There’s taking a risk, and then there’s following the path Jason Atherton has. The… chef? Restaurateur? He fixes a look. “Cook, I’m a cook. I dress as a cook, I go to work as a cook, I go home as a cook, and I always run my restaurants from the kitchen.” The cook, then, has taken a circuitous route to his present operation.
The broad story is of a Sheffield-born, Skegness-raised boy raised in a caravan who joined and then left the army, who travelled through the great kitchens — working under Pierre Koffman, Marco Pierre White, Nico Ladenis and, most famously, Gordon Ramsay — and ended up with Michelin stars, telly appearances and restaurants in London, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, the Philippines. And then the perfect arc buckled, distorted: by the time the pandemic was over, Atherton found himself in a London he didn’t quite recognise, that didn’t quite recognise him.
