Chef's CV - James Rix

Name: James Rix

Born: 12 September, 1973, in Buckinghamshire

Experience: James started cooking at 15, working in the restaurant in his local village. The summer before he turned 16, he went to the Waterside Inn in Bray to do some work experience. Over the course of the year, he did about eight weeks there. He left school at 16 and went to college in Watford. In his third year, he went to Paris to live with a family and on his return did a month of work experience at La Tante Claire with Pierre Koffmann.

In 1994, he got a job at the Greenhouse with Gary Rhodes. After 18 months there, he went to America for a year, where he worked at Lake Placid Lodge, one of the Roux brothers' consultancies, where the head chef was Tom Aikens' twin brother, Robert.

Following a brief spell at the Oxo Tower in London, he was offered a junior sous chef position at Alastair Little's Frith Street restaurant in Soho, where he worked for four years and ended up as head chef. In 2000, he moved to Tom Conran's Notting Hill gastropub, the Cow, where he stayed as head chef for four years.

In October 2004, he and his wife, Bianca, opened the Fox and Hounds in Hunsdon, Hertfordshire.