A BRIDPORT author and chef who now heads a chain of restaurants including The Ivy will be back in town for a literary lunch next month.

Mark Hix, chef director of The Caprice Group, which includes The Ivy, J Sheekey and Le Caprice restaurants, will be at the Riverside Restaurant on Tuesday, October 12, at 12.15pm to talk about his new book Fish etc.

The book takes a fresh look at fish with more than 150 modern and accessible fish dishes to suit any occasion.

Even though fish is becoming fashionable the majority of home cooks look on fish as 'difficult' or 'unexciting' and so Mark, who has been passionate about fish since his seaside childhood in Dorset, has set out to change that.

The first part of the book gives instructions for all the basics to help the reader handle fish and seafood with confidence.

Included is advice on buying and storing, gutting and filleting, preserving fish, and even dressing crab. Throughout the book there are features on the cooking techniques commonly used with fish, from grilling and roasting to deep frying. There are also ideas and suggestions on the best easy sauces and accompaniments plus sections on healthy fish, posh fish, fast fish and comfort fish.

Mark writes a weekly food column for the Independent on Saturday Magazine, for which he won the Glenfiddich Newspaper Cookery Writer of the Year in 2003. He is also author of Eat Up, a cookbook aimed at getting children to eat properly, and Simple Ways to Success: British. Together with AA Gill, he wrote The Ivy - The Restaurant and Its Recipes and the Le Caprice Cookbook.

Growing up in Dorset with all its wonderful fresh foods may have been the reason Mark Hix chose to be a chef.

It may have been the smell of his granny's homecooked ham or the fact that dad Ernie ran a social club in Beaminster or even that he was allowed to practise cooking at the Bridport Arms in West Bay when he was on leave from Weymouth College.

But, according to the local boy made top chef, it was his life-changing decision to choose domestic science over metalwork at the end of the fifth form that clinched it - followed by the inspirational Laurie Mills at Weymouth College.

He had no idea what he wanted to do when he left school, but coming top in domestic science might have given him a hint. Mark's new book is published by Quadrille at £18.99 hardback.