Working in a Michelin-starred kitchen is often the thing young ambitious chefs want to do more than anything else. But while some find exactly what they’ve been looking for in the upper echelons of fine dining, others learn there’s so much more to food than chasing stars. Matt Ryle, whose very first experience of a professional kitchen happened to be Michelin-starred, came to realise exactly that. Now head chef at Maison Francois, one of London’s most popular new brasseries, he is flourishing.
‘When I started cooking, I thought that Michelin stars and fine dining was the peak of food,’ Matt explains. ‘But over time as I ate in more of those types of restaurants, I started to realise that I didn’t enjoy those sorts of places as much as I first thought. It would be lovely mouthfuls but I wanted platefuls! At the same time, I was eating at restaurants doing food that was simpler but just as delicious, and started to think that maybe there’s a nice blend.’
Matt’s first foray into cooking professionally came as a teenager at the then Michelin-starred L’Ortolan – so it’s hardly surprising that he started off with Michelin in mind. Having obsessed over becoming a chef since the age of thirteen, Matt’s mother thought she’d get in touch with the renowned restaurant and in a matter of weeks the head chef had taken fifteen-year-old Matt under his wing. ‘He was really cool and gave me one of their cookbooks to read,’ he smiles. ‘And then he said ‘come in whenever you want to work’, so I started going in to help on Saturdays and fell in love with cooking.’ Matt may have only spent six months working part-time at L’Ortolan but, by the time he left, his mind was set on a career in the kitchen.