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Hello and welcome to Table Talk, the Spectator's Food and Drink podcast.

I'm Laura Prendergast, and today I'm delighted to be joined by Thomasina Myers.

Thomasina is a chef, writer, television presenter and the co-founder of Oaxaca, the award-winning restaurant group which brought bold, sustainable Mexican street food to the UK.

Her new book, Mexican Table, is out in August.

Thomasina, welcome to Table Talk.

Thank you so much for having we.

We always start at the

beginning. What are your earliest memories of food? Stirring onions with a wooden spoon by my mother's

side and learning how you get all the flavour out of them if you cook them low and slow. Yeah, I was

always always learning with my mother. Yeah, stirring pots of delicious things was kind of my first

memories of food. And what were meal times like in your family? Well, obviously it depended on

whether you were having a love in or a screaming row, which families do. But my parents really

loved food. I mean, they really did. I think I'm not traditionally very British, actually.

You know, there's a whole section of Britishness that kind of thinks that food is a luxury or

there's slightly something immoral about loving food too much, that slightly religious connotation

of it being almost lavish to think food was too good.

But my father's mother was from America and my mother's mother was from South Africa.

And I think they both brought an enjoyment of food with those cultures.

...