'How Long Have You Been Cooking For?'

The rush subsided, the adrenal tide went out, and then came crashing back like a vicious tsunami. Seven a la carte orders came in for the radish ravioli of oyster with goat’s cheese and truffle, and rissole of fromage de tete. Even I knew we were fucked.

The detail that went into them was frightening. It was the fiddliest job I have ever - or hope to ever - come across. The thought of my sausage fingers butchering those delicate fancies still gives me nightmares now.

The success of the dish rested on the thinness of the sliced radish, and Jon was taking no chances with that. He cut insect wing slivers with the finest setting on his mandoline, lay them out on a piece of towling, then let me get on with it. He put a silver thimble where he wanted the ravioli built - right near the rim of the plate, that no-go area I’d always been told was ‘waiter’s territory’. But then nothing at the Fat Duck followed the rule book.

I set about the dish with a pair of tweezers, building the radish slices in a circle around the thimble, each overlapping slice meeting the middle of the previous one. I took my time, but my first two were rejected before I’d even completed the bottom ring.

Yet even with my cack-handed efforts, you could see the kaleidoscope magic – it looked like a mad man had drawn Venn diagrams on the plate with a ridiculously thin pink pencil.

The fillings – a brunois of goats’ cheese, black truffle and chopped oyster - had already been portioned out like lumps of hash in clingfilm wraps. You formed it into a ball, placed it in the centre of the ring, then built up the radish wall around it using tweezers to position every sliver. And with the clock ticking and the adrenaline pumping, I was shaking like a surgeon with a smack habit.

A minute later and the confirmation finally came...

I wasn’t a Michelin chef at all. Far from it. The nearest I’d get was four tyres and a road map. The whistle was blown and Claudia, the German stagier helping out on pastry, was brought in to fill my place.

:: This blog eventually became a bestselling book, called Down And Out In Padstow And London by Alex Watts, about my disastrous attempt to train as a chef, including stints at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck and Rick Stein's kitchens in Padstow. You might like it if you're a foodie or have ever entertained the ridiculous idea of entering the padded asylum of professional cooking. It's here on Amazon as a paperback or Kindle book if you want a read...

Fat Duck: I'm Not An Oyster Shucker...

I got into the Fat Duck at 7.30am the next day and worked under a Canadian chef called Jon on the amuse bouche section – a tiny area of the kitchen no bigger than a coffin. He was tall with greying hair, and at 34 the oldest chef in the kitchen by a few years, and younger than me by seven.

I couldn’t have wished for a better teacher. Jon was intelligent, mild-mannered, thoughtful, and if he was stressed, he didn’t show it – even when he had to chuck my cucumber brunois garnish for the gazpacho dish.

“They have to be squares, not flattened,” he whispered. “Don’t worry we’ll do them later.”

As any cook will tell you, everything in a kitchen is overheard, or at least everything you don’t want to be overheard is overheard, and a few seconds later Jocky came over and pretended to be busy at the sink. He gleefully examined my ham-fisted work, poking the little cubes with a disrespectful finger, and smirking at his adoring pastry posse.

Our section was responsible for four of the 14 courses on the tasting menu:

:: Oyster in passion fruit jelly with horseradish cream and lavender.
:: Pommery grain mustard ice cream with red cabbage gazpacho.
:: Jelly of quail with langoustine cream and parfait of foie gras.
:: Sardine on toast sorbet with ballotine of mackerel ‘invertebrate’ and marinated daikon.
:: We also had one a la carte starter to take care of: radish ravioli of oyster with goat’s cheese and truffle, and rissole of fromage de tete.

My first job was opening the oysters. They were gnarled, flat native types from Colchester and refused to give up their meat easily. I thought it would be a breeze, and hoped I might be of some use. But any delusions of being a skilled oyster-shucker were soon dashed.

Normally I’d just stick the knife into the hinge, wiggle away, and with a flick of the wrist pop them open. But I hadn’t encountered brutes like these before. I began to wonder whether they picked the native type because of their expense (89p each wholesale), their gastronomic quality - or just because they were fucking difficult to open.

There is a quote by Saki, which goes something like: “There’s nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster.” But what the hell did he know?

I prised and chipped away – it was like trying to engrave a gravestone with a lolly stick. After an hour, I had stab wounds in my left palm where the blade had sprung free. On my right, there were three ugly blisters, exposing large circles of red flesh.

Sea water and shell shrapnel were splattered over my board, and I had to wrap my hands in blue tissue paper to cushion the wounds. At least sea water was good for cuts, I thought. But I must have looked a complete twat standing there with my hands bound up like a blue mummy.

:: This blog eventually became a bestselling book, called Down And Out In Padstow And London by Alex Watts, about my disastrous attempt to train as a chef, including stints at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck and Rick Stein's kitchens in Padstow. You might like it if you're a foodie or have ever entertained the ridiculous idea of entering the padded asylum of professional cooking. It's here on Amazon as a paperback or Kindle book if you want a read...

Masterchef: 'I’ll Stick My Face In It'

“So, Lennie, tell me about your passion for cooking...” the researcher from the Masterchef show began.

She asked me pretty much the same questions I’d filled in on the application form. I tried to remember what I’d written. The more I listened to her gushing about the programme, the more I realised it was all a con. From her voice, she genuinely seemed to think Masterchef was offering people a chance to, as both Egg and Toad liked to say, “embark on an absolute, life-changing journey”.

There were no details about the prize cooking job, of course, just lots about what sort of contestants they were looking for. She wanted to know whether I’d worked full-time as a professional chef before, if I had received an NVQ catering qualification or similar in the past ten years, and whether I had the required level of enthusiasm, drive, love of food, and desire, to change my life.

At one point, she asked if I had ever been convicted of a “serious crime”. I kept quiet about that. If it came out later, I’d bring up Egg’s conviction for football hooliganism.

I began drifting off, listening to the spiel. She had the same irritating, husky, mee-jar voice as the show’s narrator...

“After 15 years in prison, Lennie is desperate for a life in food. In his heat, he blew the judges away with his chicken vindaloo."

“I’ll quite happily stick my face in it,” says Egg.

“But sometimes he gives himself too much to do, and more often than not, it tastes better than it looks...”

The bitch, I thought.

Then I wondered whether I’d said the word out loud. But the researcher was still talking.

“So the next stage is a casting day,” she gushed. “You may get invited along for that. But we’ll be interviewing about 8,000 people across the country and only choose 100 for the show...”

I had a one in 80 chance. I needed to get a job.

I went for a walk, and passed a catering agency advertising cooking jobs for £6 an hour. They didn’t ask whether I had any experience. Once I’d filled out a few forms, a short, fat, cocky man with a goatee (think Ricky Gervais locked in a Frey Bentos factory for two weeks), threw a few questions at me. The interview was over in seconds.

“How do you make a béchamel sauce?”

“First you infuse the milk…”

“Infuse?”

“Yeah, boil the milk with bay leaves, peppercorns, and you can use an onion…”

He waved me on irritably.

“Then melt some butter in a pan, stir in some flour to make a roux…then slowly whisk in…”

“Yeah, yeah fine.”

All he wanted to know was whether I knew how to make a fucking lasagne.

He phoned the next morning, but I was in bed. By the time I phoned back, the job was gone. But I didn’t want to work as a dinner lady anyway.

A week later I got an email from Masterchef, saying they were “very impressed by my application” and invited me for a casting day at the Brunei Gallery in London. It said:

“Please bring along a sample of your cooking for our judges to taste. You only need to bring one dish. The team will be tasting lots of food so it does not need to be a big portion. It can be sweet or savoury and must be cold or something that can be eaten/tasted cold. We will take into account that the food is cold and has had to travel. Please note there are NO REHEATING FACILITIES and there will be minimal preparation time/facilities but you will have to plate and serve your dish.

“The auditions will be filmed for broadcast so we want you looking and feeling your best. Please avoid wearing white or cream, any logos and steer clear of thin stripes, small spots or geometric patterns. Remember we want your personality to shine through so make sure you feel happy and comfortable as possible….

“Due to the large number of applicants we will be unable to contact unsuccessful applicants.”

I sat there thinking about what dish to go for, and whether I had any clean shirts, let alone any that weren’t striped.

It’d have to be something that could sit happily in a humid Tube carriage half-way across London. Looking back on it now, I still don’t know why I went for sushi.

Masterchef: From Office Into The Pan

I sat there looking at the questions on the Masterchef application form. I had no idea what to put down. The whole show was a farce. The prize was a job as a trainee chef at a top London restaurant. They didn’t say how much you’d get, or what the hours were, or what to do when you’re thrown out on the street because you can’t pay the rent. I couldn’t see Wallace buying the Big Issue off me when he stepped out of his Bentley. And Torode looked like he wouldn’t give a fly to a blind spider.

Maybe the prize didn’t exist at all. I mean, who the hell would take them up on it? The whole thing was about getting on the telly, and society’s mushrooming obsession with fame. I couldn’t see any of the contestants swapping their cushy day jobs for 16 hours slaving in an underground furnace on a wage just enough to keep them alive. Not if there weren’t any cameras about. They weren’t as mad as me. Nowhere near.

The recent winners and finalists seemed to be too busy churning out recipe books to spend much time learning the trade. A few had apparently done a stint here and there in a top kitchen, and Thomasina Myers had set up her own restaurant. But how long she spent there given all the book deals and TV appearances was anyone’s guess.

All I knew was that even if I did get in the finals, it was unlikely to lead to any proper paid cooking work - one winner had turned up at Le Gavroche to find it was unpaid. I needed professional training and a way to support myself if I was to do it properly - to open my restaurant by the sea.

There was also the time delay. I’d have to get myself a cooking job in the mean time. The programme was likely to be months away, and I was dying to get back in the kitchen. One hopeful had to wait eight months before the producers contacted him, then spent 40 minutes on the phone whispering about why he wanted to be a chef with his boss earwigging in the background.

What the hell. I filled in the form anyway...

:: This blog eventually became a bestselling book, called Down And Out In Padstow And London by Alex Watts, about my disastrous attempt to train as a chef, including stints at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck and Rick Stein's kitchens in Padstow. You might like it if you're a foodie or have ever entertained the ridiculous idea of entering the padded asylum of professional cooking. It's here on Amazon as a paperback or Kindle book if you want a read...

'Chef, Can We Have Some More Parsley?'

Chefs like to see themselves as kitchen warriors, showing off their scars and fighting each day like it’s their last. And Rick Stein’s crew were no different – with the low season in fast flow, they missed the 150-plus covers of the summer, when the air conditioning had stopped working, pushing the temperature in the kitchen past 50C, and they were left sweating like a Geordie in a maths test.

“Just 100 in tonight,” one chef moaned before service. “It’ll be a quiet night.”

Then later...

“It wasn’t a bad night, only 93, but they all came at the same time.”

“Yeah, we got hit well tonight,” agreed an Aussie.

Cooking was so different from my previous life. Offices were filled with clock-watchers, ready to grab their coats and sprint out the door the moment their shift was over. But for a chef, there was never enough time in the day. Always something that needed doing. And when it was over and the cleaning done, they basked in the glories like fighters discussing a battle.

They might have been ready to rip each other’s throats out an hour before – “Why the fuck are you asking him to sort the meat out? He’s on starters! Put the fucking veal bones in the milk yourself!” – but after service, most of the insults were forgotten. And after a couple of days toiling like a devil, I was very nearly included in that camaraderie too.

I burned a naan bread moments before the monkfish vindaloo was to be served, and tried to blame it on my eyesight, only to come under a storm of derision and threats on my life. But afterwards, they just laughed and muttered something about everyone making mistakes. Only the female Kiwi chef who’d had to make another naan in lightning speed was still pissed off.

“Jeez, I don’t know how you can fucking burn it if you’re stood there like a twat watching it under the grill!”

:: This blog eventually became a bestselling book, called Down And Out In Padstow And London by Alex Watts, about my disastrous attempt to train as a chef, including stints at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck and Rick Stein's kitchens in Padstow. You might like it if you're a foodie or have ever entertained the ridiculous idea of entering the padded asylum of professional cooking. It's here on Amazon as a paperback or Kindle book if you want a read...

Celebrity Chef Enters Kitchen Shock

It seemed absurd to me, yet on the outside – in the media world - Rick Stein appeared quite a nervous, hunched up figure. Quiet and deferential. But he grew into a bear as he entered his old lair. It was like a fish being returned to water. He frowned a few times as he scanned the kitchen. Then his eyes fell on me, and he began squinting. He said something to the fawning Italian and pointed.

From the look on his face, I was sure he’d been told about the pasties. I kept my head down and carried on chopping. Long minutes past as Stein worked his way through the kitchen. He walked past the stove area, looked in at the pastry section, and I was praying he was going to carry on through the fish prep area and disappear up the stairs, when he turned on his heels and strolled towards me.

I sped up the chopping like I was in an Indonesian sweat shop, partly out of nerves, partly out of a lunatic attempt to make it look like I knew what I was doing. I got a glimpse of his shadow and then he was next to me.

“So how are you finding it? Hard work?”

I looked up pretending to see him for the first time, and gave him my best grin. He didn’t return it. I studied his face, looking for clues. All I could think about was those fucking pasties.

“It’s excellent,” I said. “I’m learning a huge amount. I really appreciate the chance you’ve given me.”

He looked surprised. We chatted for a few more seconds, but the conversation was stilted and I couldn’t think of what to say, so I asked him what he was doing the next day.

“I’m flying to Australia…as you do,” he answered. “Anyway good luck with it, and I’m glad you managed to arrange the week so…quickly.”

He let the sentence float in mid-air, and I knew it wasn’t just Jimmy who was suspicious of me.
:: This blog eventually became a bestselling book, called Down And Out In Padstow And London by Alex Watts, about my disastrous attempt to train as a chef, including stints at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck and Rick Stein's kitchens in Padstow. You might like it if you're a foodie or have ever entertained the ridiculous idea of entering the padded asylum of professional cooking. It's here on Amazon as a paperback or Kindle book if you want a read...

The Seafood Restaurant

Rick Stein’s PA phoned the next day, and I drove down the M4 for a week's work experience at his Seafood Restaurant in Padstow. I rented a room within walking distance of the restaurant, and went on a tour of the local pubs to get a flavour of the place. I was nervous and thought a few beers would help.

Most of the locals rolled their eyes when I brought up the TV chef’s name. I could see why they called it Padstein; he had four restaurants, 40 rooms, a deli, patisserie, gift shop and a cookery school - all in a fishing village with a population of less than 4,000. You could hardly look in a shop window without seeing his face beaming back at you. There were Rick Stein tea towels, oven gloves, mugs and grab bags, marmalade, chutneys, fudge, pickled onions, olive oil and spices.

There didn’t seem to be a thing he hadn’t turned his hand to. He was even selling jars of salt for £3 each. His Cornish pasties alone had irked the locals, who were appalled at him using puff pastry, let alone smoked haddock or crab. “It’s bloody Scaarwtch mist he’s selling in them jars,” one old boy said. The way they saw it, it was as obnoxious an insult to their treasured Celtic heritage as Ginsters. Bleach in the brooks, destroying the mystical vibes of Cornwall.

Stein, apparently, hated the name Padstein, and liked to say “I’ve just got a few modest businesses – it’s not like I own the whole town.” They blamed him for driving up property prices – forcing their children to move somewhere cheaper, where they might stand a chance of buying a home.

But there was no way you could doubt that the TV chef and his rough-haired Jack Russell Chalky had put the place on the map. And I wasn’t sure how much those old fishermen had grumbled when hordes of grockles and emmets descended, blocking up the narrow lanes, and handing over 250,000 notes for tiny ‘ideal weekend retreat’ cottages. I bet they couldn’t stop rubbing their hands.

Some remembered him in the early days – and how despite his overwhelming passion for food, he hadn’t always harboured ambitions of being a chef. The Seafood Restaurant had started out as a nightclub, and he’d gone into cooking when it failed.

There were tales of his legendary tempers in the kitchen, most of which I can’t publish. Even his old friends described him as “very volatile in the early days” and “pretty fiery and stressed out”. Stein, himself, admits he was “hot and bothered and fucking angry a lot of the time”.

It was hard to reconcile those fervid eruptions with the quiet, unassuming man I’d met in London. But then, by his own admittance, he’d mellowed significantly over the years. The books, TV deals, vineyard and house in Australia, meant he rarely ventured into the kitchen. As with Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal, he’d trained up staff so he could leave behind the heat and exhaustion for the cosy media world, while still trading off his own name. It was strange to think I was doing it in reverse. I was clearly insane, but then, apparently, you had to be mad to be a good chef.

An old waitress, who’d been there in the early days, said deep down Stein was a shy man. It reminded me of his words in a documentary: “I always seem to be quite lively and enjoying myself, but actually I’m taking pleasure in my food and the fact people are enjoying it. I’m not making a big fuss about it. I think that’s the core of what being a restaurateur is all about – actually taking pleasure in other people’s happiness.”

I admired him for that, and his philosophy that "nothing is more joyful or exhilarating than fresh fish simply cooked". It was what thrilled me about cooking too; it was that sort of cheffing I wanted to learn. Brilliant ingredients cooked in a simple manner. There is nothing worse than our scourge of chic hotels and gastro pubs blindly trying to imitate far more skilled, boundary-stretching chefs. Menus littered with pretentious monstrosities like elderberry candyfloss, anchovy popcorn, almond fluid gels, and lavender jus. What is wrong with steak and kidney pudding? It also means they think they can charge £28 for a badly-cooked fillet of sea bass.

The waitress told me when Stein opened the restaurant in 1975, the dishes were really simple: sea bass and samphire with beurre blanc, mackerel with dill and new potatoes, clam marsala, clam chowder with razor clams from the Camel estuary, moules marinieres, skate with black butter, and that hallmark of all fish restaurants – Provencal fish soup.

He won awards, but he didn’t hit the big time until Keith Floyd became a regular visitor, and convinced his director David Pritchard to include Stein in one of the ‘Floyd on Fish’ programmes. After that the phone didn’t stop ringing. Floyd showed him how to make a good bouillabaisse, and now I was going to learn those skills myself. I went to bed proud and extremely nervous.

The next morning, I walked down the hill and looked out at the fishing boats in the harbour, and the green sea beyond. It was worth going to work just for the view. The briny air was filled with the ‘kee-ow’ screams of gulls. Out in the bay, a fishing vessel was heading home, surrounded by what looked like tiny scraps of white tissue. For some reason, I thought of Eric Cantona’s famous footballing quote: “When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.”

I had a last cigarette, and walked round the harbour to the restaurant, past the spot where they’d filmed Stein eating roast bass on a trawler with Floyd as they went off to sea. Dinner jackets, a starched linen tablecloth, and silverware knives and forks. It was the spirit of adventure in Floyd’s programmes that had attracted Stein to the TV world. I wondered what fish I hoped to get by following Stein’s trawler. But then, I thought, as I walked up to the door – the sea hath fish for every man.


:: This blog eventually became a bestselling book, called Down And Out In Padstow And London by Alex Watts, about my disastrous attempt to train as a chef, including stints at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck and Rick Stein's kitchens in Padstow.

You might like it if you're a foodie or have ever entertained the ridiculous idea of entering the padded asylum of professional cooking. It's here on Amazon as a paperback or Kindle book if you want a read...

From Keith Floyd To Rick Stein

Before I start, I should explain why I’m writing this blog. Two years ago, something strange happened to me. There was no epiphany moment involving oysters and swords, or indeed anything to herald the fact I was to become a changed man. But change I did - drastically.

And when I disburden the facts, like some navel-gazing adolescent looking for praise and understanding, you’ll be able to see whether it was for better or worse. And more importantly, I hope you make more sense of it than I do. Maybe something similar has happened to you, maybe not. But I’d like to hear all the same. It’d mean a lot to me. We might even become friends. Because I still don’t know why I gave up everything I had and started a new life in a sleepy fishing village on the west coast of England.

At first I put it down to some sort of hormonal lopsidedness, but at 41 it was unlikely to be the male menopause. And it wasn’t a mid-life crisis because I’d had that in my early 30s, when I started riding motorbikes again. I threw myself on the judgement of counsellors, fortune tellers, psychics, and other end-of-the-pier specialists, but they didn’t have a clue either.

In short, there were three key changes: I became utterly bored with my life, I developed a disturbing case of insomnia, and I became obsessed with the idea that I should retrain as a chef.

I had an interesting enough job – I worked as a newspaper hack in London, and the money and hours weren’t too bad either. But I was too comfortable – I needed to kick off the slippers and feel alive again. I knew cheffing was hard – I’d heard the tales of brandings and hurled saucepans, and assaults in the cellar. Knife fights with saucepan lids for shields. And maybe that was it. Maybe I wanted to prove myself, show the world I could take anything, and find a segment of salvation through suffering. Perhaps, as no doubt certain chefs think, it was like the SAS – and I could prove I was a man by crawling on my hands and knees across Dartmoor.

In truth, the cheffing idea was not something new. I’d always loved tinkering in the kitchen, reading cook books and trying out recipes, but that was no longer enough. I wanted to find out how the professionals do it. I wanted the blurred-action knife skills you see on TV. I wanted to learn from the best, and own a restaurant overlooking the sea. But most of all, I wanted to do something with my life. Be the one being interviewed, not the one holding the Dictaphone; the flame, not the fat moth wheezing round it.

It was a big ask, whichever way you looked at it. I’d only worked in a professional kitchen once in my life. It was after university, in between working at a garden centre and joining the paper. A wind-blown corpse of a pub, so empty it made a buffet bar at a lepers’ colony look busy. The customers looked like extras from Deliverance. You know the sort – web-footed types that play the banjo, and boast how their father is the best kisser in the village.

But I got sacked on the second night for burning a saucepan of rice. The landlord couldn’t cook either – but next to me he was Auguste Escoffier himself. It was a painful lesson. The world was filled with amateur cooks able to quote chunks of Larousse Gastronomique - but put them in a professional kitchen, and they’d last as long as a green salad in a deep-fat fryer.

That’s why I wasn’t going to be one of those suckers who think they can run a place without experience. That’s why I’d start at the bottom, getting my arse kicked around all day as a commis (the lowest rung in the chefs’ hierarchy, and a term freely interchangeable with slave, grunt, or dog’s body.) After all, it would only be for a year or so, two max.

I handed in my notice at the paper, and got an alarm clock as a leaving present. I spent the first days lounging around, watching re-runs of Keith Floyd on the telly, and wondering how the hell a 41-year-old man went about training as a chef. Then Harriet, a showbiz reporter I knew, phoned. She was interviewing Rick Stein for a feature, and wanted help compiling a list of questions. I thought about it for a while, knowing she wouldn't like it, but asked the question anyway.

“Do you mind if I come along as well? I’ve always wanted to meet him…” I said, trailing off in mid-sentence. I was right - she wasn't keen.

“I thought you hated all celebrity chefs!”

“Not Stein!” He was second only to Floyd in my book.

“Well only if you don’t upset him, and only speak to him after I’ve interviewed him.” She had become business-like all of a sudden. Gone was the fluffy exterior - you had to be tough in showbiz.

I went along for the interview, and found myself in a swanky bar in Mayfair. Stein looked shaky and tired as though his blood had been replaced with salad cream.

“This is the acquaintance of mine I was telling you about,” Harriet told him after she’d finished the interview. “He wants to have a quick chat with you…”

I shook the TV chef’s hand and began blurting out a load of nonsense. He took a step back, staring into the eyes of a madman.

“I’ve always been into cooking, and well…I love cooking fish…in fact, it’s my favourite…and I just wanted to pick your brains about being…well, about being a chef…”

He told me he would have a quick chat afterwards. I waited for him to finish the rest of the interviews, and listened as he churned out the same anecdotes to each journalist. Harriet came over at one point. “Don’t be too pushy. I don’t care because I’ll never see him again. Just think of something specific you can ask him.”

I stood there confused, wondering what the hell I was doing there. I started babbling again.

“Well, why don’t you ask him if you can do a week in his restaurant,” she chimed.

I waited for an hour, and mid-way through Stein’s PR woman slid up and tried her best to get rid of me. It was obvious she saw me as an unhinged interloper who’d do nothing to promote his new book.

“We’ve got a car arriving soon,” she said finally, “so I don’t know if Rick will have time to talk to you.”

As the last camera crew began packing up, she muttered something to the celebrity chef, and pointed at her watch.

“No, I’ll see him,” Stein said, beckoning me over.

This time I knew exactly what to say. The confusion left his face immediately, and he agreed to let me do a week in his kitchen. He wrote my name down in a tatty notebook, warned me he was very forgetful, and said I should ring his PA if I hadn’t heard anything in a couple of days.

I was excited, terrified, and alive. I stood at the bar for a long time afterwards, glowing in the thought of what had taken place. Maybe my luck was finally changing. If it wasn’t just talk, I was to spend a week in one of the most famous restaurants in Britain. Then I thought of something I’d long ago locked away. That clichéd moment in movies when they gaze up and remember a childhood memory...and it all goes soft-focused and hazy…

I could almost smell the sea again, feel the sun on my skin. I was five-years-old, running round rock-pools, bucket in hand, when I spotted a scallop gleaming like a pink, fiery beacon. I took it back to our tent and handed it to my mother. But she hadn’t got a clue what to do with it, so she gave it to the French family next door. They cooked it with bacon and other secrets, and served it to me in the shell. I think at that moment, as I sat there realising there was more to life than Angel Delight and Jammy Dodgers, I decided to become a chef. But it’s funny how easy it is to get distracted.

Three decades later, I was about to embark on that pilgrimage – a long, hard journey filled with toil and hardship. And just as the scallop was the emblem of the pilgrims that walked to Santiago de Compostella, it would become mine too. Where they suffered blisters and aching feet, mine would be burns, cuts, long hours and bad pay.

It was a splendid, romantic notion and would make a mention in the blog at least. I ordered another drink, keen not to let the alcoholic, afternoon steel ooze away, and leave me with the nagging doubt that it was all a ridiculous idea, and I’d never do it.

:: This blog eventually became a bestselling book, called Down And Out In Padstow And London by Alex Watts, about my disastrous attempt to train as a chef, including stints at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck and Rick Stein's kitchens in Padstow.

You might like it if you're a foodie or have ever entertained the ridiculous idea of entering the padded asylum of professional cooking. It's here on Amazon as a paperback or Kindle book if you want a read...