Tom at his tapas bar, Poco
PHOTOGRAPHS: NEIL WHITE, ISTOCK
A SLICE OF MY LIFE
THE FAMILY TABLE I grew up in Dorset and loved the fact that, almost every day, we’d eat dinner together as a family. We’d sit in the dining room round a big wooden table, which Mum set beautifully with fresh flowers, then we tucked into the food presented on sharing plates. These days I serve sharing plates at my roaming restaurant, Forgotten Feast, so those early meals obviously made an impression.
Boyhood aspirations
FATEFUL GRAVY I wasn’t good at sport and other ‘boy stuff’ as a child, but I did enjoy experimenting with cooking. When I was 17, I got a job working as a waiter at a local pub called The Bottle Inn. I remember spilling gravy on a woman wearing a white dress… I moved into the kitchen after that and met chef Ben Hodges. It’s there that I fell in love with food professionally.