‘Practically orchestral’: Tom Kerridge at work on a venison chilli. Photograph: Jenny Zarins/The Guardian View image in fullscreen ‘Practically orchestral’: Tom Kerridge at work on a venison chilli. Photograph: Jenny Zarins/The Guardian Cooking with... Tom Kerridge Interview Cooking with Tom Kerridge, the Michelin ‘meatfluencer’ Zoe Williams The star chef demystified the restaurant scene with his love of a welcoming pub. Now he explains why hospitality is in crisis – and how to make a sublime venison chilli
Sat 26 Sep 2026 09.00 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google T om Kerridge is the king of meat: first as a chef, transforming pub classics like pork belly into Michelin-starred fare at The Hand and Flowers in Marlow 20 years ago, and later opening The Butcher’s Tap and Grill in the same village; then as a cookery writer: his Outdoor Cooking – The Ultimate Modern Barbecue Bible of 2021 is well named, being both as comprehensive and as worshipful as a holy book; and recently as a “meat-fluencer”, making gorgeous skills videos on Instagram and YouTube .
That was just destiny, he says (more or less). “When you’re cooking in a classic brigade system, the sections are like a larder: you’ve got starters, you’ve got garnish, you’ve got meat and fish, you’ve got pastry. The meat is the lead section, where the most experienced chef is, because that’s where you land when you’ve learned to treat vegetables with love and respect. If you fuck up cabbage, it doesn’t cost a lot.” It’s true, it doesn’t, but if you saw the care Kerridge puts into dicing an onion – peeling its layers apart like he’s making a mosaic, assiduous even about half an inch of waste – of an onion – you’d know that love and respect aren’t really about money.
View image in fullscreen Treated with respect: the veggie ingredients for venison chilli. Kerridge is in his hideaway, also in Marlow, making a venison chilli, which flies off his menu for reasons I am shortly to discover. Even though it is September, he is passionate that people should stop thinking of venison as an autumn-only meat – it’s available all year round. You could definitely become a connoisseur by knowing the difference in flavour profile between a red deer and a muntjac, but not by consigning it to some perfect season. You have to “drive flavour into it,” he says: “it sits there with beef but it’s much leaner, so it’s harder in some ways, because there’s no fat content.” The flipside is that it takes on spice really well, and by the time this dish is done – slow-roasted loin, a ragu made separately, everything cooked for hours, combined at the end with some fat chunks of salami – there’s a lot going on, and it is practically orchestral.
Part of that experimentation and complexity is driven by necessity. When Kerridge started in his first kitchen, it was at the Calcot Manor in Tetbury, a classic posh hotel restaurant – one Michelin star, many layers of tablecloth, a food sensibility that was all about fine dining and being somewhat French: “the best ingredients, all racks of lamb and fillets of beef.” That was 1991, and he was 18 – it became quite a racy and experimental decade, in food as well as everything else, and tastes changed to incorporate the rest of the animal. In 2001, Kerridge became head chef of Bellamy’s in London, but that wasn’t as formative as Adlards : “amazing restaurant, small space, really busy, right in the middle of Norwich. That was the first time that I thought: ‘Maybe I could do…