Tom Kerridge

Thomas "Tom" Kerridge (born 27 July 1973 in Salisbury, Wiltshire) is an English professional chef who has worked mainly in the United Kingdom. After initially appearing in several small television parts as a child actor, he decided to attend culinary school at the age of 18. He has since worked at a variety of British restaurants, including the Michelin-starred Rhodes in the Square and Adlards. With his wife Beth, he opened the gastropub The Hand & Flowers in 2005 and within a year gained his first Michelin star. In the 2012 list, he won a second Michelin star, the first time a pub had done so. As a chef he has appeared on the Great British Menu, MasterChef and Saturday Kitchen.
Kerridge currently presents Food and Drink (2015–present) and presented Bake Off: Crème de la Crème (2016), both for BBC Two.

The elder of two brothers, Kerridge's parents divorced when he was eleven. His single-parent family moved around several estates in Gloucestershire while his mother held down multiple jobs. He attended Saintbridge secondary school in Gloucester, and began cooking for himself and his younger brother after school while his mother was at work. Kerridge enjoyed riding his bike and visiting Westonbirt Arboretum.

He attended a youth theatre for three weeks when he was spotted and cast in the 1991 Christmas special of the BBC1 television show Miss Marple: They Do It with Mirrors. A number of other small television roles followed, but at the age of eighteen he decided to pursue his love of cooking instead of an acting career. Kerridge found Marco Pierre White's White Heat cookbook inspiring, and states that it encouraged him to pursue a career as a chef by attending catering college in Cheltenham.

His first role in a professional kitchen was as a commis chef at Calcot Manor in Tetbury in 1991. He moved around several restaurants as a chef de partie before joining Rhodes in the Square as sous chef under Gary Rhodes in 1999.

He spent a further two years as sous chef at Odettes in London. In 2001, he became head chef for the first time, at Bellamys Dining Room, and then at Great Fosters in Surrey. He moved back to London to become senior sous chef at Monsieur Max until 2003, before moving to Adlards in Norwich as head chef once more. In 2005 he opened his own gastropub, called The Hand & Flowers, which gained a Michelin star in 2006. The Hand & Flowers gained a second Michelin star in the 2012 list, becoming the first pub ever to hold two Michelin stars.

Kerridge describes himself as "not a Michelin-star kind of guy", which influenced his choice to open his gastropub. His signature dish is his take on a hog roast involving cooking pork belly in a bain-marie, which is then wrapped in skin and roasted. This is accompanied by a stuffed pig's trotter.

Kerridge has appeared on television in series five and six of the Great British Menu, supplying main courses to the final banquet on both occasions, and has subsequently appeared as a judge on the programme every year since competing and has also appeared on Saturday Kitchen.

In February 2013, he appeared as guest chef on the BBC programme Food and Drink. He later became the co-presenter of the show in 2015.

In 2013, he presented his own BBC Two food programme Tom Kerridge's Proper Pub Food and then in spring 2014, he hosted Spring Kitchen with Tom Kerridge, which was aired in a daytime viewing slot on BBC One.

In March 2016, Kerridge began presenting Bake Off: Crème de la Crème for BBC Two.

Kerridge co-presents the BBC Two series The Food Detectives with Sean Fletcher and Alice Roberts. The series began on 15 April 2016.

On 7 November 2012, Kerridge was among a number of chefs who joined in the cyberbullying of a customer of his associate Claude Bosi's restaurant Hibiscus. James Isherwood had written on his blog, 'Dining With James', that he had not enjoyed his starter, leading Bosi and several other chefs to verbally abuse him on Twitter. Kerridge intimated publicly on Twitter, where he has over 90,000 followers, that the customer was a "cunt", "bellend" and "dickhead" and would never be welcome in his restaurant, and encouraged Bosi to "smash him in".

Kerridge does not cook often when at home and claims that his oven is the least-used appliance in his house. He is a season-ticket holder of Marlow F.C. He is married to Beth, a sculptor who has previously worked with Sir Anthony Caro.