We're not campaigning particularly with our food, personally I look for well managed locally produced food first, it should be in season I want the primary ingredient of a dish to be British, local if possible - if it's not available, then my feeling is that we should change the menu which we do at least once a day anyway. The basis for this model is twofold, fresh tastes best, no question, and fresh and local is usually well priced enabling us to keep our prices reasonable.

The menu is a mix of familiar dishes for those who know my cooking and daily changing of specials and ingredients depending on what's available on the day. We have tried to price the menu at the right level to make a living but also to provide fair value for money, rather than thinking what we might be able to charge for short term gain trading on the MasterChef factor - besides I'm very conscious this won't last long. I try to be in the kitchen, doing the cooking, and greeting customers when I can, but it's going to be the food not the novelty that I hope will impress the local people who I expect to be my core business and who I want to price for. We provide a good three course meal for about £30, without going for all the cheapest dishes, with the ability to stretch to four or five courses and a £50 spend for those who want it.

We always have 'fish of the day'; it's very exciting for me to wait and see what seafood comes in that day and then devise a dish or dishes from it. It gives a real freshness and spontaneity to the overall menu and it's often the dish I'm most proud of.

We have favourite plants, like sea kale, that we are desperate to use more of. In March, it has young leaves which can be 'forced' like rhubarb, in May it has flower spikes like broccoli and then in June it has seed-pods, the size of a large pea but tasting of cabbage. It seems wrong to forage for it because it's not a common plant so we're trying to grow it. We visited Jekka McVicar's herb farm in the spring and brought a few specimens home to see how they do in the garden and they seem to be thriving so far.

Another favourite of ours is edible flowers. On MasterChef I made a lavender mousse, the smell and flavour are reminiscent of a country cottage garden, and we continue to serve it on a regular basis. Another flower we love is pineapple sage; it has two great things going for it; firstly it is bright red and looks amazing, and secondly it tastes very sweet, like pineapple or honey. I can't think why everyone doesn't use it!

As you drive around Dorset in April and May, you can smell the wild garlic as it blooms; then it's replaced by pungent elderflowers. We want to use these wonderful smells and flavours - they mark the passing of the seasons and we love the anticipation caused by knowing that we won't see them again for a whole year.

We want to harvest some wild garlic seeds and pickle them to make our own 'capers', a technique I noticed they used when I visited Noma in Denmark during the filming for MasterChef. We've been a little busy, so this may be something that will have to wait until next year.

We like to employ traditional techniques to enhance the flavour of food, for instance, we smoke a lot of food in the kitchen. I don't mind at all if the aroma of alder smoke wafts through to the customers in the restaurant because it never fails to make people salivate and we can produce extraordinary things with it, like smoked mash, I must get asked three or four times a night how I make this one dish, its not hard to do and the taste is extraordinary, the recipe, however, is a house secret.

I'm lucky to be working with Master of Wine (and occasional diving buddy), James Handford who has written a fantastic bespoke wine list, short and with a few key vineyards, decent wine starting at £13 a bottle, going up to approx £40 for some really very good premier cru bottles of wine or a decent bottle of champagne.

For front of house, we want a confident but relatively informal approach. People secure in their own knowledge, who are not afraid to make a few mistakes and have enough about them to handle a diverse clientèle. They should make the customer feel at ease, be attentive but not grovel or hang over the table like a vulture. We don't want them to be 'friends' with the customer, but we don't want them to be high-handed or aloof either. It's a difficult balance. What we want is how we like to be treated when we got out.