Chef Paul Ainsworth: ‘I was embarrassed it took seven years to get a Michelin star’

TV chef Paul Ainsworth has revealed felt “embarrassed” when, year after year, his acclaimed restaurant No6 didn’t receive a Michelin star.

“It was really hard because I’d come from nothing but Michelin star kitchens,” says the 45-year-old, who cut his teeth working for Gary Rhodes, Gordon Ramsay and Marcus Wareing.

“I was hell-bent on trying to win the Michelin star in my first year – didn’t get it, heartbroken. Thinking then, ‘OK, second year, OK, well it’s definitely going to be on the third year’… Being really honest, I was almost embarrassed.

“It plays with you, it plays on your mind. It did me.”

It took seven years in the end for the Padstow restaurant in Cornwall to be awarded the accolade back in 2013 and when he found out he “literally dropped the phone to the floor, [my wife] Emma burst into tears, I burst into tears… just goosebumps, just magical”.

The chef, who has just released his long-awaited debut cookbook, For The Love Of Food, says: “I think I’ve always had to wait for everything, but as I’ve got older sometimes it’s not a bad thing, not too much at once.”

Today, Ainsworth is a judge on BBC’s Great British Menu and a regular on Saturday Kitchen, and is known in the chef world as one of the very best. He’s added two more restaurants to The Ainsworth Collection – Italian-inspired Caffe Rojano and a pub, The Mariners, both in Padstow – but he’s keen to be honest that success doesn’t come without failure along the way.

In 2019, he opened a cookery school and chef’s table called Mahe, both of which closed soon after, and in 2021 he started a high-end food and drink festival in Cornwall called Travelling Feast.

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“I lost a lot of money on that one,” he reveals, “when I say profitability, you’re a million miles from it. Once you’ve paid everybody, it really did not make any sense.

“You just have to dust yourself off, [but] after that one I had to do a bit of soul searching. I don’t mind admitting, I was hell-bent that it could work. The closest people in my life [business partner] Derek and my wife Emma, told me they felt it was not right but I didn’t listen.

“I just felt like there was something here and it could be really cool for Cornwall, but yeah, you have to swallow the ego,” says the dad-of-two.

“You have more losses than you do wins. But the problem is, we all live in this world now, where it looks like everyone’s winning, and everyone’s comparing themselves to one another through Instagram.”

Success, he says, has taken 20 years. “And in that 20 years so much has not gone to plan. There’s been times when I’ve gone home and said to Emma, ‘I’m not sure I can do this. I’m not sure I’ve got what it takes’.”

Born in Southampton, Ainsworth’s dad hailed from Blackpool and his mum from the Seychelles (“You couldn’t get sort of two people from opposite ends of the world, really”) and although his mum’s curries, biryanis and use of herbs has had a big influence over his food, it was his dad who did 80 per cent of the cooking when he was growing up.

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“From about the age of 10, when you start going to friends’ houses after school for tea, dads were completely clueless. They sat there while the mums got the tea on. It was quite a rarity to have a dad like I did. So that definitely stood me in good stead.”

His dad, Dave, died in 2023 but there’s homage to him in Ainsworth’s cookbook, like his meat and potato pie with pickled red cabbage, walnut and raisin ketchup. And while diners might recognise some dishes like The Mariners’ Cornish rarebit or Caffe Rojano’s chicken strozzapreti, it is full of doable, everyday recipes he cooks for his family. Think Granny Ainsworth’s chip butty and steamed brown butter sponge pudding with strawberry jam and thick vanilla custard.

Ainsworth found life in the kitchen after a “stark realisation” at his school GCSE results day. “I opened the envelope, it was horrendous, some were ungraded, the highest grade was a D,” he shares, “I was the class clown and there was this real sick feeling in the stomach. OK, you’ve pissed around, now what do you do?

“I went into the kitchen [at a local hotel, where he was in charge of making toasties] and just felt at home. It was like this calling, and for the first time ever I was actually good at something.”

Eventually, he’d end up working for the late Gary Rhodes before an even tougher job at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, which had two stars at the time – and London Michelin star kitchens were an eye-opener.

“If Gary Rhodes was the Marines, this was like special selection,” Ainsworth says. “You can scream at me and bawl at me, I just seem to be able to take it, and as much as it hurts I’ll grow from it.

“Sometimes I think if I hadn’t done this, I probably would have fared pretty good in the military!”

He never experienced malice or bullying in any kitchen, he says, but staff would get “thrown off service if you weren’t performing”.

Ainsworth said: “Gordon is one very, very unique human being. My time there was just incredible and he taught me so much.”

And one thing Ramsay drilled into a young Ainsworth, which always stuck, was: “He was like, it’s Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, Paul, and we’ve got this small window and the expectation is through the roof, and when people go away from here they won’t be saying Paul is rubbish, they’ll be saying Gordon Ramsay is.

“And now it’s Paul Ainsworth at No6 and you’ve got this window to blow people away. And you want to blow people away because of the reputation and the Michelin star, the price people are paying.”

At the time Ainsworth was doing 18-hour shifts. “Of course hospitality needed to change and has changed, and I’m not for one second condoning that, it’s something we don’t do in our own restaurant group.

“I was knackered beyond belief! I could not keep my eyes open having a haircut and that’s the honest truth. I was in a doctor’s waiting room and I just couldn’t keep my eyes open.

“I loved every second of it but, at the same time, I’m glad the industry has changed.”

‘For The Love Of Food’ by Paul Ainsworth (Pavilion Books, £26).