Training?“It’s started off quite informally, I left school in Taunton in Somerset not really knowing what to do…I even signed up for the Army but I missed an intake - there was a 6 month wait.My Dad was a Dairy Farmer, my Mum was a Nurse and a really good cook, and I had grown up on a farm with 3 brothers. I was used to an outdoorsy life, so perhaps I thought time in the army would be an adventure. I was also dyslexic, so in part, am sure this influenced my thinking in some way.Favourite dishes from Mum?She makes a good pasta bake! Also cooks a delicious ham in cider with a glaze, served with dauphinois potatoes and a parsley sauce. At Xmas it was a Boxing Day thing with my 3 brothers in tow! Every time I’m back it’s like the first time she’s cooked…she asks for my advice, but also has opinions on food, she takes complete credit for all of my culinary success! (Smile) my main culinary influence…College days…I enrolled in college and whilst I was there doing business studies I took a part time job washing pots and pans in a converted cow shed called Pod Shavers. A pod shaver? It’s someone who makes cricket bats. The head chef there got me involved in plating dishes, he was also a College lecturer…so he got me doing more in the kitchen. I enjoyed the environment and working weekends being part of the buzzy atmosphere.Next steps?I decided I wanted to be a chef, enrolled in the local College in Somerset, who were training Chefs to work in schools and hospitals, but I wanted to be in restaurants. So at 18 years old I got an apprenticeship at the Castle Hotel in Taunton which had a Michelin Star at the time and it’s where Gary Rhodes and Phil Vickery made their names, it’s always been known for championing British produce and British chefs.I worked for a Chef called Richard Guest who had worked in London under Jean Christophe Novelli. It didn’t phase me because I didn’t mind working hard or long hours. It was a bit of an old school kitchen, there was a standard and you had to produce to that standard.I went on to work in a restaurant called Givey Park down in Devon with Michael Caines, it had two Michelin stars…the style of food was classically French. He’d trained with Gordon Ramsey when he was young, it was amazing training, as it taught me discipline. I suppose just like being in the army…it was intense, there were 18 hour days, and you lived onsite.Being dyslexic at school made me feel that I couldn’t carry on in further education…but I knew I needed to work with great Chefs. While I was at The Castle I did a Chef swap, I went to Normandie in France. It was in the middle of nowhere, I was 20,years old and I didn’t speak any French. I was there for about 6 months. It was a smaller restaurant and it made me realise that I didn’t want my own restaurant. The chefs were the first ones in and the last ones out…I realised that it wasn’t the life for me longer term.I had a plan in my head, but it went out of the window…I was a bit burned out when I came back from France. There was no structure to my career, I was ducking and weaving at the time. I find that in Hospitality you’re promoted because you can cook…but you might then be a Head Chef responsible for 12 other chefs, put in charge of a budget, responsible for HR, but no one’s ever taught you any of that. Head Chefs react how they’ve been taught. But at Fortnum’s now there is lots of management training, which is great.Mentor?Confidence had been knocked out of me a bit early on in my career. My Mum had been a midwife in Africa, and I’d always wanted to go and visit. There was a book called the 50 best restaurants in the world, this was before Instagram, so I ended up sending them a letter asking if I could do work experience (unpaid work) in a restaurant in Cape Town. This allowed me to take in Zambia, Botswana and Namibia as a month long overland trip first (along the way). At the time 8 of the top ten best restaurants in Africa existed along this one strip in Franschhoek Valley, which is a wine region in SA.It was exciting because at the time SA Chefs could come to the UK and get a visa to work in great restaurants. There were great restaurants there too. In SA the Chefs had worked in lots of different places, and liked mashing up lots of different ideas as opposed to sticking to more formal training that we had been taught. The quality of the produce on their doorstep was tremendously exciting.I stayed for a year and met my wife Sarah in a youth hostel there, who was from Bromley in Kent! She was travelling the garden route, as I was, so we ended up travelling together. We ended up going to Kenya and also going up Mount Kilimanjaro together. Later I came back to the UK…but I never wanted to work in London, due to the reputation for the intensity those restaurants had. I did a year as Chef de Partie at Scott’s in Mayfair, which had 40 Chefs in the kitchen. Scott’s was good but I wanted ...
