What were your favorite foods growing up?
Well, growing up on a dairy farm in Wales, United Kingdom, everything was fresh: home baked bread, milk, butter, cheese, eggs, chickens, pork, bacon and all our vegetables. So home cooking was the best and the freshest you could possible have. Fishing for salmon and trout just a quarter mile away. My favorite food is anything and everything from the farm.

When did you decide you wanted to be a chef?
When I was 12 years old.

Where and when did your career in food begin?
Wales, Llanelli 1969.

If you didn't become a chef, what would you be?
An artist.

Who/what has shaped your cooking the most over the years?
My mother, and the chefs who I worked with from London, Vienna, Paris, Germany, Italy, Singapore and the Caribbean.

How would you describe your cuisine?
My pastry and cooking skills are a collaboration of many people which I have developed to my own style, New Wave Cuisine and American Nouvelle Cuisine.

What influences your cooking style and particularly the menu at your restaurant?
People and location, plus creating new ideas for their taste buds and elevating them to new things.

What are your favorite culinary weapons in the kitchen?
My hands and my creativity.

What is your favorite secret ingredient?
Creativity, chocolate and sugar.

What is the one rule or value you try to instill in all of your staff?
Trust.

What qualities to you look for when hiring cooks for your restaurant?
People who are enthusiastic and love being creative in the pastry shop.

If I'm trying to watch my weight and I'm eating at your restaurant, what am I ordering to eat?
Eat in moderation, but love everything.

What was the most challenging meal you had to make? Why?
Not a meal but building the World's Largest Wedding Cake on February 8, 2004, which still stands today in the Guinness World Records. The cake weighed 10,032 pounds and could serve 59,000 people. Why did I make it? For the love of it.

What was your worst restaurant disaster?
On a rugby tour from Bermuda in San Francisco: I thought we were going to a Scottish restaurant to dine but found out that "McDonalds" was a fast food place. What did we know then?! First time in America in 1977. That was a wake up call and a disaster.

What is your least favorite food?
Peanut butter.

What is your beverage of choice?
A great cold beer, Ice Wine, or 40 year old Tawny Port with dessert.

When you are not eating at your own restaurant, where are you eating?
When I'm not traveling it's home where I love to cook.

Which foreign country inspires your style most?
It's not a country, but the chefs from different countries and their styles and flavors, which have created my own individual style.

What was the most spectacular meal you have ever had?
Dining at Gordon Ramsay's restaurant in London at Claridges Hotel— service and food blew me away.

What is your best cooking tip for a home enthusiast?
Don't panic, it's not that hard. Organize yourself. Prep well so you can enjoy the moment with family and friends and never be afraid to call on any small matter to a friend or a chef. We are always there to help.

What do you eat when you are home?
Simple and fresh wholesome foods with flavors from around the world.