Shadbolt grew up in Essex before training at the River Cafe, where she met de Boer. Holidays were spent here on the Suffolk coast, where a cast of friends and family would rotate for picnics and barbecues on the beach. Aldeburgh remains appealingly down to earth – there are a handful of pubs, a famous chippy, and a line of old huts from which you can buy seafood.
Shadbolt recently bought one of the huts and has renovated it to create a bolthole where she can read, write and relax. Today, she prepares a barbecue lunch outside: tomato salad, flatbreads, crab and skate wings. The fish was caught by her neighbour, Dean Fryer, one of the last of a once-thriving community of inshore fishermen. As she cooks the skate over a fire, Shadbolt shows there are ways to keep this heritage alive.
‘I love New York and restaurants,’ she says, ‘but cooking on the beach with friends and family reminds me why I wanted to cook in the first place.’
