The heat is on
It was his fourth visit to the school and over four demonstrations he cooked American, Moroccan, Asian and Mediterranean dishes. Antony and his lovely wife Jay own two restaurants, the critically acclaimed Notting Grill and the Kew Grill. They also have an interest in the Angel Gastro Pub in Heytesbury in Wiltshire. The couple live in Henley-on-Thames with their two children Toby and Billie.
Over the years Antony has become more and more outspoken about food issues, and practices what he preaches by rearing his own Middlewhite pigs and growing a variety of organic herbs and vegetables for his restaurants. The Aberdeen Angus beef served in his establishments and for which he has become famous, is dry aged and hung for 28 days.
Highly opinionated, Antony has locked horns on many occasions with others in the industry and there have been well-publicised spats with such luminaries of the culinary world as Gordon Ramsay and Giorgio Locatelli.
Readers of Antony’s 2003 autobiography, RAW, will be aware that his passage to culinary stardom has not exactly been smooth. Abandoned by his father, a Shakespearean actor, when he was three, Antony was sexually abused and maltreated throughout his childhood. His extra-curricular activities at boarding school included pushing cars into the swimming pool and generally getting on the teacher’s nerves.
Antony’s story very nearly came to an abrupt halt at 16 when his face was crushed in a rugby accident, leaving him badly disfigured and chronically insecure. But pioneering surgery saved the day, enabling him to pursue what was to become the enduring love of his life - cooking.
After much hard graft and some close encounters of the violent gangster kind, AWT’s flamboyant style as a restaurateur soon brought him to the attention of cookery’s cognoscenti. Things didn’t always run according to plan, however. He once had to serve tinned tomato soup, tarted up with croutons and basil, to the customers in his restaurant because there wasn’t time to make his own from scratch. (They loved it.) Today, Antony is to the culinary establishment what a bull is to a china shop. His no-nonsense style in the kitchen is loathed by a few, but loved by millions.
He has also written numerous cookbooks including the ABC of AWT, Supernosh, How to Buy and Cook Real Meat, Modern Bistro Cooking, The Small and Beautiful Cookbook, Sainsbury’s Quick and Easy Fish, and Top 100 Recipes from the Food and Drink Series.
Here are some of the delicious recipes we enjoyed while he was with us.
