Many professional chefs spend their entire careers cooking someone else’s food. Having dishes of your own creation appear on the menu is something that usually comes quite late on in a career, after years of training and experience. Chris Emery spent a good while finding his feet in restaurants across the UK and further afield, working alongside some of the biggest names in British food – but is now running a kitchen of his own in Oxford, cooking produce-led dishes to serious acclaim.
Many fall into cooking through circumstance rather than a born passion for cooking, but for Chris it was clear from a young age that he would do whatever it takes to become a successful chef. ‘From the age of five I was always saying to my mum ‘I want to be a chef’,’ laughs Chris. ‘I don’t know why but it was always what I wanted to do. My mum and dad never really cooked because they worked crazy hours, so I grew up on fish fingers from the freezer. I have no idea where the desire came from.’ Sure enough, as soon as Chris finished school, where he admits he never thrived, he went straight to catering college in Bath and at the same time got a job working in a nearby pub kitchen. Three years later he left culinary school and found himself working in one of the country’s most prestigious kitchens.
‘I tried loads of different places in London,’ says Chris. ‘I tried Sketch, then I tried The Fat Duck, but I ended up at The Waterside Inn. I thought if I really wanted to learn to cook, that was the place to go.’ Chris ultimately ended up spending three years at the three-Michelin-starred restaurant, moving from section to section and perfecting everything from his fish cookery to his pastry skills. The only problem with beginning your career in a kitchen as highly regarded as The Waterside Inn is that going on to work elsewhere can be tricky. ‘It was really hard for me coming out of there because I was so used to that style and standard,’ Chris explains. ‘The way the chefs worked at The Waterside was inspirational but then when I left, all of a sudden I wasn’t working in kitchens that were perfectly run. I found it hard to find something that I felt a part of.’