At 2pm on a rainy Saturday, Rick Stein walks quickly across the pale beechwood floor of his famous Seafood Restaurant in Padstow, Cornwall. As he trots past the diners, many look at him with astonishment, mouths agape like startled goldfish. Celebrity Chef In His Own Restaurant Shock! An experience rather similar, perhaps, to buying a Duchy of Cornwall ginger biscuit and having Prince Charles himself wrap it up. Although it’s not as if Stein ever actually cooks here any more. At a catering industry dinner in London earlier this month, the Automobile Association gave him a lifetime achievement award. “I felt a bit of a fraud,” he says, cheerfully. “There were chefs like Rowley Leigh and Shaun Hill there. They are the same age as me, and they are still cooking while I am swanning around doing TV.”

Ignoring the ripples of excitement his presence causes, Stein sits at a corner banquette, descending in a whumph of cushions and expensive upholstery. He points to my brimming glass of champagne and says: “I’ll have one of those, please.”

“On its way, Rick,” the waiter crisply responds.

Rick Stein is clearly not the kind of man to stand on ceremony. Everyone who works for him here, from the fish fryer in his chip shop on the quay to the general manager, who runs the business on a day-to-day basis, calls him Rick. The Cornish locals, who have known Stein since he moved here as a young man in 1976, call him Ricky. I’d also like to know what his business partner and ex-wife Jill now calls him, following Stein’s 2002 affair with Australian publicist Sarah Burns, which heralded the end of their 30-year marriage. It turns out that I won’t have to wait long, as Jill later joins us for a chat over lunch, an unexpected development that causes her former husband some visible alarm. For the moment, however, the sea of Stein is calm and tranquil. There may be choppy waters ahead, but right now his mind is most firmly on his mussels.

“The mouclade has come back on recently, I want to make sure it is working OK,” he says, rubbing his hands together. Mouclade is a regional French mussel dish a bit like moules marinière, except the cooking liquid is thickened with cream. It is on the menu here as a starter, alongside other scrumptious dishes such as grilled scallops with hazelnut butter, langoustines on ice and shrimp and samphire risotto. “For the mouclade, we use these little mussels from Torbay. Not as small as I would like,” says Stein. “Not as small as the ones you get in France, but still plumptious. Still very good news!”

He is dressed today in a dark, casual jacket and trousers, with a pale blue shirt. There is little about his appearance that hints at an alternative career away from this restaurant as one of the most popular celebrities on British television. Yet women respond to his rumpled charm like seagulls squawking after a rusty old trawler, while men approve of his lack of pretension, his plain-speaking ways and crab pasty recipes. Perhaps the only things even slightly prime time about him are his capped teeth, which could, at a pinch, be described as a bit showbiz. They certainly look as if they could give a shoal of anchovy a bit of a fright – except that’s probably illegal, as anchovies have now been deemed an unsustainable species by the Marine Conservation Society. At the mention of this, Stein makes a rather splendid harrumphing sound, like some great, maddened sea creature being dragged from the deep.

“Oh, gaaah. As with fish conservation, so with global warming. All this stuff! There must be an element in humans that wants to think the worst,” says Stein, who has just been criticised by a national newspaper for serving local cod in his flagship restaurant. As Stein’s name is forever linked with all things fishy in the public’s mind, he is a natural target for conservationists who like to carp.

“Cod is on the menu here because local fishing people say there is no shortage of it around Cornwall. It may be a different story in the North Sea, but not here. It is hard to run a restaurant where you specialise in fish and stick to the rules of the Marine Conservation Society,” he sighs.

Stein uses sustainable Icelandic cod in his high-volume fish and chip shop and inshore, small-boat fish elsewhere. He has recently returned from filming in south-east Asia for his next BBC television series, where he noted the smoking factories and vast industrial output. Back home, he concludes that in contrast to this, the “odd person” who won’t fly to Padstow because of their carbon footprint or eat local cod in his restaurant is a “bleeding joke”. He adds: “Whatever people say, I am never personally going to be responsible for the demise of fish. How much responsibility do I have to take for what I do? I know we should all do our bit. And I do. I won’t sell bluefin tuna or swordfish. But I will sell stuff that is borderline, otherwise I can’t get a decent menu on.”

Speaking of which, for lunch we order one portion of sushi to share, a Cornish crab salad and the mouclade as starters, then a main course of red mullet for him and monkfish for me. We have a good bottle of Bourgogne Hautes Côtes de Nuits 2004 Bertrand Ambroise (£38) and discuss the restaurant decor, which has recently undergone a £2.5m refit. There is a new seafood bar in the middle of the room, more tables and a stunning chandelier made from a swirling shoal of porcelain fish. “All Jill’s doing,” says Stein, before he notices his ex-wife – whom I have met before – appearing at his side.

“I’ve just come over to say hello,” she says, sweetly.

Rick Stein’s John Dory chowder with mussels and cider

Serves 4

Ingredients
500g live mussels
150ml Cornish cider
25g butter
100g piece of rindless smoked streaky bacon, cut into small cubes
1 small onion, finely chopped
20g plain flour
1 litre full-cream milk
2 potatoes (about 225g in total), peeled and cubed
1 bay leaf
225g John Dory fillet, cut into short chunky strips
120ml double cream
A pinch of cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
Salt and freshly ground white pepper

Method

To clean the mussels, wash them in plenty of cold water and pull away the beards from between the tightly closed shells. Knock off any barnacles with a large knife. Discard any mussels that won’t close when given a sharp tap.
Put the mussels and cider into a medium-sized pan over a high heat. Cover and cook for 2-3 minutes or until they have just opened, shaking the pan occasionally. Then tip them into a colander set over a bowl to collect the juices. Leave to cool slightly and then remove the meats from the shells, cover and set aside. Discard the shells.
Melt the butter in another pan, add the bacon and fry until lightly golden. Add the onion and cook gently for 5 minutes or until the onion has softened. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute. Gradually stir in the milk and then add all but the last tablespoon or two of the mussel cooking liquor (the last drops might be a bit gritty), the potatoes and bay leaf and 1 teaspoon of salt and leave to simmer gently for 10 minutes or until the potatoes are just tender.
Remove the bay leaf, add the John Dory and simmer for 2-3 minutes or until the fish is just cooked. Stir in the cream and season to taste with cayenne pepper, salt and white pepper. Remove from the heat and stir in the mussels, to warm them through just briefly, and most of the chopped parsley. Serve in warmed bowls, sprinkled with the rest of the parsley.

Tanned and sun-kissed in a wholesome Cornish way, the former Mrs Stein has a swing of dark auburn hair and a relaxed, friendly manner. Her mobile phone is tucked into the shoulder strap of her Alaia dress in a sassy, businesslike way and she chats happily about having sushi with Jimmy Choo here yesterday, when he showed her how to use wasabi properly. “You see, you mix it up in the sauce, Rick,” she tells him.

“I know,” he mutters.

Jill’s sudden appearance raises the temperature somewhat. Stein drains his glass in one then knocks over a forest of crockery. Following a difficult moment two years ago, when Jill slapped her husband’s girlfriend at this very restaurant – he had, she once said, promised never to bring her here – the couple agreed to divorce as amicably as possible. Yet how friendly can such proceedings ever be?

“It is a very depressing time, for both people really,” says Stein. “More depressing for Jill, because it was all my fault. To disturb something like a marriage that had been going on for 30 years and break it all up is bloody awful. It is like having a serious nervous breakdown that takes years to get over. I miss the family. I really, really miss not being married at times like Christmas. But sometimes I feel it was work that really drove me anyway, and I still have that.”

To defend her interests, Jill hired the divorce lawyer Fiona Shackleton, whom she describes today as “a marvellous woman. Very funny indeed, with a great, great sense of humour. She really made me laugh.” “My lawyer was Miles Preston. Not so well known. Just below the parapet,” says Stein, making a lowering gesture with his palm.

“Oh Rick,” sighs his former wife. “You are so competitive.”

The couple divorced last year, carving up the £20m business between them and their three grown-up sons – two work as chefs here in Padstow, the other is a sculptor. Stein kept the rights to his own name while the Stein hospitality business, centered on this picturesque Cornish village, continues to thrive. To date there are four restaurants, a delicatessen, a patisserie, a seafood cookery school, a gift shop and 40 guest bedrooms, all put together by Jill, who is a talented interior designer. Thank you! But Rick hates having to admit that. He hates it! He just can’t do it!” she says.

“I don’t hate admitting it.”

“You do.”

“Listen to us. We sound like something on Nick Park’s Creature Comforts. We sound like a couple of moaning old turbots.”

Since the divorce, the couple have continued to live separately but run the business together, not least because neither could afford to sell out. Still, there are moments when one wonders how easy it can be for them. “It isn’t easy. It is still hard,” says Stein. “We do have quite bad rows, really.”

“But we had them anyway,” says Jill. “Now I feel I get the best bits out of you and none of the crap. To make working together work, you have to get rid of all the emotion...”

“We haven’t got rid of all the emotion,” says Stein.

“Well, that takes years. It takes a long time but once that is done, it’s fine. I mean, Rick and I always got on although we do still get angry with each other.”

“We got on. We get on. But now you can’t assume anything,” he says. “You have to confer all the time. We have both fallen foul of each other by making decisions without talking to the other which, in the past, wouldn’t really have mattered. Now you have to treat it more as a business arrangement and keep each other in the loop. I shouldn’t really say this in front of Jill, but in a way, it’s quite nice not being married.”

“You can say that. Of course you can! You’re like my brother now. You’re not my husband.”

“I most certainly am not your husband,” he says, then adds: “But you learn to treat each other with more respect. Jill always said that my real problem is that I’m too domineering, but you can’t be domineering when you’re not married. You’ve just got to suggest something and hope it will be agreed.”

Shortly after this, Jill leaves to go back to work and we return to our plates. Stein has approved of the mouclade and the mullet but has no appetite left for pudding. His attention, for the moment, is elsewhere. As he watches his ex-wife walk slowly away across the restaurant, his expression is cloistered, impossible to read.

These days he spends much of his time in Australia. He has various business interests there, including the cupcake company he owns jointly with Sarah Burns and a share in a Hunter Valley vineyard. The upheaval their relationship has caused in both his business and personal life is obviously considerable, but he is not the first television star to fall for a woman 20 years his junior and it is doubtful that he will be the last. I try to tease him back into a less sombre mood and ask, “Which one are you scared of most, Rick? Jill or Sarah?”

“I think you will find,” he says after a pause, “that most men are absolutely terrified of most women.” Then he takes a long, reviving gulp of the white burgundy, which we both agree is excellent. Consensus at last!

‘Coast to Coast’ by Rick Stein is published on October 2 (BBC Books, £20)

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The Seafood Restaurant
Riverside
Padstow, Cornwall

1 x sushi £11.50
1 x crab wakame £11.50
1 x mouclade £12.50
1 x monkfish vindaloo £28.50
1 x red mullet £28.50
1 x bottle sparkling water £3.00
1 x Côtes de Nuits Blanc 04 £38.00
2 x glasses champagne £15.00

Total £148.05