Celebrity chef Luigi Pomata talks tuna, television and sustainability

"I am a third generation chef on my father's side. Our family has a restaurant in Sardinia and, when I was growing up, I was always in the kitchen. My dad told me, 'If you want to do this job, you have to go abroad.' I went to London, Milan, New York, Paris; I worked for Marco Pierre White and Marchese Piero [Antinori]."

"Everything. My grandfather had a big garden and today we still grow everything - lemons, oranges, all our vegetables. We live by the sea and have fresh fish. When customers come to my restaurant, they come to my house as my guests and I give them the best. That's the Italian style."

"After I graduated from navy school, I was the first in my family to go to culinary school. Then I started travelling and each year worked with the best chefs around the world. In 2006, I opened Luigi Pomata, in Cagliari. I also started the first fusion restaurant in Sardinia, serving raw fish but in an Italian style, in the early 1990s. In Asia it's normal to have raw fish, but it's not in Italy. We treat tuna like a pig - we use everything - but cook it like beef. If you overcook it, it's too hard and doesn't have taste. At first they said, 'Why raw?' But then, when they tasted it, they realised it's so good. My signature dish is hand-cut red tuna tartare on buffalo mozzarella cream with micro cress. Another is tuna with foie gras, or tuna rossini."

"I love everything about tuna - the skin, tripe, stomach; the eggs, like in a bottarga [salt-cured fish roe], with shrimp is fantastic. Tuna sperm is fantastic, like tofu. We boil then fry it and put it on a salad. It's very light."

"I buy tuna in the best season - May - then freeze them to keep them in their prime. After June, when the eggs are released by the female tuna, it is not as good, not as fatty. I like canning the really fat tuna, which I then age for 20 years. The ones I pick weigh 100kg to 150kg."