From Student to Culinary Master – Adam Byatt | CYD#7

When he was just 16, Adam Byatt secured a chef placement at Claridges from the Savoy Educational Trust. Over two decades later, he’s now a mentor in the same scheme that began his career. In between, he’s gone from sous chef (at double-Michelin star The Square) to head chef (at Worx), and gone on to launch his own award winning restaurants – Thyme and Trinity.

If his journey has taught him business the hard way (his first venture folded due to an unsound business model and his award-winning Thyme closed after relocating to The Hospital Club), it is also teeming with evidence to back up a well-worn cliché – cooking really is what gets him up in the morning. Adam mortgaged his own home to fund his first restaurant, and now when he isn’t spending eighty hours a week in the kitchen he’s shooting, fishing or foraging for fresh British produce that he can use to craft unique dishes.

While Trinity continues to offer imaginative seasonal dishes (think Duck Salad Lyonnaise), Adam has paid homage to the dishes of his Essex childhood with Trinity’s laidback sister restaurant Bistro Union, envisaged as a quintessentially British bistro. Beloved alike of customers and critics, the food served up at both venues is inspired by the same enduring love of creative cooking he had when he left school on the cusp of 16. With two restaurants and 50 employees to his name, he might have achieved every young chef’s dream – but for Adam, just being able to get up and cook is more important than the career his passion has carved out.

We completely agree with him when he says, “watching someone who is really good at something, and is good at it naturally, is a beautiful thing.” After all, it’s how we feel about the designers and artists behind Nosakhari.