It’s a perfect summer’s day at a perfect house in rural Oxfordshire, and the Warner family is preparing for lunch. As the kids run around on the lawn, the grown-ups turn their attention to the important matter of grub. There’s a spinach tart to be cooked, a strawberry fool to be whipped up. This is a family where food comes first — so much so that they’ve forgotten to buy any booze and send a friend on a mercy mission to the offie.

Orchestrating the culinary proceedings are Ben and Hugo, two of the nine siblings who make up the Warner clan. It’s a big family — the brothers and sisters have 22 kids and counting. It’s also a hugely successful one: three have ended up as medics, two are journalists, one is an architect and one a coffee trader.

Then there’s Ben and Hugo — each of them one half of two sets of twins — who trained as chefs. It was a smart move.

Ben ended up as one of the first Pret a Manger franchisees, a decision that, by his own admission, has given him a lifestyle he would otherwise never have had, and Hugo became a chef for Harvey Nichols. Ten years ago, they teamed up to open the upmarket sandwich and salad bar Benugo (Ben-Hugo, geddit?), offering an alternative to what Ben calls the “urban acne” of one-size-fits-all mega-chains. They've never looked back.

Benugo ticks all the right boxes — where possible, ingredients are Fairtrade, organic and locally sourced. It’s food that relies on good produce rather than culinary complication. “We’re not Heston Blumenthal or Gordon Ramsay,” Ben says. “We’re not going for Michelin stars, we’re just going for good, honest food.”

Like a lot of chefs, they credit their mother’s cooking as their inspiration. Some of the cakes they sell are based on her recipes. “Our mother was a fantastic cook,” Ben says. “As children, if we came into the house and there wasn’t the smell of cooking, it was pretty depressing.”

Hugo talks with fondness about childhood summers at the family holiday home in Pembrokeshire, which is still the venue for big family gatherings. The only arguments, according to Ben, revolve around food. “There’s a lot of discussion about how long the meal is going to last — whether it’s going to be a five- or six-course extravaganza. A lot of the day will be focused on trying to get a lobster or going to the local farmer for nice herbs. Sometimes, when other people turn up and ask why we can’t just worry about what we’re going to do during the day, there’s this deadly silence.”

The brothers’ love of food has clearly paid off. Despite the general climate of financial despondency, Benugo is thriving. They have also become the acceptable face of public catering, with cafes at the V&A and the Museum of Childhood, and a restaurant at the BFI. “We’re trying to recapture the flavours of the food we grew up with,” Hugo says. “After all, nobody cooks like your mother.”

benugo.com

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