A Coventry chef’s journey from cupcakes to Michelin star

A chef who went from being a kid baking cupcakes for doormen in pubs to running his own Michelin-starred restaurant is taking his love of cuisine to the internet.

Paul Foster’s culinary journey began in the comfort of Coventry pub kitchens run by his mum, where as a 10-year-old he would help to feed punters and bake.

He went on to open SALT in Stratford-upon-Avon before taking the decision to close the restaurant after eight years of serving internationally-inspired fine dining amid cost-of-living pressures on customers, he said.

He has since launched YouTube channel Food Unfiltered, exploring what goes on inside the kitchens of some of the world’s best restaurants.

He said owning his own restaurant was always the dream and it was a lifetime goal to achieve a Michelin star.

And while he did contemplate signing up for another lease for SALT, he said he had decided it was time to move into food media.

“It was really sad,” he said of the decision to close. “Anyone in the industry knows people aren’t eating out as much anymore.

“There’s a squeeze of cost of living, and fine dining restaurants is a luxury.

“I’ve had an incredible eight years, I’ve achieved everything I wanted out of my career, and it was a pinnacle.”

He added: “I always remembered that I didn’t get into cooking for Michelin. I got into it for the love of food and the love of pleasing people.”

Mr Foster said: “My dream was always to have my own small restaurant. Having worked in Michelin star restaurants all over the world, that was what I wanted to do; I wanted to bring something like that as close as possible to Coventry.”

He said the city – and its pubs – had been the stomping ground for a love of food to grow.

“One of [the pubs] was a live music venue. It was great [although] I couldn’t sleep much because of the noise coming through but I was just obsessed with the environment of the kitchen, the atmosphere, heat and swear words,” he said.

As a 13-year-old, he tried recipes from the Gary Rhodes book Rhodes Around Britain and saw “the pleasure on people’s faces”, which turned his hobby into a passion.

“I thought ‘that was worth two hours in the kitchen, just to see how much that pleased someone’,” he said.

“I knew there was something in it and I took it from there.”