ProfileGary Rhodes gave this chef a start, nasty French chefs made him hate cooking – Lee Adams of Skye in Hong Kong on overcoming a rough beginning and his favourite guest chef
- Lee Adams, chef de cuisine at Skye in Hong Kong, had a rough start in the kitchen – he found himself homeless and broke working for Gary Rhodes in London
- He works with local growers in Hong Kong, and focuses on making the most of simple ingredients – ‘more interesting than molecular gastronomy,’ Adams says
How did you start cooking? “I’m from Kent [in southern England], and when I was 11 years old, one of my dad’s best friends was a chef in Confolens, in central France. Whenever we went there for holidays I helped him peel onions and carrots. He used to host dinner parties and he would say, ‘This is my little protégé,’ and the guests would all clap and I thought, ‘This is quite nice, I only chopped the carrots.’
“My mum isn’t a good cook, she just cooked for the family because we needed to eat. She never seasoned anything, saying too much salt is bad for you. My dad is by no means a chef, but he always loved to make the Sunday roast and I started cooking by helping him make it.
“Carbs are my weakness. I never had time to eat, so I always ate pasta, and I wanted to know how to cook it. My favourite food in the whole world is lasagne. It would be my last meal. Even if I’m going to the electric chair, I would kill myself from gluttony before I get electrocuted.”
What was it like to work for Gary Rhodes? “When I was 18 years old, midway through my second year in Canterbury College [in Kent], where I was doing a professional chef’s course, I got a call from Gary Rhodes’ human resources team in London asking if I’d be interested in working as a commis chef in the pastry section at W1. Gary is one of my culinary heroes so I went for the interview and got the job, but I couldn’t afford a place to stay. I told the head chef, and he said they had a chef who had the smallest flat in the world and I could sleep on the floor.”
What happened? “I packed everything into two over-the-shoulder suitcases and went up to London on my first day at work. I asked about the chef I was going to live with and they said he quit last week. On my break I called my mum in tears. For about four weeks I was living in a different youth hostel in London every night. My parents would call and tell me which youth hostel to stay in.