Now my passion is fish (and chips)

This management-speak is all part of the new brand. After his famous sacking from Pied à Terre, Aikens had no choice but to become a private chef. It was a big step down from Michelin stars. The careful speech, the consideration for fellow staff, not to mention the obsession with the fishing industry and the environment is all the result of a lot of serious thinking.

I suggest that, in retrospect, failure was a sort of blessing. "Yes, I failed at my work. It was huge shock to me and other people," he says. No longer sleep-deprived or suffering from anxiety attacks, Aikens had time to think about what went wrong. "I was cocky, bullish, a control freak. I kept getting cross because I didn't know what to say. But I've mellowed and learned to communicate," he says.

He compares his cooking style, which has evolved from haute French to authentic English to his own personal development. "My cooking was tyrannical, contrived, impersonal, boxed in just like me," he said. Today it is "more flowing, organic ... I just put it on the plate". Therapy has changed the way he cooks, he says. It is now less formal and more authentic. Listing the provenance of the foods (included in the menus at Tom's Kitchen) is all part of this transparent school of cooking.

And, more importantly, he has just lured his identical twin brother Rob, also a chef, into the business. Rob has been working abroad for the past 14 years, in Canada and the States. The two are exceptionally close. When he was younger Aikens talked movingly about how Rob was the one person in his life he absolutely trusted. And he says Rob always had better life balance: while Tom was working 18-hour days as a young chef, Rob was out with models every night, enjoying the party circuit. "I stayed in London and he moved to Lake Placid and had this amazing quality of life."

Rob's return to London is obviously a major source of pleasure for Aikens. Rob even moved into Tom and Amber's Battersea flat for a time. And it's hard not to think his presence has been a major professional support. Because Aikens really is at the top of his game. His Michelinstarred restaurant, Tom Aikens, is full most nights. Tom's Kitchen, the more relaxed canteen he opened last year, is always packed.

Tom is the younger twin. A sickly baby, he weighed one kilo when he was born and spent his first two months in an incubator with a 50/50 chance of survival. "I was fighting for my life and I've been fighting ever since," he said recently.

Both boys grew up with a passion for food. Their father was a wine merchant, their mother a great home cook. By his own account, Tom was a hopeless student. "I wasn't the brightest or the most gifted. I was in detention a lot," he says.

When he told his parents he wanted to go to catering college, they were appalled. "In those days only stupid people became chefs," he says.

It wasn't easy when he started out. After working for free in good kitchens, Aikens gained a place under famous French chef Pierre Koffman of La Tante Claire. "If he was upset with you, he wouldn't shout. He would punish you. Still, I learned an enormous amount." He was hired as head chef at Pied à Terre where he became the youngest chef ever to win two Michelin stars, beating Marco Pierre White's record.

Out on the street, after the knife incident, he had no choice but to become a private chef, for clients including Andrew Lloyd Webber and Lord and Lady Bamford. The latter, whom he adores, "showed me that you could be more joyful", he says. The Bamfords also taught him about organic business plans.

Today, his personal life is far happier. Earlier this year he married Amber Nuttall, daughter of the late Bahamas-based billionaire baronet Sir Nicholas Nuttall. She now works in PR but was originally a cook who trained at Prue Leith. Later she set up a home-catering company with Marco Pierre White.

To source the fresh fish that Tom's Place will supply, Aikens spent months in the Bahamas, where his father-in-law was heavily involved in fishing conservation. Nuttall founded the Bahamas Reef Environment Educational Foundation in 1993, an organisation dedicated to marine conservation. Aikens says his journey started there, and has continued ever since.

The sea is an endless source of wonder to him. He grew up in a village called Cringleford in Norfolk, 40 minutes from the coast. "The beaches go on for miles. My father was an avid beachcomber and my grandfather, too, and I think I've inherited that." Before launching the restaurant he made many visits to fishermen in Cornwall - even making a film about them which he will screen for customers in Tom's Place.

He virtually has a PhD in fish - learning about farming, trawling, quotas, fishery offices and diseases. "You should read The End of the Line by Charles Clover [on the risks of overfishing]. It's fascinating," he says smiling. He wants to help fishermen and is planning to donate some percentage of every fish'n'chip dinner to the Fishermen's Mission. "I really want to do something to help," he says.

He is even passionate about chips. He favours starchy Lincolnshire spuds with names like Maris Piper. "What you have to worry about with chips is discoloration," he says deadpan, "and dry matter. There is a specific way of measuring dry matter which is done with a cylindrical tube. Ideally you want a reading of 21-22."

Far from wanting Aikens at home every night, Amber "drives me quite hard". They share a love of travel, food and the sea; children are definitely on the horizon.

Tom is opening a second branch of Tom's Kitchen in the City (Rob will be operations manager). And in addition to his green fish'n'chips shop, he is writing a book about fish and is launching a range of own-branded, pre-prepared food next month. Is he following the Gordon Ramsay business model? Only time will tell, but I suspect this is just the beginning of the Tom Aikens empire.

Tom's Place opens next month at One Cale Street, SW3, 11am-11pm.