In all honesty, not really, I grew up around restaurants with my mother. She was running restaurants in London when I was growing up, so I would spend all my time after school there. My whole family come from careers in hospitality, so I guess I always tried to avoid it, but now I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

Going on holidays to Italy with my parents, and sitting around these massive tables with the whole family eating loads of pasta. Ever since then I’ve always thought of food as being a way to bring people together, as a unifier.

I started my career on an apprenticeship at Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen; it was on a placement to Chez Bruce under that scheme that I fell in love with fine dining. My first permanent job after Fifteen was working for Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley hotel. I then moved to L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon in Paris, where I stayed for two years, working my way up to sous chef, which was a life-changing experience.

It was actually my old mentor, Jake White, who was the head chef at Marcus when I was there. He had introduced me to David and Val who were looking for a new head chef, a role which, knowing my experience, he felt I’d be a good fit for. The rest was a no-brainer!

It was an incredible feeling, I’d spent years learning and working as hard as I could to finally get into a position like this. Of course I felt the pressure, it’s a restaurant with years of legacy and has shaped some of the best chefs in the UK today. But I really try not to think about it too much, and just focus on cooking. I am extremely lucky to have built a solid team and, honestly, I couldn’t do half the work without them.

I’m very lucky that David and Val just let me get on with it, they allow me to express myself as I wish and it’s great because we get to constantly create new things. I take parts of things I’ve learnt from the places I’ve worked and then try to put my own style on it, but I also try to get the guys in the kitchen to contribute as much as possible. They are all equally as obsessed with food as I am, and they are all very talented chefs, so it’s nice to have different ideas and inputs because we can create something that belongs to us.

I think currently my favourite is the Japanese bream with leche de tigre. It’s packed with flavour and it’s so fresh, perfect for this time of year. It’s also a neat example of my style of cooking – bringing together influences and ingredients from different cuisines to create a new dish, in an unexpected yet refined way.

It’s a hard life: prepare to sacrifice everything for it. Living your life in Michelin star restaurants is hard and tiring but extremely rewarding. It’s where you can learn the most in the quickest amount of time, you just have to listen and replicate until you do it perfectly. You get as much out of it as you put in; there are times when I’ve wanted to quit – that’s normal! You just have to remember what you’re working towards. Maybe you can ask me that question again if we ever get Pied à Terre’s second star back! That’s what we really want, then I guess I would have won a star myself.

I love Dorian. I think Max Coen’s food is delicious and I spend a lot of time in Notting Hill, so the two go hand-in-hand really. I think the flavours of the food are great and I love the vibe there.

I think there are too many to choose from; London is really lucky to have such an incredible food scene, there’s so much great food and diversity. But I guess if I had to mention someone I would say Theo Clench. He is someone that is an incredible talent, I’ve been lucky enough to eat his food, which is fantastic, it was one of the best meals of my life. He’s also been a great inspiration and help, I know him well and he’s always there to give me advice. It always helps to have someone that is there with so much knowledge so I’m very lucky in that respect.

I’ve learnt to value time with friends and family, so I’m trying to catch up with them on my days off, but I love eating out. When I’m not in the restaurant, I’m usually in someone else’s.