There are not many pubs where you need to book months ahead for a table, and fewer still where the menu carries a price tag closer to a long-haul upgrade than a Sunday roast.

The Hand & Flowers in Marlow is both, and it has earned the right. Opened by Tom Kerridge and his wife, the sculptor Beth Cullen-Kerridge, in February 2005, it won its first Michelin star within a year and in 2012 became the first pub ever to hold two.

It remains the only one in the UK, and retained both stars in the MICHELIN Guide Great Britain & Ireland 2026, alongside a single star for its sister restaurant, The Coach, a few doors along the street.

The pub marked its 20th birthday last year, and the man behind it has had little time to sit still since. In September his London restaurant at Corinthia London reopened after a summer refit, and he has been back on ITV exploring the kitchens of southern and northern Italy. It is, he admits, a life that has moved rather faster than he ever planned.

A very civilised party

“It’s been a crazy 20 years, but it’s been brilliant,” he says of the anniversary. “It’s gone quickly but, when I look back, so much has been achieved. So it feels like a mixture of amazement and a retrospective of incredible experiences. Some brilliant, others absolute nightmares, but they’ve all been part of the journey.”

To mark the occasion, the Kerridges threw a party for the people who had walked that road with them, and the guest list read like a roll call of modern British cooking.

“We decided to invite all our friends and people we know in the industry, those who have been a part of the journey with us and been our friends for 20 years, whose own businesses have also grown alongside ours. People like Tom Kitchin, Adam Byatt, Heston, Raymond Blanc (they’ve always been supportive) and then great friends like Clare Smyth, Simon Rogan, Mark Birchall, Brett Graham. To celebrate all our places with fantastic friends and chefs who have been on the same journey was just brilliant.”

Put that many chefs in one room and you might expect a long night. Not so.

“Everyone was on their best behaviour and on really good form. We all went home and were tucked up in our beds by midnight.”

From Miss Marple to Marlow

It is a long way from where Kerridge started. Born in Salisbury in 1973, he was a child actor before he was a cook, with parts including the 1991 BBC Christmas special of Miss Marple. At 18, having discovered Marco Pierre White’s landmark cookbook, he swapped the sound stage for catering college in Cheltenham.

What followed was a classic apprenticeship in some of the country’s most demanding kitchens: Calcot Manor, the Capital Hotel in Knightsbridge, Stephen Bull, Gary Rhodes’ Rhodes in the Square, Odettes in Primrose Hill and Adlards in Norwich. It was a grounding in fine dining, but when the time came to go it alone, he and Beth chose a tired pub on the western edge of a Thames-side market town.

Speaking to the MICHELIN Guide at the start of the anniversary year, he described getting the keys as “terrifying and daunting”, and the two decades since as less of a gentle cruise than “white-water rafting”, a constant process of navigating change. “We wouldn’t change it for the world,” he said, adding that what has kept the place going is “always the people that work in it”. Many of those long-serving staff now hold senior roles across the Kerridge group, which today spans The Hand & Flowers, The Coach and The Butcher’s Tap in Marlow as well as Kerridge’s in London.

Anyone who has built a business from a single site will recognise the arc. The nightmares he mentions are part of the deal. So is the pride.

Quality over quantity

Kerridge has not drunk alcohol for some years, a decision that formed part of a wider change in lifestyle that saw him famously lose around 12 stone after turning 40. He believes the industry around him is changing too.

“I think things have definitely changed, drinking-wise, but I don’t know if that’s because we’ve got older… It was very civilised. People were drinking quality stuff as opposed to quantity. And I think, if you’re in the world of food and beverage, and you know, you’re 50 years old, you go, actually, I just enjoy something of quality and not a huge amount of it.”

It is a shift that anyone who spends their working life on the road will have noticed. The long, liquid client dinner that rolls on past midnight before a 7am flight is increasingly the exception rather than the rule, and the conversation around late nights and healthier routines on business trips has moved firmly into the mainstream.

What does he drink instead? Here the answer is refreshingly unfussy.

“I don’t do alcohol alternatives, although my wife will quite often drink non-alcoholic or zero alcohol beers or Guinness.”

The outdoor kitchen

When he is not in a professional kitchen, Kerridge is increasingly to be found in his garden, which is currently being rebuilt around an outdoor kitchen.

“I’m a huge fan of outdoor cooking, and I’m particularly excited because we’re currently renovating our garden to include an outdoor kitchen. We’re hoping to spend a lot more time out there cooking on a Sunday, which is exactly where I want to be.”

It is the social side of cooking over fire that appeals as much as the food.

“I love cooking on coals, pizza ovens and all of that stuff. It’s a great way of gathering people. And it’s nice to have lots of different flavours mixed together. But you don’t have to worry about the crossover of global cuisines, because it’s all cooked outdoors, so it all tastes delicious.”

Summer, for Kerridge, is also the busiest season of the year. The Pub in the Park food and music festivals he launched in 2017 have grown into a touring fixture of the British summer. “If you’re into the festival season, that’s exactly where you want to be.”

So is he a better host or a better guest?

“I don’t mind either really, but I thoroughly enjoy the cooking process of hosting. We’re quite lucky that we’ve got a big enough space to be able to host a few friends. So it always works well. Around our house it’s a big enough garden for the kids to have a good run around and have fun.”

Be brave with it

His barbecue book, The BBQ Book by Tom Kerridge, is aimed squarely at the enthusiastic amateur rather than the smoker obsessive, and he has little patience for the idea that cooking over fire is a dark art.

“I think what happens is you get barbecue geeks who are brilliant at it, and it can feel intimidating when they’re talking about a 16-hour slow-cooked brisket you then wrap in paper and leave, and you know, you got to do the dry rub and it all feels a little bit, ‘Oh my God’.”

His advice is to start small and build up.

“Start off simply, cooking grilled chicken breast, say, then do something like beer can chicken, which is a great thing to do on one of those egg-style barbecues. After that you can move forward to those longer, slower cooks.

“Just simply cooking steaks on a barbecue is a lovely introduction, and the flavour, the char marks and the smokiness, they really do lift your cookery to a flavour profile you can’t get from anything else. So I really wouldn’t worry about it at all. And the only way you’re going to get better at it is by giving it a go. Be brave with it.”

It is not a bad philosophy for business, either. Nobody opens a two Michelin-starred pub on day one.

Where does a chef of his standing find the extra touch that lifts a garden party? Not, it turns out, in the meat.

“I think the use of vegetables is overlooked. A lot of people don’t think of doing things like grilling asparagus in spring, which is beautiful, or quarters of those vibrant hispi cabbages, slow-cooked and charred, absolutely lovely.”

And the cut he would like more home cooks to try?

“A bavette steak is a really good one because it’s quite thin and it’s relatively cost effective. You can cook it quite quickly. Sear it heavily on both sides, then leave it to rest and you end up with this beautifully pink, gorgeous steak you cut against the grain so it’s nice and tender.”

He is also an unapologetic fan of the air fryer, which he sees as a useful supporting act rather than a rival to the grill. “You could give some small potatoes an initial cook before you chargrill them. The longer they spend on the barbecue the better, to get that good flavour. But there’s nothing wrong with having things like potatoes prepped in an air fryer.”

A little bit of planning

Ask him for his secret to stress-free entertaining and the answer could have come from any seasoned event organiser or conference producer.

“So much of it is about structure, making sure you know what you’re doing and having an understanding of what you’re going to do. So don’t just walk into it blind. A little bit of planning will go a long way to ensuring your barbecue goes off with no stress.”

Swap “barbecue” for “client dinner”, “sales kick-off” or “board away-day” and the advice holds just as well. The best hosts, in a garden or a boardroom, make it look effortless because they did the work beforehand.

Kerridge in the capital

For business travellers, the most accessible place to eat Kerridge’s food is not Marlow but Whitehall. Kerridge’s Bar & Grill opened at Corinthia London on Northumberland Avenue in 2018 as his first London restaurant, and has long been a reliable choice for a working lunch within walking distance of Westminster, Trafalgar Square and the Embankment.

This summer it closed for a refit, reopening on 5 September 2026 as two distinct spaces. The dining room, now simply Kerridge’s, has been cut from 90 covers to 57 and sits behind a velvet partition in deep burgundy leather, dark joinery and marble. Head chef Tom Childs continues to lead the kitchen, with dishes including a crab crumpet with isot biber chilli, Cornish lobster thermidor and 28-day dry-aged ribeye, and a private dining room for up to 16 that will appeal to anyone hosting clients.

In front of it is Georgie’s Bar, a walk-in cocktail bar named after the Kerridges’ late boxer dog, serving frozen martinis, bar snacks such as pork scratchings and shellfish brioche rolls, and draught beer from Marlow’s Rebellion Brewery. For a quick drink between meetings, or somewhere to wait out the rush hour before a train from Charing Cross, it ticks a lot of boxes. It joins a strong field, and our guide to the best business restaurants in London has more ideas for entertaining clients in the capital.

For those with an evening to spare, Marlow itself is an easy escape. The town sits on the Thames in Buckinghamshire, reached by rail on the branch line from Maidenhead, which is itself on the Elizabeth line, and within striking distance of Heathrow. The Hand & Flowers has its own boutique rooms, and a two-night dine-and-stay package takes in dinner at both the pub and The Coach. Given that London topped a recent ranking of the UK’s best cities for food-loving business travellers, a night in Marlow makes a compelling alternative to yet another city-centre hotel.

On the road again

Kerridge has made a second career out of culinary travel on screen, from Tom Kerridge Cooks Britain to Secrets of the Pub Kitchen. His latest series, Tom Kerridge Cooks Italy, sees him take a vintage food truck from Sicily, Calabria and Puglia to Emilia-Romagna and the Dolomites, meeting producers of everything from pasta and blood oranges to Calabrian chillies, truffles and chestnuts.

It is the natural extension of the approach he takes at home. Good ingredients, cooked with care and shared generously, whether that is at a festival field, a garden grill or a pub table in Marlow.

The long view

Twenty years on, and now into its third decade, the Hand & Flowers is no longer the upstart. It is a benchmark, proof that serious cooking does not require white tablecloths and that a pub, done properly, can compete with anyone. Kerridge himself has become something of an elder statesman, the kind of chef who throws a party for his peers and has everyone home by midnight.

He has lost weight, given up drinking, built a restaurant group and a festival brand, and is still, by his own account, at his happiest cooking outdoors for friends on a Sunday. For all the stars and screen time, the lesson he keeps returning to is disarmingly simple: plan properly, cook with confidence and, above all, be brave with it.

The BBQ Book by Tom Kerridge is published by Bloomsbury, £25

Kerridge’s and Georgie’s Bar, Corinthia London, 10 Northumberland Avenue, London WC2N 5AE

The Hand & Flowers, 126 West Street, Marlow SL7 2BP