With his thick-set build, bald head and an intense look that could melt concrete, Sat Bains is one of the most recognisable chefs cooking in kitchens today. The Darby-born chef first fell in love with cooking while studying catering at college when he was 18 (a course he only decided to join because it had the most girls on it), but it was reading Marco Pierre White’s iconic cookbook-cum-memoir White Heat in his early 20s that proved to be a real watershed moment.
Determined to work in the best restaurant he could, Bains’ early career included stints at Raymond Blanc’s Le Petit Blanc in Oxford; and the London-based L’Escargot. In 1999 he applied for, and subsequently won, the coveted Roux Scholarship, which enabled him to travel to France to work at the three Michelin starred Le Jardin des Sens.
Back in the UK, Bains took over the role of head chef at the Hotel des Clos in Nottingham, which he later brought outright and relaunched as Restaurant Sat Bains with Rooms. It became the first restaurant in Nottingham to win a Michelin star in 2003, and added a second to its tally in 2011.
Regarded as being one of the UK’s most influential restaurants in recent times, having become a breeding ground for talent, it’s also seen as one of the most ambitious.
