Ami Blakely wears her dedication on her sleeves. Her arms are covered, elbow to fingertips, in burns that come in various shades of crimson.

"She is one hell of a dedicated girl," says Anna Hansen, who worked with the 19-year-old Blakely at the recent Girls Night Out event, along with Angela Hartnett and Clare Smyth. "I don't come across many young ladies in this business, full stop, let alone ones that have so much determination and talent." As Hansen points out, cooking "isn't a career – it's a lifestyle", a slog that requires complete surrender. That said, Blakely does feel she's had to prove herself. "You don't want to be the little girl – literally in my case, I'm really short – in the corner who can't hack the banter. And even though no one treats you any differently, there's something inside that makes you want to stand out even more for being a girl." As Hansen says: "Physicality has nothing to do with it – the kitchen doesn't command strength that women have to specially prepare for. Male or female, most normal people don't want to be on their feet 16 hours a day, but in Ami's case, she took to it immediately."

Blakely says Girls Night Out "put fire in my belly", but she caught the cooking bug at 16, during a summer spent working front of house at a hotel in her hometown of South Shields, and watching the kitchen staff run around, dirty aproned and shouty. "The pace excited me," she says. "I am quite restless, and the way they moved around, the passion, it was like switching on a light, like, 'That's what I want to do'."

Restlessness is something of a theme – Blakely enrolled in catering college, but lasted only six weeks as she "wanted to be behind the stoves straight away". So after working at the award-winning Star Inn in Yorkshire, she moved to London with her boyfriend (now a chef at Royal Hospital Road) to work on the launch of 28-50. Having started as a demi chef, on the day of our shoot Blakely was excited to announce her promotion to chef de partie. "I'm chuffed to bits," she says.