WHILE many restaurants stick to the same menus this Worcester chef loves nothing more than to shake things up.

Felice Tocchini is the owner and head chef of Feli's, Stoulton, near Worcester.

He and his wife, Fiorinda, have run the Italian restaurant for 18 years.

Felice grew up in Italy where his father was a pizza chef. When he was 13, he began culinary school and began working in a kitchen.

"Cooking was the place I could express my flare for the arts while working with people," he said.

Age 17, Felice made a move that would change his life: "During a day off I found one of my teachers just walking the street and he said 'Do you want to go to England?' and I say 'Okay'.

"He told me I would only have to commit for one year," but, 42 years later, Felice is still here.

In 2004, after decades of experience working as a chef and manager in restaurants across England, he opened up his own restaurant, Fusion, in Alcester. Two years later, they would buy their current building.

"At the start, it was more of a pub doing food, but we changed it to become a restaurant serving drinks."

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Having spent so much time working in the UK, Felice understands much of the cultural difference when it comes to food in the UK: "There's so many different influences and cultures in this country; everyone's brought a little bit of themselves.

"You can go almost anywhere here and find almost any ingredient, but if you try that in Italy, you will struggle a lot.

"Italian food is very much based on what you have locally at that particular time."

Felice demonstrated how he enhances the flavours of his ingredients to make them the best they can be. Italian tomatoes tend to have more flavour, so he adds salt, sugar and honey to remove moisture and improve the taste. 

Much like in Italy, Felice often changes his menu depending on what he has available throughout the year: "Last week we found some very good seafood, so we put seafood linguine on the menu.

"We don't have that very often because I refuse to use the frozen stuff.

"The menu varies almost every week, which sometimes for the waiters can be annoying, but it's good fun for me because it doesn't become repetitive."

Despite working as a head chef, Felice doesn't spend every day hidden in the kitchen; he finds great passion in passing his knowledge on to others in cookery classes and demonstrations: "I enjoy doing it whether it's in a field where you've got loads of people watching or going into a school and showing kids what to do."

However, Felice likes to run his classes in a certain way: "I hate it when you do a class and there are 40 people in there because you're not going to teach anything to anyone with a group that big. 

"The most we do at once is six people."

Are you are café or restaurant owner interested in doing an article similar to this for your business? Let us know by emailing kieran.williams@newsquest.co.uk.