Ainsley Harriot: Austria’s my ideal for skiing and cooking

Chef Ainsley Harriott reveals his favourite holiday haunts.

“The holiday that really resonates with me was when I went on a skiing break with the school aged 12.

I remember being absolutely blown away by it and it was where my passion for skiing started. I’ve been doing it ever since.

It was to Austria and in my early days of skiing this was the 1970s it was very much a case of “spot the black man in the mountains”.

I didn’t see anybody else black. It was such a rare thing that some people skied into each other when they looked across and saw me.

It was very different back then when not so many people were skiing and certainly not a man of colour.

I have been to ski in the States and the conditions are great but the food is awful.

In fact, I don’t think I’ve been to anywhere in America where I thought: ‘Wow, this is the best’.

For me, places like Lech in Austria tick all the boxes.

I went with my mates and we’d hire an apartment, ski all day then come back and I’d do the cooking. Brilliant.

Other than skiing I used to go to a place in Sardinia called Forte Village, which I went to initially for the BBC’s Holiday programme.

It was a little bit posh and some of my trips you’d see famous footballers, like Roberto Baggio and Xabi Alonso, there with their families and even have a kick about with them.

There was a fabulous beach and some fabulous dining places. You could take one of the little village apartments and you had tennis, spas and so much else.

Food is always important to me and one of the best places I’ve been was Taipei on this Street Food series.

I had something called black pepper buns, which were made by this little women and her husband in a tandoori oven.

It’s the only time when I’ve been filming something I’ve purposely got something wrong so we could shoot it again and I could eat another three or four.

I did notice that there were few obese people.

“They tend to eat small amounts when hungry rather than a big three-course meal, so maybe we could learn something.”

Chef Ainsley Harriott’s new series, Ainsley Harriott’s Street Food, is running on More4 on Sundays at 8pm. It takes him from Turkey, Iceland and Barbados to Taiwan, Sicily and Japan.