Hamish and Max are The Flavour Fellas: two cooks with, by their own account, one shared brain. They joined us in Earls Court for their first-ever Supper Session.

Before service, we pulled them aside for a few quick questions. Holidays planned around food, a jar of anchovies and the reason sweetcorn will never make their menu.

A podcast in the car

It started with a mutual best friend. “He was my best mate on my ski season, and Max’s best friend at university,” says Hamish. Every year at that friend’s birthday, the two of them ended up paired together, including on the drive home.

One drive stood out. “We were both really hungover, and we just talked about food.” When they got back, they ordered each other’s favourite delivery. “On that conversation, I was like, you know what? There’s something here.”

As they put it, “It was basically like a podcast in the car.” A year later, here they are.

One brain, two cooks

Ask what they’d say about each other and the answer comes in stereo. “We’re very similar. We’re in each other’s heads. We finish each other’s sentences.”

That’s the whole point of the partnership. “To be a cook, to be in food, you have to back yourself,” they say. “We both know each other’s strengths. That’s why there’s two of us. We pick up each other’s weaknesses.”

And how many weaknesses between them? “Zero. If it was just one of us, loads. But between us, we’ve got it covered.”

Competitive, on and off court

They’re both competitive. “It stems from the kitchen into anything we do.” They haven’t played padel together yet, with Hamish out injured, but the rematch is already booked in their heads. “When he’s back, I’m going to destroy.”

Who’s more likely to trash talk mid-match? “100% Max.” He doesn’t argue. “That’s kind of my game. Get in the head from the start. I’ll lay the groundwork before the game and then just slowly work it up.”

Eat like a local

Favourite holiday destination purely for food gets the same answer from both: San Sebastián, hands down. “Just the whole experience. All standing, all sharing, loads of booze. Perfect. So many options: bar hopping, eating and drinking.”

Street food or fine dining? Street food, without hesitation. “You will find a way better meal if you go off the beaten track and get street food.” On a recent trip to Istanbul, “all the best food we had was on the street. Plastic chair.”

Fine dining doesn’t get much of a look-in. “You don’t need the seven courses. You’ve forgotten what you had on the first course by the end.”

If they could eat only one cuisine forever, one of them goes straight for dim sum, “my favourite food on the planet.” The other picks Thai, at least for now. “It’s good for our menu.”

No guilt, all anchovies

Guilty pleasure snack? “I’ll just get a jar of anchovies and eat all of them in about ten seconds.”

In San Sebastián, that’s called a pintxo. Honestly, quite civilised.

The sweetcorn incident

The food opinion they disagree on most starts with sweet things. One of them won’t go near sweet food. Then there’s sweetcorn.

“I can’t cook with sweetcorn. Ever,” says Max. That’s down to Hamish, and he has his reasons. At a festival, a friend who’d been eating tinned sweetcorn left the tin out. “I ended up standing on it and slicing my foot open on the Saturday. Had to get stitches and do the whole festival.”

“For years I was like, what’s your reason?” says Max. “And that’s it. Real trauma.”

Until next year. See you at the table.