Our lovable and oh-so-talented head chef Richard is celebrating his birthday today!! 🎂🥳

The beating heart of The Avenue kitchen and the one most of you know best, we thought that you might like to know what makes this food-mad man tick. So we asked him a series of questions to let you get to know him a little bit more.

Enjoy…. 🥰

What are your birthday 🍰 plans this year?
Going to visit my sister in Sweden 🇸🇪 with Mum, Soph and Shanga to check out what Sweden has to offer

What is your go-to comfort food 🤗 and guilty pleasure snack?
I generally don’t have comfort food as I love too many, but one that I eat a lot is my granola and it has to be eaten with a teaspoon!

What is the next BIG holiday ✈️ that you’d like to go on?
My girlfriend has bought me flights to Vietnam 🇻🇳 for my birthday – can’t wait to see what the food’s like.

Which food do you REALLY not like and why?
Anything that is meat or fish in a tin, seriously why?! 🤢 🐈

Who is the better cook, you or Diana? 
We are very different, I’m more scientific 🧪, Mum is more entertaining. She brought us up focusing on seasoning so I think if we both cooked the same dish we would probably end up pretty similar.

If you could have a dinner party with any three people (dead or alive), who would you invite and why? 🤔
Ray Mears, I would love to ask him more about food that you can forage 🥬 around the UK as my knowledge is very slim.
Steven Fry, I love his interesting concepts on humans and linguistics and have loads of questions!
Harold McGhee, I feel he may have some answers to my unanswered cooking questions. 🔪

What is the most adventurous thing you’ve ever done or would love to do?
I’m currently working on tunnel flight 🪂 and want to put it into practice and get my skydive license.

In your dream restaurant, what would the perfect starter, main and dessert be? 🍴
Starter 1️⃣
I love bread 🥖 and feel you always get it in restaurants so feel I would make it into a starter….
3 types and very small:
1 Sous Vide Pork Belly in a Sourdough Bun
1 Crispy Duck Breast Steamed Bao 🦆
1 Wagyu Burger 🍔 in a Brioche Bun
Main 2️⃣
I think as the bread will be pretty filling something like the forever banging Miso Glazed Cod 🐟 with Asian Slaw and a Peanut Praline 🥜
Pud 3️⃣
To keep it light I am currently addicted to Mochi so…3 different Mochi 😋
Coconut 🥥
Pistachio
Hazelnut

If you could have any superpower 🦸🏻‍♂️, what would it be and why?
To be extremely lucky, as I feel every time something happened you would feel happy 😁

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Thank you to our lovely Rich for answering our questions so brilliantly! 🥰

We hope you enjoyed getting to know our head chef and why not pop in and meet the main man in one of our many classes!

Happy Birthday Rich!🎉