EXCLUSIVE

Even when he won MasterChef: The Professionals in 2016, Gary Maclean - a former restaurant head chef turned senior lecturer in Professional Cookery at City of Glasgow College - defied expectations that he would open his own restaurant. Instead, he surprised many by announcing he would stick to food education. In his role as Scotland’s first National Chef, to which he was appointed in 2017, the father-of-five has made sure education remains central to his remit, travelling throughout Scotland and all over the world with talks and demonstrations highlighting Scotland’s traditional food culture and its quality produce. His cookbook, Kitchen Essentials (Black & White Publishing), further emphasises his passion for teaching home cooks who never learned how to produce a meal from scratch either from their own parents or at school.

I asked him for his views on how lockdown had affected his pet professions of education and hospitality.

“I’m a glass-half-full person and I’m trying to bring the positives in,” he began. “I think this is an opportunity for teaching and learning to be better. From an educational point of view a lot is going to change and there are some really good ideas currently being discussed for the future re-opening of the College. Our department went paperless a few years ago, so students are used to virtual learning online and we can continue to develop that. For practical cookery we are looking at smaller class sizes with more work being covered. With fewer students in each class you can add more in.”

His livesteamed demonstrations and online recipes ideas have so far attracted over one million views worldwide since lockdown began.

While he is glad lockdown has encouraged more people to cook from scratch at home, often for the first time and with the help of chefs’ livestreamed demonstrations, he also hopes that if and when they can go to restaurants again, diners will appreciate them more.

“People are now seeing cooking as part of their lives, and they are buying better ingredients direct from local independent suppliers to cook at home, and that’s a great thing,” he says. “I’ve said before that a generational change is needed [in order to improve the population’s health and attitudes towards food], and I reckon this lockdown has jumped that.

“Many parents are cooking for the first time. Every day I’m getting messaged for recipe ideas and how to use up cupboard ingredients. It’s unbelievable. Barriers are being broken down. Confidence is coming with increasing knowledge. People are learning that making your own curry is so much better than getting a microwaveable ready meal from the supermarket. I hope they’ll be less likely to go back to the rubbish convenience stuff, ordering in cheap takeaways three times a week.

“There is a lot of good coming out of this and I hope these changes last a long time.”

This, plus home deliveries of chef-prepared restaurant meals, could in future help diners appreciate what goes into a quality restaurant experience, and be willing to pay the price for it.

“Twenty years ago eating out was a special occasion but recently it had become a race to the bottom with cheap deals, all-you-can-eat, and so on, leading to a lack of respect for the industry from the public,” he says.

He has huge empathy for the current plight of the hospitality industry and his fellow chefs and restaurateurs, many of whom remain his close friends. “Chefs are very hard-working and they want to be doing something. It’s amazing that those who are doing the most are the ones that have lost the most. Finding new ways of working - be it live demos, doing takeaway, writing recipes, cooking for charity - is almost like a ‘phoenix irisng from the ashes’ moment and it shows how keen they are to keep working.”

While discussions are ongoing about how best to re-open restaurants safely and profitably - and amid fears of permanent closures and enforced redundancies when the government furlough scheme requires employers to pay ever-increasing percentages of staff wages from August - Maclean suggests that in future menus will be smaller with fewer choices at those restaurants that can re-open.

“I think menus will be shorter and simpler, and changing more often, in order to maximise a potentially reduced and distanced kitchen brigade,” he says. “Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

“Menus cluttered with multi-choice courses and various add-ons could be a thing of the past because they require lots of kitchen staff falling over themselves to do everything at once, and the volume of ingredients used are both colossal and wasteful. A simpler menu can mean a better working environment and heightened quality of dishes.

“Provenance has been increasingly important for diners but the pandemic has made us more aware of the need to keep local businesses going. I reckon buying and eating local will become even more important for most diners and restaurants than it is now. They will want to be supporting their farmers, butchers, fishermen, fishmongers and producers.”

Meantime, he continues doing live demonstrations beamed around the world from his kitchen at home via Facebook and Zoom - a huge change from travelling all over the world with his remit at City of Glasgow College and also as Scotland’s national chef.

“During lockdown I decided to continue my travels from my own kitchen, as I felt it was important the Scottish food and culture was still in people's minds all over the world,” he explains. “The reaction has been unbelievable, with tens of thousands of people tuning in live from every part of the world.

Gary Maclean preparing a cooking demonstration for Cuba from his kitchen at home, filmed by his student daughter Laura. Two of his young sons look on.

He has tied in with some big American Scottish institutions such as New York Tartan Week, Scot Week, Los Angeles and Chicago Scots. He also wrote the Mother’s Day menu and sent a video for a Scottish Care Home in Chicago.

On the other side of the world he worked with rhe International Institute of Hotel Management, the largest Hospitality school in Asia, and did a live class for 10 of their campuses, where over 500 young chefs tuned in.

On Wednesday [May 27] he will do a Scottish demo for the people of Cuba. The video, filmed by his daughter Laura (above), a student at City of Glasgow College, will be recorded and translated, as Cuba has very little internet.

“I truly feel my international responsibilites a have somehow been made easier and have offered our friends in far flung countries a bit of an escape,” he says.