BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts

Hello, I'm Lauren LeVern and this is the Desert Island Disks Podcast.

Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them

if they were cast away to a desert island. And for right reasons the music is shorter than the

original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

My cast away this week is the chef Monica Gilletti. As a judge on TV's master chef the professionals

she's been sharpening contestants' skills and occasionally cutting them down to size

for over a decade but food has been central to her life since the beginning.

Her first memories are collecting eggs and mangoes on the family plantation in Samoa.

After moving to New Zealand she trained in hospitality, making a name for herself in the

Cutthroat World of Competitive Cookery before following her dream moving to London to train

with restaurant royalty, the Roo family. One of the few women who have made it to the top in her

profession she's now running a restaurant of her own named in honour of her mother who taught

her the values that have been central to her success. She says there's always a problem.

Every day there's a problem. The main thing is to keep calm. If you lose the plot the team will

see it and the last thing they need to see is us at the top running the show panicking. Stay calm

and be quick on fixing a problem. Stopping a problem head on is vital.

Monica Gilletti welcome to Deser Island Discs. Thank you for having me.

So if ever there's been a time to keep calm Monica it is now isn't it?

Isn't it just? So Monica of course along with the rest of the

hospitality sector you're dealing with the all-consuming problem at the moment of coronavirus

and your restaurant closed for the third time late last year and then remains closed today.

...