I grew up in Kent and Essex, but my mum’s family is half Italian and, from about the age of four, I can remember us all going to stay with relatives in Bardi, near Parma. There would be loads of us: grandparents, aunts, uncles, kids. Sometimes we’d fly, but often we’d drive — all the way across France, the Alps, through the Mont Blanc tunnel. Now, I look back and think “Wow, what an amazing trip that must have been”, but I remember at the time just wanting the journey to end. I was a kid. I was bored. “Mum, are we there yet?”
Because there were so many of us, Italy felt very familiar. To me, it was just like being at home, but I’d look out of the window and see this beautiful countryside. Bardi really is one of those typical, quiet Italian one-horse towns, but I loved it. I immediately immersed myself in the whole Italian way of life — which involved a lot of cooking.
My grandmother always found jobs for me in the kitchen: podding peas, scraping the cheese or preparing vegetables. I soon realised that I was actually quite good at it. I was organised. I knew how many vegetables to get. I knew what to do with them. After that, I started to learn about stuff like pasta, tomatoes and parma ham. The meals were mammoth affairs — so many of us packed around the table. I’m certain those holidays kick-started my love affair with kitchens and food.
We did have holidays in England, too. For a while, we lived near Folkestone, so we used to visit all those seaside towns in the southeast — places like Dungeness, with the little steam train. And I remember going with my mate’s family to Derbyshire, to a gorgeous town in the Peak District called Matlock Bath. I suppose we would have been about 16, and we really thought we were grown-up, sophisticated young ladies. We tried to get into a couple of pubs, but they immediately asked where our parents were and sent us packing.
On the Isle of Skye I saw some of the most spectacular scenery I’ve ever seen in my life Quite recently, Mum and I have rediscovered British holidays. Last year, we went to the Isle of Skye for the first time. I can honestly say that I saw some of the most spectacular scenery I’ve ever seen in my life, and we immediately booked for this year. I also take mum to either Devon or Dorset every year. She loves it down there. It’s easy to forget what a wonderfully scenic country we live in.
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One of the most memorable — and certainly one of the strangest — trips I ever took was to visit my brother in Tokyo when I was in my early twenties. I took a couple of hundred quid with me, thinking that would last me two weeks.
Not a chance. I think I paid the best part of a tenner for my first orange juice and ran out of money after a day or two.
Every time we went out to eat, my brother would point at me and shout “Chef! Chef!”. The guys in the restaurants loved it, and would take me into the kitchens to see how they worked. I can remember eating an awful lot of tempura, but also realising that Japanese restaurant culture is so polite that if you don’t actually tell them to stop physically bringing food to your table, they will carry on doing it for the whole day. You could come away with bills that run into thousands of pounds.
As you might have guessed, food is a huge part of any trip I make — visiting restaurants, seeing how they’re laid out, how they work, what the people are like, the food. Eating camel hump in Dubai was a pretty incredible experience. It was cooked underground in grass and tasted a bit fatty.
But the one trip — and taste — that really stands out was actually to Dartmouth, in Devon. Mum is a huge fan of Joyce Molyneux, who opened the Carved Angel down there, so, 20-odd years ago, we decided to go and see what it was like. We had basil ice cream and it blew my mind. Coming from such an Italian family, I was used to having basil with mozzarella or pasta, but Joyce was taking it into totally new territory. Ironic, really: I’ve been all over the world, but the place that really challenged my idea of flavour was right here in England.
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The chef Angela Hartnett, 42, is best known for working alongside Gordon Ramsay, in restaurants such as Aubergine and Zafferano, and on the television series Hell’s Kitchen. She was awarded her first Michelin star in 2004 (at the Connaught) and an MBE in 2007, and is chef-patron at Murano (also Michelin-starred), in London. She will be a guest on the Great British Food Revival on BBC2 this Wednesday. She is single and lives in London.