A Maltese chef has quit a top London restaurant for a school kitchen.

The Guardian reported how Nicole Pisani made her name cooking sumptuous Middle Eastern and Asian-inspired dishes in London. From Monday, however, she will be preparing lunch for 500 schoolchildren at an inner London state primary school, on a budget of just 92p a child.

Pisani, 34, grew up in Malta, where her family were in the restaurant business. She earned a reputation as chef de cuisine at Nopi – the fashionable Soho restaurant set up by celebrated chef and cookery writer Yotam Ottolenghi.  

But exhausted from the 70 to 80-hour weeks and the challenge of managing a brigade of 15 men, Pisani decided to leave and look for a new challenge. 

It came in the unexpected form of a tweet by Henry Dimbleby, co-founder of the fast food restaurant chain Leon and architect of the School Food Plan that came into force earlier this month, setting new, improved standards for all food served in schools.

In the tweet, he said the chef at his son’s school, Gayhurst community school in Hackney, had left and asked if there was anyone interested in the job.  

A friend spotted the tweet and told Pisani, who responded, applied, cooked a trial meal for the entire school and the job was hers, The Guardian said.

“I had an amazing time at Nopi. It was a massive learning experience for me. But after two and a half years I was tired,” she said. “I wanted a break. It’s hard being on your feet for 16 hours a day.” 

“I want to try and stick to the same menu they have, but cook it better,” she said. Ideally she would like the children to eat from proper plates, rather than plastic trays, and she would like the cooks to wear chefs’ jackets to instil pride.

“In school kitchens the mentality is they are cooks, not chefs. But it would be really nice to have people who love cooking in schools. I’ve always loved feeding people. It’s a profession, but the idea that you feed someone is so rewarding.”