Ask April Partridge’s family whether they’d have predicted her success as a chef, and you’ll most likely hear a resounding no. As a child, April was a pretty fussy eater, with no amount of bargaining enough to get her anywhere near vegetables. ‘There are so many family stories about it,’ she laughs. ‘I remember my dad taking me to this mega bike shop. He let me pick out my favourite bike, with rainbow tassels and the whole shebang, and then he took me to the fruit and vegetable stall and said you just have to pick one and I will buy you that bike. I said ‘no, you’re alright, I’ll wait until my birthday’.’ April and cooking might not have seemed like a match made in heaven, but that’s exactly what it turned out to be. As sous chef at Brett Graham’s two-star The Ledbury, she already had a stellar reputation (some years ago Gary Lee was quoted as saying ‘she might be better than me’), but winning The Roux Scholarship this year certainly cemented her status as a star very much on the rise.

She might not have been willing to try all of it, but April is the first to say that she grew up around good food, thanks to both her mum and step-dad. Tempting smells would greet her as she walked home from school, and she remembers poking her nose through the letterbox and inhaling the aromas of lamb shoulder and rosemary mash. Still, no-one predicted her career in cooking, until the time came to do work experience at school. Finding few opportunities in her preferred paths of music and art, she took on a kitchen placement at The Reform Club in Pall Mall. It was, she says, a lightbulb moment. ‘I liked school and I had lots of friends but never felt like I totally fitted in,’ she says. ‘I really felt like I’d found my people in a kitchen. I loved the camaraderie. It felt like a load of misfits who, when they were all together, just worked.’

Eager to nudge her along her newfound path, April's school entered her in the Rotary Young Chef Competition and, mentored by her step-dad, she won the London heat, earning a day at The Ivy working under Gary Lee as her prize. That shift turned into a year of Saturdays and a decision to ditch sixth form and cook full time, studying her Professional Chef scholarship at Westminster on the side (in total, April stayed at The Ivy for three years before taking on stints at 34 Mayfair and The Ivy Club). Those early years not only immersed her in professional cooking, but spelled the end of her fussy eating – thanks mainly to pride. ‘People were saying ‘come and try this’ and I was embarrassed to say I didn’t want to, so I just tried everything,' she laughs. 'There was nothing I didn’t try. I’m the least fussy eater you would ever find now. It changed me as a person.’

In 2014, April entered the Young National Chef of the Year contest, competing against Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons’ now-executive head chef Luke Selby, who took home the prize and, in doing so, sparked her competitive spirit. ‘He absolutely smashed it,’ she tells us. ‘I remember watching him and thinking ‘this guy is so sharp’. He had a maturity I just didn’t have and I wanted to be as good as him.’ Entering that competition was, she says, a moment which ‘changed the path of my career’. Set on sharpening up, she took on stages at The Clove Club (where she later returned for eighteen months), Tom Kerridge’s The Hand and Flowers, Paul Ainsworth at No 6 and The Ledbury. ‘I remember going to The Ledbury and watching them cook and thinking ‘these guys are animals, I’ve never seen anything like this’,’ she laughs. ‘They were like the SAS of cooking, they were so, so good.’

Continuing her pretty remarkable whirlwind of Michelin-star kitchens, April hopped across the Atlantic, spending a year with Dan Barber at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York, getting a grounding in foraging and farm-to-table cooking. Memories of harvesting vegetables from the garden, discussing beetroot compounds with the chefs and being sent out to eat the food on her trial shift stick out as being especially formative. ‘From being a kid that was so fussy to sitting there enjoying vegetables so much, it was amazing,’ she remembers. ‘On my way home I called my mum and was in tears over this meal. I was saying ‘I need to come here, this is my next move’.’