parts of the treatment, he says, was not being able to swallow for half an hour after the injection, as it can ‘wash away’ the steroids. “It sounds so simple, but not swallowing for longer than a minute is insanely hard,” said Aiden.
Aiden said he initially got a hearing aid on the NHS, but it was ‘bulky’, so he switched to a £2,500 one from Boots, which has an AI chip that lets you block out different sounds. Fortunately for Aiden, he can pay it back through a zero per cent instalment scheme.
‘Eating meat three times a day, seven days a week, is not good for the world’
Vegetarianism runs in Aiden’s veins as his dad was an animal rights activist and a punk in the 80s, so he’s always felt ‘strongly about the treatment of animals and looking after the world.’ His mum was veggie too, and both parents were ‘very good cooks’ which helped shape his view that ‘vegetarian food focuses a lot more on flavours and textures rather than relying on kind of one sort of baseline meat with some sauce.‘
“I’m all for people eating a bit of meat here and there and eating as fresh and as local as they possibly can, but I think eating meat three times a day, seven days a week, is just not good for the environment. I don’t want to start preaching about global warming but it’s not it’s not it’s not sustainable.”
‘You haven’t tried hard enough’
Chef Aiden is familiar with the tropes surrounding vegetarianism, with people sometimes claiming the food is bland and tasteless. His simple response is that people ‘haven’t tried hard enough.’
He said: “You haven’t tried hard enough, or you haven’t researched hard enough. People sometimes turn vegan and feel like their energy is gone or that they’re not eating correctly. It just means that they’re not thinking hard enough about their food and thinking about where they’re getting their vitamins and their macronutrients from.”
Aiden added: “I’m very passionate about the food that I put out, and the responses I’ve had from customers are amazing. Each mouthful has something sweet, something sharp, something umami-ish and the textures are all there. I think vegetarian food has quite a bad rep.”
‘It’s about people being happy’
He doesn’t want a monopoly of trucks, but the goal is to get his own bricks and mortar at some point. But for now, says Aiden, ‘it’s about people’s experiences.’
“What I love about this industry is creating memories and creating experiences for people,” he said. “The future is making sure that people have happy faces and they’re happier than when they arrive because they’ve had lovely, delicious vegetarian food and a nice conversation, that’s brilliant. That’s a good day for me – the response that I’m seeing from people is just overwhelming, so encouraging.”
“I’d like to thank the community around Camberwell for how supportive they’ve been.”
‘You don’t need everything figured out before you start’
Aiden has words of wisdom for people who want to chase their dreams but are slightly unsure about taking the leap of faith. He told us you learn as you go, as ‘you don’t need everything figured out before you start. “I lost half my hearing and now I run a successful sandwich shop – always believe in yourself.”
He even admitted that he hasn’t got ‘it all figured out’. Instead, he takes it ‘step by step,’ facing ‘each day as it comes,’ “Believe in yourself, because that’s how I’ve grown and built what I have built so far.”
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