From the Garden of England to California by way of London and the Isle of Wight and back again – Simon Ulph certainly doesn’t seem to mind upping sticks in search of inspiration. And at only twenty-seven, he’s part of the next generation of young chefs looking to make a name for themselves in the British food scene.
After falling into cooking by accident when working a weekend job at a little restaurant in Kent, Simon did a trial shift at The Swan in West Malling and realised he wanted to be a chef. ‘Two days after I started, I rang up my mum and dad and told them I was staying for a couple of weeks,’ he says. ‘As soon as I finished my GCSEs I went straight there – no catering college or anything – and stayed on for three years.’
This is a little bit different to the average chef’s career trajectory – learning on the job is certainly important, but going in without any formal training meant Simon had to learn fast. ‘It was a bit difficult at first, being a sixteen-year-old kid in an environment full of men. You think you’re all that coming out of school, but you end up burning the candle at both ends trying to learn as much as you can. It was pretty hardcore.’
Once Simon had found his footing and become a capable chef in his own right, he moved up to London to work at The Swan at the Globe Theatre for a year. But it was his next move – to work with Robert Thompson at The Hambrough on the Isle of Wight – that made him realise the kind of chef he wanted to be.
