Multiple choice (longer text)

Every Saturday morning, a queue forms at a small stall in the corner of Hartley Market. Behind the counter is nineteen-year-old Tomasz Kowal, who sells soup and fresh bread that he makes himself. Two years ago, he had never cooked anything more difficult than pasta.

“At school I wanted to study engineering,” Tomasz explains. “Cooking was just something my grandmother did.” Everything changed when she broke her arm and he had to help her in the kitchen for six weeks. “She told me what to do and I did it. At first I was terrible. I burned the onions almost every day, but she never let me give up.”

After that, Tomasz started cooking for his family at weekends. His friends tried his food at a birthday party and asked him to cook for their parties too. “That’s when I thought I could earn some money from it,” he says. He got a part-time job washing dishes in a restaurant so that he could watch the chefs and learn from them.

Opening the stall was harder than he expected. He had to take a food safety course and borrow money from his uncle to buy equipment. “The first month was awful. Some Saturdays I sold only ten bowls of soup and took the rest home.” Instead of giving up, he asked customers what they wanted. Many said they would like something warm they could eat while walking around the market, so he started selling his soup in paper cups.

Now the stall makes enough money for Tomasz to pay back his uncle, and he plans to start a cookery course at college in September. “I don’t want to open a big restaurant,” he says. “I like talking to people while they eat. At a market you see their faces, and that’s the best part of the job.”