He was trained at the Savoy, gained a Michelin star, was named European chef of the year and cooked for the Queen Mother. And now Freddie Jones has pitched up in Diss to cook for dinner party hosts and office workers with a taste for the gourmet but little time.

He was trained at the Savoy, gained a Michelin star, was named European chef of the year and cooked for the Queen Mother.

And now Freddie Jones has pitched up in Diss to cook for dinner party hosts and office workers with a taste for the gourmet but little time.

But his new venture, Fredrick's Fine Foods, is no restaurant, delicatessen or catering company.

Instead it is a whole new concept, something Mr Jones and his wife, Linda, have been planning for years - and something the 61-year-old now describes as his "retirement project".

In an open-plan ultra-modern kitchen, among the cafés, restaurants and health food shops of the chic Norfolk House Courtyard, off St Nicholas Street, Mr Jones can be found beavering away in front of a vast stainless steel stove.

On it he spends the day preparing a series of gourmet dishes that customers come in, buy, take home, reheat and serve.

Mr Jones also takes bespoke orders for dinner parties, sourcing all ingredients locally, giving hosts the chance to impress by serving exquisite food, while hardly having to enter the kitchen.

But if customers prefer, they can just sit and watch the chef prepare other people's meals for half an hour before leaving with a jar of chutney from ingredients grown in his two-and-a-half acre garden in nearby Burston.

"The idea is that people come to us for whatever meal they need prepared," he said. "I've cheffed all my life and in my mind I always thought it would be nice to do something like this. People love to watch chefs on the television, which is why I've opened up the kitchen.

"As far as I know this is the first time something like this has been attempted in the UK, though the format is popular in France."

Fredrick's Fine Foods opened just before Christmas with no publicity but already has a loyal client-base from much of Norfolk and Suffolk.