My first impression of Greg is of a lovely, down-to-earth man, who has the rare ability to speak articulately at exceedingly high speeds – a talent which means it takes several seconds for me to register the accent.
‘I came out here in 2004,” he tells me, ‘I’m very happy here, I wouldn’t move anywhere else”, explaining how he came out from England with a then-girlfriend and promptly returned home, sold his house and returned to the country.
‘I actually wanted to be a dentist,” he says, ‘I had a lot of orthodontic work when I was a kid, and my dentist drove a BMW and I thought he was the greatest guy going”, he says, pausing to smile. He took physics, biology and chemistry in A levels, and began studying, but dropped out after deciding that it wasn’t for him.
‘I started cooking in local pub – washing up, actually – and figured that making sandwiches was better than washing up so I started making sandwiches.” He has always had a passion for food, however. ‘My mom’s French, and my grandparents lived in Spain, so when we had Mediterranean holidays we would go to market everyday and buy the food fresh.” He can also wax lyrical on the subject of spicy food. ‘I’m a curry addict. I particularly like the way the Thais balance their hot and sweet and sour, and also the way in Indian curries, the same way France has got provincial cooking, India is very similar, with the use of spices and creams, ground almonds.”
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