Staying power: Sat Bains on his near-death experience and marking 25 years of his Nottingham restaurant

Sat Bains has a large line art tattoo on his forearm that details the ups and downs of his personal and professional life so far. Resembling an electrocardiogram, the timeline sits just below the scar that was made when doctors removed an artery for a triple heart bypass.

The widowmaker heart attack that precipitated the op features towards the end – it happened in 2021 during the Covid lockdown just a few weeks after the chef’s 50th birthday – and is followed by a series of dots that signify that his journey is not over yet.

Other milestones include Sat meeting his wife Amanda – who is sitting by his side – the launch of their Nottingham restaurant in 2005, attracting one then two Michelin stars and the passing of their first rabbit, Tyson.

Sat is lucky to be here. As the name suggests, the survival rate for this type of heart attack – which is caused by a full blockage in the heart’s largest artery – is low.

Amanda winces as her husband of nearly 30 years - they met as teenagers - recalls the event. “I was on a walk with my personal trainer. I became short of breath and there was a numbness behind my eye and jaw. I didn’t connect the symptoms with a heart attack. I thought that was shooting pains down the left arm. But I knew something wasn’t right, so I called an ambulance.”

Sat was and remains an active guy – he has been going to the gym since he was 15 and has a rounded muscular physique that recalls a cannonball – but was aware he had high cholesterol. “Being Indian, I’m genetically predisposed to hold onto it,” he explains. “The doctors said that if I hadn’t led an active life and had an okay diet that would have been it. It also allowed me to recover quicker than most, I was only in hospital for 10 days.”

Restaurant Sat Bains reopened just a few months later. “It was that summer post Covid when there was a lot of pent-up demand,” says Amanda. “We were low on cash and didn’t know if there were going to be more lockdowns, so we had no choice but to go for it. By the end of summer, we were done. We weren’t enjoying it anymore.”

Changing things up

It might not have happened straight away - the pair soldiered on until Christmas - but Sat’s brush with death and the travails of the pandemic triggered a rethink of how Restaurant Sat Bains operates.

“The idea was to make the space calmer and more controlled and do fewer covers,” says Sat. “In the previous setup we could do nearly 100 covers on a busy Saturday. That’s a lot for a two-star restaurant.”

Following a major refurbishment in early 2022 that was funded largely by the abnormally high take of the previous summer, the dining room has gone from about 50 to 28 covers. With the exception of Saturday, Restaurant Sat Bains has dropped lunch, consolidating its business into just five services per week (the restaurant is closed on Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays).

A drop in capacity and the number of services offered has seen turnover fall, but not by that much because the price of the 10-course menu that the majority of the restaurant’s guests go for has increased from £145 to £195. The changes have also reduced Sat and Amanda’s cost base with the restaurant now employing fewer staff, although their annual wage bill is still in excess of £800,000.

“Nobody was made redundant. We just didn’t replace the people that left,” says Sat, who was among the first UK chefs to rethink his team’s hours having introduced a four-day working week back in 2015. “The whole dynamic of the experience here has changed. The space is much better, and we are using more luxurious ingredients. We are giving people £195 worth of value.”

Marking 25 years on Lenton Lane

2024 marked a quarter of a century for Bains on Lenton Lane. He was originally an employee at the site but took over and relaunched the business with Amanda as Restaurant Sat Bains in 2005 serving progressive food at a time when the UK’s dining scene was for the most part staid.

Originally Hotel des Clos, the red brick restaurant with rooms is in a location that could generously be described as inauspicious underneath a flyover about 10 minutes’ drive to the south of Nottingham city centre.

“We like being in an obscure place because we have to try harder,” says Sat, who has invested heavily in the site over the years, including the addition of seven bedrooms and a kitchen garden. “We’ve all been to the nice restaurants in beautiful country house hotels but nine times out of 10 the food is shit. We can’t rest on our laurels here.”

Restaurant Sat Bains has held two Michelin stars since 2011 making the chef part of what could be termed the old guard of British gastronomy. But unlike some multi-starred places that have been around a while the restaurant is no relic, with Sat and his lieutenant of 24 years head chef John Freeman continuing to play an attacking game.

“The food has changed a lot over the years, but the ethos hasn’t,” he explains. “We’re flavour driven above all else. These days all chefs have access to the same sorts of ingredients. It’s about how far you’re willing to go with them. Are you going to play it safe by doing a dish that people know or are you going to take a risk and create something new?”

The restaurant’s commitment to progression is clear on the plate but is also evidenced further by the chefs that have passed through its doors over the years. Over the past two decades or so Restaurant Sat Bains has been a finishing school of sorts for the next generation of cooking talent including Gareth Ward, Jordan Bailey, Niall Keating, Alex Bond, Tom Spenceley, and Kirk Haworth.

“You know a RSB chef when you see one,” Sat says. “They ask a lot of questions of themselves and of food so when they leave us, they are more likely to cook in a way that allows their own identity to come through. The talent we have here and have had here is some of the best in the UK. They come because of the way we run the place. There’s no bullshit.”

One tough cookie

A powerful physical presence – his go-to emojis to represent himself on social media are a gorilla and a rhinoceros – Sat has a reputation for being an uncompromising person both in and out of the kitchen.

“I’m firm but fair. I will show you how to do something as many times as you need me to. But if I see sloppiness or laziness here there are serious consequences,” he says when this is put to him. “I do it to help. People that take shortcuts on their own careers aren’t doing themselves any favours.”

Tough talk. But the heart attack does appear to have softened his edges a little.

“I took up jujitsu 18 months ago because I wanted to be a better mentor,” he adds. “I’m learning something new that’s hard and it can be frustrating as fuck. Becoming a student again has given me more empathy for the guys when they are struggling in the kitchen.”

Other lifestyle changes are also paying dividends. On top of the strength training regime that he has stuck to for decades, he now carves out a lot more time for wellness including daily walks, breath work (he is a devotee of Wim Hof), long sauna sessions, cold showers and table tennis.

“The most beneficial thing for me is the walking. I usually do a 10km walk before work. It sets me up for the day and gives me time to think.”

The pair have also made changes to their diet. “We haven’t become monks overnight but we’re eating less saturated fat and more fruits, vegetables and fish,” Amanda says. “In general, we stay away from processed foods now, although we might treat ourselves to a Twirl or something like that occasionally.”

“I’ve always paid attention to what I eat but I’ve worked with a nutritionist to tweak my diet,” adds Sat, who published a cookbook early this year called Eat To Your Heart’s Content that features accessible ‘heart-healthy’ recipes.

Both Sat and Amanda are now working less too, with the former clocking 50 to 60 hours a week, 75% of which is in the kitchen.

“Pre-heart attack, if we’d been invited by friends to do something on a Saturday night Sat would almost certainly have said ’no, I’m working’. He’s now much more likely to say yes. We have a very strong team here.”

Unusually give their profile the Bains have not pursued any side projects with the exception of a small, lockdown-born samosa and curry business.

“To do one thing well has always been our goal. But we would never say never. If the right thing came up and we had time to do it, we would.”

“We like our life,” Amanda adds. “We are in our business for four days then it’s closed for three. We like our holidays. We don’t feel like we need more. But we do get offers and we do consider them. In fact, we were looking at a possible new project earlier this year.”

Business as usual

The heart attack has changed the way Sat cooks for himself and Amanda. Has it changed the way he cooks for his customers? Not really.

“I went to Japan in 2007, and my food has been influenced by the experience ever since. I like richness but my food has never contained lots of cream and butter. I like eating a tasting menu and not coming away stuffed. Good value for me means being able to finish the meal.”

While the cooking style hasn’t changed, the Restaurant Sat Bain’s experience has evolved to become more flexible. Earlier this year, the restaurant started offering a three-course la carte in addition to its seven, 10 and 15-course tasting menus.

The twist is that the £145 menu is only offered on the restaurant’s six-cover tasting room - which looks directly into the kitchen - and its four-cover kitchen bench.

Usually, ambitious restaurants only offer their more involved menus in prime spots but offering a shorter menu opens up the possibility of selling the table twice in one evening.

“We also give the later booking the option of upgrading to one of the tasting menus and very often they go for it,” Sat says. “But I like the challenge of creating a menu of more complete dishes that have to work together in all combinations.

“More often than not the a la carte dishes we cook here are the ones I want to eat myself. It’s also good to have something for people that are limited on time or budget.”

Chopping and changing

Over its quarter century existence, the restaurant has had to evolve with the times, no more so than in the past few years since the pandemic. While some chef patrons are resistant to changes, only making them when absolutely necessary (as with Covid lockdowns), Sat and Amanda have embraced the opportunity to try something new. For example, the pair were among the first operators to introduce a separate dining experience that showcased recent menu development (Nucleus, now closed).

“We have never been nervous about changing things here,” says Amanda. “Sat and I can make decisions very quickly. If they don’t work out, we just change it back to how it was.”

This nimbleness is partly down to the Bains having no investors. “We don’t have a board of directors questioning why we are doing things. We can take calculated risks.”

Sat has previously described his restaurant as ‘working class’, referencing his and Amanda’s backgrounds and their determination not to be elitist. But that doesn’t mean the pair pass up on opportunities to drive revenue.

Earlier this year when many comparable restaurants were dropping their prices as demand dropped, Restaurant Sat Bains launched a £279 15-course tasting menu. A little later, a £725 wine pairing option named Off The Charts was developed to accompany, featuring some of the world’s most vaunted wines, including a 2002 Château d’Yquem.

“We always provide good value here and we never upsell aggressively but it’s also very important that restaurants at this level give their customers the opportunity to spend money,” says Sat. “This industry is on its arse. Things have been brutal over the past few years. We have had to do a lot of things to mitigate and to ensure we are not blindsided.”

Planning for the future

It’s a cliched question, but does it feel like he’s had his restaurant for 25 years?

“It’s gone fast. I never thought I’d spend a quarter of a century here. Amanda and I only notice how much time has gone by when staff that worked with us come back to see us,” says Sat, who will be 60 when the current lease for the restaurant will be up.

“As long as I’m still enjoying it, I could see myself still cooking here at 60 and even beyond that. But I don’t want to go from being in a white box to a brown box. Where is the joy in that?”

Though he’s not planning on doing it anytime soon, a middle ground could be Sat going from four days a week to three days a week.

“I could absolutely see myself stepping back at some point. I’ve got to be realistic. I’m not a young lad anymore. Don’t get me wrong though. I love being in the kitchen and really pushing the guys and having a creative output. But RSB isn’t just me anymore.”

To be continued…