As part of our Meet the Chef series, we're talking to some of Cumbria's finest about their lives in and out of the kitchen. This week, it's the turn of Ben Donkin of The Café at Lakeland

It is mushrooms on toast, but not as we know it: ‘award-winning Lovingly Artisan sourdough topped with sauteed mushrooms, pickled shimeji mushrooms, watercress puree, aioli and artichoke crisps’. 
Or how about bubble and squeak, only this time your humble potato and cabbage is transformed with two crispy hash browns, the cabbage sauteed in butter with leeks, salt baked swede, topped with honey mustard-glazed ham hock and a parsley and onion sauce to pour over the top. 
It is traditional comfort food made surprising, interesting and very, very tasty. 
Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that these dishes are served not in a trendy bistro but in a café in a shop, Lakeland’s flagship store in Windermere.

What is more, each satisfying plateful comes in at less than £13.
They are the work of Ben Donkin and his team at The Café at Lakeland.

When you learn of Ben’s background, it is easy to see where it comes from. He grew up on the Holker estate where his dad, Grant, was private chef to Lord and Lady Cavendish.

Grant had worked in Lakeland hotels, but his role at Holker Hall saw him cooking meals for the family, for dinners and banquets for many visiting guests, including HM The Queen.
Ben started to help out at a young age at home where his mum Michelle, also a trained chef, taught him how to make his own favourite pasta sauce.
“From a very young age I would either go down to cook with dad or at home like I do with my own children. As I got older I would help make bread and things like that. I always remember getting taught how to make a white cheese sauce for pasta. I was probably quite young when my mum showed me. We always had roast dinners as a family which I have continued with my children. Whatever kind of meal it is it’s that time together. Family is important and that’s what a lot of my life is geared around.”
At 31, Ben is dad to Ollie, who is nine, Harry, aged six, and four-year-old Lilly.

He takes his responsibilities very seriously which is why the 8.30am-4.30pm hours at Lakeland appealed when he joined seven years ago.

(Image: Sheenah Alcock)
A pupil of Flookburgh Primary School, Ben was in Year 11 at Cartmel School when a catering lecturer from Kendal College visited to give a careers presentation. “I had always cooked, and I enjoyed it but I never thought about it as a career as such. I just cooked because I could, but on a very basic level. I was thinking about it vaguely but then my food teacher got me a work placement in hospitality,” he said. 
The placement was at L’Enclume, which had been open six years and had earned its chef-patron Simon Rogan a Michelin star and four AA rosettes.

Now it holds three Michelin stars and is at the centre of an international food empire. “It was the early days but Simon was an amazing cook. It was a very big eye opener into a world that I didn’t even know existed. I remember meatballs with a tzatziki foam that was mind blowing,” said Ben.
He was offered a part-time job at L’Enclume whilst studying a two-year diploma at Kendal College. “I started off front of house and then got asked if I wanted to be in the kitchen. After I finished college I was asked if I would go full-time. Hopefully they had seen a bit of potential and that I was capable of doing what they asked me to do. 
“It was a fantastic place to learn, and especially now it’s amazing because they have the people to get full potential out of people like me.”

Eventually he would like to have his own restaurant. “It’s a big step and I don’t know what level it would be but as long as it’s honest and the best it can be I don’t think it matters what food it is. It’s a dream but at the moment I have got everything I need here.
“I am here for the life I wanted to create for my children. Lakeland has given me everything to enable me to do that while still making tasty food.”