The Chef

People often ask me where my cooking influences come from. It’s never been a quest of mine to claim influences from a specific source, more a case of picking things up along the way.

After attending Thanet Catering College for 2 years to study City & Guilds 7061/7062, my first job was to work at the Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland for the summer season. At the end of the summer I returned to London to work at the Inn-on-the-Park Hotel where I received an education in hotel cookery. After a year I felt that I needed to work in a restaurant with Michelin stars to achieve the level of cookery I was after; I managed to get a job as a commis chef working for Philip Britten at the Capital hotel in Knightsbridge. The years working for Philip taught me a lot, but after a while I felt it was time for a new challenge and to step up to another level. I accepted a job working for Bruno Loubet in the Four Seasons restaurant. Bruno’s kitchen was very demanding; such was his talent that he lifted everyone in it to a completely different cookery world. He gave me a new perspective on produce and how to treat it.

My cookery journey then took me to work for Rowley Leigh at the award winning Kensington Place Restaurant in Notting Hill and then as Sous-chef for the well respected Terrance Laybourne at the Michelin starred 21 Queen Street Restaurant in Newcastle-upon-Tyne .

Being a young chef also gave me great opportunities to travel; I spent an amazing summer working at the Inn at Manitou in Ontario Canada and another cooking in the French Alps. I was head chef of the fine dining restaurant in the Hilton International in Abu Dhabi and was personal chef to an Indian Business man in New Delhi , India . Travelling gave me different perspectives on cookery and introduced me to amazing new ingredients and different flavours.

Upon returning to England , I was head chef for Nico Ladenis at Nico Central in Manchester for 2 years. I was then offered the opportunity to set up and run the Livebait Restaurant, for the London restaurant company Chez Gerard; the 1 st Fish restaurant in Manchester . After a couple of years I was offered a new challenge, as executive Head chef for a company called Alias Hotels. As well as assisting them with running their existing hotels, I was responsible for setting up the Hotel Rosetti in Manchester and then opening and running the Seattle Hotel in Brighton .

As I had worked my way to my latest position of executive head chef to a chain of hotels, I realised that I was no longer able to do what I really enjoyed: cooking. My wife and I decided it was time to go back to basics and to take the wealth of knowledge I had accumulated over the years to start my own restaurant. We looked at places in and around Brighton but it wasn’t until we extended our search a little further afield that we found the place we fell in love with: 3, Stan’s Way in Horsham also now known as the Stan’s Way House Restaurant…

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