In 2008, Matt Kemp put down his knives, left the kitchen and walked out of Restaurant Balzac, the Randwick restaurant he co-owned and ran with his wife at the time, Lela Radojkovic. He kept walking in a trance-like state all the way to Coogee Beach.

The British-born chef was desperately unhappy. Between the pressure of his business, an imploding marriage and his increasingly problematic relationship with booze and drugs, he was in a dark place he felt he couldn't escape from. He was on the edge of the cliff when the phone in his pocket rang. It was Colin Fassnidge, a fellow chef from his days at Banc, the kitchen Kemp had run under Irishman Liam Tomlin in the early 2000s. It was enough to knock him back to reality and away from the cliff's edge.

"I didn't know how to get out of the hole I was in," says Kemp. "I was so unhappy. If I'd been employed by someone, I would have just left that job and things would have really changed. But I couldn't because I was the owner. I think that just snowballed into me not knowing how to cope, and I might have thought that was the easy way out." He walked backwards from the edge of the cliff, and retraced his steps.

Kemp had wanted to be a chef from the age of 11. There were few options for the young kid from Essex, in England's south-east, who, despite being a bright spark, was decidedly unacademic. That internal drive didn't just give him restaurant tunnel vision, but also a surprisingly fragile ego. "I was always very frightened of what people thought about me – how people thought I cooked, whether I was good enough. I was always questioning myself. Sometimes I'd create a dish and be scared to show anyone in case they didn't think it was good enough."

With the exception of his year working under Philip Howard at London's Michelin-starred The Square in 1996, Kemp has spent the past 25 years in Sydney. But that one year cooking in Howard's kitchen, with a chef who had trained under Marco Pierre White at his peak, was the best of his life.

"Now there was a nurturing, placid kitchen. Although it was very hard, and fast-paced, there was definitely a little bit more genteelness about it," says Kemp. "Within the first week I was there, I was like, 'I've been cooking for 10 years and I know nothing. I am going to learn so much here.' In my opinion, there's never been a kitchen as driven as The Square at the time I was there."

Banc was just f---ing hard. The kitchen was tiny, so it was just a push all the time.

Yet despite all he learned in that kitchen, he hated London, and couldn't get out fast enough. Which is how he came to help run Banc – one of Sydney's most volatile kitchens – as chef de cuisine under Liam Tomlin in 1997. In the Good Food Guide 2000, the CBD restaurant received three hats.

"Banc was just f---ing hard. The kitchen was tiny, so it was just a push all the time. I suppose there was a lot more pressure put upon me to achieve things at Banc. It was a jump into a bigger role, so I'd say that the stress got the better of me as well, hence why it became quite a volatile kitchen."

Kemp says he wasn't a particularly angry chef before starting at the celebrated Franglaise restaurant. Working long days under pressure changed his personality, though to this day he's not sure if it was something inside him that Banc just brought to light. "Maybe I should have taken a bit more of the Phil Howard approach, maybe I'd have got something else out of it."

Instead, Kemp developed the famous temper he took with him to Restaurant Balzac, something a five-part SBS documentary series, Heat in the Kitchen, took full advantage of. They filmed him calling his pregnant wife a c--- during service, and aired it on national television. There are the stories of him firing chefs and throwing their knives out into the street. He's certainly the first to admit he burned through a lot of chefs during the 11 years he ran the restaurant.

"There's a lot of people that are not cut out for it," he says now. "I never picked on someone for the sake of it. I f---ing loathe that. It's not just that they're pushed during service; it's a lot to do with the hours and the stress. It's about how that pressure is handled. It's like, 'This is the food we want to achieve. This is the workload that you are going to be given. Can you do it? If you can't, no problem.'"

In 2011, Kemp relaunched the fine-dining Balzac as Montpellier Public House, a casual English-style diner. It stayed open a year before Kemp declared bankruptcy, closing the doors on the site for good.

After spending a few years consulting on several venues, Kemp made the move out of Sydney in 2017, heading to Pottsville on the NSW north coast.

And, having gained a chef's hat for The Byron at Byron in the latest Good Food Guide, Kemp is quitting to become executive chef of the Kingscliff Beach Bowls Club in the interests of better work-life balance.

He's starting fishing. And while he hasn't started yoga yet, he's thinking about pilates. His kitchen tan is now an actual tan. And maybe, just maybe, he's found a little Byron-style chill. "When we went under, I put my family through the ringer. But, well, it's just four walls innit? It's not life."

Quickfire corner

Late-night snack I like 70 per cent chocolate.

Music to cook to I am very much a silence man. I prefer the radio because I like to hear conversation. I like to hear news because I'm a boring old fart. And to know what's going on so there can actually be some conversation within the kitchen regarding current affairs, 'cause I think that's something that's important as well.

Indispensable kitchen tool My serrated red paring knife for tomatoes. Red, because I can usually find it in the kitchen when the bastards steal it.

Formative food moment We went to a restaurant with my father. It was an old-school restaurant, a really nice fine diner. My dad was trying to impress a girl at the time. And they brought out the dessert trolley – it was a big bowl of profiteroles, a big bowl of poached caramel sliced oranges and there was a big cheesecake. It was all done beautifully, and I was just like, 'I'd like to do that'.

Who is the smartest person you know? I suppose it's a bit of a cliche but my late dad. My dad was one of these guys who could sit and hold a conversation with the king, the dustman, the chef, the football player, and find something to talk about with them, about their field and hold a good intelligent conversation that made them feel as though they were the centre.