' I am usually up by 7.30am. I live in Chelsea, not far from my restaurant, Tom Aikens. I have a cup of coffee and if it's a nice day, I walk to work. In the food business, it's all about preparation, so I need to get in early because I order all the ingredients and I like to source as much organic food from farms in Britain as possible.
I've always been interested in cooking and food. My parents were in the wine-import business and when we were young, we'd travel to vineyards in France and stay in small towns, where they had great food. That's influenced me ever since. I went to Norwich City College for two years when I was in my teens and decided I wanted to become a chef. I worked in various restaurants around London before moving to Paris to work under Joel Robuchon. He's the master and he taught me everything
I know. Working for him was the toughest but most rewarding time of my life. He's very demanding, but fair.
If you think the hours are long in the industry, try working 20-hour days. Robuchon pays a lot of attention to preparation and most of the time we were not even cooking; we were just preparing every ingredient to high standards. I was up by 4.30am to get to work and got off close to midnight. By the time I got home, it was almost 2am. It was so full on, seven days a week. You'd think that being the only English worker in a French restaurant would be difficult, but everyone there was really nice. In fact, French chefs in England are the snooty ones.
When I was 26, I got my first [two] Michelin stars. I am the youngest chef to get them. At the time, I had just moved back to London and was working as chef of a place called Pied a Terre. One morning, a journalist called me and asked if I knew I'd won. I was ecstatic. It was so surreal. But in a few years, I felt burned out. I was part owner of the place and running a restaurant as well as cooking took its toll on me. I always wanted to be hands-on. I think people like [Alain] Ducasse are great at what they do - creating and managing restaurants to high standards - but I really enjoyed being in the kitchen. When you balance it with everything else, like staff management, planning schedules and all that, I became really stressed. It was a difficult decision but I decided to take some time off and just cook, so I became a private chef.
My clients were [composer] Andrew Lloyd Webber and [hotelier] Anoushka Hempel. It was a real change because the work became so focused. These people threw lavish parties, which gave me the chance to flex my creativity, but when they were alone, they just preferred honest home cooking. I travelled with them. Webber always liked to go to France in the summer.
