After Dinner Speakers: Paul Gayler, The Lighthouse Family, Albert Roux

Paul Gayler is one of the finest of the new generation of British chefs. He describes himself as an eternal apprentice, which is his way of saying that he is constantly learning, always developing and perfecting his art. As Executive Chef at London's prestigious Lanesborough on Hyde park, he leads a team of thirty five chefs, a restaurant seating one hundred, six banqueting rooms, room service and bar operation. He calls his style 'Eurasian', which is a base of European techniques with flavours of the Orient. Gayler's undeniable talent is combined with twenty years dedicated to some of the most respected kitchens and restaurants in London and Europe. His career began at The Royal Garden Hotel, before joining Anton Mosimann at The Dorchester as his Executive Sous Chef in 1980. So began a close relationship between these two artists. Gayler's infectious, direct, honest approach to his work led to his appointment as Head Chef at the renowned Inigo Jones in Covent garden where he built an enviable reputation. His cooking, while using modern techniques, has lost none of the classical disciplines and his culinary sense of adventure has grown admiration from customers and fellow chefs alike. Although Essex born, the late Jeremy Round described him as more Central European than many of his peers. Many chefs will talk about Oriental influences on their cooking, which generally tend to come from books or frequent visits to Oriental restaurants. Gayler has gone one step further. He has worked in both Chinese and Indian restaurants and spent a short period in Singapore understanding the methods of spicing, the results of which can be an improvement on the original. He is well known as one of the first chefs in London to create specifically catered dishes for vegetarians on both the a la carte and special vegetarian menus, at the Lanesborough. He appeared on numerous TV programmes, including BBC1's Hot Chefs, Take Six Cooks, HTV's vegetarian cookery series entitled Green Grow the Dishes, and has been a regular contributor on This Morning and a featured chef on Quisine. He filmed his own thirteen part series for the Carlton Food Network entitled The Green Gourmet. More recently he has appeared as a consultant and judge on the ITV Chef of the Year programme. His first cookery book entitled Virtually Vegetarian, published by HarperCollins in autumn 1995, was nominated for the Andre Simon book award. Great Value Gourmet (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) followed a year later and A Passion for Cheese was published in May 1997 by Kyle Cathie, this book was nominated for the Andre Simon Award. The Ultimate Vegetarian Cookbook was published by Dorling Kindersley spring 1999, followed by A Passion for Vegetables published by Kyle Cathie last October, which was named joint winner for the Guild Of Food Writers Cookery Book of the Year 1999. His is currently working on two new books for Kyle Cathie. He has accumulated numerous awards during his working career, a recent one being the Craft Guild Award, given for services to industry. His latest book published by Kyle Cathie is Raising the Heat. He is working with the Tesco Chefs' Club to improve people's awareness of cheese cookery in this country. He works at the highest level all week, but enjoys spending time with his wife and family at the weekends, at their home in Essex.