'Going to prison reignited my passion to become a Black fine dining chef'

01 October 2023 , 06:18

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Nathaniel Mortley has reached popularity on TikTok and Instagram for his unique fine dining options (Image: @tsxsolo)

A young Black chef has told the Mirror how just two years after being released from prison he's pursuing his passion of opening a Michelin-star restaurant that puts refined Caribbean food on the map.

Nathaniel Mortley, 29, from Peckham, South London, has amassed over 60,000 followers on his social media and has gone on to sell out fine dining events. The chef, also known as NATTY CAN COOK, was encouraged to pursue hospitality after being stabbed when he was 16. He often made cakes with his mum who had threatened to send him back to the Caribbean if he continued to get in and out of trouble. Natty's passion for food saw him catering at the Olympics, working at Westminster University and Oblix at the Shard, but after moving up the ranks he said he eventually started to face racial barriers.

Natty runs his own events alongside catering for finance execs in his 9-5 ( @kennytranproductions)

Speaking about when he helped at the opening of Oblix, he told The Mirror: "That's when the passion really came, especially because it was something completely different. And there was no one like me there so it was an environment that I really thought I could grow in."

As time went on, Natty started to progress and soon filled management positions at luxury restaurants. "It was only as I moved kitchens that it became a lot more segregated and I could feel 'you're Black and I'm white'," he said. "I went to a Michelin-star kitchen and that's when I really started to feel it. I was the youngest person in there and I was a Black guy from Peckham and I went in as management.

The chef was sentenced to two and a half years in prison (Supplied)

Natty pictured on the day of his release (Supplied)

"They started asking me stuff like do you stab people? Are your cousins in gangs? Do you know Stormzy? Just stereotypical, really patronising questions." Natty highlighted that the chef industry is "very middle class". He added: "For the English chefs, they had come from private school or grammar schools and then that's how I lost my passion for cooking."

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He added: "I saw a lot of people taking drugs at work so I started selling drugs there. I left that restaurant and went to a different restaurant. It was a private member's club and it was just like a party and everyone was just on it all day and all night." In 2019, Natty was sentenced to two and a half years in prison on drug charges and one week after his sentencing he made it to the final of Young Chef of the Year. He served his time at HMP Brixton, which is home to an inmate-run restaurant called The Clink.

Natty plans to host at least two more events this year (@siriusfilm/Instagram)

The social media chef said he wants to make fine dining 'sexy' (@siriusfilm/Instagram)

"This case was hanging over my head for nearly three years so as it started to get more serious I thought I should have a contingency plan," he added. "I knew that there was a restaurant so I went to eat there six months before I got prosecuted so I could see the level of food." Upon arrival in Brixton, there was a job fair which shows you all the different types of jobs in jail. "Within a week I was working at The Clink," he said. 

After reigniting his love for cooking, Natty was released and organised a tasting menu to show people how far he had come. He said: "That was just a year of getting out of prison to show people that in a year, I'm able to change my whole life around put on a sold out event with a six-course tasting menu of refined Caribbean food, full of Black chefs. When I came out of prison, a lot of people just thought I'd end up back in jail or revert back to my old ways. So it was more for myself." However, following its success, Natty decided to host events more frequently and support had started to grow after he shared cooking videos on Instagram and TikTok.

Natty is one of the few black fine dining chefs in the UK (@kennytranproductions)

He explained: "Considering that I've only been creating content for 17 months, I'm now starting to throw an event every month. Now, it's more about creating a space that we as Black people can go to and look nice. There's no violence and it's all nice food and good vibes. White people have all these places to go to like private members clubs and that's just normal for them. The chef pointed out that there are no "super refined restaurants". He said: "There is African refined food and Asian but for the Caribbean there is none."

However, he noted: "The diversity is getting a lot better in kitchens but you don't hear people being pushed into the career like other careers. If there was a lot more Black role models in kitchens I feel like more Black youths would want to be a part of it. The only Black chef I knew growing up was Ainsley Harriott." He hopes he can help make the career become "more familiar" for people of similar backgrounds.

"I want to take people that have just come out of jail and build a chef brigade of ex-convicts potentially and get them into full-time work," the chef explained. He said he wants to show that convicts are not "just going to get caught up in the cycle and just go through the prison system." Natty further said he will "eventually push to get a Michelin star from there."

He also has plans to help prisoners get back on the right path and would like to start a charity to campaign against knife crime after his best friend Trei Daley was stabbed to death earlier this year. "When Trei passed it really affected all of us," he said. "It was a dark period of time. Off the back of this, I want to try and launch a charity to stop knife crime as I've been stabbed myself and especially in the memory of Trei. Knife crime is rife, especially in young Black males in London."

Monica Charsley