We caught up with top chef and MasterChef: The Professionals winner, Stu Deeley who talks about making a leap of faith to inspire his son, mentors that money can’t buy and a dirty little secret…

Stu Deeley’s CV reads like a roster of top Midlands restaurants – Brockencote Hall, Simpsons, The Wilderness, Smoke at Hampton Manor and now The Warwick at Mallory Court. Stu’s been cooking for more than 16 years during which time his style has evolved hugely and now come full circle. Smoke at Hampton Manor was all about fire and cooking over coals but at Mallory Court’s newly titled The Warwick restaurant, Stu’s back to the classical techniques and flavour profiles of his early career.

He’s still finding his feet at Mallory and admits when he walked into the dining room he wondered whether he could do it. Stu explains: “It’s a beautiful dining room – wood panels, crisp tablecloths, sommeliers – really different to Smoke.” Mallory already has a great reputation and has had a Michelin star twice, but Stu’s job is to reinvent it from a food perspective.

He says: “As much as I’d love a star, it’s also about bums on seats – cooking for people who come here week in week out and for people who’ve followed me from Smoke or MasterChef.” The 10 acres of gardens are inspiring and with two gardeners on site, Stu’s spoilt with ingredients. He says head gardener Chris, came to him with a spreadsheet recently and asked him what he would like for next year which is the dream for any chef.

COOKING GEEK

Fight or flight is how Stu describes learning to cook. He says: “My mum was a terrible cook – she hates it when I say that! I was hands-on from the age of 11 or 12-years-old.” Work experience at Jonathan’s on the Hagley Road gave Stu a glimpse into a professional kitchen which he loved. He describes arriving at Jonathan’s on his first day: “I walked round the back of the restaurant and the sous chef was sat on a Yamaha 600 playing Nine Inch Nails and smoking fags. I’ve never been rebellious, but it appealed.”

He adds: “I’d been a bit lost with what I wanted to do – I wasn’t academic. Even now it takes me three business days to reply to an e-mail, so it was always going to be a practical career for me. The military style of the kitchen suited me.” As a young chef, Stu describes himself as a cooking geek preferring to spend Saturday night at home experimenting in the kitchen rather than going out. It paid off big time.

LEAP OF FAITH

Stu famously won MasterChef: The Professionals in 2019 but it was touch and go whether he’d enter the competition at all. He says: “It was daunting. I’m not an extrovert and I don’t crave attention. I’m just somehow good at what I do.” Stu decided he didn’t want to go through life thinking, ‘I’d like to do that’ and then putting it off until another day. At the time, his son Jack was roughly 18 months old and Stu wanted to set an example. He says: “I started to wonder what Jack would end up doing and I wanted him to have the confidence to just go for it whatever that might be, so I took a leap of faith. I thought, if I go out in the first round, I’ll become a plumber. If I get through, great. I never thought I’d win.”

MENTORS MONEY CAN’T BUY

Stu grew up in Bearwood never encountering an Anjou pigeon, black truffle or even a whole rabbit aside from at Pets at Home, so when he started working under Adam Brown at Brockencote Hall it was a bit of an eye-opener. Adam became a mentor to Stu and he deeply respected the chef. Adam’s generosity and teaching was intrinsic to Stu’s development. He stayed for two to three years before Adam told Stu he needed to be working in a Michelin-star restaurant. Cue Luke Tipping at Simpsons who took a chance, returned Stu’s call and gave him a trial.

Luke became another significant person in Stu’s life and development. Stu recalls: “I’ve been lucky. Real mentors like that money can’t buy. I’ve absolute respect for Luke. He’s caring, family-led and he looked after everyone, made sure the team was okay. He’s always in my corner.” Stu started at the bottom as a commis chef but caught Luke’s eye after cooking an impressive staff dinner and was promoted to chef de partie.

Simpsons is also where Stu met his wife who was the restaurant manager. Once babies were on the horizon, Stu needed to move on to earn more money essentially. Alex Claridge’s The Wilderness in the Jewellery Quarter provided that opportunity where Stu became head chef and had his first Michelin inspection in his own right. He didn’t get it that time.

BACK YOURSELF

It hasn’t all been high end restaurants and not all of them have been thriving. A stint at Jamie’s Italian was a bit different where they were doing ‘mega numbers’ and there was Loves in Canal Square which Stu describes as the epitome of a failing restaurant doing two-to-four covers a night. The current strains on the hospitality industry provide a significant challenge but Stu thinks there’s a fighting spirit in the Midlands food scene and people find ways to make it work. He says: “You’ve inspirational people like Glynn Purnell who are determined to keep people in jobs.” In this climate particularly, Stu says you’ve got to ask yourself, ‘Is this good enough?’ and then back yourself.

NOT SO SECRET

When Stu clocks off you can find him either at MacDonalds at 1am for a quick fix or even better at KFC ordering a Dirty Louisiana Burger. When Stu and fellow MasterChef alumni Dan Lee are on the road indulging their ‘bromance’, they can’t get enough of it.

Stu says: “It’s got everything – good bread, fried chicken, hash brown, spicy mayo, gherkins, cheese, BBQ sauce. I make a right mess. I’ve started to keep a tea towel in the glovebox!” We’re sold.