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From The Beginning To The middle

It’s been a long journey so far and there’s still a long way to go.  In fact, if, as they say, a career lasts 40 years, I’m barely halfway there.  Some mornings this thought can fill one with dread.  However, most mornings and in fact most of the time, this thought fills me with excitement about what lies ahead.  It has to really, as I’d be in the wrong line of work otherwise.

Looking back now I could never have imagined where I am now.  That’s not to say I’m in a particularly unorthodox or incredibly privileged position at the moment.  Its just like everybody; I was young and thinking further ahead than which pub I was meeting my friends in come the weekend was not something I contemplated.

I arrived in London (1999) from New Zealand via various stopovers wide-eyed, eager, and skint. After a few false starts at work I found myself forging a path forward at ‘Mildreds’ vegetarian café/restaurant in Soho.  This afforded me a fun time in London for a while.

A while later a pretty hefty page was turned and I found myself cooking food backstage at festivals and at massive corporate events and shows.  This eventually led to cooking on tour for bands around the U.K., Europe and the United States.  To this day (although much less frequently), I still find myself crammed on a tour bus with a bunch of roadies loading in and out of venues all over the place. 

In 2005 my wife and I (yes, somewhere along the way there I met my English rose), moved down to Brighton before London consumed us completely.  Here we set about trying to set up a private catering company, take on the food in a local pub and have kids all at the same time.  By the way, these things don’t really go hand in hand.  After some time really struggling to get our feet to touch the ground let alone lie down and sleep, we had ditched the pub idea, dragged our kids up to an age where school/nursery kicked in and focused our attention on event catering and brownies by post. 

Welcome to egg&spoon. A culmination of hard work, long nights, various mistakes and many, many good times. 

ben