He’s the chef with a prosthetic arm, but you’d never notice given the quality of the food he serves.
Michael Caines, head chef at Gidleigh Park, a two-star Michelin restaurant he took over in 1994, lost his arm in a horrific accident that severed his right arm from the elbow down.
Listening to him talk about the accident it’s amazing he was able to continue with the profession he loves, but that traumatic moment – “a pretty bad day at the office,” he quips – proved the making of him two decades ago.
“I came close to losing my life that day,” says Caines looking back on the day he fell asleep driving on a hot August day – just three months into his tenure at Gidleigh Park – and crashed into the central reservation.
The car he was driving flipped on to its roof and the first thing Caines noticed was his hand on the floor before realizing he was also losing a lot of blood.
He credits a former military doctor and a lady called Geraldine for saving his life. “I’ve been in touch with Geraldine and thanked her but not the other guy,” he says. “I want to seek him out, it’s still a bit of a quest, so if he’s reading I’d ask him to get in touch.”
Caines had a prosthetic arm attached and remarkably was back cooking in the Gidleigh Park kitchen in a fortnight.
He feared that with the use of just one arm, his ambitions as a leading chef were over, but five years later he was awarded a second Michelin star at Gidleigh Park and two years later he was named Britain’s chef of the year.
“It’s worth pointing out that everything I’ve achieved was since my accident,” he says. “I feel blessed and it all adds to the sense of achievement. It changed my life and changed it for the better.
“I’m a better person – less selfish I think – and it gave me an extra element of determination to want to go for it.”
That determination has led to all manner of ventures. He’s hoping to build a hotel in Devon complete with fine dining as well as a restaurant in Abu Dhabi.
But more pressingly is the 180 covers he has to oversee every day for the next five days at Ascot, one of the quintessential events of the British social calendar.
The restaurant has been completely sold out, but if he does gets time to nip out of the kitchen, the 46-year-old Caines has arguably the best seat in the house.
Glass fronted on the fifth floor of the Ascot Racecourse grandstand, it has perfect views of some of the world’s richest race horses for the next five days of racing with the London skyline faintly shimmering in the distance.
Ascot’s flagship restaurant On5 rips up the traditional copybook of horse racing cuisine, stereotypically the domain of picnic hampers and burger vans.
Of the food itself, Caines describes it as a “real celebration of British produce with an eclectic mix of my skill and panache.”
The starter is a lobster, potato and mango salad with cardamon vinaigrette and a curried mayonnaise.
For the main course there is a choice of either sea bass with bouillabaisse and mussels or else beef with a celeriac puree with shallots, a red wine sauce, the last of the season’s English asparagus and wild mushrooms.
And for pudding, it is a strawberry mousse with poached strawberries with a coulis of basil and sweet olive and a sorbet.
As if that were not enough, there is a cheese course and, later in the day, afternoon tea of cut sandwiches, passion fruit ganache and scones among other delights.
All of it has to be fitted around the litany of races that paying punters have come to watch, an event leading jockey Frankie Dettori this week likened to “Augusta or the Monaco Grand Prix or the FA Cup final.”
“It’s a challenge with that many covers and breaking up the pace of the day and the racing,” said Caines. “There will be 10 of us in all in the kitchen and with Ascot’s experience we’re confident we’ll be able to cater comfortably for the numbers.”
If it’s a challenge, he concedes it’s not quite as stressful as service at a new restaurant’s opening night.
“They’re very different because this is a pop-up so there’s not quite the same overall stresses but this is logistically very challenging in an unfamiliar environment. But we just have to roll up our sleeves and get on with it.”
Caines is not a regular racecourse goer – “the big races tend to clash with weekends which are my busiest days” – but he has taken in some of Britain’s racecourses in the past.
And if time allows he fully plans to sneak off to place the occasional bet , before adding, “don’t ask me for any tips.”
Caines is not the first celebrity chef to lay on the food at Ascot – the Roux brothers have done so, likewise Raymond Blanc earlier this year – and Caines admits he is honored to have been asked.
“I feel like I have to pinch myself right now sitting in this beautiful setting,” he says overlooking Ascot. “I’m the type to look forward rather than back but I do sometimes have to pinch myself on what’s happened in my career.”
First service at Ascot, which got under way at lunchtime on Tuesday, is just the latest chapter in this British chef’s remarkable career.