Revelations: Sarah Barber, executive pastry chef, Hotel Café Royal, London

What was your best subject at school?
Food technology

 

What was your first job?
Pastry commis at the Park Lane Hotel

 

What do you do to relax?
I read or have a massage

 

Which is your favourite restaurant?
Yauatcha

 

What is your favourite drink?
Aperol spritz

 

What is your favourite cuisine?

 

Which ingredient do you hate the most?
Truffle

 

Are there any foods/ingredients that you refuse to cook with?
Mustard and olives â€" I cannot stand them

 

What flavour combinations do you detest?
Strawberry and balsamic

 

Which person in catering have you most admired?
French pastry chef Philippe Conticini

 

Cast away on a desert island, what luxury would you take?
Valrhona Tanariva milk chocolate

 

If not yourself, who would you rather have been?
A millionaire

 

If you had not gone into catering, where do you think you would be now?
Working in something food-related, such as a food stylist or a journalist

 

Tell us a secret…
I love cooking simple food at home

 

What irritates you most about the industry?
The younger generation of chefs who think they know it all and have an answer for everything

 

What’s your favourite film?
Iron Man 3

 

What is your favourite prepared product?
I don’t eat prepared food

 

Who would be in your ‘fantasy’ brigade?
My pastry team at Hotel Café Royal are my dream team; it took 18 months to build the brigade