Rick Stein, one of the UK’s leading culinary voices, has written about the time he was robbed as a young man in Mexico whilst travelling the world following a tragic event
Rick Stein has opened up about how he was nearly killed during a terrifying incident abroad. The celebrity chef, now 78, said that after the death of his father by suicide he went abroad going as far away as Australia, the United States, Mexico.
He found it “very special” visiting Mexico and its bars, but things weren’t totally plain sailing. Rick told the Times: “The bars were not exactly glamorous, but there was something very special about drinking ice-cold beer and tequila in a room full of cowboys.
“Having said that, a couple of English lads and I did get robbed in Acapulco. They managed to take our backpacks — we were on the beach — without waking us up, which I was told was quite lucky. If we had disturbed them, they would probably have killed us.”
This isn’t the first time Rick has spoken about the events that shaped his life as a young man and how those experiences transformed him into the man he is today.
In 2020, he was asked by the Guardian how his father’s early death had moulded him as a father to his children and stepchildren.
In response, he said: “It really made me want to be a lot more communicative with my own children. I still think of my dad as being somebody really special in my life.
“I think it’s very confusing…On the whole, my dad was a hero, it’s just that it got really difficult in his depressive phases, very introspective. And I think he took it out on me really.”
Rick added that he had developed a good sense of “not being very good at stuff” and that despite his immense career success that he still sometimes doubts himself.
In the decades since his life travelling the world, Rick has built a multi-million pound empire out of the small Cornish fishing town of Padstow.
However, just like all hospitality business owners in recent years, Rick has been battered by economic headwinds caused by events such as Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost of living crisis.
Speaking to the London Standard earlier this year, Rick called for more support for the industry.
He said: “I appreciate that the country is not in a good state, but it seems to me a complete ‘home goal’ to target parts of the economy that are not well-equipped to deal with it.
“Hospitality is always taken as slightly second-rate way of the national wealth, but tourism and hospitality are so important.
“The National Insurance increase in the last budget was really hard. It started with the war in Ukraine, and food prices have just continued to increase. It’s a tough business.”