To say it’s worked out well would be an
understatement - he’s been a Gault &
Millau Chef of the Year finalist the last
two years running - and Robinson is
justifiably feeling “proud and emotional”
about returning to Northcote Manor. It’s
there, under chef Nigel Howarth, that he
apprenticed a decade ago, on the advice of
his father, who suggested that a promising
football career with Burnley FC might, as
it so often does, not actually work out as
planned. “And my dad was very wise to
suggest as much,” says Robinson. After winning his head chef position at Stanley
House in Mellor, UK, Robinson made the
unexpected move of going to Australia. “I went
to Sydney because there were beaches, sun and
women,” says Robinson, hastily adding that he
“was single then”. “I got a good job almost right
away and started to see these different products
that just fascinated me - sesame, waffle seeds,kangaroo. And I’m still using native herbs, for
example, that I’ve never heard of before. I looked
around and just wasn’t excited by what was going
on elsewhere in the world.”Indeed, so taken with the place was Robinson
that he scraped his last few dollars together
and in 2015 opened his trickily-named nel.
Restaurant in the city, to almost instant
acclaim. This wasn’t just luck. “People eat
out here a lot - the climate favours that sortsmoked trout, caraway, pickle cucumber and roe