It was through a degree of desperation that landed Pip Lacey under the wing of Angela Hartnett. Desperation, that is, from both sides – in 2008, Pip was running a business in graphic design when her love for food became too much to ignore, and only a career in the industry would do. At the same time, the York and Albany – where Angela was head chef – had a commis vacancy to fill, and few options with which to do it.
Perhaps they would’ve otherwise rejected her straight out, but Pip got lucky. On her response to the job, she ticked the wrong box in the right-to-work section. ‘They sent the application back to me,’ says Pip. ‘It said, ‘well, you can’t work here – you don’t have a visa’. So I phoned them up and told them I do. I had no experience as a chef, so they said ‘why would we do that?’ I convinced them to do an interview over the phone.’ Needless to say, they gave her the job. ‘I loved it straight away.’
Albeit with some degree of prior front of house experience, you wonder what Pip might have said to convince them. Especially when, considering her background in art, she was more used to wielding paint brushes than pestle and mortars. ‘That whole creative side has actually been a massive help,’ says Pip. ‘Just in trying things out, because that’s what you do in art. You don’t know what the outcome’s going to be when you first put brush to paper. It’s that drive to create.’