Patrick Bardoulet is the chef owner of The Horseshoe Inn at Eddlestone near Peebles. A restaurant with rooms and a bar bistro, The Horseshoe has attracted plenty of plaudits including three AA rosettes and the Gold Eat Scotland award.

Born in Chantilly, Patrick started his career at Le Chateau Montvillargenne, a former residence of Baroness Jeanne de Rothschild and now part of the Rothschild Group. He went on to work all over Europe before opening Bardoulet’s Restaurant at The Horseshoe Inn in 2005. He describes his food as one which ‘uses lots of local ingredients in a French style’. He runs the Horseshoe with his wife Vivienne.

Here he tells 5pm about his Hogmanay kitchen nightmare, his ideal Valentines meal and his farmyard to fork upbringing. He also joins the growing band of Chewing the fat chefs who wouldn’t touch tripe with a barge pole.

Valentine’s Day promotions are beginning. What would you cook for a romantic meal?

PB) It would be fish to start, that’s for sure. We’re in Scotland where you get the best shellfish in the world so scallops would be good. I’d probably do them with a salad. We’d stick with fish for the main course just to keep everything light and fresh. Dessert would have to be chocolate. Women love chocolate but also, in February, when Valentines Day crops up, there isn’t much fruit to work with.

Do you know of any aphrodisiac foods?

PB) Only those I read about like oysters but I don’t really believe in them.

What is your favourite ingredient to work with?

PB) It would be seafood. You have to be precise when you cook seafood. It’s not like a piece of meat, whether it be lamb, beef or venison, where you leave it to rest for a few minutes after cooking it. Fish has to be cooked and served. I like the precision that is needed for that.

What do you like to eat on a night off?

PB) We are closed every Monday. Normally, I don’t cook on Mondays so we try to eat very simply be it a bowl of pasta or some tomatoes and mozzarella. Occasionally, we might do a roast chicken. We don’t eat foie gras and caviare.

Which chef has inspired you?

PB) My path was a bit different from the usual career which chefs might have. I was born in ’67 when there weren’t the big supermarkets that you find today. My family come from a farming background in Chantilly, north of Paris, and we grew, reared or caught everything that we ate, from vegetables to poultry, game, fish and so on. Every weekend, we would pick the beans and potatoes; kill the rabbits and pigs. That might seem a bit barbaric today but that was just a normal way of life then. There no Playstations or MP3 players.

Cooking was just something that you learned as part of family life. By sixteen, I felt very comfortable just being in a kitchen. I couldn’t see myself working nine to five so I got an apprenticeship at a local restaurant. I liked the team work and producing meals from all these raw ingredients.

Is there anything you don’t like cooking with?

PB) Frozen food.

Is there anything you couldn’t eat?

PB) I can’t eat tripe, no matter what. It’s awful.

What has been the most exotic thing you have eaten?

PB) I’ve never had any kangaroo or crocodile. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten any weird food except perhaps ostrich.

What gadget/utensil can’t you work without?

PB) I have some equipment and toys in the kitchen but, at the end of the day, they are just bonuses. I have a thermamix and so on but my best tool is my knife.

You can get anyone in the world to cook you a meal. Who will it be?

PB) I don’t know. Someone sexy? Or someone who has something to say? I don’t know. I’m not in contact with the celebrity world and all the bling bling. We are in our own world here in the kitchen day after day.

Apart from your own establishment, where do you like to eat out?

PB) Martin Wishart’s in Edinburgh. His cooking is very close to classic French cooking, at least to start with, but it is also very clever. For me, he’s the top man in Edinburgh. I love what he is doing there.

What is the best thing about being a chef?

PB) The freedom to choose the products you are going to work with; going through the different products which become available during the four seasons and being part of a team.

I also enjoy writing a menu in a way that makes it click with customers. You have to be clever. Restaurant cooking is not just about putting food together and making it look beautiful. You have to make money and you do that by selling your products. You have to get the right words and the right combinations of ingredients. Say I have a chocolate parfait which isn’t selling for whatever reason. I know that if I pair it up with meringue then it will sell.

And the worst?

PB) I don’t really see it like that. Although perhaps the worst thing is that we don’t take time to eat properly. If friends cook for us, they sometimes think that I will enjoy really sophisticated or luxurious food. Having the time to sit down and enjoy it with the company means more to me.

Have celeb chefs been a good or bad thing on the whole?

PB) Both. We owe Gordon Ramsay a big thank you because there wasn’t nearly as much food on TV before he started. On the other hand, kids dream of being a chef and then getting on TV and that’s not how it works for the vast majority of us.

What’s been your worst kitchen disaster?

PB) We had a power cut on Hogmanay 2008. We had to finish the service using candles in the kitchen. It was a nightmare. I brought my car around to the kitchen door so we could work by its headlights. There was a full house and, while I think the customers enjoyed dining by candlelight, it wasn’t so much fun in the kitchen. We kept on going and, when the power came back on an hour later, the customers gave us this huge round of applause.

Chefs are well known for drinking in moderation but what would you cook for a colleague who was suffering from a hangover?

PB) I’m not the sort of chef who is going to shout and swear at anybody. The guys in my kitchen are all about twenty-two to twenty-five. I’ve been young too and I know that you can go out and end up having one too many. I would send the guy home and I think he would understand that it was a one off.

What has been your most memorable meal?

PB) I worked in Cyprus for a year and when I came back, my girlfriend, who is now my wife, and I went for a picnic on Gullane beach. We had white wine, salmon and foie gras. By then, I had decided that I wanted to live in Scotland for good. That was a special meal.

Tell us your daftest customer complaint?

PB) It’s very rare that people send anything back but sometimes people want their duck well done. We always explain to them that it will be tough done that way but if they insist . . .