Michael Caines is the quiet star of British gastronomy. While other chefs have hungrily courted fame and fortune, he has chosen to work the kitchen rather than the cameras. It seems to suit him that way. “I’d rather be a star within my business,” he says in his soft Devon accent. “I think being a personality becomes a burden. Once you get on that celebrity treadmill, it can be destructive.”

Despite his relatively low public profile, he has achieved more than most of those in the limelight. In 1999, he became the youngest chef ever to win two Michelin stars, and in 2006 he was awarded an MBE for services to the hospitality industry. Michael Caines may not be a household name, but it’s one that others in the restaurant world invariably drop when asked which chefs they really rate.

After catering college in Exeter, he spent three years at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons with Raymond Blanc (“a good mentor and a good friend”), before stints in France with Joël Robuchon and the late Bernard Loiseau. At 25, he took over the kitchen at Gidleigh Park hotel in Devon.

Less than a month later, his right arm was ripped off in a horrific car crash. It could have spelled the end of his career, but instead it gave him a greater desire to succeed. He was back at work two weeks later. Within five years he had won the restaurant a second Michelin star.

His cooking style shares his understated confidence. “I’m not a chef who messes about too much,” he says. “What I do is unpretentious and ungimmicky.” Signature dishes such as roast partridge with braised chicory, quince and walnut, or Dartmoor beef with marrow bone, cream of shallots and horseradish blend his French culinary training with a strong sense of the seasonal and the local. He’s clearly proud of his West Country roots and was championing regional ingredients long before they became a fashionable bandwagon. “It’s something I’m very keen on, and have been since I started at Gidleigh,” he adds.

The chef wants everyone to have the opportunity to engage with good food and regional cooking. Does that include people trying his recipes at home? “Chefs need to be able to take the essence of complicated dishes and create something simple that is true to it,” he says. “People are much more adventurous and skilful in what they’re cooking these days. They understand food and can have a go at it. But there’s no right and wrong, just good and bad. Food is not meant to be an elite sport.”

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