Everyone’s heard of Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen Restaurants, but not so many food enthusiasts

will know there’s a similar scheme in Dartmouth

that is taking scores of youngsters off the dole. Martin Hesp has been there to find out more.

It's no wonder we find the subject of food so inspirational – without it we'd be like a bunch of expensive Bentleys stuck 1,000 miles from a petrol station. The stuff that fuels us fascinates us, motivates us, encourages us and excites us.

So here's an idea: why not use food – the sourcing, preparation and serving thereof – to stimulate those who have so far failed to find inspiration?

After all, food does more than merely fuel us – it brings us together, enforces ideas of community effort and action and is the mother of much invention.

OK, so you may have heard such thoughts before. A certain Jamie Oliver is famous for expounding such ideas and his Fifteen restaurants have long since been hitting headlines for the way in which they inspire those with little hope to re-enter mainstream life as employees.

Most readers will know of Fifteen Cornwall and a few may have dined at its dramatic Watergate Bay location.

But how many have heard of the Dartmouth Apprentice? While young Jamie storms the world flying flags on the wider importance of food in the community and his Fifteen restaurants grab oodles of attention, a very similar outfit based in the South Devon estuary town has quietly been doing some sterling work indeed.

For two years now the Dartmouth Apprentice restaurant, based in a converted church overlooking the River Dart, has been nurturing long-term unemployed youth through its training programmes – and here's an impressive vital statistic…

Some 60 unemployed Devon youngsters have been through its six-month scheme and to date no fewer than 45 of them have gone on to land proper jobs elsewhere. If that is not a recipe for social and economic success, I don't know what is…

Which is why the Western Morning News was keen to accept an invite to Dartmouth to see the place first-hand – and without any more ado let me make this sweeping claim: I think the Dartmouth Apprentice has the most amazing and impressive restaurant space in the whole South West.

Walk up the old steps and you suddenly enter a massive atrium which would be the pride of any top West End restaurant. The vast old St Barnabas Church has been converted with vast amounts of sensitivity and with architectural panache.

All of which is not quite surprising when you learn that the charity Training For Life spent a whopping £3 million on its conversion.

Money well spent? I should say so. But I only knew that for sure after spending a morning there and talking to the folk who make the place tick. And at Dartmouth Apprentice that starts and ends with the powerhouse woman who is in charge.

Nina Stanesby has a great passion for her work – and you obviously need to be like that if you are taking on scores of unemployed youngsters who may also have other issues and problems.

So, why Dartmouth? That's the first question I asked after learning that Training For Life had always been a strictly London-based operation before branching out to South Devon…

"It was Dartmouth that chose the charity in a way," she replied. "This church was bought by a local man who used it to help homeless people. When he could no longer sustain it, it fell into a state of disrepair.

"For the local council it was a bit of a head-scratching exercise – but one of our associate directors has a home here and he got involved."

Wind the clock forward and post-conversion an executive Italian chef was brought in to create the original menus…

"Back then it was aimed at 18 to 24-year-olds – that's changed a bit now – but they have to be receiving job seekers' allowance," said Nina. "The Government had an initiative called the Future Job Fund which said if you had a position that wasn't normally available for long term unemployed they would help you with a financial incentive.

"In the past two years we've had some 65 of these young people off benefits into a training programme. We train them to NVQ level, pay them a wage, put them through things like Life Coaching and Blueprint to Work programmes... We do their CVs, get them interview techniques and get them jobs.

"But first and foremost this is a restaurant," said Nina. "Some work in the kitchen, some out front – we've even had guys working on our allotment, and I've had a PA… We try and fill any gaps we can to maximise as many young people as we can possibly take.

"We've had young chefs who have moved on – one is now at The Priory in Bath. They're not all successes but this gives them enough confidence to think they can move on and do something they want to.

"I would say that 45 of the 60 are now in employment. We have as many as 20 at any one time – and at the moment there are three of us running the place.

"It's all local produce," said Nina. "We buy locally and make a lot here like all the bread. We don't buy desserts or anything like that – everything is made from scratch.

"It's taken a while to be accepted," she admitted. "I think people were suspicious of this charity moving into this enormous expensive refurbishment on the hill – however we've worked very hard to prove we are here for a particular reason and that encompasses a great plate of food and fantastic service.

"Obviously people say: 'Is it like Jamie Oliver?' But it is different – Jamie is chef-orientated – this is bigger in that it's not just about keeping them within hospitality, there are other openings.

"About 80 per cent are long term unemployed – not just because they couldn't get a job," said Nina. "Behind every apprentice there's a story – it could be they're a single mum or that their parents are separated and they didn't know what to do, or they ran away from home. Others are pretty straightforward – they just took the wrong road, couldn't find anything they wanted.

"The turning point is the first month's wages – because many of them haven't had quite that much money before, it can send some of them off the edge.

"Some of my work is like being a counsellor," she added. "I'm like everybody's mother. I know lots about them, their backgrounds, and so on. You need to enjoy a glass of wine at night when you get home sometimes.

"We are now getting regular customers – I've got some wonderful people who support our events, our fundraisers – and they are the most valuable to me. We're planning on holding more events – we've had two opera evenings and we've had over 100 people in for those.

"It's not like running an ordinary restaurant," Nina explained. "To be commercially viable we need that bit extra and people have donated auction prizes and raffle prizes for gala nights. The events help us raise the money we need – for example I am taking 20 of them through a course in hygiene – that's a quick £1,000. Then there's the NVQ in professional cookery and one in service out front... That's £7,500."

In the kitchen two young men were going about the morning chores. Christian has been so successful that the team at Dartmouth Apprentice have now agreed to take him on full-time.

"I didn't know what I wanted to do before I came here," he told me. "They've trained me up and I took a shine to it – this is now what I want to do. I love doing the pastries – I work every hour I possibly can for the training – I want to get somewhere with my life now."

Mark told me he'd been abroad and when he came back to the UK he didn't know what to do. "So I started here as a pot washer – now I'm going full-time to the cooking side. I love cooking and have learned so much.

"It's nice and laid-back, but you have to keep to the standards – he cracks the whip every now and again."

"He" is Adam Parnham, the executive chef. "I've been in the industry for 13 years and part of this project for three," he said. "This is a very different challenge. It's not your everyday catering job.

"You have to be careful what you put on the menu because you have to remember that some of these guys have never been in a kitchen before, but part of our success is we use the best quality ingredients.

"We change the menu constantly because the guys are always learning. Some of the guys have definitely found a passion for the ingredients – maybe not at the beginning," shrugged Andy.

"Christian for example had not made any pastries before he came here – but he turns out to be brilliant at it – and now we're taking him on full-time as our pastry chef."

Running operations front-of-house was a young single mother who has come up through the ranks to be Nina's right-hand woman…

Abigail York is also being given permanent employment at the restaurant – by the end of September she will be supervisor.

"I had some experience before but no paper qualifications," she said. "As soon as I started I realised I cared a lot more about this than anything else in my life – this is a lot more than a job to me.

"Now I am looking forward to bringing on new young people – I really enjoy the training. This has been an amazing opportunity – I started with nothing and now I've got certificates and a job."

Abigail told me her father had recently passed away and had left a sizeable sum for her in trust which will be hers when she turns 30…

"I plan to start a restaurant of my own with the money and I've got nine years to plan it," said the determined 21-year-old.

I left the highly-impressive Dartmouth Apprentice thinking I'd probably just met the Michael Caines or Jamie Oliver of the future…