Celebrity chef Tom Kerridge has admitted that he avoids most high street chain restaurants – but there’s one in particular he has a soft spot for after a ‘funny date night’ with his wife
Celebrated chef Tom Kerridge has confessed to having a soft spot for the high street chain Nando’s, despite generally steering clear of most chains.
On Russell Howard’s podcast ‘Russell Howard’s Five Brilliant Things’, the culinary star revealed his unexpected preference for the well-known fast food joint.
Tom remarked: “To be honest, no. I try to avoid them. If you’ve got restaurants, you want to eat in them, you normally go there. If you mean like McDonald’s and KFC I never, I don’t have them. I don’t mind a Nando’s though I got to be honest. Nando’s is alright.”
Tom added: “It’s a bit of a funny date night for me and my wife. So we’ve got a young son, he’s nine, so if we get a night out and we live in Marlow.
“We got a posh Everyman (a cinema chain) open in Marlow, but before that there was the ones up in High Wickham and we would go for a cheeky Nando’s and then a movie. That was a date night out, yeah, Nando’s High Wycombe.”
The 52-year-old chef highlighted another perk of dining at Nando’s, beyond its suitability for a relaxed family evening.
He added: “That’s the beautiful thing. You go to Nandos no-one knows who you are, no-one cares. It doesn’t matter. They’re not looking at who are the Michelin-starred chefs in Nandos. No-one knows who you are, that’s what I like about a Nando’s.”
In addition to his views on casual dining, Tom has been vocal about the significant challenges currently facing the hospitality sector, reports Gloucestershire Live.
Amid the cost-of-living crisis, there’s also been a surge in energy prices, leading to venues hiking their fees and inadvertently fuelling a cost-of-socialising crisis.
In these tough times, restaurateurs like Tom are caught between a rock and a hard place, striving to serve top-notch food at fair prices while remembering they’ve got a business to sustain and staff grappling with the same financial pressures.
Earlier this year, he expressed his deep appreciation for his team, calling them the lifeblood of his enterprise. Chatting with the Guardian, he referred to his establishment as a “socialist space” where everyone’s role is crucial.
He elaborated: “A pot washer, that’s the beating heart, that’s the engineering, because a chef can’t work without pans. Housekeeping is vital … because if they forget to make a bedroom up and a guest walks into a messy room, that now puts a huge amount of pressure on the rest of the business because we have to look after those guests in a completely new way.”
Source: Mirror
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