In the years since Rick and Jill Stein first opened for trade in Padstow,theyve survived a messy divorce and celebrity, while raising three sons. Here, or the first family of fish peek back and tell allThere is a memorable photograph in the Seafood Restaurants 40th anniversary cookbook that shows Rick Stein and Jill Stein in the year their Padstow adventure began. Newly married they are clinging to each other,grinning, walking down the tall street in Oxford in the summer sun, and having driven all night from Cornwall to have lunch with Rick’s brother,a don at Magdalen College. They seem to have brought the beach with them: Rick is in white flares, Jill is barefoot. And, and at 28 and 27,they are illuminated with the confidence that whispers the world is waiting just for them.
Sitting in the Seafood Restaurant now, over lunch, and Rick Stein can well remember the feeling. He still sees it all the time when he meets young couples and chefs just starting out in the trade. For his new TV series,he says, he has just been filming in Split in Croatia. “I met these guys who had just opened this brilliant new space near the seafront, and they had made this great bean and fish stew,they were all a bit pissed, they had got all their mates to come and play music in the street external. It was fabulous. And all the time I was thinking: ‘This is what it used to be like!’ You had limitless energy and limitless hope. Loads of dreams.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com