TALENTED chef Julie Lin MacLeod is one of the familiar faces on STV’s popular Live At Five programme.
Julie, 25, has worked at various restaurants and now runs Julie’s Street Kitchen.
She appeared on MasterChef in 2014 and is also on STV’s cookery show Julie and Jimmy’s Hot Woks.
Julie, who’s single, lives in Glasgow.
As a chef, ‘time off’ can be a bit last minute and you just have to take advantage of random weekends.
So, last minute breaks are not at all uncommon for me.
The most last minute had to be when I got home after a busy service at 11pm, looked up what was available – and was on a flight to Berlin at 9am.
Packing was a bit hit and miss but it was worth it for a great couple of days.
I chose that because Berlin was having a food week and food,
funnily enough, is always really important.
Probably my all-time favourite place is Paris, partly at least because of the food culture. I go at least once-a-year and it’s just such a romantic spot.
I love films like Amelie and I think what sealed my love of the city was sitting out on a lovely sunny day with a baguette, cheese and some red wine – I don’t need any more to make me happy.
There’s also a kind of unofficial Chinatown area with dumpling shops and dim sum, cheek-by-jowl with traditional French restaurants.
I think I’ve become a bit of a Francophile as I went to the Cote D’Azur recently.
I like to avoid the big places like Monaco and Cannes and instead seek out the smaller places.
The kind of towns where you still see women hanging out their washing on balconies.
The food is amazing of course and because of the vicinity to Italy you get loads of great spaghetti dishes.
I think I probably got my love of travel from my childhood days when we’d go to Malaysia, which is where my mum comes from.
We’d visit family and because it was close to Singapore, it was a real mix of cultures.
But I still love getting away in Scotland, too, with Oban being my favourite place.
The seafood is amazing, of course, but you can also take to the hills for a walk which is lovely after being in a hot, busy kitchen.
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