It’s impossible to not get on with Jeremy Lee. Anyone who has seen him chatting to diners at the tables in Quo Vadis knows what a warm, friendly personality he has. But it’s once you’ve tasted his cooking that you know you’ll be returning to his restaurant very soon.

Born in 1960s Dundee, Jeremy was introduced to the joys of food and cooking from a young age. ‘My mother was a domestic science teacher and my father was an illustrator for D.C. Thompson,’ he tells us. ‘They like their tuck, so you had this remote corner of Scotland with this couple who cooked every night and wanted a boisterous table to sit at with good food as part of their daily life. Me and my three siblings assumed this was normal, so it was quite a shock when we went to other people’s houses!’

This naturally led to an interest in cooking professionally – something that in 1960s Scotland was not seen as the glamorous profession it is today. ‘I did entertain art at one stage and my father was quite keen on it, but after reading the books of magnificent French chefs like Michel Guérard I could feel the kitchen beckoning,’ says Jeremy. ‘In those days, middle class boys did not become chefs, so when I turned up they always wondered what on earth I was doing there. Professional cooking is always going to be a hard business but I never worked in a brutal chef environment like the ones you hear about. Puzzled, annoyed and frustrated, yes, but I always worked with great people who were firm believers that a happy kitchen makes happy food.’

After working for a few years in a Scottish country house hotel, Jeremy made the move down to London and landed a job at one of the most exciting restaurants of the 1980s. ‘Terence Conran was starting to take his restaurant business very seriously and had the brilliant idea to choose Simon Hopkinson as his head chef and partner at Bibendum, a restaurant on Fulham Road housed inside the old Michelin UK headquarters,’ explains Jeremy. ‘Cooking with Simon was a revelation; at the time, everyone was beginning to understand produce and we saw the birth of British cooking. After that I got to cook with Alistair Little, who worked in a very different style in a very different kitchen. He’s been a great friend ever since.’

Simon and Alistair had a huge impact on Jeremy’s cooking and approach to good ingredients, eventually giving him the skills and experience needed to become a head chef. After running the Frith Street Restaurant and Euphorium, in 1994 Terence Conran offered Jeremy the head chef role at Blueprint Café in the Design Museum. ‘When I went to The Blueprint Café I was given free rein which was remarkable, especially as Terence was such a well-known businessman and it was an incredibly rare opportunity for a chef,’ says Jeremy. ‘It was a time when British cooking – which I still believe is undefined – began to really gather momentum. We had a lot of catching up to do with all the esteemed French and Italian cuisine, but because we’re an island nation and have imported and exported so much, we have this phenomenal freedom of thought and practice which is less confined than countries not surrounded by a coastline.’