This month’s Featured Chef
Tom Aikens
Chef Patron & Director, Restaurant Tom Aikens & Tom’s Kitchen
Tom, first and foremost thank you very much for meeting with us today. I appreciate you are very busy. Let’s start by you telling us a little bit about your current role.
Well, basically it’s Tom Aikens Fine Dining Restaurant. We’ve had one star since we opened and last year – sorry the year before last, we got the rising two and we have 5 AA rosettes. It’s all good and going in the right direction.
How many do you have on your team?
On the pastry we have 2-3 and in the rest of the kitchen there are 7 or 8: round about 10 people in total. I will probably take on more chefs, and go upto 13, around October time when things start to pick up for Christmas.
So London gets quiet during the summer, doesn’t it?
Yes, it’s the opposite to everywhere else. Everyone wants to get out of London in the summer and wants to come to the city in the winter.
OK, your Rising 2 Stars – it’s been well documented that at 26 you had 2 stars at Pied à Terre, does that add more pressure because you have had two stars before?
Well, the whole Pied Ă Terre was an exceptional part of my life and career; some good some bad – like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly really (chuckling) but I still look back with a fair amount of fondness. Having two stars at 26 made me who I am; it made my career; it gave me a name so from that point of view you couldn’t ask for anymore. And now, when I look at 26 year olds who I have had in my kitchen or 26 year olds that I meet – I think “I must have been f***ing mad”. At 26 I had no management skills … nothing apart from just cooking. (Laughter)
But that is true of many 26 year olds, isn’t it?
Yes, but I was very determined, very stubborn, very blinkered, and the only thing that really mattered was Michelin; Michelin; Michelin and nothing else. Nothing got in my way. But it was incredibly hard work. I literally had a change over with Richard (Neat) in the kitchen for two weeks – which was weird!
I was interested to read, in your book, that you described Richard as a “Nut ball”; they were your words.
Yes, he was a “Nut ball” (laughter)
