Growing up in one of Britain’s best-known food families could easily leave a chef forever in someone else’s shadow. Jack Stein has done the opposite. The middle son of Jill and the award-winning famous chef Rick Stein, Jack has forged a career and a reputation entirely his own – as Chef Director of Rick Stein’s Seafood Restaurants, as the driving force behind the Stein’s at Home meal-kit service, and as a familiar face on television, whether alongside his father and brothers or entirely on his own. Having cooked in restaurants around the world, he has settled where it all began: his native Cornwall.
Jack got an early taste of hospitality, spending school holidays as a kitchen porter and then waiter at The Seafood Restaurant in Padstow. He might have taken a very different path – he read Psychology at Cardiff University before adding a Master’s in Ancient History – but the pull of the kitchen proved too strong. On completing his Master’s in 2003 he re-entered the family business as a Commis Chef at The Seafood Restaurant, then stepped up to Sous Chef at Rick Stein’s Café.
A move to Paris to work at La Régalade lit a passion for travel and a run of stage placements across the globe, including an extended stay at Tetsuya’s in Sydney and an exploration of Asia – Japan in particular. Back in Padstow, Jack became Executive Development Chef across the Stein Group, and since being appointed Chef Director in 2017 he has launched the “Cook with Jack Stein” course at Rick Stein’s Cookery School and the hugely popular Stein’s at Home meal-kit service. In 2023 he was voted Best Chef at the Food Magazine Reader Awards.
At home in the UK, celebrity seafood chef, Jack is a regular on Channel 4’s Steph’s Packed Lunch, BBC’s Saturday Kitchen and Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch, and has been the expert Mentor Chef on ITV’s Cooking with the Stars for many consecutive series.
Jack has filmed several successful series in locations around the world. In Wine, Dine and Stein, co-hosted with his brother, sommelier Charlie, the pair spent a day on each of the twelve wine farms of South Africa’s Durbanville Wine Valley. In Born to Cook: Jack Stein Down Under, made for SBS and UKTV Food, Jack and Rick worked their way through the southwest of Western Australia, meeting the producers at the heart of a food revolution. And in Jack Stein: Inside the Box, he travelled the globe presenting British dishes and discovering what locals really make of British food.
Jack’s cookbook, Jack Stein’s World on a Plate, was published by Bloomsbury in July 2018. Inspired by his years cooking in restaurants around the world and his deep love of British produce, it gathers 100 easy-to-follow recipes – from chilli crab made with the very finest Cornish crab to Szechuan-style pigeon, hot and sour Sumatran soup and XO clams.
Jack is a lively fixture on the UK food-festival circuit, putting on chef demonstrations at the Rock Oyster Festival, the Ideal Home Show, Feasty Festival, Caerphilly Food Festival and many more. In March 2026 he fronts the opening of Stein’s at Cheltenham during the Cheltenham Festival, bringing the celebrated Cornish hospitality of the Stein family to Jump racing’s most prestigious meeting. He is also a brand ambassador for St Austell Brewery and for MicroSalt, an innovative low-sodium salt.
Represented by DML Talent, Jack Stein continues to prove that he is very much a chef in his own right – a global cook with Cornwall in his heart.
