S14 Ep29: Jon Watts, chef and cookbook author on discovering his passion for food and how he completely turned his life around

Desert Island Dishes

Food, Food Interview, Desert Island, Desert Island Dishes, Arts, Food Podcast, Dish, Interview, Society & Culture, Cooking, Chef, Personal Journals

4.8 • 780 Ratings

🗓️ 12 October 2023

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You may well know Jon from his friendly, down-to-earth cooking videos online where he has amassed a huge following of avid fans but what you may not know is that Jon is where he is today through a lot of hard work and determination to turn his life around completely.

He left school at the age of 16 with no idea what he wanted to do, he found himself hanging out with the wrong crowd and was constantly getting into trouble with the police. In 2008 he was sentenced to 6 ½ years in a young offenders institute. He said he had two choices: spending 23 hours a day in a cell or signing up for everything he could. He signed up for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and in that moment he changed the entire course of his life.

Jon became the first person to ever earn a gold Duke of Edinburgh award whilst in prison receiving the award from Prince Philip himself. Jon went on to work for Jamie Oliver, where his passion for food was really ignited and now 16 years on, he runs a successful food business working as a chef and has just released his first cookbook.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is brought to you in partnership with London-based crew cafe coffee.
0:05.3	To know me is to know that I love coffee.
0:08.8	There's something so special about that first coffee of the day.
0:12.3	It's not even a routine for me anymore.
0:14.5	It's more of a ritual.
0:16.4	But we all know that not all coffees are equal and life is way too short for bad coffee.
0:22.5	I'm sure lots of you listening will be familiar with crude cafe coffee, but if you haven't
0:27.0	yet discovered it, let me tell you, this is game-changing coffee.
0:31.8	From sweet and floral arabicas grown in Central America to bold and deep robusters drenched by India's monsoon rains,
0:40.1	their coffees are carefully chosen to unlock a whole world of flavor.
0:44.7	Their coffee is so good.
0:46.5	I've actually stopped drinking coffee with milk, which I never thought I would.
0:50.3	And of course, you can still enjoy a milky coffee, but I just find the flavour of the coffee
0:55.2	is so good. I don't need to add milk to mine anymore. And much like with wine, and believe me,
1:01.3	I am not a wine expert, but you can really taste the different notes from light and bright
1:06.4	fruits, dark chocolate and rich earthy ones. It's a whole new world, I'm telling you. They also happen to be
1:13.1	100% organic, B-Corp and Fair Trade. They pay an additional premium to the farmers, which then
1:19.5	gets reinvested back into the local community to pay for water supplies, schools and health
1:25.1	centres. So this is a company that's creating not only a better
1:28.9	cup of coffee for you, but also the farming communities and the planet. What's not to love? This is
1:35.1	coffee for connoisseurs. You can find them online at crewcafe.com, where you can currently get 50%
1:42.1	off their discovery box. That's c- K-A-F-E.com.
	...

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