Gabriella Margiotta, professional sous chef

Gabriella Margiotta was born and grew up in Southport. She is sous chef at her father’s award-winning South Liverpool restaurant Cucina Di Vincenzo and was a semi-finalist in the latest series of MasterChef: The Professionals.

She also runs her own YouTube channel, Gabriella’s Kitchen, where she shares easy to follow tutorials and cooking content.

The restaurant, Cucina Di Vincenzo, opened in 2016 and has since won a number of accolades from The Italian Awards.

After leaving school at 16, Gabriella studied at catering college, followed by working at London Carriage Works as a chef, running a ski chalet in Meribel and setting up her own business in Manchester selling street food.

In 2019, Gabriella won Cuoco of the Year at the English Italian Cooking Awards.

My school/s:

Holy Family Primary School and Christ the King High School before studying at Liverpool Catering Community College.

My favourite teacher:

My wonderful art teacher, Miss O’Brien.

My favourite subject at school:

I liked quite a few subjects: art, media, English and R.E.

My favourite extracurricular activity at school:

Slightly random but at primary school it was chess, however, at secondary school I loved basketball.

School dinners or packed lunch?

Always packed lunch and always something Italian!

Did you always do your homework?

I always got it done, but would always leave it until the very last minute.

My favourite book:

I love to read recipe books, if that counts.

My dream career at school:

An actress or you guessed it, a chef!

What two words would describe you as a teenager?

Hardworking and endearing.

My funniest or best memory at school?

Once in an art class when we were using plaster to make sculptures, we thought it would be funny to plaster our arms into casts, but after the plaster had set we realised we had taken it too far and all got asked to leave the class.