'I remember when we first talked to Norfolk magazine just as we were about to open and there were builders walking around and we sat there and we were full of hopes and dreams, but no clue,' laughs chef patron Richard Bainbridge.

He and his wife, Katja, set out with the goal of creating the sort of restaurant that they would like to go to. With a string of accolades and glowing reviews to their name - and more importantly, countless happy diners many of whom have become friends - it certainly proved to be a recipe for success.

'It was like what do we want on the menu? What do we want on the wine list? What price would we be happy to pay? How would we like our service to be? And it folded out from there,' says Richard as he and Katja cast their minds back a decade.

They took over the premises from well-known city restaurateurs Jayne and Nigel Raffles, who had run it as St Benedict's Restaurant for almost a quarter of a century.

Richard and Katja Bainbridge. Photo: Andrew Hayes-Watkins Owning a restaurant was something that Richard had dreamed about since he was a teenager when he got a job as a pot washer in a pub. He used to admire St Benedict's Restaurant as he walked past on his way to gigs at Norwich Arts Centre.

'Carrying a can of cider. It was quite posh and I used to think that I'd love to go in there one day. Never once did I think I'd own it.'

He continues: 'When I was 13, I walked through the doors of my first job at the Bull in Hellesdon and I loved it. It was the day after my 13th birthday and I vowed to myself that this was the industry I was going to be in and I was going to own my own restaurant. I was dyslexic and this was a world where I felt like I was on a level playing field with everyone.

'My shift started at 6pm, so I went in at quarter to six and started my job. No word of a lie, we got the keys to Benedicts the day after my 33rd birthday and it was literally 20 years to the hour of me, a boy with dyslexia from a single parent family, walking through the doors of my first restaurant job.'

Richard had certainly put in the groundwork in the intervening years. He studied hospitality at City College Norwich and worked in some of the most prestigious kitchens in the UK, US, New Zealand and Ireland - including for Michel Roux Senior at the three Michelin-starred Waterside Inn in Bray, Berkshire and one of Norfolk's best-known restaurants, Michelin-starred Morston Hall.

Serving up pork at Benedicts. Photo: Andrew Hayes-Watkins 'When we opened it was on such a shoestring,' says Richard. 'We had no experience of running a restaurant. I had run kitchens and I'd been a head chef before and I'd started to make a name for myself in Norfolk from being head chef at Morston Hall. And Katja was a nurse and was on maternity leave with our daughter Holly, who was just over a year old, and had never been in the industry before. She's been amazing - like with nursing, hospitality is about caring and knowing what someone needs. And she did that and learned business too - how to do the payroll and pay the bills.

'When we........

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