Bermudian schoolboy chef Judah Smith-Steede has signed up with an agent after landing his first paid cooking job.

The 13-year-old kitchen prodigy has also done demos at a cooking expo and honed his cutting skills.

Judah, who lives in England, worked at London restaurant La Muse when he was only 11.

He said: “I don’t go to the restaurant any more but I have signed an agent. I have had my first paid cooking job. I was doing cooking demos at a cooking expo and I’ve been practicing my knife skills.”

And he hinted that he would be involved in other projects in England.

Judah said: “I’m still going to work on my skills back home but there are a lot of other projects that I am doing. I don’t want to give too much away. I don’t know if I’m allowed. But there are a lot of other projects that I will be doing involving cooking and other chefs.”

Judah added he had improved his technical knowledge, including different types of meat and their characteristics, as well as improving his instincts in the kitchen.

He explained: “Before I only really knew what meats you could eat and what meats you could cook all the way through, what’s dangerous to eat like different kinds of mushroom.

“Now I know different meats do different things when they’re integrated with heat, how to know by eye when things are done. Before I had to use a thermometer to check it now I can look at something or feel it and I know it’s done. I know different techniques as well like chopping things.”

Judah is this week back in Bermuda, but is scheduled to return to Britain next week, where two years ago he appeared on Junior Masterchef UK.

And he said he had ambitions to host his own TV show.

He added: “I would love to have my own cooking show. I would cook anything really. I like to experiment with a lot of the things I cook.

“If I found something that is really interesting or tasty I would try and put it on the TV show and see if anyone else would try it.”

Judah said: “To me the culinary arts are like an expression. Like regular art, you paint stuff and show your feelings through something else.

“Cooking is like that for me. It’s like showing who you really are through something that everyone else will like. It’s just like an extension of me.”

Judah, who has previously visited France and tried the national delicacy of snails or escargot, said he had since visited Germany to broaden his culinary horizons.

He added: “I did go to Berlin and I tried a potato side dish that tasted boiled, roasted and fried with some kind of salty meat.

“It was really crunchy and smooth and salty at the same time. It’s really nice.”

But he said his first loyalty was to the cuisine of France.

Judah added: “French is like the building blocks of cooking. All the first sauces were made in France and all the first techniques.

“The foundation of cooking was made in France and it was built up over the years from different countries making their own versions. Escargot is my favourite french dish.”

Judah’s mentor, Serge Bottelli executive chef at the MEF group’s complex of restaurants at Elbow Beach Hotel, said he was devoted to encouraging young Bermudians in the industry, while MEF has sponsored students to learn and work overseas.

Mr Bottelli said: “You need to love it, not like it. We work on Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day.

“We live in a different time than everyone else. When most people finish on Friday at five o’clock they go out for drinks, but we are serving the drinks.

“The practicality is that in school you make four burgers, but suddenly when you come here you need to make four burgers, then two burgers then six more burgers — the pace is completely different.”

Mr Bottelli added: “If you send your car to the garage to fix it and it’s not ready tonight, you go tomorrow.

“Here I cannot tell you that your steak is not ready so come back tomorrow morning. That will not happen. Sometimes on a good Friday we serve about 700-800 people between the three locations. So there is a lot of food to be served, a lot of preparation.”