It’s 23 years since Nathan Outlaw opened the Black Pig in Rock, Cornwall, when he was 25 years old. It was a long shot that everyone told him not to take – he already had a great job at the Vineyard in Stockcross, Berkshire; his wife, Rachel, was eight-and-a-half months pregnant; and he’d won a couple of prestigious young chef awards. But he wanted a place of his own; a simple menu, “bistro cooking,” he says. “That’s why I became a chef. I loved cooking, my dad’s a good canteen chef, he worked in a big paper mill in Kent, cooking for workers. I loved the physical aspect, standing up doing something. I loved the way there’s a lot of team work. I didn’t know anything about Michelin stars or being famous.” But he got his first Michelin star anyway, the year after he opened.
