Jason Atherton

Opening 17 restaurants around the world in just five years, Jason Atherton is cooking in a league of his own. The chef takes a break to tell Mark Sansom how his empire is coming along and how he forged his own path

The teenage Jason Atherton is in a Skegness arcade. He’s watching a group of lads play his favourite game, Track & Field, from his vantage point at the money exchange where he works. He saunters over to the toy egg machine nearby, deposits 20 pence, cranks the handle and retrieves his prize. He cracks his egg, discards half and takes his place behind the joystick. Where his contemporaries button-bash their way through the 100m sprint, he places the egg over his middle and index fingers and whips it back and forth across the buttons. It’s a world record. He types in his initials at the top of the list and walks casually away.

Atherton’s Track & Field philosophy could be a metaphor for his career: it has been a journey of straining boundaries in search of excellence. From being born into Seventies mining stock and becoming a loyal Thatcherite, to pioneering small plates in a conservative restaurant world and opening venues in the thick of a recession, he’s not made it easy for himself. But he’s certainly made it. In a big way.

We meet at his central Soho offices. It has more than a whiff of a beautifully curated Bond villain’s lair: gated entrance, a labyrinthine network of subterranean rooms and a dark-wood 12-seater boardroom table where I imagine him and his lieutenants plotting global restaurant domination. Though instead of revenge, he serves up excellent coffee and a warm welcome that belies the sometimes cold persona portrayed in the media.

Over the past five years, Atherton’s career has gone stratospheric. He opened his first – and still his flagship – restaurant Pollen Street Social in London in 2011 and since then he’s opened another 16 sites across the globe. It’s been a busy few years for the man. ‘ Opening Pollen Street was a nerve-racking time. I risked my house, my life savings and everything I’d worked for. You make your own luck in life, but you do need a couple of breaks. I believe in those Sliding Doors moments where things just fall into place.

‘It took us about nine months to find the site and then another nine months to fit it out. We really took our time with it; we were amateurs at opening restaurants then. Not so much now – once the drawings are signed off we get building. We can turn it round in a couple of months. I know what I want to see.’

The attention to detail – fastidiously complex and intricate cooking that made his reputation in six years at Maze Grill – comes through in his approach to restaurant design. ‘I was in Sosharu [his new restaurant in London’s Clerkenwell] last week before we open. Someone tried to cut a corner on me with a couple of doors, so I said that I wanted them ripped off, straight away.’ His contractors duly obliged and Japanese oak was hung in its place the next day. ‘It’s the same with my staff. There’s nothing worse than seeing a waiter with a naff pen, bad trousers or something not quite right. We make sure that everything is of a certain quality – and that includes the staff.’

Ever heard the phrase ‘Never trust a skinny chef’? Atherton doesn’t buy in. ‘Most of my kitchens are open-plan and the diners can see them. I don’t want a disgusting fat guy in there making my food, sticking his fingers in it – it’s ridiculous. Have a bit of pride.’ It’s got to be said that Atherton, 44, is in good shape himself. He boxes twice a week and has a personal trainer. Most days he and wife Irha take a typically trendy Soho spinning class. He is unashamedly image-conscious and has excellent taste in clothes. Where some moneyed chefs end up dressing like a shiny-shirted football pundit, Atherton has a sense of style that pervades his clothes, his office and his restaurants.

‘When you take pride in your appearance, it comes out in what you produce,’ he says. His Berluti shoes, Tiger of Sweden trousers, Tom Ford cashmere, Thom Sweeney jacket and Audemars Piguet watch agree. While his designer labels and W1 HQ chime with his right- of-centre politics, his uncles were miners who lost their livelihood during the Thatcher years.

‘My family would chase me around the village for saying it, but Thatcher did a fantastic job,’ he says, pointing towards a well-thumbed biography of the Iron Lady in his bookcase. ‘She got us back on the straight and narrow. The way she took care of the Falklands, fixing the union crisis and interest rates were all down to her. She made London one of the top four cities in the world in terms of the economy, tourism and independent restaurants.’

A person he holds in equally high regard is Jamie Oliver. ‘Jamie is at least 40 per cent responsible for making people interested in restaurants. He made boys, 20-something boys, want to take their girlfriends to the new hot restaurants and spend their money. Gordon didn’t do that, Delia didn’t do that.’ He’s the first to mention the name of his former employer, Ramsay, a figure I deliberately steer clear of – to see if he will bring up. After their acrimonious split, his feelings have clearly mellowed – 17 launches will help with that. ‘You’ve got to remember that Gordon ran London back then. In the UK, Heston has a three star, a two star and a one star–Gordon had 11 in the capital alone. He was the man.’

Does his management style differ to that of Ramsay? ‘I’m tough when I have to be, but I don’t scream and shout. I’ll say throw it in the bin and lecture, lecture, lecture until they’re sick of hearing my voice. I don’t scream, shout, punch or kick, I’m not that kind of person. People cope with pressure in different ways. The only person you end up stressing out is yourself.’ I can’t help but feel this is a pointed comment.

Right now, Atherton’s doing just fine on his own. ‘I sweated for 30 years to get to the point where I’m at. When I launched the Social brand it was never about ego. I didn’t want my name above the door – that’s all bull to me. In fact, I only really wanted one restaurant that made enough money to put my kids through a good school and go on a few nice holidays.’ Not that he’s complaining about his meteoric rise.

‘I came from an uneducated background – the only gift I have is how to cook and I’m grateful for what it’s given me.’ But he’s still putting in the hard yards. ‘The law of God is that if you want to be good at something, you’ve got to put in the hours. I’m still clocking 80 hours a week and I own the company.’ Like his days in the arcade, excellence is at a premium, and Atherton doesn’t care what it takes to get him there.