Antoine Melon Of HOMETAINMENT: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became a Restaurateur
An Interview With Martita Mestey
Don’t listen to everyone’s opinion and believe in yourself — when you start a business everyone will give you their opinion, but you have to keep believing in yourself and your vision.
As a part of our series about “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became a Restaurateur”, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Antoine Melon.
With nearly 30 years of experience in opening and running restaurants and hotels around the world, including Six Senses, Mandarin Oriental and Conran Restaurants, HOMETAINMENT co-founder Antoine Melon is an expert in the art of hosting, or as he would say “L’Art de recevoir”. Since coming to London, Antoine has put his global experience to use at Soho House and Artfarm (part of Hauser & Wirth art gallery). Using his little black book of contacts, Antoine and his team hand-picked talented hospitality experts with unique offerings and voila, HOMETAINMENT was born.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to ‘get to know’ you a bit. Can you share with our readers a story about what inspired you to become a restaurateur?
Paul Bocuse (longest ever 3 Michelin star chef in the world) once gave me a car.
It was a toy car, of course, but I loved it as if it were life-sized. The date was 3 November 1979, my seventh birthday. Like true Lyonnais, my parents chose to mark the occasion with food, at Bocuse’s celebrated restaurant, L’Auberge du Pont de Collonges. That day I had Bocuse’s signature truffle soup V.G.E. (named after Valerie Giscard d’Estaing, who was president at the time), and then ate sea bass stuffed with lobster mousse in puff pastry with Sauce Choron. I finished with a vanilla île flottante (a ‘Floating Island’), while one of Bocuse’s staff, wearing a red uniform trimmed with gold braid and brass buttons, played an Orjels-Winn barrel organ. My family sang “Bon anniversaire, nos voeux les plus sincères…”
But the dinner’s most impressive moment happened when Monsieur Paul himself came to our table; he was wearing his whites, while his chef’s hat made him the tallest man I had ever seen. That was when he offered me a miniature version of his own 1972 Citroën Dyane. That little car bore all the region’s finest meats, cheeses, fruits and vegetables, from Lyons’ famous market, Les Halles, to L’Auberge du Pont du Collonges.
From that moment on, I wanted a life based around food and artists like Monsieur Paul. That meal actually changed my destiny, which would otherwise have been to take over Maison Melon, a jewellery house that my great-great-grandfather Jean-Pierre Melon founded in 1850.
Do you have a specific type of food that you focus on? What was it that first drew you to cooking that type of food? Can you share a story about that with us?
At HOMETAINMENT, we proudly offer a diverse selection of more than 20 types of cuisines, including Persian, Mexican, Japanese, British, and French, along with specialized options like Table Grazing and Vegan menus. While I enjoy cooking at home, I don’t consider myself a professional chef, despite having trained at the renowned École Hôtelière de Lausanne. This experience provided me with a solid foundation in the culinary arts and allows me to engage knowledgeably with our expert chefs.
We are delighted to have a carefully curated selection of over 30 handpicked chefs on our platform, each bringing a unique background — whether they come from Michelin-starred restaurants, esteemed cooking schools like Le Cordon Bleu or Leiths School of Food and Wine, or have made their mark on shows like MasterChef. This diverse talent pool enables us to cater to a wide range of events, offering various price points and making our services accessible to all.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that happened to you since you became a restaurateur? What was the lesson or take away you took out of that story?
Today, I see myself more as an Entrepreneur than a Restaurateur. In the past few months alone, we’ve organized over 250 events, ranging from private parties at homes and offices to art gallery exhibitions, exclusive home rental experiences, resident events, and even video shoots. One memorable moment was when a musician, who had just performed at one of our events, called to express her gratitude for the opportunity to play in front of Leonardo DiCaprio and Naomi Campbell — guests whose identities were kept confidential from us.
Recently, we also had the pleasure of organizing a stunning and magical 18th birthday party. The birthday girl shared a TikTok video of the event, which quickly went viral, amassing 1.5 million views.
At HOMETAINMENT, our passion is crafting unique and unforgettable experiences, creating Living Memories for our clients by bringing the finest hospitality and entertainment directly to the comfort of your home or office.
The lesson I took away from those events is that whoever is the client make sure that you create Lasting memories.
Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? How did you overcome this obstacle?
The hardest task at the beginning of HOMETAINMENT was to explain what we wanted to create and achieve. We want to be the Airbnb of Hospitality at HOME or the OFFICE, the first hospitality and entertainment marketplace connecting vetted experts with potential clients. The best way to overcome that obstacle was to come up with a clear vision and mission statement to explain our business.
In your experience, what is the key to creating a dish that customers are crazy about?
It is very simple, just select the best ingredients, local and in season, and cook them in a simple way to showcase the product rather than trying to transform it.
Personally, what is the ‘perfect meal for you’?
The perfect meal is a large table with Friends or Family sharing the best food the place has to offer, cooked in a simple way (grill, panfry or baked) with a Private Chef to remove the stress of hosting and accompany with great wines to help the conversation flowing.
Where does your inspiration for creating come from? Is there something that you turn to for a daily creativity boost?
I get my creativity by being inspired from the industry, by my travels and by the local stories.
Are you working on any new or exciting projects now? What impact do you think this will have?
Yes we are launching HOMETAINMENT Hong Kong later this year which will be our first venture abroad and a massive step for us to become an international brand and show the scalability of our business.
What advice would you give to other restaurateurs to thrive and avoid burnout?
Make it a point to engage in daily exercise, regularly socialize with friends, and explore new places to keep your mind refreshed and energized.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started as a Restaurateur” and why?
- Don’t listen to everyone’s opinion and believe in yourself — when you start a business everyone will give you their opinion, but you have to keep believing in yourself and your vision.
- Test your service to check Market fit — do not spend a fortune in tech but get your potential customers to test the product or service to validate your idea.
- Use data to validate your assumptions — make sure you collect all the data you can to make the right business decisions in the future.
- Emphasize Team Culture early on — make sure you have a strong company culture from day 1 as it will be reflected in everything you do.
- Bootstrap to avoid wasting money — think twice before spending money and what the return will be otherwise you will burn your cash too fast.
What’s the one dish people have to try if they visit your establishment?
We have too many amazing chefs on the platform to only name one or their dish! Please check our chefs here: https://www.hometainment.co.uk/all-chefs
My favourite discovering dish is from Persian Chef Bahar: Borani esfenaj: a mix of natural yoghurt with sautéed spinach, cinnamon and garlic. Kashke Bademjon: roasted/fried aubergine with caramelised onions, garlic, roasted walnuts, dried mint and drained yoghurt.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Open your house to your friends, host them to show them your private space, to look after them, share special moments of togetherness and create Living Memories with the help of HOMETAINMENT.
Thank you so much for these insights. This was very inspirational!
