‘I went from knowing nothing to learning quite a lot very quickly’ … Nathaniel Mortley in Brixton market. Photograph: Jamie Salmons/The Guardian View image in fullscreen ‘I went from knowing nothing to learning quite a lot very quickly’ … Nathaniel Mortley in Brixton market. Photograph: Jamie Salmons/The Guardian Restaurants Stabbed, jailed, reborn: the chef who lost his love of food – then regained it behind bars Nathaniel Mortley dreamed of opening his own restaurant, but ended up in jail for drug offences. Now he’s out, and doing his best to make up for lost time
Sammy Gecsoyler Sat 7 Nov 2026 06.00 CET Last modified on Sat 7 Nov 2026 06.02 CET Share Prefer the Guardian on Google A t first he thought it was just a nasty punch, but Nathaniel Mortley soon realised he had been stabbed in the back. This was true in two senses. Figuratively, because he had been set up by a friend, and quite literally – since his back was gushing blood, as he saw reflected in the pub toilet mirror.
It was 2010 and hours earlier, he had been at a street festival in south London. Life was looking up: he had just achieved good exam grades (14 GCSEs) and things were going well with his girlfriend. It was the final week before sixth form began and Mortley, who was 16 at the time, was due to continue his academic success, having signed up for five A-levels.
In the middle of the fun, his girlfriend’s friend directed Mortley down a street. There he found a group of boys waiting for him. In the past, he’d had verbal clashes with them, but this was different. It was an ambush. Realising he was in trouble, he ran around a car and felt a blow to his back. When he looked behind him, he saw three of the boys flashing knives.
Mortley ran into a pub and went straight to the toilet. His back “felt like it was on fire” and he lifted up his jacket and saw the wound. Panicked, he left the toilet and went into the packed pub seeking help. “I think I’ve been stabbed,” he said to the woman behind the bar, and she told him to sit down. The moments after are a bit of a blur. He was taken upstairs, downstairs, and then the ambulance arrived. Paramedics began cutting his clothes off. The next thing he remembers is waking up in a hospital bed.
The incident was “a major thing in my life,” says Mortley, 32. “It caused me to have a lot of anger, resentment and emotions that I’d never been through before.” I meet him early in the morning at 2210 By Natty Can Cook, his Caribbean restaurant in Herne Hill, south London. He asks how my weekend has been. Fine, but nothing too exciting, I say, and throw the question back to him. He doesn’t take days off, he says, preferring to keep busy. It’s prep day and there’s a snag before he can settle down for a chat: they’ve run out of carrots. He pops out to get some before taking a seat.
View image in fullscreen Nathaniel Mortley as a child. Photograph: Courtesy of Natty Can Cook He might spend every day in a kitchen now, but while he was growing up it was the one room he avoided. “My first ever kitchen experience was me peeling potatoes for my granny,” he says – fiddly grunt work for most adults, never mind a six-year-old. He was more interested in the end result, feasting on fried chicken, brown stew chicken and, his favourite dish to this day, curry goat and roti.
Mortley was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder at four years old but still excelled in school. He came from a fairly well-to-do family and was a keen rugby pla…