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Rick Stein has said he got into the restaurant business to avoid bankruptcy after his nightclub venture was shut down by the police.
The chef and restaurateur discussed his businesses and the evolution of British cuisine during a wide-ranging talk at a sold-out event at the Henley Literary Festival. The Independent is the festival’s exclusive news partner for the second year in a row.
Speaking about how his first restaurant in Padstow, Cornwall came about, as he looks towards its upcoming 50th anniversary, he told the audience: “I wanted to open up a disco in Padstow and so I bought this building on the quayside and intended set up a nightclub.
“But it was very, very hard work for a young, green-behind-the-ears person who had no idea about the responsibilities required, people’s capacity to drink too much and the need to keep them in order.
“We were closed down by the police and I was declared not a fit person to run a nightclub. So I opened up the restaurant really to avoid being bankrupt.”
The food writer and his former wife, Jill, opened up their flagship seafood restaurant a year later in 1975 and while it is still going strong half a century later, Mr Stein said it was not so popular at first.
“A lot of the local people in Cornwall didn’t want to eat fish,” he said. “In the early days, the restaurant wasn’t busy.”
However, he said Britain’s appetite for fish has grown over the years as the nation developed “a much bigger and knowledgable appetite for food and eating out.”
Discussing his new cookbook Rick Stein’s Food Stories: Over 100 New Recipes Inspired by my Travels Around the British Isles, Mr Stein spoke about how Britain’s vibrant immigrant communities have made the UK home to “the most exciting cuisines in the world”.
The book accompanies his TV series on BBC Two in which he travels around the UK to taste the best food Britain has to offer and meet the people behind the plates. He has compiled his favourite 100 recipes including Kubo pork belly adobo, Arroz roja, potted shrimps and Paneer jalfrezi.
He recalled his visit to Belfast where he shared a Phillipino Sunday lunch and also his time in Bristol where he cooked alongside women from West Africa, Egypt and Pakistan at a cookery-focused social enterprise.
Henley Literary Festival continues until 6 October.