A cook's tour

Ken Snowdon finds out why workers are prepared to swap a tropical paradise for a former pit village to further their careers.

Oh dear. We live in worrying times. It seems there's yet another vital commodity the country is running out of. To the list of oil, gas and coal, you can add chefs.

Apparently there is a shortage of people who can cook for a living. I know this because a bloke in a pub told me so. The bloke is Peter Crosby and the pub is The Ship at High Hesleden, near Peterlee, which he owns and runs with his wife Sheila. They needed a good chef and had to go the extra mile to get one. Well a few thousand extra miles actually.

They headed south down the A19, past Teesside and turned left at the Indian Ocean. They kept going below the equator, steered just north of the Tropic of Capricorn and stopped at the tropical island paradise of Mauritius. Personally, I would have gone to the Jobcentre in Peterlee, but apparently I'd have been wasting my time.

"Nobody wants to work at it any more - you just get 'ping and ding' chefs (warming stuff up in the microwave) round here." Peter talks like a man who's done a lot of looking for someone to do the cooking. "You just can't get a decent chef round here now."

And so, while tens of thousands of Brits were fully engaged in queuing to escape the winter freeze for Christmas, cheerfully walking the other way through the door marked 'Arrivals' were Sanjeev Halooman and his friend Ravi Aukhaj. They'd left behind sun-filled skies, beautiful white, sandy beaches, blue lagoons, palm trees and coral reefs. It was au revoir to the mountains, the nature reserves and the wildlife parks, to set sail for The Ship.

Now I can't imagine what it was like for the boys waking up in a former pit village in County Durham for the first time, a tad below Peterlee and just north of a discarded Tropicana carton. You're not far from the icy cold of the North Sea, the thunder of the traffic on the A19 and the freezing temperatures of another North-East winter. Would they come to regret swapping the former for the latter?

Well they've made an encouraging start. Sanjeev has been handling front of house and is amazingly calm, almost serene. He has a winning smile. He proudly shows me one of the many Christmas cards the locals have given him. He's only been here two minutes but has made a big impression. I sneak over to the shelves and do a quick count - they easily outnumber those sent to the landlord. Ravi the chef seems equally at home, instantly adapting to the kitchen and cuisine The Ship serves the locals, before introducing some specialities of his own. He says he's looking forward to sharing his experiences and trying some new ones.

No one mentions the cold - yet.

So how did a publican from a small village over here end up recruiting on a tropical island? The story actually starts at the beginning of the year when Peter and Sheila were on holiday in Mauritius. Peter makes it sound disarmingly simple. "I just saw what they could do and wanted them at the pub," he says.

Turning that wishful thinking into reality meant persuading the boys to leave their jobs and families at home. Sanjeev was the food and beverage manager of a four-star hotel, one of five in the group on the island. His wife, 11-year-old daughter and nine-year-old son live on the east side of the island. Ravi, 34, worked as a chef in a major hotel and has also worked at Le Gavroche in London, whose famous Michelin-starred chef Albert Roux trained many of the big names on the scene today. He's left his wife, three-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son behind.

So, given the scale of the decision, how long did it take for Ravi to decide to join Sanjeev in the UK? "It was a big decision, three or four months of big thinking, asking for details and talking it over to decide," he says.

So, in the end, what was it that made them want to swap summer for winter, a top restaurant and hotel for a pub, and a home and family life for bachelor lodgings? Sanjeev says it's a thirst for knowledge and experience "For some time I have wanted to travel outside the island, to improve my education by learning from England and also to share my Mauritian knowledge," he says. Ravi agrees that lots of people won't understand why they've come, "but we want to learn, to experience".

That eventual 'yes' began an invigorating battle to get their visas. Peter was like a dog with a bone. He says: "We never gave up. It took ten and a half months to get the job done. We rang a guy in the British Embassy every day for a fortnight. We got to know him quite well."

So well in fact, Peter and Sheila have invited him up to the pub.

So, while it's summer back at home and 35C both new arrivals eventually admit they feel the cold. However, the most surprising thing about the North-East wasn't the cold weather but the warm welcome. Sanjeev said he didn't expect it. "People are so very nice here and that's helped me fight the homesickness." If all goes well, their families could be joining them next year.

While the boys don't have a language problem - the official language of Mauritius is English - the real language of the people is Creole. It evolved from the pidgin English used by the French in the 18th century to communicate with their slaves.

Well, we might not have a separate language but we have a distinctive dialect in the North-East of England, one which Sanjeev is taking in his stride. He says: "There's a big accent round here, yes, but I'm getting used to it. Last weekend I learnt 'why aye man'."