At Preneur World, we believe in celebrating excellence, passion and purpose – qualities exemplified by Michelin-starred chef and BBC’s Great British Menu winner, Tom Shepherd. In this exclusive in-depth interview, we delve deep into the journey of the man behind Upstairs by Tom Shepherd, the acclaimed fine-dining restaurant nestled above his father’s jewellery shop in Lichfield. From his unconventional start as a pot washer to earning his first Michelin star just four months after opening and launching his own premium spirits brand, Tom shares candid insights into his inspirations, family values, and the relentless pursuit of culinary brilliance that defines his extraordinary path.
Your journey to becoming a Michelin-starred chef has been remarkable. What was the defining moment when you knew you wanted to pursue a career in fine dining?
I haven’t got one of those romantic stories, you know where I was baking scones or cream cakes with my nan in the kitchen at nine years of age. Instead, I was very sports orientated when I was a kid, and I felt that naturally my career would probably head in that direction.
Yet I actually started my career in hospitality with my first job as a pot washer at a local hotel in Litchfield, called The George Hotel. Right from the start I just loved meeting the guys there and the fast paced environment.
I think the general manager saw something in me, and they took me to one side and said ‘Tom, I think your personality is going to really suit the hospitality industry, have you ever considered it?’
I really hadn’t at that stage, but there was a trainee manager’s position that was coming available at another hotel in Sutton Coldfield. I was introduced to the general manager there, and as part of my training I was asked to spend a period of time in each section of the hotel with the first three months in the kitchen.
I just had the most surreal experience in those couple of weeks, and I found this completely natural ability to cook and to understand cooking and to understand flavour and seasoning. It was the strangest thing when I was going home, and I just understood everything; and I think the most important thing about any industry is that you understand it.
I was fortunately given a natural ability with cooking, and from that day forward, I had an incredible support network with the whole team at New Hall Hotel in Walmley.
The head chef I worked with was quite meticulous. He came from a very good background, and he just wanted everything to be right. So I learned how to make a proper sauce, I learned how to season and learned how to make things properly. I loved it. I love serving, I love making it, and then I was serving what I made to customers, and they were loving it. It was just amazing, and I caught on to it quite quickly, and just didn’t want to stop.
The head chef there basically said to me, ‘Tom, you need to seriously consider this as not only a career, but you need to really push yourself’. I was at school and going through the early stages of my career, but I always had this huge desire and hunger to succeed. I just didn’t have a clue what I was going to practice in and fortunately, I found that platform in the kitchen, and I just didn’t look back.
My next move after New Hall and three years of essentially my apprenticeship at New Hall saw me go straight to a Michelin star kitchen, and fortunately, I haven’t stepped out of them since.
Earning a Michelin star for Upstairs by Tom Shepherd just four months after opening is an incredible achievement. What do you believe set your restaurant apart?
Working in this industry, it’s a hard career and I’ve always had this mentality of whatever I put in, I felt I was going to get out. I turned every opportunity I had to learn and do my best, and just present myself in the best possible way.
With that in mind, I’ve worked at three one Michelin star restaurants and two that have two Michelin stars in my career, and now I’ve got one of my own. I think when you look back, it’s almost the same fact as I’ve worked in a cumulative seven Michelin star restaurants, and now my own is my eighth. I think you put in that groundwork and hard work, and success is going to follow you.
I think when I opened up my business, I didn’t think about Michelin once. I was ecstatic at the fact that this was my own business and my own restaurant, which was amazing.
Then on top of that, the focus was purely on trying to please customers and trying to produce challenging food that’s delicious, following the seasons and trying to source the best ingredients available to us. That was it really.
Then the Michelin phone call came in, and they must have inspected us a number of times in the first four months of us being open. I think they must have understood what my project was, and my delivery was and felt that it was a part of it, and also felt that the execution of what we were delivering was at a level that met the Michelin star status.
Getting that was validation, and I think it just validates all that hard work and sacrifice that I put in my career. It got validated that one day when I got a phone call and they said that I got a Michelin Star, and it was the most incredible experience and period in my professional career; it was just insane. I broke down in tears. I didn’t have a clue. I just couldn’t believe that everything I had worked for had become that dream. I dreamed of earning my own Michelin Star restaurant one day, and that became a reality in that one phone call. It was the most special moment of my career.
Your restaurant is uniquely located above your father’s jewellery shop in Lichfield. How does that personal connection influence the atmosphere and experience at Upstairs?
Yeah it’s really special. My daughter Grace came last night and she’s only six. She came last night because my wife had a couple of errands to run, so she got dropped off after lunch service, and my dad obviously sees her downstairs and then she comes upstairs to me. I think that’s special from that perspective, but I also think my dad’s story is so much longer than mine and he has so much more history that makes our location so special too
It was his grandfather that started the jewellery business in Birmingham in the Jewellery Quarter. Then my dad took over joining in with my Grandad and it was a part of a joint business. The business had had three generations of hard graft and then I was the offspring that completely didn’t fancy going into jewellery, which to be fair to my dad did support.
The fact that it’s gone full circle now, and I’m operating my own business above the family business downstairs, makes it feel like it’s almost become the new family business. It’s incredible.
Hopefully when my dad sort of feels that retirement is upon him, we can look to do something downstairs as well and have an upstairs downstairs scenario where we can operate our two separate properties, but almost combine that experience.
It’s really special. I often pop down for a cup of tea in between services, and likewise, he’ll pop up and have a chat with us.
If you could describe the philosophy behind Upstairs by Tom Shepherd in just three words, what would they be?
I think looking at the whole business, one word would be family. Another would be flavourful, because we very much promote flavourful food, and obviously seasonality. For the third word I’ll say culture, more from our delivery.
Many diners look for a ‘wow factor’ in their culinary experiences. What dish on your menu do you feel truly captures that magic?
A dish that has the origin of just purely Upstairs is our transition course, which is called a Thai Green Curry. Ironically, that’s obviously one of Twofold Gins, and that’s where it comes from.
The transition course comes in after your main course, but also before your dessert. Essentially it transitions you into dessert and sets it up.
We do a really traditional English style rich rice pudding at the bottom and then a fresh mango sorbet. Then we do this coconut foam, which is infused with a Thai aroma. So it’s like lime leaf, lemongrass, ginger, a bit of chilli, a little bit of coriander and it’s sweetened, and it just gives this real flavour.
People literally will do one spoon and everyone’s reactions are the same. They look up each other and then gasp, and they go, ‘What the fuck is this?’ And then they keep eating, and their minds are blown from a dish. It’s just mad.
We get people saying, ‘can you just never take this off? You can’t take this off.’ Or they tell us they come back just for that dish. It’s the smallest dish on the menu, but it’s clearly the most impactful. I think that is a really fair representation of who we are and what we’re about.
Encouraging children to be more adventurous with food can be a challenge for many parents. As a chef, what are your top tips for making mealtimes more exciting and helping kids develop a love for new flavours?
So obviously, I have the experience of a cook, and I think the ingredients that are open to me are probably a hell of a lot more open than what I would have had at Grace’s age.
One thing that we do is we look at it quite openly. It’s quite strange in one respect, where they don’t know the difference between a crab and a piece of haddock or a fish finger. Then one day we just say ‘Listen, it’s fish, and that’s the end of it.’ There’s a bit of a myth in society that has enabled us to think that we can only serve fish fingers to a kid, and they won’t eat fresh crab because they won’t like it. But that’s rubbish because they don’t know the difference at all.
One of my top tips is don’t overthink and to just include them in everything that you do. This morning me and Grace both had pancakes and I got Grace involved. The mixing of it and cooking (I keep the stove a bit separate), but she’s involved the whole way through. I’ve found that if it’s a meal that I prepared that she doesn’t know, she will look at it and go, ‘what’s this?’ And then because she’s had no involvement in it, it’ll take her about an hour to eat because she’s not interested. But then this morning she’s whacked down three pancakes in about seven minutes, because she’s been part of it. So I’d say being part of the cooking process without doubt and doing family meals together.
You and your wife Charlotte recently launched Twofold Spirits, combining your culinary expertise with premium drinks. What inspired you to step into the world of spirits?
So to start off with it was my wife Charlie and Charlie’s background. Her family have always been in catering and hospitality, so from the moment she was born, she’s always been in and around this industry. She actually left school to go straight to catering college and I met her as a chef. I was 24 and she would have been 21 and we just obviously started getting on – and obviously the rest is history!
But from Charlie’s perspective, she knew at 21 that this industry, from a chef’s perspective, wasn’t really for her. So she got involved with drinks brands which included working with Fever Tree where she worked for four years before she was later headhunted by Britvic. It was a fantastic job and opportunity, and she absolutely loved it. She became quite an integral part of the business; I think she did about three years there before we had our daughter Grace.
When Grace started school, we ran into issues with school and childcare as the hours are obviously less than when they’re in nursery which had been manageable for us. She spoke with her team but ultimately they couldn’t replace her or turn her role into a three or four day position, and Charlie was gutted. She’d worked so hard to get so far in her career, but we just couldn’t make it work.
So I just thought there was no better opportunity than to bring Charlie into Upstairs. It started with a customer relations role, which is the best decision we ever made as it’s been so amazing and essential for us as a business and helped with our guest interaction. Before Charlie got involved there was no personality and it was just replying to emails either by me or my restaurant manager, and that was it. With Charlie on board, suddenly there was this personality. Their experience was created or began before they even stepped foot into the restaurant, which was amazing. And with that, we could then manage our personal life with Grace. It works well for us, but Charlie felt like she was missing the drinks industry and was regularly being contacted for her consultancy and expertise and how to get started. So I said, ‘Well, I’ve always wanted to get into the drinks brand as well, can we start?’
She basically took that opportunity and ran with it. I really wanted Charlotte to have that toe back into what she loves, and from my point of view, with the ingredients, and the flavour profile, it’s worked so well.
The Banana Rum and Thai Green Gin are both bold choices. How did you develop these unique flavour profiles, and what’s next for Twofold Spirits?
From my point of view with the ingredients and the flavour profile, I’ve learned from Upstairs that you really need to add personality to your product. We have customers who come to Upstairs that just invest solely in who we are and what we are and what we do. That’s the personality in the ethos and the culture that we represent. I wanted that to be true for Twofold Spirits too.
I didn’t want to just do a London dry gin and just fall in an already overpopulated market. Same with the rum, I didn’t just want to do a plain, white or dark rum and have no flavour profile, have no personality, and just again, fall into an already overpopulated market. I wanted to bring Upstairs into it.
I brought Charlie and her background, and I wanted to bring Upstairs into it too. So the Banana Rum is purely from the banana dessert that was on The Great British Menu, which was the highest scoring dessert or dish of the whole entire series, and it was a memorable moment as I was dressed up as Banana Man. So a lot of people obviously remember that.
Then the Thai Green Gin was just an epiphany. We went to the gin distillery, and we looked at all the ingredients that can go into a gin. I just looked and picked out ingredients like coconut, vanilla, mango, ginger, and chili. I was like, hang on a minute, ‘Have you ever done like a Thai gin or a Thai Green Gin’ They were like, no and I was like, I’m gonna do it.
I made it there, and it was insane. It had this incredible floral profile, with the fatty texture from the coconut, and the sweetness from the mango, but it had a heat from the chillies. It married in with our dish at Upstairs, and I just knew it had to happen.
We went through 18 months worth of tasting for both. The Banana Rum was a lot easier to profile. It was more of a case of just balancing the sweetness. But the gin was very difficult, because the aftertaste really had this floral smell on the nose, yet it had a lot of heat, and we had to work on taking some of the heat out but still have it so you could taste it. It’s a real balancing act, but we got there, and I’m very happy with the outcome.
If you could invite three people – past or present – to a dinner party at Upstairs, who would they be and why?
I’d always said I would love to cook for Gordon Ramsay. I had no interest in cooking at all as a young lad. But then when the chefs around me were telling me to watch this guy, I just remember watching him and I’d never seen passion and desire like he possessed. I had just never seen it. Looking at him I knew he was at the very top of his game, which is industry. I just looked at him and found him the most inspiring person I think I’ve ever seen. So if I ever got the opportunity to cook for him, that would just be absolutely unbelievable.
The other two are a bit more personal. My nan’s name was Gladys, and we used to go around there as a very young lad, and she always used to have cookery programs on the TV. She passed away aged 102, but I would love the opportunity to cook for her. Just because she started my career and I think she saw something in me that others didn’t at an early age. I think I would love to have invited her to Upstairs and to just cook for her, because she was always into food.
I think the third, I’m going with my granddad Colin as well. Me and my grandad had an amazing relationship. I think I’m more like my grandad than my dad, and I think he was the visionary that really sort of pushed and promoted his dad’s business and he looked out for me a lot when I was younger. I’ve never been able to cook for my grandad in my restaurant that essentially has his history and his hard work, and essentially created the possibility of having this business.
Your culinary style has been influenced by your experience in some of the UK’s finest kitchens. Which chef, mentor, or experience has had the greatest impact on your approach to cooking?
For me it was the head chef Wayne Thompson at New Hall, he was my first head chef.
He’s come to Upstairs about three or four times, and I hold an awful lot of my success to him, because he gave me the belief more than anything. He taught me very well. He always encouraged me, and I think he knew potentially what I possessed.
I’m the only chef to ever leave New Hall and gain the Michelin Star so I think his initial feelings have been justified now that’s for sure. Wayne was definitely the person who encouraged me and actually got me to like the industry.
Cooking is both an art and a science. Do you have any personal rituals or habits that help you get into a creative flow in the kitchen?
I don’t have superstitions per se, or anything like that to be honest. You know I don’t wear the same socks or chef whites for shifts or anything like that.
I would say that from my perspective I just follow the same rule I have in life, which is to just be fully prepared. We make sure that we’re fully prepared and set ourselves up for success.
I had a chat with one of the guys who opened up Upstairs, and he mentioned that where he’s working now he works with a chef who just works in a complete mess, and it’s chaos 24/7. He said it’s so different to what we do and our mentality, which is to fully prepare and set ourselves up for each and every shift. We will clean down, set up, make sure we’ve got our spoon pots, what we need in each of the sections, set up our boards nicely and clean our knives so they’re nice and sharp. Once all of that is done, then we start our day.
You can’t cook and efficiently do your day’s work if it’s a mess or dirty and not prepared. We have a set up procedure that we do as soon as we get in, and that starts us off on the right foot. Prepare yourself well because failure to repair is preparing to fail.
What are the five things you couldn’t live without in your kitchen?
First of all a good non-stick pan is essential, and you can use it for a whole variety of things.
A knife that you keep on top of so it’s sharp, and I mean proper sharp. A chef’s knife almost becomes a part of you, and it’s got to be a knife that can cut anything and be used for prepping anything and everything in the kitchen.
A Maryse spatula, it’s essential and it’s a central piece of equipment that I just couldn’t live without. I’ve constantly got about four at home and about 20 at work, because they’re just so good for everything; good for getting stuff out of nooks and crannies and also great for stirring or making mashed potatoes, scrambled eggs, omelettes or whatever. They’re just essential.
Another is a spoon pot. We have Le Creuset ones on each section, and each part of the kitchen has one with a little bit of fresh, clean water in there all the time.
Lastly it’s got to be a microfibre cloth. Nothing fancy, just a little damp microfibre, and again just on the side of each section. Perfect for helping wipe up or clean down a spill and leave the kitchen looking brand new.
Upstairs by Tom Shepherd, Staffordshire’s first and only Michelin-starred restaurant, is redefining contemporary British fine dining in the heart of Lichfield. To learn more about Tom Shepherd and his culinary journey, visit www.cheftomshepherd.co.uk
Twofold Spirits Banana Rum and Thai Green Gin are currently available for sale exclusively at www.twofold-spirits.com and select stockists. Prices start from £38 per bottle.
