T o say Nathan Outlaw has had an eventful decade is something of an understatement, like saying he knows his way around a piece of fish. Ten years ago, the Cornwall-based chef was in full-on expansion mode. Adding to three sites in the county, including his eponymous two-Michelin-starred seafood restaurant, he had recently set up shop at the Capital hotel in London’s Knightsbridge.
Soon he would make the leap to Dubai, launching at the hyper-luxury Burj al-Arab hotel. He was travelling a lot, writing cookbooks and not doing as much cooking as he’d have liked. “It was a pretty mad time,” he admits.
Then came the contraction. The Capital was sold in 2017 and Outlaw relocated to the Goring hotel in Mayfair, before Covid shuttered the restaurant. The Dubai stint came to an end after a few years, as did his tenure at the St Enodoc hotel and the Mariners pub in Rock.
Now, Outlaw’s footprint has shrunk to just a couple of streets in Port Isaac, where he runs two restaurants, a guesthouse and self-catering properties with his wife, Rachel. But despite all the closures and thwarted dreams, as well as some of the toughest years for hospitality in living memory, he has never felt more fulfilled as a chef. Dashing between far-flung outposts took its toll, he says, so “it’s a pleasure to be in the kitchen these last two or three years – I’ve been cooking all the time”.
(Outlaw is speaking to me fresh from breakfast service at the guesthouse.) The contraction may have b.