Lionel Strub was born in Eastern France in June 1964 in what was a small, yet quickly growing town called Nancy in the region called Alsace Lorraine.  His mother was a young nineteen-year-old student nurse at the local hospital. His father was a bus driver, but he was also married to someone else and did not hang around once he found out about the pregnancy. To this day Lionel’s mother doesn’t often speak about him and he never got in touch with his son.

In 1964 no real help was given to single mothers. It was clear that she could not both work and look after her child. So the first few years of Lionel’s life were spent in foster care after which he ended up being passed around family friends and people he barely knew.

He still vividly remembers staying in a home where he had to eat alone in a different room away from everyone else simply because he wasn’t considered part of the family.  He didn’t seem to fit in anywhere or with anyone. This went on for some time and Lionel became very unsettled, over-active and badly behaved. This was reflected in his early school years which were nothing short of a living nightmare.

Then at the age of eight, his Grandmother decided enough was enough and undertook to look after the boy rather than seeing him being part of a game of ‘pass the parcel’… Lionel’s life and passion for cooking has taken him from being that restless boy to award-winning chef-patron of the Clarendon Inn, Hebden, North Yorkshire.  

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