This month’s Featured Chef…

Tony Hoyle

Executive Pastry Chef, Grove Hotel

Tony Hoyle

Tony Hoyle has progressed through some of the countrys most prestigious hotels, from the Dorchester, The Savoy and finally the Grove Hotel in Hertfordshire, where Tony has been Executive Pastry Chef since the operation opened in 2003. Tony operates with a team of 16 in the Pastry and is fully responsible for the operation and its forward planning, whilst always on hand to lend his wealth of experience.

Tony, thank you for your time today. Tony, what made you decide you wanted to be a chef? Did you always want to be a Pastry Chef?

“No, I started in the hot kitchen. I don’t really know why I became a chef, my father was a chef. I think I got interested in food early on from my father and grandmother. I don’t like to use it but it’s a great line – my grandmother was a great cook!”

At last someone who’s grandmother was a great cook. (laughter)

“I left school. Did a computer course for a year – totally bored out of my mind.”

So even when you left school, you didn’t know you wanted to be a chef?

“No, I took a year out – as you do.”

Yeap

“Then did a HND course in computer programming and thought ‘oh no this is not for me’ I couldn’t see myself sitting at a computer for the rest of my life. So I went to work with my father. He was working in a kitchen and I went to work with him for a few days a week and I got the bug from there really.”

OK

“Started off in a small hotel in Manchester where I’m from. And then everybody said that if you want to be a chef you have got to go to London, so that was the next step – to London. Worked in a restaurant that is still going now – called Odette’s.”

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