By no means has Charlotte always been a pub chef; in fact, her position at The Five Bells was the first time she’d worked in a non-restaurant kitchen, and up until that point her career as a chef had been far from traditional. Growing up in Devon, she ended up joining the army and worked her way up to rank of corporal whilst training to be a chef, before leaving to work for Michael Caines at Gidleigh Park. ‘I had it on paper that I was a chef when I came out of the army but initially, I didn’t feel like I could deliver the food that Michael required,’ explains Charlotte. ‘So I decided to go back to square one, going in as a commis and learning as much as I possibly could from Michael and his team.’ Working her way up the ranks at Gidleigh Park, she eventually moved to The Royal Clarence with Caines spending a decade as one his pastry chefs, but in her mid-twenties Charlotte took the decision to quit the industry.

Tired of the stress of the professional kitchen, for the next ten years she instead pursued a career as a scientist. ‘I wanted to do something completely different,’ says Charlotte. ‘So, I went and did two degrees and started working for a drugs company. At first it was fine but after about five years I really started to miss being a chef and how great it felt to make people happy with my food. One day I was walking back down to my lab and I saw everyone doing the same, monotonous thing. I just thought ‘I hate this, I’m going to go back into cheffing’.’ Within weeks Charlotte found and was offered the position at The Five Bells and her second career as a chef began.

Working in a lab and cooking in a kitchen may seem like polar opposites, but Charlotte has come to realise that they’re not as different as one might think. ‘In many ways even as a chef, I’m still a scientist,’ she muses. ‘That part of me will never die. I love experimenting with gels and powders but I’m also trying to create reactions when people eat at the pub.’ Charlotte’s food meanwhile is by no means conventional British pub grub. Taking influence both from her Nordic heritage and a period of time she lived in Japan, her style is all about elevating local produce. ‘I’ve got a lot of little flavour bombs going on in my food which often surprises people,’ explains Charlotte. ‘For example, I’ve recently created a dish where I flatten out some lemon sole and roll it in toasted seaweed to make a roulade but then it’s served with a sushi wine vinegar gel, so there's a real mix of influences.’

Charlotte has further elevated the food at The Five Bells to compete with the best gastropubs in the country by putting a real emphasis on showcasing local fresh produce. ‘Everything we serve is super local,’ she explains. ‘I don’t get anything out of county if I can help it; our eggs are from two miles down the road, our milk and cream is from a nearby farm, and even our scallops are hand-dived off Exmouth, around fifteen miles from here, and that’s the furthest away I tend to go.’ Touches like these have helped The Five Bells rank in the Top 50 Gastropubs for the last three years running (most recently at number 35) and it's achieved numerous other accolades.

It’s been just three years since Charlotte decided to quit her job in science to return to the professional kitchen, yet she’s now at the helm of one of Devon’s most exciting gastropubs. That takes a particular type of determination after ten years out of the game and begs the question of where she’ll be in another three years. Her immediate aim is clearly to continue breaking new ground at The Five Bells, both in terms of the food and winning accolades, but you get the feeling that we may be hearing Charlotte’s name a lot more over the next few years.