"People often ask me how I could be so brave as to change my career completely and now be doing something entirely different to what I was doing before," said pasta chef Egle Loit, who previously studied communications at university before going on to work in media and communications.

Loit admitted that she has learnt a lot more skills since then but remains a storyteller. "I'm still doing communication, it's just that my platform is different. It's not just about cooking, it's the stories I tell with food."

Loit decided to choose pasta making as her specialty. "I've always loved cooking. My grandparents are vegetable farmers and I've spent summers in the fields with them. They have been selling their wares at Viljandi market for their entire working life. I think the passion for cooking and the connection to Italian food culture comes from the opportunity I got to use those limited ingredients that my grandparents had."

Loit said it provides a big boost to one's creativity when all you have at home is a 25 kilogram bag of potatoes to work with, so you have to start thinking about what you can do with it. "My love of food has come from experimenting. I've never cooked to a recipe."

When she first moved to London, Loit knew that if she could, she wanted to find a way to get into culinary school just to have more fun. "I saw it more as something I'd have to save money for and maybe it would be possible to do in the future, but when I got to London I realized that with the cost of living there, I wasn't going to be able to raise enough money to go to culinary school."

One rainy day, however, on a whim, Loit walked into a restaurant she had been to before and liked. "I thought I'd just go and ask if they had any work."

The head chef was working in the restaurant at the time and asked Loit what experience she had. "I didn't have any experience in the kitchen or the service industry. The head chef thought that sounded dubious, but said 'come on.' I didn't tell anyone about the job and just wanted to see what it was like being in a restaurant."

Loit began working at the restaurant in the evenings after finishing at her other job and again at weekends. After moving to full-time work in the restaurant, Loit realized this was the job she really wanted to do. It also helped her to eventually get into culinary school a few months later

Loit said that being a chef is a really tough job, but when you work with a team you get a great sense of achievement.

"I did have those moments in the first year when the dishwasher wouldn't work work and I had to wash dishes the entire day. But a couple of hundred people still came to the restaurant during a day. I remember those moments when I was washing dishes and just crying and wondering what I was doing. But at the same time, I knew it was an important experience for me on the road to where I wanted to go with food."

Loit didn't tell anyone about what she was doing because she was ashamed to admit that she was working in a kitchen. "I knew it would raise questions in people's minds. Why would I go to work in a kitchen after my previous career choices, what happened?"

In culinary school, Loit learned numerus techniques that gave her the freedom to explore what she wanted to do in her own work.

She also got the idea at that time to write articles about food, but never considered opening a restaurant herself. "When I was working in a restaurant, I had to make pasta, and at one point I just realized that was something I would like to do for a living."

Loit started giving pasta-making lessons in various studios. But because she did not have her own space, she was forced to cancel a lot of work. It was her good friend and fellow chef Anna Jones, who put Loit in touch with people that were looking for someone to take over their space for a year.

"I called it a residency so I wouldn't confuse people, but it was a short-term contract for the space, during which I could make preparations to open a place of my own," said Loit, who now has her own artisan pasta restaurant in London's Hackney district called "Darling's."

The key to success, she said, is to be as authentic as possible and do what you believe in, instead of just trying to following the latest trends.

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