Rick Stein, 76, went straight from Oxford University to running a mobile disco in Padstow. His career took a different path when he inherited a vast sum from a distant German relative and he opened his first restaurant. He now owns several renowned seafood restaurants across England and in Australia.
When he’s not overseeing his gastronomic empire, Rick regularly fronts his own TV series that marry his love of good food and travel. An award-winning author and a father of three sons, Stein and his wife Sarah have homes near his restaurants in Padstow, London and Australia.
What was your first job?
I was born and brought up on a farm, so I spent a lot of time driving tractors, stacking hay bales and stuff like that. When I was 18, I got my first proper job as a hotel management trainee on £5 a week. I didn’t do this job for any other reason than to try to please my dad, who wanted me to do something with my life.
I worked for British Transport Hotels, the railway hotels. I gave it up shortly after, but I spent enough time in a kitchen to learn how they work, and also what chefs were like, so it was good in the long run.
What prompted you to read English at Oxford?
I remember my mother saying at the time that there was nothing wrong with a ‘liberal’ education, in other words, one that didn’t lead straight to a specific job. It was almost a way of continually putting off the awful day of having to do anything.
But it’s stood me in really good stead. It’s come to my help a lot, particularly filming because I can quote lines of poetry, off-the-cuff, which go down well.
How did you end up in the restaurant trade?
I was running a mobile disco in the early 1970s, when I was left £14,000 by an unknown German relative, uncle Otto. At around the same time my best friend was left some money, so we bought a nightclub.
It turned out to be the best thing I could have done, putting this money into bricks and mortar. We never needed to pay rent, and we ran it for two years until it was closed down by the police because we didn’t know how to run nightclubs at all. I bought the restaurant in Padstow as a result, and eventually bought my friend out, so it was a piece of real good luck.
When did you feel you were financially secure?
I think it was in the first year I owned the restaurant in my own right. We turned over £9,000, and in the second year we turned over £21,000. When you look at the increase, and with a restaurant on the quayside, selling fresh fish we were probably on to something.
It wasn’t like ‘whoopee, we were in the money’, after all it was a seasonal restaurant and we were closed for four or five months a year, but there was a certain sense we were going places.
How did you get on TV?
Back in the 1980s you had the school summer holiday period, but then it went quiet, so I always up for doing other things, including local TV, cooking a barbeque for BBC Plymouth and the like.
It was through this that I met Keith Floyd and David Prichard, his director. Through our friendship I got more involved and realised I really enjoyed filming. It wasn’t about wanting to give up restaurants, rather I wanted to tell people who we were and to promote where we were.
How did you come to open restaurants in Australia?
I’ve got two in Australia now, my business partner Peter Cosgrove stumped up the money and I manage the places. But I got involved because of my wife. Sarah has always taken holidays in a place called Mollymook, on the coast of New South Wales.
The ambiance was similar to Padstow, where people take family holidays year in, year out, and I realised a restaurant there would work. I have a holiday house there, and I’ve come to realise that having a good restaurant in an area doesn’t do the house prices any harm.
What’s been your career highlight?
For me, personally, it was the first cookery book I wrote, English Seafood Cookery. I got what was then one of the best awards in the country for food writing, the Glenfiddich Cook Book of the Year. I had no idea I was even being considered for it.
I didn’t earn much out of it, but I was so bowled over that I organised by own book signing tour. Penguin, the publisher, said there was no point, but I went ahead anyway. It was probably pointless, but, well, full marks for trying.
What are you writing now?
I’ve got a new one out, Simple Suppers. I’ve written a lot of books, and inevitably the recipes are quite complicated because they’re cooking dishes as accurately as possible. I just wanted to do a book that describes the sort of way I and many other people cook at home with recipes that fit on one page and are fairly quick to do.
How do you treat yourself?
I just love going out for meals, particularly lunch, meeting some friends and having a nice lunch with lots of chilled white wine. I know it’s what I do for a living, but just going into somebody else’s restaurant, relaxing and having a good chat, I love it.
Rick Stein’s new book, Simple Suppers, is out now.
