Pressure cooking

SURE, some successful chefs gave up illustrious careers in law and finance to pursue their dreams of opening a restaurant. But without a safety net, entering the F&B industry sans even a modicum of personal experience is a big gamble.

Javier Perez, founder of Italian-Japanese eatery Kilo, says: "I have friends who open restaurants because they're passionate about cooking, but they end up closing only a year later. They look at it as a glamourous thing but there are a lot of moving parts and a lot of continuous work that has to be done in order to keep the ship going in the right direction."

Self-realisation