IT ALL started with a chocolate cake when I was about nine. In a fit of derring-do, I commandeered my mum’s kitchen while she was out and my dad was snoring his way through a Saturday afternoon and made one for tea.

He went wild when he woke up and saw all the mess and made me clear up before she came home. Unaware of all the previous mayhem, she just saw the cake and ate it.

So began my love affair with the kitchen that has continued unabated to this day. But some 40 years later, I’m now kicking myself, viciously hard, and tearing my hair out in angst as I regret the passage of years and lost opportunity.

For I’ve just enjoyed one of the most brilliant days of my life working alongside one of the most talented chefs in Britain at the Star Inn at Harome, one of the brightest lights in the foodie firmament.

Enough review words have been said and written about Andrew Pern, chef patron of the Star, the Whitby lad made good whose own love affair with food began on the family farm, for me not to add to them. But then I was lucky enough to receive as a gift the opportunity to spend a day in the Star’s kitchens, chopping, stirring, sizzling and plating, and it’s opened up a whole new galaxy in my constellation.

The sights, the sounds, the smells just did it for me. Watching agog as Andrew and his team of chefs prepared food and garnishes in readiness for the looming lunch service, then being encouraged to get stuck in, tentatively at first, not wanting to be in the way of such skill and order.

Then as the pace gained momentum and the food orders came in, first at a trickle, then a flood, finding a rhythm and beginning to feel, just a teensy weensy bit, part of the team.

The work eddies and flows, but the faster the pace the more balletic it becomes. The chefs swoop and duck round each other, different elements of the kitchen working as one to produce the finale on a plate, closely inspected and checked on the “pass” before being swept out to the expectant diners by sure-footed waiting staff.

Not here any Ramsay ranting or Marco madness. Frenetic it might be at the height of service, the air thick with shouted instructions and urgent requests for elements of a dish to be completed at just the right moment, but beneath all the noise and the sizzle of the hotplate there’s a total focus on the job at hand.

And in the midst of it all is Andrew, who for all the Star’s success hasn’t got too big for his chef’s hat like many of the so-called celebrity chefs and is still at the stove virtually every day. “All I want to do is cook,” he says simply and you know then who’s got it right.

It’s a simple philosophy but one exercised by his team too. I was working alongside Pete from Huddersfield, aged somewhere around 21, who’s been wearing chefs whites for about three years and can’t imagine doing anything else. “I just love it, me,” he grins as he drops another helping of asparagus spears into a sizzling pan. “Can you do another selection of veg for us?”

All round the kitchen they give you the same message. The executive head chef – another Andrew – had seen service at Middlethorpe Hall, Swinton Park near Masham, and the Black Swan in nearby Helmsley before landing the job of his dreams in the Star kitchens. “I go on holiday and am itching to get back in a few days” he says. “I just feel useless when I’m not here…”

And for that one day I know what they mean and that’s where the regrets and feelings of lost opportunity come in.

I fell for it straight away – the combination of the food, the atmosphere, the buzz, the rush, is a powerful drug that probably gives a better hit than any illicit narcotic.

Added to which there’s something very, very special about this kitchen. It must be the magic Star dust…