Success ruined my marriage

Meeting Tom Aikens is a bit like ordering his braised pig's head if you're squeamish - it sounds scary and a bit horrid, but actually it turns out to be rather yummy.

He has a fiery reputation as the foulmouthed, saucepan-flinging chef who famously had to leave his job at Pied à Terre - the restaurant where he had become the youngest ever recipient of two Michelin stars - after an incident involving a hot palette knife and a shocked trainee chef.

As his peers queued up to condemn him - Gordon Ramsay said he didn't deserve to work in London again - the disgraced Aikens disappeared from the restaurant scene.

That he was back three years later with an eponymous restaurant which has attracted loyal customers such as Joan Collins and Michael Caine and picked up a clutch of awards and a Michelin star for its modern French cuisine, says as much about his determination as it does his talent.

And had it not been for that self-imposed exile, he might not be the modest, gentlevoiced man I meet today at the Anouska Hempel-designed restaurant in Chelsea.

He is a good-looking, baby-faced 34, without the ravaged looks that usually come from all those years spent in searing kitchens. Earlier this week, a beaming Aikens picked up his latest prize, the prestigious Restaurateurs' Restaurant of the Year award for the second year running.

"It's been a difficult year - there's no doubt about that," he admitted at the ceremony, "but now I'm waiting to see what the future holds." His success has come at a price. In May, he split from his wife of seven years, Laura, with whom he'd started the restaurant.

They met in 1993 at the Argyll restaurant in Chelsea, where Aikens was the sous chef. Laura, an attractive Finnish-born blonde, got a job as a pastry chef and, at first, found him terrifying. "He screamed and barked at everyone, including me. I found it incredibly frightening. It was a tiny kitchen and I just stood in the corner and cowered," she has said. They married in 1997.

Despite their separation - Laura moved out of their Fulham flat - she continued to work front of house at the restaurant but left in July. "I don't think it's good for people who are married to work so close together," she has said.

I suspect that being married to Tom Aikens is hardly a bowl of cherries in itself. This is the man who is so passionate about his work that he has given everything to it - from spending his late teens and twenties rarely out of the kitchen to getting back in the game after the Pied à Terre incident with such fury that, in the 18 months since it opened, his restaurant is now one of the most successful and highly regarded in the country.

Does he think he's devoted too much of his life to cooking? "I have," he says. "The past 10 years have been work and work and not much else." It can't have been easy for his wife.

"It's been very difficult. Working in a restaurant for 18 hours a day, you have to be prepared to make sacrifices if you want to get to the top." He's clearly uncomfortable talking about the separation and won't say if he hopes things will work out with his wife.