Overall ranking: 55
Chef ranking: 7
Snapshot
Michael Caines is a Michelin-starred chef who has become a successful restaurateur and hotelier to boot. He owns the historic Royal Clarence hotel in Exeter and the Arthouse hotel in Glasgow in partnership with hotelier Andrew Brownsword. Caines is also chef-director of the restaurant and cocktail bar at Whitbread’s Bristol Marriott hotel and at Gidleigh Park, the country house hotel in Chagford, Devon, where he first rose to prominence.
Career guide
Caines, born in Exeter in 1969, showed early promise as Exeter Catering College’s Student of the Year in 1987. After working at Grosvenor House hotel and Ninety Park Lane in London, Caines spent three years with his key mentor, Raymond Blanc, at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in Oxfordshire. For the next few years he studied under French superchefs Joel Robuchon in Paris and the late Bernard Loiseau at La Côte D’Or in Saulieu.
Returning to the UK, Caines became head chef in 1994 at Gidleigh Park country house hotel in Devon. In 1999 he set up Michael Caines Restaurants and took over the food and beverage operation at Exeter’s Royal Clarence hotel in a profit-share deal with then-owner Corus & Regal hotels.
Caines explored a new business avenue in 2000 as consultant-chef to contract caterer Baxter & Platts in a partnership that lasted until 2004. After taking on the restaurant at the Bristol Marriott Royal hotel in July 2003, he struck up a new partnership with Brownsword to buy the Royal Clarence in October for £4.5m and, in 2004, the Arthouse hotel in Glasgow from its receivers.
What we think
Caines’s drive and staying power were dramatically illustrated when he took on the challenging role of head chef at Gidleigh Park, an AA top 200 hotel. Just two months into the job, Caines lost his right arm in a horrific car accident. Yet within two weeks he was back in the kitchen part-time and working full-time two weeks later. His courage won him the 1996 People of the Year award from RADAR (the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation).
The following year, he retained the Michelin star won by his predecessor, Shaun Hill. More accolades were to follow – a Caterer Acorn award for young achievers under 30 in 1996, along with a fourth AA rosette; a fifth AA rosette and a 9/10 rating in the Good Food Guide in 1997; and a Relais Gourmand award in 1998, when Caines’s cuisine helped Gidleigh Park win the Catey Hotel of the Year award. 1999 brought the jewel in the crown in the form of a second Michelin star.
His admiration of Blanc as a chef, restaurateur and hotelier has moulded his own career path. Caines launched himself as a businessman when he became chef-director at Exeter’s Royal Clarence hotel, where he opened his first signature restaurant in April 2000.
His transformation from player to manager moved further afield in July 2003, when he opened the Michael Caines restaurant at the Bristol Marriott Royal, along with one of just a dozen Moët et Chandon Vintage Champagne bars in the UK. In October he realised his dream, frustrated for more than a year, of buying the Royal Clarence.
Caines will undoubtedly be looking to regain the AA rosettes he lost in 2003, when the Gidleigh Park and the Royal Clarence restaurants dropped to four and two rosettes respectively. And he has made no secret of the fact that he wants to win a Michelin star for the three-rosette operation at the Bristol Royal Marriott.