Nick Beardshaw: From working for Tom Kerridge to winning a Michelin star
It took Nick Beardshaw less than six months to win a Michelin star at his new restaurant Starling in Esher.
After more than a decade working for Tom Kerridge, having previously been at Midsummer House under Daniel Clifford, Nick decided to go it alone.
With his Michelin-starred background, as well as joining forces with former colleague James Shaw as general manager, Nick’s bistro Starling has enjoyed a spectacular start since opening in August 2024.
Booking have been flooding in, team morale and staff retention is high, and the early worked was capped off by earning a Michelin star in February.
From Tom Kerridge’s kitchens to his own Michelin star
“With my 14 years that I worked for Tom, what I really learned was how to run a kitchen,” Nick explained.
“Everything I'd done before that was cooking skills. I was a chef de partie, but my time with Tom was the whole package. It was running the kitchen, looking after the staff, the financial side of things.
“I was really lucky in the sense that I was left to run the restaurant. I really learned how to run and open restaurants. I opened three restaurants while I was with Tom. The Coach, The Butcher’s Tap and Grill in Marlow and Kerridge’s Bar & Grill.
“So I had a really good grounding and a really good start of how to run and open a restaurant.”
Opening Starling: Turning a former Costa into a bistro
Asked why he decided now was the right time to branch out on his own, Nick added: “There are two real reasons why. One is I'm getting older, I'm running out of time to do it.
“It's a bit like buying a house, you can't time the market. So if it is a hard time like it has been, you've just got to suck it up and do your best to work with that because otherwise you'll be waiting forever, because there'll be no good time.
“I live in Esher and I wasn't strictly looking for a restaurant in Esher, but I was looking in the area and this restaurant came up. It had been a Costa for 20 years. It was going to be another coffee shop, but GAIL’s opened down the road, so the guy pulled out, it became re-available and I came and had a look.”
He continued: “Being on the corner, it's the first thing you see when you drive into Esher and the area itself is affluent, which is generally a very good thing for a high-level restaurant.”
Iconic dishes: Balloon Girl and A Moon Shaped Pool
As well as progressing through the ranks with Tom Kerridge, Nick’s career was given a big boost by his success on Great British Menu.
Nick was a winner on the hit BBC show in 2023, cooking at the banquet at Brighton Royal Pavilion.
Two of his standout dishes that year, A Moon Shaped Pool and Balloon Girl, feature on his menu at Starling.
“Great British Menu has been massive part of my opening of this restaurant,” said Nick.
“It gave me a platform to do it. It also, in a funny way, was the reason that I went to the Hand & Flowers because Tom had just been on Great British Menu. So it was almost like the cycle was completed by the time I did it.
“It was something that I loved doing. I really loved the creative side of it, the process and then ultimately going on and winning, it gives you that profile. We've opened this restaurant with two Great British Menu dishes on the menu.
“They are amazing PR and it just really has given me that platform to do this.”
He continued: “The Balloon Girl Banksy image that is one of the most reproduced images ever.
“With visual storytelling, it was how can I bring it to life?”
The balloon itself is a cheesecake, with a stencil created for the ‘girl’ image.
“We sell about 100 a week,” said Nick.
“It's iconic. It's on Beyoncé's Instagram. It's one of those that had to go on the menu.”
Nick added: “The winning Great British Menu fish course in 2023 was A Moon Shaped Pool.
“It is inspired by the image of a Radiohead album cover. When I saw the image of A Moon Shaped Pool, I remembered the dish I had at The Fat Duck and it was called Rockpooling and it's a little white chocolate crab.”
In Nick’s version, a gelatine sheet melts away for a Thai green curry sauce to cover a scallop.
Making Michelin Dining Accessible
One of Nick’s goals was
to make Starling accessible for as many people as he can.
“The way we make it accessible is first of all price point,” he explained.
“We buy the best ingredients we can, but equally we try and keep it as affordable a price as we can.
“The price point starts low, but then equally you have the option to spend as well. We go from pigs head all the way up to Wagyu and caviar, so throughout that menu, there's something there for everyone.
“The environment, feeling comfortable in your best clothes or your less smart clothes, that all adds to the accessibility.
“Sometimes when people go to a Michelin star restaurant, they're a bit nervous of how to behave. So making people feel instantly comfortable is a big part of it as well.”
He continued: “Our lunch menu is £30 for three courses. We think that's a great point where we can get some nice stuff on the menu. It's not super cheap, but it's definitely cheap enough for a Michelin star restaurant that it will get bums on seats.
“Customer expectations is an interesting one for us because we've opened as a bistro, but then we've gone and won a Michelin star. So that massively in some cases skews the customer expectation, because it's a sort of crossed message to a certain extent, because the cliché of what a Michelin star restaurant is.
“You do get the odd person that will come here with the expectation of tablecloths and all the finery that goes with that cliché. But in general, I think that most people come here understanding that what we do is we take great ingredients, it's a relaxed environment and they're appreciative of that environment.
“I think more and more people are looking for that environment rather than the finer one.”
James Shaw: From Barman to General Manager of a Michelin‑Starred Bistro
The team culture is driven by Nick and James, with staff on a rota to work a four-day week, ensuring they have plenty of time off to recharge.
“Nick and I first met at the Hand & Flowers back in 2013,” James explained.
“Nick was senior sous chef there, I was James the barman, learning his way, just come up from Devon, absolutely clueless.
“We were given an amazing opportunity by Tom to open The Coach, his second pub. I was looking after the bar and Nick was obviously running the kitchen. And with the nature of The Coach, Nick and I spent an awful lot of time together because we're both behind that bar.
“The rest is history. We got through it all together and we did amazing things.”
He added: "Having that opportunity to work with some of our real industry leaders, whether it be Lourdes (Dooley) at the Hand & Flowers, with Matt Abé and Enrico (Baronetto) at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, Sally Abé at the Pem, you pick up little things that really mean a lot to you and you try and weave those into how you work day-to-day.
"They also almost work as a quality test level. You see someone work at a really top level and you want to reflect that and emulate it, but also share it with others."
The future of Starling and Nick's next chapter
Starling may still be in its infancy, but Nick hopes it is just the beginning for him as a restaurateur.
“In five years’ time, ideally everything would be paid off in this business, it would be running like clockwork and that would have given us a platform to maybe do other things,” said Nick.
“At the moment it's amazing, business is great, but we need that to carry on. We need to keep working hard.
“We would certainly like to do more, which would mean obviously I would have to naturally be here less, but I think that I would always try and be here as much as possible because this is the restaurant that starts it all off.
“You want to grow, obviously, but don't want to do that too quickly. You just want to make sure everything is absolutely solid. I'll be here as much as I need to be here.
“But then organically, if you get to a point where everybody around you is also growing, that's where you can expand and look for the next stage of the business.”
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Nick Beardshaw: From working for Tom Kerridge to winning a Michelin star
