How award winning chef Tommi Miers dropped eveything to follow a dream

She began her career at the Ballymaloe Cookery School. Now the owner of a chain of Mexican restaurants in London, Thomasina Miers is returning to her roots for the Litfest.

Thomasina ‘Tommi’ Miers was drifting. She had finished university, done a bit of travelling including time in her beloved Mexico but still had no clear idea what she was going to do with her life. She met her guardian angel at a modelling show: Clarissa Dixon Wright (just recently deceased), one half of the TV cooking programme, Two Fat Ladies, and all-round force of nature, was a fellow model.

“We met on the catwalk,” says Miers, “she was an amazing woman — I went to her funeral only last Monday — and I was 26 and pretty desperate at the time, I needed to find a career.