TV chef Matt Tebbutt: I splashed out on a £6,000 espresso machine 24 years in the past… it is tripled in worth

Matt Tebbutt is a chef and television food presenter best known for fronting BBC weekend staple Saturday Kitchen for the past decade. 

The 52-year-old has also presented shows such as Masterchef: The Professionals and Food Unwrapped.

He has worked at some of London’s most prestigious eateries, including with Marco Pierre White, and ran a restaurant in Nant-y-derry, Wales, for 15 years with his wife, Lisa.

Matt and Lisa live in Monmouthshire and have two children, Jessie, 24 and Henry, 22.

What did your parents teach you about money?

That it doesn’t come easily… you must work bloody hard for it.

My dad Martin always instilled the notion that ‘it doesn’t matter what you do in life but be the best at what you can be’. If you’re going to be a plumber, be the best plumber. You’re going to be a pilot? Fly a Concorde.

He worked in a factory as a fitter and then set up his own. He would work six days a week, sometimes seven, often coming home late covered in grease and oil.

My mum Joan raised my brother and me. Mum and Dad were working-class kids from west London and we used to go on caravan holidays. 

On these holidays we’d try foods not readily available in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s.

My parents were great cooks; so were my grandparents. My love of food and cooking all stems from that.

Have you ever struggled to make ends meet?

I was always in my overdraft at university. When I got into cooking I was doing 90-hour weeks for £190 pay.

Then, in the mid-90s, the only way to bring yourself out of that was work with somebody with a name in a kitchen for many years – rise through the ranks.

I was too impatient and decided to buy a little old pub in the country in Wales and live upstairs.

We opened in December, our daughter was born in May and then a year later our son was born. It was hectic.

There was a misconception at the time that restaurants made lots of money – but those little family-run ones didn’t.

You make a living and there were many times where it was a close call. Something as little as five grand would see you surviving that month or not, and that was quite often the case.

Why did you give up the restaurant?

My wife was front of house, I was in the kitchen.

I would work all hours and then the TV stuff happened. I was disappearing to do that and paying a guy to do my job in the kitchen, which he didn’t do as well. 

Any money I made in television should have been a bonus, but it went straight back into the pot.

I was doing that for eight years – getting back at midnight every Thursday night, straight into service Friday morning, Saturday, Sunday and then disappear again. It was a continual treadmill.

Then, aged around 40, I was offered a full-time TV job.

I was out of the equation at the restaurant too often, so we got rid of it.

Have you ever been paid silly money?

Sometimes I get asked to do a job and I say: ‘Not a chance.’ Then my agent will say: ‘Well how about for this much?’

And I go: ‘I can get my head around that.’

I will do jobs and my contemporaries will say, ‘Why are you doing that?’ But I used to work bloody hard in the restaurant for a week and wouldn’t take that much money. 

So being offered a couple of grand to give out an award is a ‘hell yeah’ in my book because I know how hard it is to earn that sort of money.

What was the best year of your financial life?

Around ten years ago. I was doing Food Unwrapped on Channel Four, and that took me away for four days of the week.

I then turned up and did Friday and Saturday to do Saturday Kitchen on BBC One, and then I would regularly do a food festival on Sunday. It was good money.

The most expensive thing you have bought for fun?

I bought a Faema Legend coffee machine for the restaurant 24 years ago. It’s gorgeous and now lives in our kitchen.

It looks like something from the 1940s but it’s modern tech. At the time it cost me about six grand. It’s probably worth triple that now.

It makes me smile every morning when I make my espresso.

What’s your idea of food heaven?

Nothing too fancy, too stiff or starchy – a succession of plates hitting the table, stuff you can graze on and revisit. A Lazy Susan and lots of groaning plates of delicious Chinese food.

What was your biggest money mistake?

When I bought that old pub 24 years ago and turned it into the restaurant, it cost £180,000. 

At the time I remember looking in the Evening Standard and there was a four-bedroom villa with a pool in Saint Paul de Vance for the same money. 

Had I bought that, I’d be sitting on property worth millions in France.

Best money decision you have made?

Buying property. We have our main residence in Monmouthshire. It’s a 500-year-old mill house. 

It’s very small, old and uninsulated – and needs a new roof. We’ve lived here for 17 years.

We have two other properties in the area.

Will you pass down your money or spend it all?

I want to pass down as much as I can. Neither of my children plan to follow in my footsteps as a chef.

My daughter is a drummer and my son wants to join the Foreign Office!

Do you have a pension?

I have a very tiny pension through a television thing I was in for three years – but other than that, negligible.

If you were Chancellor, what would you do?

Help the hospitality industry – it’s getting a battering. VAT needs to be brought in line with Europe.

What is your number one financial priority?

Getting through the month, being able to pay the mortgage and cars – but also have a few fun coupons to go out for dinner and enjoy ourselves.

Matt has teamed up with Zurich Insurance for a new cookbook, Legacy Kitchen, designed to get Britons talking about life, loss and inheritance.