It really helps if you've got something like cycling, walking, running or swimming that can let your body release all that tension and keep your muscles fit.

We [chefs] are competitive, although I think you need to be careful with competitiveness as it can become quite negative.

It really helps if you've got something like cycling, walking, running or swimming that can let your body release all that tension and keep your muscles fit.

Some people who see cooking as a job. They got into cooking at some stage and they're sort of ticking along trying to get the money together to buy the car to impress the girlfriend and you know they're doing their job, but some of these people one day, all of a sudden it becomes wonderfully exciting to them. They find this love of what they're doing and they're away.

The thing that gave me most pride about it was to see the smiles and the pride on my staff's faces, because a restaurant is a team thing, and for the whole team it's very much that touchy-feely thing that I could have helped them achieve such an award.

Chef means boss and in France you get an office chef and you get a chef on a building site, etc. So I'm a chef de cuisine, chef of the kitchen, and that means that I'm in charge of a team.

There are many different types of people that end up coming to me and saying 'Yeah I want to cook.' Some of them successful, some not. There's no one formula, but if I get someone coming through the backdoor who knows that they want to get into the cooking field, they feel this inside-out love for it, this attraction to it, that person is an awful lot easier to work with.