JAMES Close can remember exactly what he was doing when he became only the fourth North- East chef ever to receive a Michelin Star.

It was September 2012, and he was swilling dirty flood water out of the cellar of the Raby Hunt, the restaurant in Summerhouse, on the edge of Darlington, that he owns with his parents, Russell and Helene.

One struggles to imagine Gordon Ramsay or Heston Blumenthal being able to say the same.

“It was the most surreal day of my life,” says 34-year-old James. “The place was flooded so I thought I had better check my phone to see if we had any bookings because it was going to be touch and go whether we could open or not.

“I’d had an email from a food blogger saying he had seen the latest set of awards online, but I just thought it was spam.

Then when I started getting a couple more messages, I thought I had better check with the people at Michelin.

“At first they wouldn’t confirm or deny anything. Then I got passed over to a guy who was clearly from Michelin because he had the poshest voice I’d ever heard. He said: ‘Congratulations Mr Close, you have been awarded a Michelin Star’. I nearly fell into the flood water.”

The incongruousness of the setting is perfectly in keeping with the rest of James’ life story, which charts a remarkable rise from obscurity to the very top table of British cuisine in less than four years.

Raised in Hamsterley and a former pupil at Barnard Castle School, he wanted to be a golf professional when he left fulltime education.

However, after a sports scholarship at Lincoln University failed to turn out as planned, stints in the pro shop at courses in Thirsk and Northallerton persuaded him that the life of a club professional was not for him. “I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life selling Mars Bars and Snickers,” he explains.

A six-month spell labouring in London proved equally unrewarding, so he returned to the North-East to embark on a career in cookery. Or initially, in peeling potatoes.

“My first job in a kitchen was at Headlam Hall,” he says. “I worked there for about a year and a half, mainly washing up, prepping veg and doing the preparation work for the wedding meals.

“By the end, I was maybe starting to send out a few of the starters, but there was nothing in the way of actually cooking dishes or doing any of the seasoning.

“I left there to work at a pub called The Bridge at Whorlton (near Barnard Castle), for a guy called Paul O’Hara, who had previously worked with Terry Laybourne at Bistro 21.

That taught me a bit more about how a busy restaurant works, but it still wasn’t very hands on. Then, my parents decided to buy this place.”

When the Closes took over the Raby Hunt a little more than four years ago, they inherited a traditional drinking establishment, with a sideline in unremarkable pub fare.

“Steak and chips, pie and chips, mussels and chips – pretty much anything with chips,” says James. “Although I seem to remember there was a fairly decent creme brulee.”

Initially, the Closes followed the same model, although James was already attempting to broaden his horizons by investigating new culinary techniques and eating at restaurants with a reputation for innovation and excellence.

“I have never had any formal training, but I have always had a real interest in food,” says James. “That’s what’s driven me on really. I’ve read a lot of books.

“And I’ve never really had a holiday – a holiday for me is visiting three or four different restaurants in a week to try to get a handle on what they are doing well. I can never understand chefs who won’t eat in other people’s restaurants – that’s the best way to learn.”

Even so, the Raby Hunt may never have moved into the world of fine dining had James not experienced something of a culinary epiphany while visiting Belgium two years ago.

“It always sounds a bit cheesy when people say they had a life-changing moment, but I really think I did,” he says. “I was eating in Hof van Cleve, a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in the middle of nowhere, and the whole experience completely changed the parameters of what I thought was possible with food.

“Everything about it was different to what I had seen before, and it seemed to open my eyes to the possibilities.”

Upon returning to England, he decided to change the Raby Hunt’s entire outlook, and while there was understandable resistance at first, the move has proved a huge success. “Everyone said this couldn’t work in the North-East of England,” he says. “But I think that does the people who live around here a massive disservice.

The restaurant’s popularity is testament to that shift, with the assessment of the Michelin judges also providing a further affirmation of James’ approach.

“It has definitely changed things,” says James, who is about to travel to Holland for a week to work as an assistant in a three-starred restaurant.

“Your profile goes through the roof, and we get people coming up from London for the day now just to eat with us. That’s fantastic, but it also brings a certain pressure. We know everything we do is under massive scrutiny now.”