Starling — The Michelin Star That Kept Its Nerve

Starling opened in August 2024 with a fairly straightforward ambition: Nick Beardshaw wanted to create a neighbourhood restaurant in the Surrey town where he lives.

Five months later, Michelin gave it a star. The interesting part is what happened next. Not very much.

Starling remains a small bistro on Esher High Street, serving à la carte food in a room designed to work as well for a midweek lunch as an anniversary dinner. The cooking became nationally recognised remarkably quickly. The restaurant around it resisted the temptation to become something grander.

The Long Way to Esher

Beardshaw arrived at his first restaurant with considerably more experience than the word "first" suggests. He trained under Daniel Clifford at the two-Michelin-starred Midsummer House in Cambridge before beginning a relationship with Tom Kerridge that would last around fourteen years. He worked at The Hand & Flowers in Marlow, joined the opening team at The Coach and eventually became its head chef, before moving to London to run the kitchen at Kerridge's Bar & Grill at The Corinthia.

Then came Great British Menu. Beardshaw competed three times. In 2023, his fish course, A Moon Shaped Pool, built around poached Scottish salmon, was selected for the series banquet. By then, opening somewhere of his own was becoming the obvious next move. The less obvious decision was where.

Coming Home

Beardshaw didn't head for central London or another established restaurant town. He chose Esher — his home town — and when a corner site became available on the High Street, opposite Sandown Park Racecourse, he saw the opportunity to create something specifically for the place where he lived.

Starling has around 40 covers, an open kitchen and a dark blue interior softened by shelves and windows lined with wine bottles. The intention from the beginning was informality. Beardshaw has described wanting somewhere people could dress up for an occasion but feel equally comfortable visiting casually. Michelin appears to have understood the idea.

Forty Seats, One Star

Starling received its first Michelin star in February 2025, only around five months after opening. It retained it for 2026. The Michelin inspectors praised not just the food but the lack of pretension, describing a neighbourhood operation delivering cooking of considerably greater ambition than the surroundings initially suggest.

That contrast is central to Starling. There's no compulsory tasting menu and little ceremony around the cooking. The main menu remains à la carte, while the weekday set lunch currently offers three courses for £37.50. The accessibility is deliberate rather than accidental — Starling is supposed to be somewhere people return to.

What's on the Plate

Beardshaw's cooking is built around British produce and classical technique, but the influences travel considerably further. The Orkney scallop with Thai green curry sauce has become one of Starling's signatures and has been highlighted by Michelin as an example of the kitchen's approach: apparently straightforward on the plate, but dependent on considerable precision underneath.

Elsewhere, familiar ideas are pushed in less familiar directions. Truffle cheese crumpets come with aged Parmesan. A prawn Scotch egg is paired with roasted-shell satay. Dry-aged steaks are designed to be shared. And one dish has followed Beardshaw from television: Comet C, the baked Alaska he created during the 2021 series of Great British Menu, remains on the dessert menu in a version combining chocolate, cherry, kirsch and lemon thyme. It's serious cooking without much interest in advertising how serious it is.

A Different Kind of Kitchen

There's another decision at Starling that diners won't necessarily see. The core team works a four-day week. For Beardshaw, who spent much of his career inside demanding high-end kitchens, the working culture behind his first restaurant mattered alongside what appeared on the plate.

That feels consistent with everything else here. Starling isn't rejecting ambitious restaurant cooking — its Michelin star rather conclusively proves otherwise. It's questioning some of the baggage that traditionally comes with it, for diners and for the people doing the cooking.

Why It Earns Its Place

Surrey isn't short of expensive restaurants or affluent customers willing to fill them. Starling is more interesting because Beardshaw could have built precisely that kind of destination and chose not to — the same instinct that runs through Edit No.28, and through Foxhills a few miles west, where a golf club quietly became something broader.

After fourteen years working across Tom Kerridge's restaurants and three appearances on Great British Menu, his first restaurant ended up a few miles from home, with 40 seats and the ambition of becoming somewhere locals might use regularly. Michelin arrived five months later. Starling kept being Starling.