London certainly isn’t short of Italian restaurants. It’s arguably the UK’s favourite cuisine, and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t get excited about the idea of a wood-fired pizza or bowl of fresh pasta. But there’s so much more to regional Italian cooking – something chef Ben Tish proves at his beautiful Sicilian-inspired restaurant Norma.

Growing up in Skegness, Ben’s parents were very much into food and cooking, but he never really thought about becoming a chef. After his A levels he knew he wanted to move to London but didn’t want to go to university. ‘A few of my friends had moved to London and one of them was a chef,’ he explains. ‘He convinced me to join catering college before moving down there, so I signed up and started to learn how to cook.’

After a few months, an incredible opportunity arose – Jason Atherton opened a small hotel restaurant in Skegness, and Ben started working there as part of his college course. ‘The food was great, but it was completely wrong for Skegness – which is probably why it only lasted a few months! – but I learnt a lot and Jason became my friend and mentor. He got me my first job in London at The Ritz, where I spent two years learning all the classical skills. I’m not going to lie, it was pretty unpleasant: bad money, long hours and very competitive. But I stuck it out until Jason moved back to London to work as a senior sous chef at a restaurant called Coast.’

Ben got a job as a commis chef at Coast, where he’d spend another two years improving his skills and learning the ropes. ‘I loved it there – the working culture was great,’ he says. ‘Everyone who was in that brigade I’m still mates with to this day.’

After Coast, Ben worked at L’Oranger under Marcus Wareing before moving on to work with Steve Terry and Jason once again at One Lawn Terrace. After that, he went to Al Duca, a River Café-style Italian restaurant, which is where he got his first taste of Mediterranean cooking. Next came a three-year stint in the West Highlands at a restaurant in the Crinan Hotel. ‘It was my first head chef role and we got lots of good reviews, which was great,’ says Ben. ‘It was quite a challenging environment to work in, however – in summer you’d be rushed off your feet, but in winter there might be nobody staying in the hotel at all.’

On returning to London, Ben helped out a few friends at a recently opened restaurant called Salt Yard after the chef walked out. He ended up staying there for the next thirteen years, becoming a partner and investor in the business and growing the group to open other restaurants such as Dehesa, Opera Tavern and Ember Yard. ‘It was a great, formative time of my life, where I learnt about the business side of things as well as cooking,’ he says. ‘It’s where I really got to grips with Mediterranean cooking – not just Italian but Spanish as well.’