Jason Atherton

Jason Atherton (born 6 September 1971) is an English chef and restaurateur. His restaurant Pollen Street Social gained a Michelin Star in 2011, its opening year. He was the Executive Chef at Gordon Ramsay's Michelin starred Maze in London until 30 April 2010. In 2014 he co-hosted the Sky Living TV series My Kitchen Rules.

Atherton was born in Sheffield, South Yorkshire.

The son of a Skegness hotelier and her joiner husband, Atherton ran away to London at the age of 16 while his parents were on holiday. After training at Boston College, Lincolnshire, he spent six weeks training with the Army Catering Corps, which he hated.

Jason Atherton has worked with chefs including Pierre Koffmann, Nico Ladenis, and Marco Pierre White. He joined the Gordon Ramsay Group in 2001 as the executive chef for Verre in Dubai. In 2005, Jason returned to the UK and opened Maze.

In November 2007, Atherton and Gordon Ramsay oversaw the launch of Maze in the Hilton Prague Old Town. April 2008 saw the launch of Maze Grill, which sits alongside maze in Grosvenor Square. In 2009 Atherton opened Maze in Cape Town at the One and Only Hotel and also maze restaurants in Melbourne and Qatar.

– Fay Maschler, Evening Standard,

Atherton left Gordon Ramsay Holdings in 2010 to launch his own restaurant company, The Social Company. He launched his first independent restaurant venture, Table No. 1, at the Waterhouse at South Bund hotel in Shanghai in May 2010. His flagship restaurant has been awarded one Michelin star, Pollen Street Social, opened in April 2011 in Mayfair. The restaurant has been ranked at number six in The Good Food Guide’s Top 50 Restaurants 2013 & 2014 and number three in the 2016 guide. It was deemed London's best new fine dining restaurant in the Time Out Eating & Drinking Awards 2011 and won New Restaurant of the Year at the Craft Guild of Chefs Awards 2012. The restaurant has 4 AA Rosettes and has been named the BMW Square Meal Restaurant of the Year 2011. In 2014 the restaurant won Food and Travel Magazine Readers Award's "Restaurant of the Year - UK" and Jason Atherton won Restaurateur of the Year at the Catey's