Jason Atherton: ‘I insist on five family holidays a year - that’s non-negotiable’

Jason Atherton has just arrived in Solden, Austria, and cannot wait to hit the slopes. The Michelin-starred chef is a keen skier (he takes his family twice a year) and has managed to combine his favourite hobby with a cooking gig for the annual gourmet food and wine festival, Wein Am Berg (weinamberg.at).

“I’m lucky,” he grins, when we meet pre-ski. “This is technically work. I’m in the Austrian Alps cooking - and not many careers can give you that. But the only reason I have that, is because I’m good at what I do.”

That’s hard to argue with. Atherton, 46, has opened 17 restaurants in seven years, from New York to the Philippines, including his flagship Michelin-starred Pollen Street Social in London, which has been named the fourth best restaurant in the UK. It’s been a rapid rise - particularly as his career didn’t take off until his early 30s. 

He spent his formative years as Gordon Ramsay’s right-hand man, until 2010 when he left to set up “his baby”. “Pollen Street Social is where I spend most of my time,” he admits. “It’s like my favourite child I spoil and spend too much time on.”

But Atherton - a father of two - has no plans to slow down. He wants to join the “tiny” number of chefs still world-renowned in their 60s, which means he has 14 years to carry on growing his empire. “I have got a real chance and the real opportunity to cement that,” he says. “Which is why I need to put my foot on the gas even harder. No one wants to be a faded has-been.”

He is dismissive of people who aim for a work-life balance - “I’m not a huge fan of that. When success happens for you, if you’re smart, you work out the best way to keep making it work for you” - but acknowledges that his success comes at the expense of his two daughters, Keziah, 12, and Jemimah, 6.

They are clearly incredibly important to him, and his face lights up when he talks about Jemimah being a “little foodie” and Keziah demanding waiters bring her the À La Carte menu instead of the children’s version. But the demands of his work mean he cannot spend as much time with them as he would like.

“Look, I’m a cook,” he says. “I left school with no education and no GCSEs. I was obsessed by food. I opened my own restaurant. We now live in a stunning house in Wandsworth. I have a life people dream of, but that comes at a price and that’s we don’t always see each other as much as we’d like to. But my kids get a very good education, and go on wonderful holidays.”

He pauses. “To be honest, [work-life balance] is a bit of a first world problem. I just get on with my life and thank the lord I got the opportunities I did.”

Atherton grew up in Skegness, in a “working-class family.” At times they lived in a caravan, and he worked giving donkey rides to tourists on the beach. But he was obsessed with food. “I used to collect clippings about it,” he says. “Back then, in the Seventies and Eighties, good food was for the elite. My family never went to restaurants. We’d dress up for Pizza Hut. I’m so happy for the kids in Britain that it’s completely different now.”

He knew he wanted to be a chef, and “there was no way it was going to happen in Skegness”, so he left for London as a teenager. He worked his way up through the top restaurants, and in 2001, joined Ramsay. “We were never big mates,” he admits. “For me, it was just work. We haven’t spoken since I left. He has his life, I do mine.”

These days, Atherton’s business partner is his wife Irha. Originally from the Philippines, they met when he was working in Dubai, and she is now co-director of The Social Company restaurant group. “She controls my diary,” jokes Atherton.

But he admits it isn’t easy. “Working together has its challenges. We don’t always agree on the way forward, which can be hard. But what’s important for me is having my wife at the office. She’s family.”

Does it mean they spend a lot of time together? He laughs. “No. We’re both working too hard.” 

Atherton says that he sleeps for less than six hours a night (“I’ve done it my whole life”) and wakes up at 6.45am to feed the children scrambled eggs or cereal, before doing the school run. They go on five holidays a year, which is “non-negotiable.” 

“The children are put first,” he explains. “You’ve got to take your family on the journey with you.” Both he and Irha come from modest backgrounds, and regularly take the children to the Philippines to work with their charitable foundation, so they can understand that not everyone is born into privilege.

This is important to Atherton - he has never been fame-hungry and is critical of chefs who are. “I don’t like to let things get to my head,” he says. “You don’t see me driving around in a Ferrari." (Though I do see him arriving on the slopes like James Bond, dressed head-to-toe in black, with his own mirrored skis).

“If you aren’t successful in your family life you haven’t achieved success,” he continues. “I’m quite private. It’s bad enough now having people pulling and grabbing you asking you to sign things. The most important thing for me is the restaurants have become famous and that’s amazing. You should want to be a cook because you love food, not fame. Some people get into it just for the fame. But if they come to work for me, then they soon realise it’s not for them.”

One thing he has more time for, is the trend of Instagramming food. “I use it to decide what restaurants to try out,” he explains. “What I love now is if the critics don’t like a restaurant they’ll say so, but they don’t dictate if it will be successful. It’s the public who do, and that’s how it should be.”

Harder to swallow has been the rise in veganism, something he confesses to having struggled with. “It was a pain in the arse, because we’d have to try to come up with a dish for them, and so we blamed the vegan,” he admits. “We felt they should have phoned in advance. Then I realised it’s not their fault. So we started inventing dishes, and now we have a tasting menu.”

He thinks other chefs should follow suit: “The more people mock it, the more they’re excluding themselves from a growing society demanding vegan food. Chefs need to be more accepting, and if they’re not, they’ll be forced to. If restaurants don’t cook for customers, they won’t go back.”

This is a big part of Atherton’s philosophy. He refuses to cook ‘cheffy’ dishes like ox-tongue or offal “because to the normal public it’s not great, it’s crap.” He is happy to take criticism, because “that’s the fastest way to improve” and has even launched a mid-range pizza restaurant, Hai Cenato, in London because he wants to be more accessible.

It all comes down to his mission of longevity. “You’ve got to keep yourself relevant,” he says, sipping an espresso as he looks out over the Alps. “That’s my number one goal.”