‘Not the least asset of the cooking is its holy-grail combination of lightness and resonance’.
The Black Pig, The Good Food Guide 2005
In 2003, at the age of 25, Nathan Outlaw opened his first solo restaurant – in Cornwall. Back then, in the days before social media, the difficulties faced by a hugely talented but relatively unknown young chef opening so far from the capital were immense. Yet, within a year the Black Pig had won a Michelin star and was hailed as Cornwall’s Restaurant of the Year by The Good Food Guide. However, the chef recalls 10 consecutive winter days when not one customer crossed the threshold – November and February being remembered as ‘particularly evil months.’
‘…he only cooks fish and has done away with butter and cream in savoury dishes. Resources have been aimed at creating a single, memorable experience and it is all in the detail’.
Restaurant Nathan Outlaw, the Good Food Guide 2013
The Black Pig’s life was short and the search for the right home resulted in Outlaw being hailed as the Guide’s newcomer of the year three times over a four-year period. By then his name had burst out of the small print and into the writing over the door. Restaurant Nathan Outlaw may have had a peripatetic early life, but the cooking gained momentum with each move, achieving 9/10 at the St Enodoc Hotel in Rock in 2013.
Outlaw’s food is characterised by absolute freshness of ingredients and by a clear sense of purpose – he follows no fads, copies no recipes, joins no schools.
Restaurant Nathan Outlaw, the Good Food Guide 2018
‘Does it get any better than this?’ asked one reporter in 2016. In a defining move, RNO relocated to a prime clifftop location in Port Isaac. And in a restaurant Outlaw now owned, the chef gained the control required to aim even higher, becoming a GFG top-scoring restaurant in 2017, and twice named the UK’s best.
‘Nathan Outlaw's mini empire is a shapeshifting testament to the sense of place he has always celebrated in north Cornwall’.
Outlaw’s New Road, The Good Food Guide 2023
After a lockdown-induced closure, the flagship restaurant was relaunched as Outlaw’s New Road to reflect a simpler, less formal and more accessible approach to fine dining. The nine-bedroom Guest House across the road followed, offering much needed quality accommodation, though it proved a steep learning curve for the very hands-on chef: ‘I was so out of my comfort zone…I’d not cooked breakfast for 15 years’. Together with the long-established Outlaw’s Fish Kitchen, ‘a tiny, wonky, whitewashed box of wonders’ overlooking the harbour, a mini empire was established.
Why, then, is New Road closing for good on March 28th? The past couple of years have been tough on the hospitality industry, due to forces that have very little to do with cooking. And for an intimate, destination restaurant in a fishing village on the Atlantic coast, the fine dining business model with its high labour costs and emphasis on expensive luxury ingredients is unsustainable. Changing tack once again is a huge risk but Outlaw has shown he has adaptability in his DNA. New Road is up for sale, the ground floor of the guest house has been reconfigured, and on 3rd April (Good Friday), Outlaw’s Guest House and Bistro will open.
‘One thing that dawned on me when I looked back is that I haven’t changed the way I think about food and the way I cook. I’m quite proud that I stuck to it and saw it out because it’s very easy, especially when you’re younger, to chop and change. I might have moved locations but the style of food I enjoy eating and cooking has always been the same’.
Interview in 2023, thegoodfoodguide.co.uk
Is this then the return of the Black Pig? ‘It essentially is,’ Outlaw admits, ‘but run with a 48-year-old head on my shoulders, not a 25-year-old’. By using the word ‘bistro’ he’s setting up people’s expectations – it will be affordable, casual, delicious, all about customers having fun. What it is not is a French bistro. A short three-course à la carte will reflect his simple, less-is-more style of cooking and, in a significant pivot, will be split between fish and meat.
It’s been a long time coming but Outlaw has long wanted to get back to the same freedom he had 23 years ago when he had the pick of affordable seasonal produce and could buy what he wanted to cook, free of the constraints of fine dining.
All the staff are on board. No one has been laid off. The same New Road chefs will be in the kitchen led by Peter Biggs, Outlaw’s longstanding lieutenant, and Matt Hartnell. With just 27 seats and lunch/dinner seven days a week, this is not a chef taking his foot off the gas – more like the start of an exciting new decade.
– Elizabeth Carter, editor-at-large
