The young cook is all about having fun with food and bringing in the Caribbean flavours of his heritage. Prudence Wade finds out more. While you might struggle to get many 12-year-olds to eat their veg, Omari McQueen isn t your average tween. Not only has McQueen been vegan since he was eight years old, but his CV reads like that of a seasoned chef: running a pop-up restaurant, selling a range of dips, presenting a cooking show on CBBC - and now publishing his own cookbook. McQueen fell in love with food by accident. When my mum was sick, my dad taught me how to cook when he was going to work, he explains. He taught me and my older brother how to warm up food and do the basics, but I wanted to get more into it and actually use the stove, learn how to fry and chop things.