Thomas Straker: the joy of cooking what you shoot
The chef and social media sensation talks to Ed Cumming about going viral, the pros and cons of fame, his deep love of fieldsports and the joy of cooking what you shoot.
“We came to thrive over other species because we were able to hunt and cook and feed our brains,” says Thomas Straker. “That all stemmed from hunting. The most dialled in I ever am is when I’m out with a gun and a dog. Walking-up woodcock or trying to shoot pigeon or rabbits, your senses are heightened. Your bloodlust is up but you have to be quiet and still, and you’re listening, you’re watching the dog work. And then there is the excitement of thinking about cooking something. Who are you going to feed with it? What are the customers going to think about it? What are your kids going to think?”
We are sitting in Straker’s, the 35-year-old chef’s hit restaurant in Notting Hill, speaking in between bites of mussel-heaped flatbread, sweet langoustines and silken pappardelle with pork ragu. Since Straker raced to social media celebrity for his instructional videos during lockdown, and less than three years after his restaurant opened, he has become perhaps the most notorious British chef of his generation. Subject to endless headlines about being a ‘bad boy’, he is a media fixture for his devil-maycare public persona as much as his indulgent, swaggering cooking that makes such liberal use of butter he launched his own range: All Things Butter now shifts 130,000 units a month.
At heart, though, Straker is a country boy. Being outdoors, shooting things and cooking them runs thickly in the blood. He grew up in Herefordshire, where his mother was a trained chef and ran an award-winning pub. His father was the former second-in-command of the SAS and deputy director of Nato special forces in Afghanistan. “My dad was very into shooting and fishing, and we were always out riding,” he says. “It was an idyllic childhood.” Toby Hopkinson, Straker’s school friend at Shrewsbury and now business partner, used to come to stay during holidays and would refer to Straker Senior’s “Rambo Shack”.
“Whenever I was at home I would always be out with a gun trying to shoot a squirrel here or a pigeon there,” Straker says. “I’ve loved it ever since.” At 18 he initially planned to follow his father into the Army, applying for Sandhurst prior to being waylaid into cooking, first through a course at Ballymaloe and then as a chef at The Dorchester and Dinner by Heston Blumenthal before ending up as head chef at Casa Cruz, where “they didn’t like game at all”. Finally he went to work with Elystan Street’s Philip Howard but realised, with his first child with wife Davina on the way (they now have three), that he could “not earn 30 grand working for Phil”.
If his easy-going facade cracks, it’s usually when someone suggests he is merely an Instagram sensation: he had done plenty of hard yakka in the kitchen before his videos took off and was on the verge of signing his own site in Queen’s Park when COVID-19 hit. The pandemic was an unprecedented global catastrophe for restaurants but it turned out to be the making of him. Having landed a job cooking for a billionaire in the USA, in between meals Straker began to shoot videos for social media. His telegenic public school shtick was an instant hit. “I started making videos because I was bored,” he says. “When I went out to the States I had 900 followers. By the time I got back I had 30,000.” Today he has more than 2.6 million on Instagram and the same on TikTok. He finally opened Straker’s in 2022. “It has not been the classic road to get somewhere but if you have a general end goal you work your way there whichever way you can,” he says.
Fame has come with downsides: sniping from the press about his background, scrutiny of his private life, a wave of criticism after he posted (perhaps naively) a picture of his kitchen team revealing they were exclusively white men. In the past he has responded brusquely to criticism; today he is more sanguine. “There are pros and cons to having a profile,” he says. “I’ve seen both sides. I think because I’ve stayed in my lane and I’ve been reactive to certain criticism I’ve received we have been able to manage the situation. All we’re trying to do is run a great business with happy employees. Yes, sometimes you think it’s unfair and you don’t think you should be treated like that. But it’s a fact of life. If you’re going to cry about it, it’s not the game for you. Initially I reacted to criticism but I’ve learned that’s not the way to go.”
There have been upsides, too. With his 12-part Game Eater series of videos for social media, Straker has discovered that fans around the world share his love of hunting, fishing and shooting your meals. “It’s one of those things that travels really well,” he says. “It’s allowed me to journey across the UK and meet these people who are so involved in their craft. There’s six deer species; we shot five of them, from red deer in the Highlands to muntjac in Wiltshire. That’s the beauty of it. It’s one shot, one deer – it’s not about killing loads of pheasants.” He would love to take the series abroad next, perhaps to America’s Deep South: “Alligators, snakes, feral hogs out of a helicopter… There’s a lot.”
For now, however, he has plenty of other things on his butter-drenched plate. A busy restaurant and a new deli, Acre. An olive oil to complement the butter. Nosy tabloids. More social media. And a young family, in whom he is trying to instil some of the country values he grew up with. “I was out shooting driven hares in Northumberland the other day and took my two daughters – one’s three and one’s six,” he says with a grin. “They were sitting next to me with their unicorn boots on and waving white teddies, not being that discreet. A hare ran towards me and the kids started shouting ‘Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit!’ I stood up and shot it. Initially they were sad but then they got into it. Sometimes you have to learn the hard truths of life.”
Photography by Mark Williamson.