Thomas Straker

The chef and social media sensation talks to Ed Cumming about going viral, the pros and cons of fame, his deep love of fieldsports and the joy of cooking what you shoot

- 

WE CAME to thrive over other species because we were able to hunt and cook and feed our brains,” says Thomas Straker. “That all stemmed from hunting. The most dialled in I ever am is when I'm out with a gun and a dog. Walking-up woodcock or try-ing to shoot pigeon or rabbits, your senses are heightened. Your bloodlust is up but you have to be quiet and still, and you're listening, you're watching the dog work. And then there is the excitement of thinking about cooking something. Who are you going to feed with it? What are the customers going to think about it? What are your kids going to think?”

We are sitting in Straker’s, the 35-year-old chef's hit restaurant in Notting Hill, speaking in between bites of mussel-heaped flatbread, sweet langoustines and silken pappardelle with pork ragu. Since Straker raced to social media celebrity for his instructional videos during lock-down, and less than three years after his restaurant opened, he has become perhaps the most notorious British chef of his generation. Subject to endless headlines about being a ‘bad boy’, he is a media fixture for his devil-may-care public persona as much as his indulgent, swaggering cooking that makes such liberal use of butter he launched his own range: All Things Butter now shifts 130,000 units a month.