my rivals reacted to the dire economic situation in a completely different way to me: they put their prices down. They reckoned that to reduce the price of a meal would bring in the punters, and when that tactic failed, they reduced their prices even further. They were searching desperately for the right price to appeal to customers. In contrast, I

A young chef has a habit of overworking things and it takes great confidence to believe in your produce and yourself. I have discovered that I didn’t need to put that much effort in. For instance, in the old days I would have put a huge amount of effort into designing a Dover sole dish, but now that I’m out of the kitchen, I know that it should be

Seventeen or eighteen hours a day in the kitchen not only stunts your growth socially; it can also stunt your growth in cooking terms. You become blinded. You are just working, working, working. Routine. Standards, standards, standards. Now that I’m no longer under that pressure, I find I can look at a dish, mentally dissect it and see a way of

I’d take myself off to the countryside for a day out with those good friends of mine, my thoughts. It seemed strange that I had stopped cooking in order to be happy but found it difficult to boost my spirits. I kept telling myself, I want to develop as a person, not as a chef anymore. Then I resurfaced, filled with the same energy and knowledge

“Look, you’re not happy and you haven’t been for some time. If it is all about the pressure of having the stars, then why don’t you get rid of them? No stars, no pressure.”

It dawned on me that I had spent my whole career being judged by people who had less knowledge than me, be they restaurant inspectors or food critics. Please forgive the arrogance, but can you see my point?

Although I had spent a career questioning the way I cooked; I had never really questioned why I cooked; I just did it.

Failure is often the first part of success. Go to the best restaurant in the world and you might still see failure. A sommelier might accidentally knock a bottle of wine onto the table so its contents spill out and onto your partner. Your beef or lamb might be overdone or underdone but certainly not the way you ordered it. These things shouldn’t

There was lots of publicity as the media followed my entrée into the world of conceptual art. Most people seemed to get my point, that you can scribble all over a piece of paper, frame it, put it on a wall, and now it’s art.