Why a good roast reminds chef Daniel Doherty of soccer

"I was around 10 years old and on Sundays we had football. [Afterwards, at home] in the bath I would listen to the football scores on the radio. You'd know how long you'd been in the bath by the smells coming from the kitchen. First it was the roast and then, when you could smell the vegetables being boiled, you knew dinner was almost ready. When our restaurant just opened, it was crazy busy, we were finding our feet working in a 24-hour restaurant, and then someone walked by with a roast chicken and it immediately transported me back to being in the bath listening to football scores."

"I'd already been working in restaurants on weekends and holidays since I was 14, and planned to do an apprenticeship [in my hometown of] Shrewsbury, two to three hours' drive from London. But my friend's mum saw a newspaper ad for a scholarship at a culinary school and gave it to me. I stuffed it in my pocket and when my mum was doing the laundry she found it and applied on my behalf. So one Sunday, when I thought I was going to play football, my mum said, 'We're going to go to Bournemouth', a six-hour drive, for the interview and trial. They offered me a space and I remember saying, 'I'll think about it' and my mum kicked me under the table. Thousands of people applied and they only take in 28. In the car on the way home, I thought it was a good decision."

"As part of the culinary programme, I went to London and worked at his Michelin-starred restaurant. There were 26 chefs and me, a skinny 16-year-old. He's an amazing chef with such a great palate, old school, very opinionated and has a wealth of knowledge of food. During my apprenticeship it was relentless. We did huge numbers for lunch in the brasserie and then the Michelin-starred restaurant. He would taste everything, and everything was made to order. He never sacrificed anything, was never willing to change anything. That's what we try to do in our restaurant. It shows you don't need to cut corners when you increase the volume. He was a tough man, a disciplinarian, that's why he's so successful. It was incredibly tough for a 16-year-old, but it was certainly what I needed. By the time I left, after five years, I'd spent a quarter of my life there. It enabled me to grow a lot quicker and move forward a lot faster."

"That's the funny thing - I didn't have a reaction because I didn't know it was 24 hours. On my first day with the company I flew to Miami for two months to do some menu development. One of the chefs asked me what I was going to do overnight and I thought he meant staff food. He said, 'No - it's a 24-hour restaurant.' So that was an interesting curveball.

"The owner, Shimon [Bokovza], thought that just because there wasn't a 24-hour restaurant didn't mean there couldn't be one. Only nightclubs are open late, and the [London Underground] closes at midnight, which meant people would have to take a taxi or a bus. So when we opened, it gave people a reason to stay out. But the logistics of the restaurant are insane. We have a kitchen in the basement and the restaurant is on the 40th floor. The internal goods lift only goes up to the 38th floor and then the chefs have to carry the rest up two floors, and it's not like two normal floors, they're two big floors, so I have very fit chefs."