Profile | Hyatt Regency chef in Hong Kong on working at Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck and falling in love with cooking because ‘there’s fire everywhere’

“I’m from Bournemouth [on the south coast of England], where we have an amazing beach with fine golden sand, eight miles [13km] long. My mum was a chef at one point, a short-order cook for a leisure centre, but not for very long. Apparently, she was a terrible cook. My dad used to joke that when the fire alarm went off, we knew that dinner was ready.”

Was that your motivation to learn how to cook?

“I had to learn how to cook or eat my mother’s cooking. My parents owned a 10-bedroom bed and breakfast for a couple of years so I was around that hospitality environment. Both of my grandmothers were good cooks.

How did you start working in restaurants?

“When I was 16 years old, I was a dishwasher in a hotel on the weekends. One of the chefs in the cold section got very ill and had to leave work for six months. In the cold section, they just made sandwiches and no one wanted to do it except me. I made the sandwiches and prepared cold starters, and that’s how I got into it.

“I never wanted to be a chef, I just fell into it, and that’s how my passion grew. I liked the whole environment, seeing this busy kitchen, people running around, it’s loud, and there’s fire everywhere. When you’re 16 years old it’s amazing.”

Did you go to culinary school?

“I didn’t, but I worked at the hotel for a couple of years and then decided to travel, to see what’s out there, when I was 19 years old. I went with a mate to Southeast Asia and Australia, where we stayed for two years. We were mostly in Brisbane and Darwin. I was quite lucky to stay there for two years, as you need to do regional work to get a visa.