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It’s the night of the supper club menu launch at Three Darlings, Jason Atherton’s latest opening, and the room is buzzing. Among the guests, the actual darlings for whom the restaurant is named for: Atherton’s daughters. His two youngest, ages five and 13, sit with his wife, Irha, at the table closest to the open kitchen’s pass, where Atherton is running the show. He doesn’t spend many evenings at Three Darlings, instead alternating his time between his other restaurants, Sael and Row on 5, but the British chef is always in a kitchen somewhere.
“I don’t really know much else,” Atherton tells Observer, a few days after I dined at Three Darlings, an upbeat, joyful experience that is as much about the atmosphere as it is the food. He shrugs. “I was born a chef [and] I’ll die a chef. It’s the part of the business I love the most.”
He adds, “Of course, I enjoy growing the business and I enjoy watching new projects come to life and creating new concepts. But ultimately, I love to cook. People call me a chef-restaurateur, but I prefer to be called a chef and a restaurateur, because restaurateur-ing is not getting involved in the kitchen and not getting involved in the service. I definitely put myself in the chef camp.”
Atherton, originally from Sheffield, England, has been cooking for decades, working with chefs like Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay. He opened Ramsay’s storied restaurant Maze in 2005, but departed in 2010 to launch his own hospitality business. Pollen Street Social debuted the following year, almost immediately earning a Michelin star. He’s since built an impressive empire, with a number of restaurants in Saudi Arabia, Dubai and St. Moritz. “Every six weeks, I’ll jump on a plane and go to Dubai,” he says. “I’ll be in Dubai for 10 days or two weeks, working on new dishes, new menus. It’s like a second home to us.”
Last year, Atherton shocked the London restaurant scene by announcing he would be closing Pollen Street Social, as well as Social Eating House, his beloved Soho spot. The decision was partially economic—it’s difficult to fill a room with high-paying diners—and partially because Atherton wanted to go out at a high point. He was already in the process of developing Row on 5, a fine dining restaurant on Saville Row that launched in November, and chose to shift his focus to new openings.
“It was 14 years of a restaurant that has given us a wonderful life,” he says of Pollen Street Social. “It became an iconic restaurant. And it’s better it lives in the memory of people as an icon, rather than a restaurant that’s faded. That’s a real boggle decision to make, but I think it was the right decision. It made money till the day it stopped, and a lot of my chef friends were like, ‘You’re crazy shutting a restaurant that’s making money.’ But I was moving on to Row on 5 to be our new flagship.”
He compares it to the end of “Games of Thrones,” a show that could have “stretched a lot longer” but concluded before it fell off the rails (some fans might argue otherwise). Because Row on 5 only seats 28 guests, it’s far easier to fill than Pollen Street Social, which sat 60 in the main dining room. Sael, which opened in September, and Three Darlings, which debuted in October, are more casual and at a lower price point. “The new generation of diners have changed, and they’re looking for something different,” Atherton notes. “It’s our job to provide that. We wanted to go more towards the lower end, but also still compete at the elite level, which is where Row on 5 comes in.”
Atherton runs his restaurant empire alongside Irha, and all of their decisions revolve around their family. On an average day, Atherton exercises before feeding the kids breakfast and getting them to school. He spends his morning in meetings or doing press, then cooks the lunch service in one of his London restaurants (on the day of our conversation in early March, it’s Sael). There are more meetings in the afternoon, and then he always takes a gym break to do strength training. He works the dinner service at one of his eateries Monday through Friday, and at Row on 5 on Saturday. Sundays, however, are spent away from his restaurants.
“Sundays are family time,” he says. “We are a tight family unit. We make sure we have our four family holidays a year. I think I’ve earned that after 37 years in the kitchen. We always go away at Easter, in the summer, during half-term in October and at Christmas. My wife is very strict on that, and I appreciate that because that gives us time to relax and reflect and understand each other and keep that family unit up.”
Not only does Atherton value his family time, he’s incorporated them into his career. His 19-year-old daughter, Keziah, works shifts as a receptionist at Three Darlings, and he took her advice when conceptualizing the Chelsea restaurant. It began as a chic neighborhood breakfast and brunch spot, and has since expanded to dinner with the new supper club menu.
“We pass through Chelsea every day,” Atherton says. “We do a lot of shopping in Chelsea. The girls go to school there, and the girls were born in Chelsea Westminster Hospital. The area has always been a big part of my life. When the Cadogan Estate approached us about a restaurant on this quintessential British street, we decided to do it. The idea was: If we could create a neighborhood restaurant, what would that be?”
The dishes at Three Darlings range from skate wing schnitzel served with katsu curry (a personal favorite) to an enormous Wagyu sausage roll that best suits two diners. Lamb, steak and fish are grilled to order, and even the side dishes, like the roasted hispi cabbage accompanied by black garlic, feel considered and memorable. It’s a sharing style menu, bolstered by the visible kitchen and buzzy atmosphere.
“It was really fun creating the brand, the identity, the types of drinks we would serve. I don’t want to jinx it, but it’s been a big hit,” Atherton says.
Atherton even invested in a soft-serve machine to augment the dessert menu. The chefs swap out the flavor every so often to embrace the season; over the holidays, there was a divisive Christmas pudding edition. When I visited in March, it was milk soft serve accompanied by tangy cooked rhubarb.
“The whole of London’s gone soft-serve mad,’ Atherton says, grinning. “It almost feels like all the chefs are like, ‘Who can do the craziest soft serve?’ Two of our restaurants have it; Sael and Three Darlings, and it’s been going down great. The last one I bought was like £11,000, so they’re expensive. You’ve got to sell ice cream to get your money back!”
Both Three Darlings and Sael, which Atherton describes as a modern British bistro, offer a balance to the high-level cooking at Row on 5, which recently earned a Michelin star (its sister restaurant in Dubai has two). The chef enjoys the dual experiences, but acknowledges that the lack of pressure at a more casual restaurant can sometimes be a relief.
“Right now, we’re about to hit asparagus season,” he says. “I can put asparagus on the menu and not think about it. Do it nicely steamed with blood orange hollandaise and not think too much about it. Whereas, when you run a restaurant like Row on 5, we’re at the back end of perfecting the spring menu and it’s a three-month journey perfecting those dishes. It’s constant because the level is so high. Nothing can be changed unless it’s absolutely perfected to an inch of its life. And I like doing both.”
Still, Atherton enjoys the challenge of achievement. Opening a new restaurant, particularly somewhere like Saville Row, is a huge investment, and he wants to live up to expectations.
“If it fails, it’s a massive dent in the company, so of course you feel that pressure,” he admits. “But you’ve got to take that energy and put it into everything you do and not be scared. It’s like [how] there’s never a right time to have children, never a right time to start a relationship, never a right time to buy a new house. Well, there’s never a right time to open a new restaurant. You’ve got to grab hold of the horns and just ride it.”
He adds, “There’ll be a time in the next 10 years where I’d like to let go of that pressure. If me and my wife want to travel to Australia now, which will probably take two months, that’s just not possible. In time, that has to happen, right? But at the moment, I like that pressure.”
When Pollen Street Social closed after its final service on July 31, 2024, it took with it its Michelin star. Atherton has since earned new ones, but these days, he’s less interested in external accolades.
“Success for me has changed a lot in the last five years,” he acknowledges. “The number one success is my family. Having a successful family gives you the foundation of everything and that has to be unbreakable—my wife, my children, making sure they’re flourishing in the world. Everything outside of that is a bonus. And yeah, of course, Michelin is very important to me. But ultimately, that’s just an extension of who I am. I don’t let that cloud me too much these days. I just enjoy what we do.”
He considers, then adds thoughtfully, “I want to enjoy the journey, whereas I maybe didn’t enjoy that journey before. I was in a rush to get to the finishing line. And now I just enjoy it every day.”
