BL-24 - Flipbook - Page 54
ENTREPRENEURS
Rick’s 昀椀rst book, English Seafood
Cookery, was published in 1988.
“Then the great cookery writer Jane
Grigson, whose book Fish Cookery
I loved, turned up at the restaurant,
and I didn’t realise it at the time, but
she must have been scouting us out,
because the book won the Glen昀椀ddich
Award for Cookbook of the Year in
1989.”
David Pritchard, whose relationship
with Keith Floyd had by that
time broken down pretty much
irreconcilably, was the director,
although he initially had reservations
about putting him on screen. As Rick
told me that night, “the 昀椀rst time
David saw me on camera he said,
‘you’re a bit like Forrest Gump, aren’t
you?’”
“Rick has no ambitions to
write a novel of his own –
‘I’m no good at constructing
a plot. Starters, main
courses, puddings, that’s
me!’”
But it was Rick’s thoughtful, dif昀椀dent,
natural style of presentation, skilfully
captured by Pritchard, that shone
through on Taste of the Sea, and a
plethora of subsequent series, until
Pritchard died in 2019, 昀椀lmed all over
the world.
I 昀椀rst met Rick a few years later,
in January 1997, at the bar of his
recently-opened St Petroc’s Hotel and
Restaurant, a short stroll from The
Seafood Restaurant. At midnight, just
as we moved on to the second brandy,
he turned 50.
Most chefs do not have what is
sometimes called a “hinterland” –
other interests and passions that round
out their character – or even any real
passion for food: some of them might
just as well have taken an NVQ in
spot welding. But Rick, and his old
friends Simon Hopkinson, Rowley
Leigh, Shaun Hill and the late Alastair
Little, is different. Music was an early
passion – hence the disco and the
nightclub – and so is literature: he read
English at Oxford. “I got a third. So
did Evelyn Waugh!” His book choice
on Desert Island Discs was Anna
I was interviewing him because,
by then, he had become one of
the brightest stars in the culinary
昀椀rmament. His series Taste of the Sea,
released a year and a half before, had
been rapturously received, and won
him another Glen昀椀ddich Award.
Karenina, he loves Graham Greene,
and he is currently devouring Anthony
Powell’s magisterial A Dance to the
Music of Time, all 12 volumes of it,
“for the fourth time: I still 昀椀nd new
things to enjoy in it.”
He has no ambitions to write a
novel of his own – “I’m no good at
constructing a plot. Starters, main
courses, puddings, that’s me!” – but he
has still managed to publish nearly 30
books since English Seafood Cookery,
including Under A Mackerel Sky, his
2013 autobiography that candidly
charts his chaotic younger life,
including his father’s bipolar disorder:
he took his own life when Rick was
19.
His latest book, Rick Stein’s
Christmas, is an altogether happier
read, liberally seasoned with
quotations from Thomas Hardy,
Maya Angelou, Jane Austen, Charles
Dickens, James Joyce, Shakespeare
(and The Pogues), and full of enticing
seasonal recipes.
His advice to Christmas cooks?
“Don’t overcook the turkey! Portia,
the home economist for the book and I
cooked and re-cooked lots of turkeys,
just to get the timings right, and we
concluded that it’s just a large chicken.
“Get it out of the fridge early – the
night before, preferably – use a
temperature probe, and don’t let it get
above 65˚C. And just prepare as much
as you can in advance: Christmas
dinner is all about choreography.”
It is an October evening in Chiswick,
and Rick and I are enjoying a pint or
two of London Pride in a pub not far
from the home he shares with Sas,
his Australian wife, and his business
partner in his two restaurants down
under. (His 昀椀rst wife, Jill, still owns
and runs his UK restaurants with him.)
Rick Stein’s The Seafood Restaurant, his original and still his 昀氀agship
54
BOISDALELIFE.COM
ISSUE 24
Nearly three decades since we 昀椀rst
met, and now aged 78, his curiosity
about food and his love of restaurants
remains undimmed, despite the
economic headwinds that are severely
