I always loved cooking. I was brought up in a family that enjoyed food, but I didn’t know that I wanted to be a chef until a bit later in life. My gran was a great cook, as is my mum, so I guess they definitely had some influence on me. But I always knew I wanted to do something with my hands.

My earliest food memory would probably be my gran’s stew. It was one of my brother’s and my favourite parts of going to visit her in Shropshire. It was one of those dishes that would be bubbling away all day on the Aga, filling the house with the most delicious smell.

I had a rather strange route into the industry, cooking at a lodge in Uganda for four months. I then came back to London and started working in pubs. I ended up running a pub for a few years, then decided I wanted to go into high-end kitchens, so went back to being a chef de partie. I kind of just learnt on the job, really.

Nest in Hackney is really where I learnt the most of my craft. It was a very small kitchen and I was in there on my own for over a year. We then took on two members of staff, so we ended up being three in the kitchen, and we all worked every day, every shift. It was one of the most enjoyable periods of my whole career. We all loved what we were doing and cared so much about the place and the space. I think my food developed a lot over the years there, and we really pushed to make the experience as good as it could be.

I learnt that in kitchens you always have limitations, but you can push those limitations right to the edge. Hopefully that makes the dining experience more interesting and the energy in the restaurant more electric.

From Fenn, I learnt quite a lot about managing a team and how tricky it is to oversee two projects and keep the standards at a really high level.

St Barts was the restaurant we always wanted to open, but we didn’t have the money or the experience. I think it’s a culmination of my cheffing experiences and how I see food, alongside how my business partners Oran, Toby and Luke and I think that a restaurant should look, feel and be experienced by the guest. It feels like we are only really at the start of what we want to create at Barts, but I definitely want it to create its own identity within the busy and brilliant London restaurant scene.

Our suppliers – they are the main focus. We also have our fermentation programme, which was started by Brendan, who has worked alongside me for the last three years. But ultimately it’s always down to the suppliers. If a product comes in and it’s beautiful, that makes it very easy to make the dish stunning as well.

I think that sustainability and food have always been part of the way I wanted to run a kitchen. The idea of using the whole carcass just makes sense, and the idea of turning potential waste into something that adds flavour to dishes down the line is a no-brainer.

The Green star and our inclusion in guides like Eat 360 is a nice pat on the back, but ultimately, if we didn’t care about sustainable practice, I wouldn’t be passionate about the project at all. I don’t see it as a balance – I see it as an obligation that chefs, along with every other industry, should be thinking about: how we can best serve the planet, not just focus on Michelin stars.

Don’t work towards Michelin stars. Their job is to come to you – it’s their guide, and they can select who they think is worthy of a star or a Bib. A restaurant is a very personal and subjective thing. You might be cooking what you think is the best food in the world and someone can come in and hate it – it’s just the way things are.

All you can do is try every day to be better at what you’re doing. Michelin are incredibly good at getting around all the restaurants in the countries they operate in. If you keep the ethos of trying to improve every day and work hard, most likely you will capture their attention at some point. But the main thing is enjoying what you do, believing in your ethos and making the business work.

It’s hard because there are so many restaurants that I love and admire. I think that The Ledbury has always been one that I admire. I think that Brett Graham’s passion and love of food and produce is second to none. I’m very impressed as well with the reopening and the way it has gone from strength to strength. It is a very inspirational restaurant.

James Knappett at Kitchen Table is someone I have always found impressive and inspirational. The way he seasonally manages his produce-focused restaurant is very impressive. I ate there for the first time last year and loved it. The produce takes centre stage, but the cooking is precise and the emphasis is always on flavour first.

I’m not sure if I have a favourite dish, but if I had to choose it might be our signature dessert, the black koji tart. We managed to recreate the flavours of chocolate using fermented English barley, building a tart with different textures and flavours of this blackened barley koji. It’s very interesting and something that I have never seen done anywhere else.