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In the build up to The Staff Canteen Live 2015 at the Hospitality Show, NEC Birmingham on January 19 – 21, we are taking a closer look at the chefs who will be joining us on stage. We dig a little deeper to find out what they are hiding under those chef whites!

Richard Turner runs Turners, his small, self-titled restaurant in Harborne, Birmingham. He opened the restaurant in 2007 and it won a star in the Michein Guide after just two years. He is self-taught and gained his experience locally. It is our pleasure to welcome Richard to take part in The Staff Canteen Live in January.

At The Staff Canteen we want to see what makes chefs tick. We asked Richard a few questions about what he gets up to when he’s not in the kitchen:

What made you want to be a part of The Staff Canteen Live?

Well, Mark Morris (Managing Director of The Staff Canteen) asked me to do it so there’s that. Of course it’s great to work alongside your peer-group and I’m up for anything that promotes Birmingham and it’s good to share ideas with everyone.

What was the restaurant like when you first took over?

It was a restaurant before but it had horrible quarry tile floors. It was one of the only restaurants I'd walked into where I wiped my feet on the way out so we cleaned it up. We've had a carpet put down, we've got Villeroy and Boch cutlery. It was very much an acorn and it’s hopefully blossoming into an oak tree but we are a little local restaurant. We do what we do and we're very conscious about the fact that it is the food that's the main thing here. I never wanted to go about a restaurant where people felt like they were uncomfortable, because there's