"I want to help young chefs as Andrew Fairlie helped me": Lorna McNee on moving from Gleneagles to Glasgow

EXCLUSIVE

Chef Lorna McNee’s imminent arrival in Glasgow from Gleneagles is sure to have an electrifying effect on the city’s restaurant scene. The move, just as lockdown eases, is as timely as it’s thrilling.

Lorna, 33, has spent almost her entire career in Scotland’s only two Michelin star kitchen. She joined Restaurant Andrew Fairlie at the Gleneagles Hotel as an apprentice in October 2008, after asking him for a job, and under the late chef’s watchful eye gradually moved from the Larder section to chef de partie and then to sous-chef. Encouraged and supported by chef Andrew, who died in 2019, and by head chef Stevie McLaughlin, she entered prestigious competitions (I first met her in 2016 when she won Game Chef of the Year) and she was named Scottish Chef of the Year in 2017. She won the Great British Menu competition in 2019.

Now, after almost 12 years, she’s set to take over the kitchen of one of the city’s independent fine-dining restaurants as head chef – and has been given free reign to recruit her own brigade.

Lorna hasn’t publicly said where she is going (though I gather it’s an open secret in cheffy circles). The jungle drums are beating. Glasgow, as everyone knows, doesn’t have a Michelin star. It hasn’t had one since 2003, when Gordon Ramsay closed his Amaryllis restaurant at One Devonshire Gardens (though I love the synchronicity that its star was a continuation of the first star Lorna’s late mentor Andrew Fairlie attracted for the restaurant in 1996 when it was owned by Glasgow hotelier Ken McCulloch. Also that she did a two-week stage with Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s while still a student at Moray College in Elgin).

Will Lorna turn the tide and get the city its first Michelin star for 17 years?

“I’m not going to say I’m aiming for a star, though it would be amazing for Glasgow to get one,” she says when we distance-meet in Glasgow on the condition that I won’t reveal the restaurant’s name (the owners want to make their own fanfare nearer the August opening, and I’m happy to play ball: securing Lorna is a major coup for them). “It’s not about that for me. A lot of what I’ll do is what I’ve taken from chef Andrew: good local ingredients cooked simply and well. Whatever comes after that is a bonus.”

A more pragmatic reason for making her move - after much soul-searching - is that she becomes head chef for the first time. “It's been a really hard decision to leave Stevie, Russell and the team, but for the benefit of their kitchen and for my career it’s the right thing to do,” she says. “I want to take the first step as head chef. If I’d stayed put I’d never have got there. Also, it’s nice to give other young chefs the opportunity to grow. I felt that if I didn’t make room for them they’d be denied the chance to move up too.

“I’m taking on a new learning curve. Learning how to bring people in and manage them, and finding my cooking style. Chef Stevie has said he thinks I have got a style. I want to see what that is.” Can she describe it? “I can’t see it yet.”

So I ask head chef Stevie, with whom she has worked since the beginning. “Lorna works with her fingertips and on the balls of her feet,” he says. “She is a talented chef and she does everything with great strength, physically and mentally. She has huge creative passion. What goes on the plate is flavour-driven and done with real finesse and elegance. [continues …]

Lorna McNee with her late mentor Andrew Fairlie, above; and with Stevie McLaughlin, right.

On her move to Glasgow, he adds: “It is the right time for Lorna to do her own thing, to seek her fortune elsewhere and to learn the ropes of running of a business rather than a section. There will be things in her that haven’t come out yet. This move gives her the freedom to create her own dishes, and I hope in Glasgow she finds other creative people to influence her.

“The expectation of what she’ll bring to Glasgow is huge because of where she comes from. What needs to be made clear is that Andrew would be incredibly proud of her moving on like this. I know that all she wants is for chef Andrew to be proud of her.

“For my part, I’ll be her best pal forever. I’m very pleased to be able to use her as a shining example to my own young chefs at Restaurant Andrew Fairlie.”

Lorna has now left Restaurant Andrew Fairlie. She’s started recruiting her new brigade for Glasgow, and I ask if she’s headhunted anyone from other restaurants.

“I’m not a poacher,” she says. “There are people at other Michelin starred places who want to come and work with me, but I’m friends with their head chefs so I wouldn’t do that. “If it happens that they become free later on, that’s fine.

“But right now I’m looking to where I came from: straight from college, all shiny and new. I got to become an apprentice with Andrew Fairlie just after finishing college, and there’s no reason not to take someone fresh out of college. They can become great chefs under the right direction. I want to show them how happy this job can make you.

“I want to be a mentor, a leader – not a dictator. I want to do for young chefs what chef Andrew did for me, while supporting Glasgow’s and Scotland’s food culture at the same time.”

I ask what she learned from over a decade at the famous Gleneagles restaurant. She doesn’t hesitate.

“Discipline. It’s massive. How to present yourself. Polished shoes. Washed and ironed jacket. Fresh apron. So when you cook you’ll always be clean.

“Always work in the same manner. Work left to right, no mess, always tidy. If you look messy you’ll work messy and your food will be messy.

“That was instilled in me and it will never leave me.”

So, be prepared then, anybody who works with her? “I’ll be instilling that in my team,” she says with a grin, adding: “The other thing I learned is now to be humble. There’s always something new to learn, always someone to help. It’s important to understand there’s always someone better coming up behind you. Just be nice to people. Treat them the way you’d like to be treated.”

So no place for shouting in her kitchen? “Eh, no.” Silence (apart, perhaps, from the sound of digital timers going off) was one of the stand-out features of chef Andrew’s kitchen too.

While all this is ongoing, she is also preparing for her September wedding to her long-term partner Dawn McIntyre, who also works at Gleneagles. They will remain in Auchterarder, with Lorna commuting to Glasgow.

She isn’t looking to build an all-female kitchen, and refutes the notion of feminine food.

“I don’t think there’s such a thing. Food isn’t feminine because of the way it looks. I think it’s about a lightness of touch that isn’t necessarily a woman’s. Chef Andrew had an amazing way of moving his hands that was light and elegant. You’d plate something and he’d come over and move a few things and instantly make it more elegant.”

Neither will she engage in the debate about women chefs being different from male. “I hate the whole female-male chef thing. We’re there to do a job – to be a chef. Whether you’re a boy or a girl will make no difference in my eyes.”

That said, the living chef she most admires is Clare Smythe. “She’s phenomenal. I went to eat at hers [Core restaurant in London’s Kensington] with chef Stevie and it was like being in an operating theatre. You walk past the open kitchen to get to your table and it was so quiet and clean. Her food is so flavoursome. Every element of a dish punches flavour and all the flavours are defined. Nothing in there muddles with the flavours that are meant to be. Straight away I thought, ‘I’d like to be like you one day’.”

Observing that diners are eating lighter and healthier now than when she started out, she says her tasting and a la carte menus will reflect that, with vegetable and plant-based dishes alongside meat and fish. One of her new dishes in development is an onion consommé with braised onion shell stuffed with Jerusalem artichoke, morels, girolles and chive oil. Further hints of what’s to come lie in Josh Niland’s The Whole Fish Cookbook, the first cookbook she has purchased in years; she also treasures John Campbell’s Formulas for Flavour, given to her as a birthday gift by chef Stevie in 2015.

She’s got plans for how her new Pass will look. “I’m ditching the metal cutlery jugs for bespoke pottery ones, and will show off the pots and pans a bit more. There may be food photography on the walls. It will look pretty.”

A small and subtle nod to femininity; potentially a giant leap for Glasgow gastronomy.

©️CateDevine

[Main image: I took this photograph of Lorna in Glasgow last week after her meeting with the owners of her new restaurant. I tried to make the location as neutral as possible, since the name of the restaurant is meant to be a secret until the official announcement!]

"Transitioning to takeaway meant bringing in the expert": how one chef embraced digital pivoting during lockdown

Digital pivoting has emerged as one of the new buzzphrases during the pandemic – and especially so in hospitality. Being forced by lockdown to find new ways to survive now and into the future means restaurateurs are entering new territory: The Takeaway.

Offering meals to collect from the restaurant or have delivered to homes not only means re-thinking the creative working week in the kitchen: it also require expertise in user-friendly, efficient and effective online management. Since this is a relatively novel skill that many chefs aren’t traditionally trained in, or have had the time to learn, how do they make this vital transition?

To get an insight I spoke with Andrew Moss, above, chef-patron of The North Port family-run restaurant in Perth, who launched an At Home menu earlier this month with the help of his friend and former colleague, the Glasgow-based marketing and events professional Rachel Edwards (below).

The restaurant offers click-and-collect or home delivery menu of hot dishes on Friday, Saturday and Sunday - a seismic shift from running the restaurant five days from Tuesday through Saturday. It has sold out since the June 5 launch.

“We’d never done much social media before lockdown because we didn’t really have to,” says chef Moss, who runs North Port with his wife Karen. “Doing takeaway for the first time since we opened eight years ago means we’ve had to have a total re-think and be super-organised, and it would not have been as successful as it has been so far without Rachel’s expertise.

“Setting up a workable online booking system with pre-payment was absolutely vital, not only because handling cash is not viable at the moment, but also because people want to come and pick up and leave quickly so the food stays as hot as possible.”

The first task for Rachel - who has 17 years’ experience in the Scottish hospitality and events industry, co-founded Galvanize Events and whose most recent projects include the Clydebuilt Festival in partnership with the Clyde Maritime Trust; The Tall Ship at Riverside Museum, Glasgow; the 2014 Commonwealth Games; and Cameron House Hotel Loch Lomond - was to set up the social media strategy to promote the new North Port At Home takeaway menu.

Andrew offers an a la carte choice of four starters, four mains and four desserts plus two side options of home-baked bread and cultured butter, plus a wide range of matched wines - not as straightforward for him as doing a set menu might be.

The next stage was equally important.

“Updating the restaurant website and making the At Home menu more visible on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram was paramount,” she explains. The first FB post announcing the launch of the At Home menu had an organic reach of over 18,000 people within hours.

Writing regular website content, thanking everybody for their orders, sharing customer photographs and replying to comments personally is also part of Rachel’s job.

Online presence has its advantages for the kitchen, too: social media updates trigger immediate booking responses.

“Being able to use my phone to click into the ResDiary bookings as the week progresses has been really handy,” says Andrew. “I can see if I need to get 10 beef and five crab ready, for example, so it allows me to source and prepare throughout the week.”

How is doing takeaway different from running the restaurant? “Our working days have shifted from Tuesday through Saturday to Friday, Saturday and Sunday and it’s more intense on those days,” he says. “People are working from home and cooking meals all week, so they see the weekend as time for a break and a treat, and we’re happy to accommodate that shift for them.”

Although they are cooking fewer meals than before – around half the number they would do over five days – the work is more concentrated over their three operational days compared to the previous five, and with a much smaller team.

Will he keep the takeaway offer once restaurants are allowed to re-open? “We’d rather do this than not do it,” he says. “Looking towards when we are allowed to re-open we’ll continue to offer takeaway for a wee while in addition to the restaurant. If the two-metre distancing rule is retained, we will not re-open. But if it’s reduced to one metre, we’ll be just about ok, so we’ll continue to do both.

“The takeaway menu is simplified so it travels well for delivery. But we’re already seeing people booking every weekend, so we enjoy a lot of repeat business from loyal customers, which we’re extremely grateful for.”

He adds that while many restaurants in Glasgow and Edinburgh are doing ‘finish at home’ takeaway menus with lots of boxes and tubs and cooking instructions, that wouldn’t work in Perth, which is a much smaller city.

“We want to offer our customers an easier more convenient option, which is hot restaurant quality food, ready to eat at home,” says Andrew.

I wonder if awareness of the restaurant is growing via social media. “Another positive of this new way of working online is that we may make restaurant quality food more accessible to people who might not normally visit The North Port.

“I hope that through this digital pivoting experience with the addition of word-of-mouth we’ll get a wider reach when the restaurant does re-open.

“It would not have been possible to even contemplate that without Rachel.”

For her part, Rachel - who has just joined Glasgow Community Food Network as logistics co-ordinator - says believing in the product was a huge motivator for her. “Mutual trust is vital in a venture like this.

“It’s so easy to work with a restaurant that is already successful and I’m happy to have had the opportunity to work with Andrew and Karen during this difficult time. Running a restaurant and producing amazing food is not the same as organising its social media. Andrew is the one with the vision,” she says.

“It’s also very encouraging to see customers being so loyal and enthusiastic during this trying time for restaurants. North Port’s success is not down to me. I’m just a link in the chain.”

Andrew adds: “Doing At Home takeaway is about keeping our name out there, raising awareness, highlighting your profile and keeping your and your staff’s skills up while lockdown continues. It would be too easy to just disappear.”

Text ©️CateDevine

Photo credits: Fraser Band Photography/Jemma Wood.

The mystery of the Michelin star chef who can't even get a job picking fruit

Exclusive

One of Scotland’s top chefs is currently out of work – and he can’t even get a job picking fruit.

Graeme Cheevers, who has held a Michelin star at two Scottish restaurants for eight consecutive years, first applied for work at several Scottish farms after news emerged in April that there was a need for thousands of UK-based fruit and vegetable pickers to replace the overseas workers who normally arrive to pick crops during the season but had been prevented from travelling due mainly to the coronavirus lockdown. UK Government advertisements urging furloughed and out of work workers to Pick for Britain ran in the mainstream media, and the campaign was backed by Prince Charles. By May only around one-third of overseas workers had arrived, and there was a shortfall of supply from the UK. The National Farmers Union in Scotland (NFUS) also helped suport the industry by flagging up vacancies on its website fo link applicants with farms.

Yet Chef Cheevers, 30, who gained a Michelin star first for Restaurant Martin Wishart at Loch Lomond at Cameron House and more recently at Isle of Eriska in Argyll, has been repeatedly told there is no work available at the 20 Scottish farms he has applied to from the start of lockdown. Even now, at the height of the strawberry season, several farms are still advertising for workers. And it’s not just for soft fruit: many need people to harvest other fruit and vegetables right into the autumn.

The NFUS says Scotland needed 10,000 seasonal workers to get its world-class soft fruit and fresh produce out of the fields and into shops and supermarkets. A spokesman added: “I can’t think of any barriers to people in the food industry applying for these jobs.”

Cheevers, who is based in Glasgow, said: “I’m very hard-working and physically fit, and find myself unemployed for the first time in my life.

“I’m trying to do something to help the economy recover and to keep the food chain running smoothly. Unlike many of my chef friends I’m not in a position to start a takeaway service or do online cooking tutorials, although I applaud them for doing it. I’d rather go back to basics and help keep the local food chain running smoothly. To do my bit, as it were, especially when it appeared that British people weren’t interested in helping this sector.

“I’ve always been interested in where our food comes from and how we get food from the farm to the table, so I am keen to use this as an opportunity to not only extend my knowledge, but also help the Scottish economy and potentially earn some money while the lockdown remains in place.

“However, I’ve discovered it’s not as easy as I thought it would be. After applying to 20 Scottish farms, I’ve been turned away by all of them. I’ve said I would be happy to work any shifts they required me to do and that I could stay for as long as needed. Most haven’t replied. Some have thanked me for my application but have said onsite accommodation was full. When I said I could stay with family nearby, they then said there were no vacancies left.” This has happened three times, the last being only yesterday [June 17].

“I get the feeling they don’t want local workers and would prefer to recruit from abroad,” said Cheevers.

“The online application form for overseas workers ask when they can start, but for Scottish hopefuls like me they seem to be throwing up hurdles. Maybe they are worried that we’ll abandon ship as soon as we get work in our own field. But I don’t have any other plans or commitments, and I have made it clear that I’d commit to staying for the season or as long as required.

“I keep being put off. At first I was advised to wait until the middle of May when more jobs would come up, then it was mid-June. Now I’m told all jobs are taken. And the same has happened to many of my own chefs also looking for work.

“It seems to me that all those government advertisements were meaningless. It really annoys me when people say British workers are lazy and don’t want the work.”

A spokesman for the NFUS said: “We still have farms advertising places. We did have almost 30 at the start but every week or so we contact the farms asking if they still want the availability of jobs kept on our website.

“There is a feeling that once furlough starts to roll back some more places will become available in Scotland.

“We are only just getting into peak season for strawberries – raspberries are later in the season, and veg will be a bit later again – so the 10,000 places is across the whole fruit and veg season rather than all being required on day one.”

[Text and photo ©️CateDevine]

ENDS

Now 'seasonal and Scottish' are the hottest ingredients in the UK's hippest soda brand

Softness, subtlety and sophistication aren’t usually associated with the cracking open of a can of pop. More often, what hits first is that all-too-familiar combo of harsh carbonation, hyper-sweetness and unchanging flavour from first sip to last.

But Gregor Leckie’s Glasgow-based Rapscallion brand of hand-engineered fresh fruit sodas has been slowly challenging consumer tastes and is now making serious inroads in a UK soft drinks market that already has a staggering 273 brands all jostling for attention.

His latest flavour, Rhubarb S_01 Sour Face Pull - the first in a new series using seasonal Scottish soft fruits - shifted 2500 cans in the week before its official lockdown launch purely via social media and without any advertising.

Not bad for his first step into the all-important digital pivot, or leap to online marketing, which has become the way forward for many in food and drink during the pandemic lockdown. (Leckie’s growing list of restaurant and bar clients disappeared overnight when they were forced to close indefinitely.)

When I first wrote about Rapscallion in 2016, it was after meeting Leckie (whom I photographed at the time, above), a GP’s son from Edinburgh, in his tiny lab in the Gallowgate in Glasgow’s East End and he had just launched his ground-breaking brand. Surrounded by tanks, tubes, bags and canisters. He looked for all the world like a modern-day alchemist and now, in retrospect, very Breaking Bad. He was actually developing his unique technique for cold-infusing his fresh fruits with a range of spices and herbs – a slow process that enhances flavour and avoids the need for artificial additives - and tweaking his carbonisation process. He was testing the brand with “taster kegs” at pop-up events and talking to top restaurateurs. He moved larger scale a year later and is now in hip new premises in the Gorbals.

But his ambition remains as firm as ever: to “start an awkward conversation with the soft drinks industry without trying to preach to people”. Hence the name Rapscallion, meaning iconoclast or rebel.

The 33 year old’s product chimes with the current foodie obsession with provenance. “I’m not aiming to take out Schweppes but I do want to start a counter-culture,” he told me.

I got to sample Rhubarb S_01 on a Zoom media launch with Leckie himself hosting. It was a most spectacular and surprising taste sensation: on its own, a hit of intense very slightly sour yet sweet rhubarb flavour in the mouth in a light fizz, with the nose registering grapefruit and very subtle floral lift of pepperiness. It was almost like a wine tasting. Indeed, the wine writer Peter Ranscombe has already expertly described Rhubarb S_01 as having “a vegetal whiff of wet leaf on the nose and then a bitter tang on the finish”. When sampled with botanical gin it complemented and enhanced it.

Rhubarb S_01 with ice and grapefruit wedge and Sichuan pepper: I love its delicate pink colour.

The rhubarb is from Fraser McDonald’s farm in Arbroath, and is infused with candied pink grapefruit zest and Sichuan pepper with a touch of raw organic cane sugar. It’s very delicate in colour. To illustrate how different parts of the fruit make for different flavours, we tried the soda with three different expressions of grapefruit: whole grapefruit sous-vide in rhubarb sugar; grapefruit wedges with Sichuan pepper, to show the intense aroma of the pepper (see right); and zest on its own, to highlight the bright bitter oils released in the glass. The addition of gin or vodka was optional. Ice altered perceptions too.

Leckie explained: “Rhubarb is one of the simplest drinks we do, but it’s exciting to play with different batches. Some people find rhubarb intensely grapefruity, and rhubarb changes its flavour as it matures, so we can adjust the balance between them as the season develops.”

Strawberry with Scotch Bonnet chilli (S_02), and Raspberry with oats, lemon zest and star anise (S_03) will follow as the Scottish soft fruits come into season. This makes the sodas tantalisingly short-batch and limited edition, as well as local and seasonal. They will join Rapscallion’s core range of Ginger Ninja with pimento and lemon zest (C_01), Burnt Lemon with charred zest and coriander seed (C_02) and Dry Lime with rind, saffron, lime leaf (C_03).

I love the packaging by Freytag Anderson, the German-Scots design studio based in Glasgow and Oban. “We wanted to build on the subversive, rebellious nature of the Rapscallion name and better communicate the all natural ingredients,” they explain. “A sterile approach to layout, bold use of colour and minimal type treatments help to differentiate core range and seasonal product lines. The deliberate short stop label highlights the cans base metal, hinting at a more clinical and scientific approach to production.”

Leckie’s sodas, on their own or with white spirits like gin, vodka or Tequila, don't flood the tastebuds like some mass-market brands, and as mixers they're intended to compliment rather than dominate botanical craft spirits. At the moment they are 60:40 soft drinks to mixers, though Leckie has mixed alcoholic drinks in the pipeline in collaboration with the likes of Scots brands Arbikie and Porter’s, and he hinted that the Ginger Ninja works well with a Lowland Malt. Rhubarb S_01 goes really well with gin.

He’s naturally hesitant to divulge the exact process he’s taken years to perfect. And with good reason. It’s surely only a matter of time before the big brands look to tap into the emerging market Leckie has so beautifully and painstakingly curated.

©️CateDevine

"I like to think we put a bee in the bonnet of the Scottish food revival."

EXCLUSIVE

I caught up with Ben Reade - former head of research and development at Noma’s Nordic Food Lab in Denmark - to talk about the future for his Edinburgh Food Studio following the decision to close its doors after five years, in part due to lockdown and its devastating long-term effect on restaurant closures.

In fact, the five-year lease on the EFS premises on Edinburgh’s Dalkeith Road was up for renewal on June 1. Reade decided to call it quits.

“It’s bittersweet,” he told me. “It hasn’t gone according to plan. You can get really upset about what’s happening just now, or just accept it. Being able to walk away from the lease just now, as things are looking so bad for restaurants, is actually an advantage because that site – much as we loved it - was never going to work with social distancing. So I see this as an opportunity, a blessing in many ways.

“Lots of other interesting sites will come up in Edinburgh. All sorts of opportunities will raise their heads. We’re not done as a company yet. We will bounce back in one form or another. But there’s no point in opening anything during lockdown.”

He is grateful still to have The Company Bakery, the Edinburgh bread co-operative he runs with four other stakeholders and six full-time bakers. When lockdown began and restaurant customers closed, they lost 85% of their business overnight. Now they deliver award-winning sourdough made with 80% Scottish-milled flour wholesale and direct to over 500 customers across the city. During lockdown demand has grown and they are now supplement box deliveries and restaurant takeaway menus too.

“Bread is about redefining what’s important, what really counts, for people at the moment. I feel we’re part of a growing community that has had to stop going to restaurants and is now buying better locally produced food to cook and eat at home. We’re part of the changing food culture.”

All the same, he admits he’s “really aching” to get back to the “touchy-feely” society we were before Covid-19 and the conviviality of eating together in restaurants.

“We still have the Edinburgh Food Studio (EFS) brand. I don’t know what form it will take yet. We’ve got to stay on our toes, weather the storm, and take time to work out what’s to be done.”

EFS was a restaurant but also a research hub that hosted many international interns. What does he feel EFS achieved? “I think we helped build new respect for local producers and products, and a recognition for Scottish food. We were part of a wider food movement, but I reckon we put a bee under the bonnet of the Scots food culture revival, and got things moving.”

He seems particularly proud of the guest-chef pop-up events.

“I like to think our guest chef events helped break down barriers and made fancy food accessible,” he says. “We got some super-famous chefs coming to Edinburgh from all over the world, and nobody else was doing that except the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy.”

I ask for his stand-out memories. “The diver Roddie Sloan from the Arctic Circle in Northern Norway came here with a load of indigenous seafood - sea urchins, mahogany clams - that had been in the ocean at 3am and was being prepared and consumed in Edinburgh at 7pm the same day. It was a real coup for us to get Ezben Holmbo Bang, the world’s youngest three-star chef at Maaemo in Oslo, cook a meal for £42. And Ana Roš, Head Chef at Hiša Franko, Kobarid, Slovenia.” Others came from Hong Kong. Latvia, Bolivia, Chile, Denmark, Spain, India, Lebanon, Hungary, France, Turkey, Italy, Norway, Malaysia, Portugal, USA, Ireland, Sweden, Belgium.

“We learned lots about other food cultures. And they were so impressed with Scottish produce. They didn’t know anything about it before coming here and that was so exciting.

“It’s easy to doubt yourself and what you’re doing. That they recognised Scotland in a totally different light was really heartening. People now travel to Scotland to eat. That’s a whole new thing.”

He adds that EFS’ focus was bringing guest chefs here, but could it also be something that pops up elsewhere – taking Scotland’s food story out of Scotland? “It’s something we’ve always really wanted,” he says.

“So the ending of our lease in lockdown has been a positive thing. Now I’m free to explore the future.”

©️CateDevine

• See also my blog post “Looking to the past to feed the future” from 2018.

How social media could help Save Our Scallops: Guy Grieve on Mull

Dropping from 10,000 to 1700 sales per week is a devastating blow for any business, but for Guy Grieve – diver-proprietor of the Ethical Shellfish Company on the isle of Mull – it represents a much-needed ray of hope.

For only weeks ago he had lost everything. Now thanks to social media he is tentatively clawing his way back – with a totally new business model.

More than a decade since starting his business he was happily supplying around two tonnes of top-quality hand-dived king scallops to Michelin-starred restaurants across Scotland, London and the rest of the UK. The best seafood wholesale partners were also on his books. Then came the pandemic. Restaurants closed, and wham. Grieve’s carefully nurtured livelihood stopped faster than a scallop shuts its shell.

“We thought we had it worked out,” Grieve tells me. “We always refused export on principal because I look to see the whites of the eyes of the people I deal with. With export the whole relationship is based on numbers. We were able to build really strong UK market for our scallops and had great relationships with the best chefs in the UK. We thought we were in a really good place ahead of Brexit, and were feeling really positive about the future. Then came Covid. We went from delivering 10,000 scallops a week to zero. Our customers closed overnight and our business was gone.”

Faced with the grim reality that many of his business customers may not open again, and that those restaurants that do may be unable to afford the same price for his scallops as before - in turn meaning he wouldn’t be able to pay the same wages to his divers and boatmen - Grieve was forced to re-think his entire business model. As he puts it, “We were tempted to hunker down and stay in our bunks, but we decided to sail on.

“To paraphrase Darwin, it isn’t just the fittest and most intelligent species that survives – it’s the one most willing to adapt.”

Deciding to try selling online to private individuals in Glasgow and Edinburgh was a bold, if desperate, leap into uncharted waters. But Grieve was pleasantly taken aback at the response to his first tentative Tweet on May 18, where he asked if ordinary consumers might be interested in buying his large scallops at £2 each and medium at £1.50. They’re receive them within hours of their being carefully hand-harvested from the seabed.

He attracted 11,000 impressions and 1100 direct communications from that first tweet and interest hasn’t diminished. He had to cap orders for the pilot run, to give him time to dive for them, and is set to hand-deliver 1700 scallops to 35 addresses in Glasgow wiht 52 customers in Edinburgh collecting from a central point next week [June 4 and 5 respectively]. His teenage sons, Oscar and Luke, will do the driving and despatch initially, with the potential to join the new-look business to take it into the future.

“The goodwill from the public that we’ve encountered with this experiment has been absolutely gobsmacking, and I can see the power of social media,” he says. “The experience has given me hope.”

That hope is as fragile as shellfish in a hatchery. “The question is, how much is this short-term goodwill, and how much is it an indication for the future?,” he angsts. “We simply won’t know until we try.”

He is also selling ethically- and sustainably-sourced mussels, oysters and lobster. I ask if he is surprised at the keen interest in shellfish from the Central Belt hoi polloi.

“There’s always been an appetite for seafood in Scotland,” he replies. “However, people tend to eat them only in restaurants. There hasn’t been the confidence in the cooking of them, so they entrust that to chefs.

“Now people want to give it a go themselves. It’s a new ‘let’s give it a shot’ mentality.”

I wonder if it means supermarkets will have to change their sourcing policies if consumer demand for quality local shellfish is high enough.

His answer is emphatic. “What we’re doing here is cutting out the cynical trade of the middle men. This is a whole new conversation, and it’s between you, me and the fishermen. If we can get it to you efficiently, you’re eating it 10 hours from the sea.”

So, the start of an entirely new food culture, then?

“The food culture will change through this,” he says. “It will have to if independent Scottish producers are to survive.

“We may yet go under. But if this pilot works, it will benefit Scotland’s food security for when restaurants do return.”

The final irony is that scallop stocks are in optimum condition after 10 weeks of being left untouched. “The lockdown has been great for the fishery and shellfish is in the best possible place it’s been for years. But where’s the market going to be?” he wonders.

“If the big commercial dredgers take over, that would be the worst outcome of all.”

©CateDevine

"Many people now see cooking as part of their lives for the first time": Scotland's national chef on a lockdown legacy

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.

©CateDevine

"We are doing everything we can to make sure The Chip is still here for its 50th birthday in January - but we need help."

EXCLUSIVE

I was aware the Ubiquitous Chip was approaching its landmark 50th birthday, and wondered how the lockdown was affecting celebration plans. I spoke exclusively with co-propietor Colin Clydesdale.

The owners of the world-famous Ubiquitous Chip, the longest-established family-owned restaurant in Glasgow, and certainly one of the oldest in Scotland, are determined to see it through to its 50th birthday in January – despite being closed for the first time in its long history due to the Covid-19 lockdown.

Colin Clydesdale, pictured above, his wife Carol and their student son Ruaraidh, together with a skeleton staff, are collaborating with their longest-established Scottish suppliers to open a ready meal & fresh produce shop on Friday [May 22] and are preparing a weekly £95 high-end five-course menu for two with house wine for click-and-collect/home delivery starting at the end of the month. Customers who pre-order on www.ubiquitouschipshop.co.uk will be served from the Wee Chip bar off Ashton Lane.

Clydesdale, whose father Ronnie founded “The Chip” in 1971, served his apprenticeship under his father’s direction. He is donning his chef’s hat for the first time in many years to oversee the operation, which was trialled last month and proved so popular with the restaurant’s regulars that they had to stop to regroup and refine the way it operated.

“The horror of it is that I’ve had to buy myself a pair of oven gloves and learn how to switch on all our expensive computer-operated kitchen equipment for the first time since we bought it,” joked Clydesdale. “Doing takeaway is a completely different scenario from running the restaurant. There are no ebbs and flows. It’s full-on the whole time. But it’s fun because the buzz of the kitchen never goes away.”

On a more serious note, he added: “This situation is not of our volition. It’s been forced on us and are doing everything we possibly can in horrific circumstances to ensure The Ubiquitous Chip will still be here for our 50th anniversary in January.”

Clydesdale and his wife Carol have successfully expanded the business to include Stravaigin and Hanoi Bike Shop restaurants, and have created two new bars within the Chip since Ronnie died in 2010.

But since the Coronavirus pandemic brought about the lockdown in March the business, like others across the country, has been closed and staff have been put on furlough. “Since March, there has been no money coming in and although we have a business tax holiday, we still have substantial standing outgoings such as buildings insurance, internet, electricity, gas and maintenance costs. Our insurers say the pandemic wasn’t written into the contract.”

The extension of the Westminster government’s job retention furlough scheme until October is no comfort to many in hospitality. Like most independents in the industry, Clydesdale fears that if Chancellor Rishi Sunak continues to incrementally reduce government-funded furlough payments down from August, forcing employers to contribute the balance, the future looks as bleak as it was before furlough was introduced.

“We need furlough to remain as it is at 80% until we’re allowed to re-open the business safely, and we’ve been given absolutely no guidance on that whatsoever,” said Clydesdale. “Independent restaurateurs like us cannot afford to contribute increasing percentages of staff wages while there is no money coming in.”

“The problem is we don’t know what we’re supposed to be doing in order to re-open safely. We need clarity from the Westminster government. If we knew what they wanted us to do we would jump through hoops to do it. So far the information has been contradictory. They are telling people they can go back to work, but in our industry we can’t go back to work. We have to ask ourselves what was the point of the job retention scheme in the first place.

“The only definite we’re getting is that hospitality hasn’t a chance in the short term,” said Clydesdale. “We can’t see it getting any better before October, when the furlough scheme stops. There is nothing good about this situation. We are simply trying to adapt as we need to in order to survive. Knowing our customers want us to keep going is the best encouragement we could wish for.

“Over the years The Ubiquitous Chip has overcome many difficulties. My dad used to tell me I couldn’t imagine the awfulness of the three-day week, power cuts and the Army picking up rubbish bins and the Winter of Discontent of the 1970s, but this one trumps them all. It is a horror story that beats everything that went before. We are shut for the first time ever.

“Like all restaurants, The Ubiquitous Chip may need to change the way it operates even after lockdown is lifted but we are determined that, after all it’s been through, it will make it to its 50th birthday in January and beyond.

“We have a lot of great staff, suppliers and fiercely loyal customers behind us. So we’ll be doing everything in our power to get through and thrive again. We want The Chip to be a beacon of hope for all other restaurants in Scotland.”

©CateDevine

Will supermarkets help lift the Scottish seafood sector out of crisis?

I really feel for Scotland’s precious fishing industry as it is experiences a 60% drop in demand during the Coronavirus pandemic. If this new initiative from Seafood Scotland takes effect, it could ease the hiatus in the supply chain and keep the industry and related business and community networks survive. It might also herald a complete turnaround in domestic consumption of fresh, locally-caught fish and seafood - traditionally much lower in Scotland than it is in European countries, where historically the majority of our seafood has been exported.

I’m taking the unusual step (for me) of publishing this release in full issued on behalf of Seafood Scotland because I think it is a bold and positive challenge. Will supermarkets now re-open their fish counters? Morrisons has - now it’s up to the others.

Seafood Scotland, on behalf of the Scottish seafood sector, has written to the chief executives of the main UK supermarket retailers, urging them to reopen their fresh fish counters. 

With international markets closed off, and the UK restaurant/catering sector largely shut down, the entire sector is relying on retail for survival, but most of the fresh fish counters in major multiple retailers have been closed for weeks.  Only Morrisons has reopened its fresh counters in recent days, in a welcome move to support the meat and fish sectors. 

In the letter, sent to the leaders of ASDA, Sainsbury’s and Tesco, Donna Fordyce, Head of Seafood Scotland, said: “It is imperative that fish counters are reopened to allow consumers access to fresh, locally caught seafood from the domestic market as part of their essential shop.”

The Scottish seafood sector has been devastated by the impact of the coronavirus. The Scottish seafood industry landed around 450,000 tonnes of sea fish and shellfish from around 2000 vessels.  150 processing sites employ over 13,000 staff.  With an estimated 60% drop in demand the industry is suffering, and fishing families and the wider communities that rely on the sector are facing real economic hardship.

Pre-coronavirus, 80% of Scottish seafood and shellfish was exported, with the remaining 20% destined for UK food service and retail.  With the export market at a standstill, the sector is now completely reliant on the UK market to keep afloat, and even within this segment the food service sector is operating at minimal levels due to the UK lockdown.

This means UK multiple retailers and some independents are now at the front line of supplying the nation with locally caught seafood.  Some fishing businesses are selling direct to the public, but this trade is contained within small pockets, and amounts to a drop in the ocean. 

Donna Fordyce continues: “Once the lockdown was implemented many of the main multiples closed their fish counters – effectively blocking a significant part of our domestic market.  We understand why this happened – retail was under enormous pressure at the time, and social distancing felt like a barrier. However, we believe that the operational pressure has eased slightly as retailers and consumers alike become more used to working around social distancing in supermarkets.  Morrisons has already proved it can be done.” 

“It’s time for consumers to eat local, eat Scottish. We get to eat our own high quality, delicious, healthy, and sustainable seafood, so that the Scottish coastal communities can continue to operate, albeit at reduced capacity.  The supermarkets are key to making this happen.

“We are seeing a shift in consumer behaviour across Europe moving towards a ‘buy local’ approach and signs are that this will continue after this pandemic. The support of the UK supermarket sector is now imperative to assist a core industry that is currently severely affected by this crisis.”

 

How Covid-19 cancellations could yet prove beneficial to Glasgow's food culture

[A version of this exclusive story was first published in The Times, April 21, 2020.]

The Coronavirus pandemic means COP26, the United Nations climate change conference in Glasgow and the largest ever summit to have been held in the UK, will not take place this year – dashing hopes of seeing Greta Thunberg, the young climate activist, sail up the Clyde if not exactly in a banana boat then in some ultra-green sailing vessel.

The virus has also caused the postponement of another first for Scotland – the launch of the Glasgow City Food Plan, a unique and ambitious blueprint for a healthier and more resilient food system for the city and beyond.

However, its creators believe both setbacks could yet bring benefits for the city’s food culture and its parlous diet- and poverty-related health statistics.

A multi-agency project group from the Glasgow Community Food Network, the Sustainable Food Cities network and the Centre for Population Health together with Glasgow City Council, Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS Board Health, and Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership, have been working together to develop a draft ten-year City Food Plan. It was due to go out for public consultation from this month [April] as preparations for COP26 were ramping up, and be implemented towards the end of the year, just as COP26 was taking place.

The launch has been on hold during the pandemic as workers address the immediate problem of sourcing free food for those citizens most in need. A crowdfunding campaign, Food For Good Glasgow, has been launched by the Glasgow Community Food Network and Slow Food Scotland to facilitate this in the meantime.

But, as a sign of their commitment to the City Food Plan, its creators are simultaneously preparing an application for a substantial £2.5m grant from the National Lottery and the Climate Action Fund to enable them to implement it as soon as it can be launched.

The City Food Plan’s ten-year action plan aims to help Glasgow in its commitment to become carbon neutral by 2030 and to reach consensus on how to deliver a sustainable, healthy, fair, accessible - and for the first time cohesive - food system that can help save not only the planet but also its own citizens.

Localising food production, creating a larger network of spaces for growing and urban farming - ex-bowling greens, underused golf courses and other open/green spaces for example – building a wider range of community shops, weekly markets, vegetable barras, swap shops and making public transport free to facilitate access to them are key aims.

It is also suggested that Green Assemblies of teachers, cooks, gardeners and others in local areas could empower community decision making.

The Plan’s ambitions chime with the ethos of the climate activists and campaigners from around the globe who, when COP26 does eventually take place, are expected to anchor themselves in their thousands on the River Clyde at the Scottish Event Campus in coracles, canoes and yachts.

It’s anticipated that while in Glasgow they will seek out hyper-local, high-welfare, ethical, healthful, sustainable and affordable food experiences in their quest to shorten global supply chains and localise the food system - which alone contributes 20%-30% of the carbon emissions that drive climate change though production, processing, storage, transportation and disposal.

While number of grassroots food initiatives are already established in Glasgow, they remain unsung and patchy. Three market gardens supply local restaurants and deliver hundreds of veg boxes each week; community orchards are being planted; there are almost 100 community gardens and growing spaces across the city, and 32 allotment sites; local food and drink products are flourishing through start-up funding; and the social enterprise supermarket, Locavore, has recently expanded into the city centre. The city also boasts a growing number of independent, progressive, chef-owned restaurants.

But food deserts and food swamps persist, and there are criticisms that while restaurants are celebrated, food growing is not.

A major restriction is the lack of growing space for a more diverse range of produce to suit modern diet trends, and the knowledge of how to grow and prepare it.

But perhaps the greatest hurdle is that such initiatives and schemes are implemented separately to address different issues around the food system, culminating in a lack of coherence to policies, strategies and practices already underway.

The City Food Plan aims to brings these disparate strands together for the first time.

"There are lots of enthusiastic and innovative people and projects working on food across the city who would benefit from a more coordinated approach to the issues in our food system," Abi Mordin of the Glasgow Community Food Network, and one of the key architects of the City Food Plan, told The Times. "We want to involve as many of Glasgow’s citizens and businesses in shaping our City Food Plan and in making it happen. We are very excited about it and delighted that Glasgow is taking the initiative ahead of any other Scottish city.

“The current crisis has shone a light on the inadequacies of the global food system, and shows why we urgently need a more resilient local food system that can respond effectively to shocks, as well as one which has lower carbon emissions.

"We are sure we have a proper chance to change Glasgow's food culture for the better when we launch the City Food Plan later this year, and the prospect of COP26 can only give it more impetus."

[Text ©️CateDevine]

[Photo credit: Alamy]

Andrew Fairlie: an appreciation

When Scots chef Andrew Fairlie died on January 22, 2019, I was asked by The Herald to write an appreciation. It was published on January 23, 2019.

Andrew Fairlie at his beloved Victorian walled garden near his two Michelin-starred restaurant in Perthshire. Photo ©CateDevine

Of my many warm memories of Andrew Fairlie, one of the most enduring is when, with typical generosity, he allowed me into his beloved kitchen within the Gleneagles Hotel to shadow him during one of the busiest services of the year. It was Christmas time many years ago and he was on top form. From my vantage point, tucked well out of the way of his busy brigade and their steaming hot pots and pans, I remember being struck by his utter calm.

He stood at the Pass, head down, waiting for his section chefs to bring him the perfectly prepared components of each dish for him to assemble personally before calling – never shouting – “Service, please!”.  As he waited quietly, I could just about discern him counting out the seconds in his head. Without turning round to watch what was going on in these final moments of world-class culinary creation, he simply knew who was doing what and when.

Everything came together when it should. The rhythm and harmony of Fairlie’s kitchen – the beating heart of Scotland’s only two-Michelin starred restaurant within the Gleneagles Hotel – was palpable, and to witness Scotland’s most celebrated chef at the very top of his game was a privilege I’ll never forget. I am grateful to him for this and the many subsequent memorable experiences he allowed me to share as a journalist. Remembering him sitting youthfully cross-legged atop the scrubbed wooden kitchen table of his Glasgow flat, grinning widely with his hair boyishly tousled, for a photographer just after he got his first Michelin star for One Devonshire Gardens in 1996, is particularly poignant.

It was Andrew’s quiet demeanour and waspish sense of humour that endeared him to so many, not only within the Scottish, UK and international hospitality industries, but also in the fields of art, design and, most recently, horticulture. He was a great collaborator and mentor, and he certainly had a huge personal impact on many journalists, myself included.

From my numerous accompanied visits to the Victorian walled kitchen garden in Perthshire he acquired in 2014 after an unsuccessful second course of chemotherapy, it was abundantly clear that he adored it and regarded it as his “salvation”, both professional and personal. He loved the quiet energy of the many specimens being cultivated by head gardener Jo Campbell exclusively for his restaurant. “It’s so different from the crazy energy of the kitchen,” he said. “The garden is a very calming influence and I am sure it has had a beneficial effect.” Despite the chemotherapy he never lost his sense of taste and the fresh produce had a galvanising effect on his menus, with dishes headlining the greenery in line with global culinary trends. He loved that diners would travel for miles to sample his take on the fruits of the Scottish terroir, and spent many happy hours with Jo and her team. When I got my allotment last August, I laughed out loud when he cautioned me wryly against letting it take up too much of my time. God knows I know now what he meant.

I like to think his humility, which endured even after joining the international culinary elite as one of only a handful of Grands Chefs du Monde, was down to his upbringing in a modest council house in Letham, Perth, and leaving school at 15 with no qualifications. More than once he told me that he felt he was very lucky in life. Marrying his beautiful, loving long-term partner Kate White last November was, he told me, the “icing on the cake”.

At the Michelin Star awards ceremony in London last October, he was using a walking stick with some difficulty but looked deliriously happy as, surrounded by Kate and his closest chef friends, Restaurant Andrew Fairlie retained its second star for the 14th consecutive year. He had words of encouragement for those Scots restaurant chefs who were left disappointed not to receive a star: “In the next couple of years Scotland will do really, really well,” he said.

The last time I saw him was when he invited me to his home just days before the wedding and some weeks after being discharged from the Beatson Cancer Centre in Glasgow. Struggling under the long-term effects of chemo followed by steroids to help correct his balance, he told me that his brain tumour - first diagnosed in 2005 - had now entered the terminal stage. He wanted the world to know that though he was finally having to give up cooking, the Gleneagles Hotel had assured him that Restaurant Andrew Fairlie would continue with the same long-standing team under head chef Stevie McLaughlin, restaurant manager Dale Dewsbury and business manager Gregor Mathieson – whom he had worked with since the early days at One Devonshire Gardens. Over coffee at his home overlooking the Ochils, Andrew confided that he’d been so worried his staff may be laid off and his restaurant given over to a different chef that he’d had sleepless nights angsting about it. The relief at being immediately assured otherwise was, he said, “a huge weight off my shoulders”. Concern for others was an abiding characteristic, and engendered life-long loyalty.

For his 55th birthday he’d had plans to take his trusted tight-knit team to spend time with head chef Michel Guerard at Les Pres d’Eugenie, the three-Michelin starred restaurant in south-west France where Andrew had worked at age 20 as the prize for winning the very first Roux Scholarship in 1984. “That’s where it all began,” he’d said. “Returning will be the final piece of the jigsaw.” Though he’d subsequently had to cancel that long-cherished trip, he bore the disappointment with a philosophical acceptance. “I feel very peaceful,” were among his last words to me.

I cherish the notebook I used to record my most recent interviews with Andrew. He liked it because of the lobster design on the cover. I was pleased he’d noticed, as I’d bought it on purpose: Andrew’s signature dish was home-smoked Scottish lobster with warm lime and herb butter. I always meant to source a similar book for him, but could never find one as it had gone out of print. It’s now a small personal reminder that though Andrew himself is gone, his legacy will live on long into the future.

ENDS

What Rosie did next ... moving on from Alchemilla

• Thanks to @GlasgowWEToday, @fooddrinksco and @Glasgowist for publishing my exclusive story on 13, 14 and 15 November 2019 respectively. Photo ©CateDevine.

Rosie Healey, the founding chef of the acclaimed Glasgow restaurant Alchemilla on the trendy Finnieston strip, is to open a new restaurant just a few steps away – and only months after splitting with her business partner Fergus McVicar.

Gloriosa will open on November 25 on the site of the former Firebird in Yorkhill. With its white walls, a bright pink wood-fired oven, large light ash tables with simple Milano chairs, and the open kitchen visible from the street, the large, airy space will have a different vibe from that of Alchemilla. The restaurant will have 60 covers compared to Alchemilla’s 47, with a further 25 in the bar area serving natural wines and high-end snacks. The menu will once again feature the beautifully prepared vegetables and pastas that made Healey’s name, with fish and meat from the wood-fired oven.

What she will not have on her menu are the small plates that made her name at Alchemilla.

“Small plates are so last year and I’m going for large and traditional, bringing it all back to the classic format,” she said. “It’s all about generous cooking. It’s not fine-dining but I want people to feel they’re getting a real treat and that they’re being cared for.”

After training in London with Yotam Ottolenghi Healey, 32, returned to Glasgow to launch Alchemilla in 2016, but split with McVicar in March this year. Since then she has been back in London doing stages in top kitchens such as Quo Vadis in Soho, La Rochelle Canteen at the ICA and Moro’s Padella Pasta in Shoreditch.

“When I left Alchemilla I got so many immediate offers to open new restaurants in Glasgow but I thought it would be silly just to jump from one to another so quickly,” she said. “I was very wary and had lost my confidence entirely so I thought I should go away and try to rebuild my self-esteem.

“Working in London again was fantastic and I learned so much about what’s trending on the cooking scene. It was very affirming for me to know I could do it and that I was up there with progressive, revolutionary cooking.

“Then Derek Sutherland of Firebird approached me and asked me to take on the space for him. He lives in Sicily and will remain my business partner which is great. He has invested some money for refurbishment. I’ll be sourcing olive oil, lemons and fresh herbs from his farm there.”

Lily Brown, formerly restaurant manager at Legs in London’s Hackney, is the 3rd partner in this venture and will run front-of-house and the wine operation. “At Alchemilla I was on my own, so it will be so great to work alongside Lily,” she said. (Continues …)

My 2018 photo of Rosie when head chef at Alchemilla on Glasgow’s Finnieston Strip

At Alchemilla Healey’s cooking attracted some rave reviews. One well-known London critic [Jay Rayner] described her food as “a thoughtful mix of great ideas and ingredients which are never overworked … the product of extremely good taste”. A respected Scots critic [Joanna Blythman] wrote: “Alchemilla has already achieved the intoxicating buzz that other restaurants find persistently elusive … Our food was stupendous from start to finish, but not in a showy, ‘Look at me. Aren’t I clever?’ way.”

Healey’s dyslexia did not hinder her from gaining a degree in Fine Art Photography at the Glasgow School of Art after leaving Notre Dame High School in the city’s West End with Highers in English and Food Technology. As a student she and her friends ran a 12-foot diner, catering events and exhibition openings. She went on to work as a manager at the Peckhams deli in Glasgow’s West End, where she learned about cheese and charcuterie; at the late, lamented Heart Buchanan deli, where she worked with founder Fi Buchanan in private dining; and at Mhairi Taylor’s Delizique deli, also in the West End.

Asked if Gloriosa will feature the feminine type of cooking she was famed for at Alchemilla, she replied: “It’s just what I like. My food is inspired by the colours of ingredients. Colour is as important as anything else and is often the starting point for me.

“My cooking takes huge care and time. It looks very simple on the plate but it’s not. The complexity is in the flavour rather than in what you see.

“I cook beautiful dishes. My food is not played with. I don’t do puffs, gels, foams, ices and water baths. To me, that kind of cooking is very male, and more about showing off the chef rather than what’s delicious to eat.”

“I hope eating at Gloriosa will be an uplifting experience.

“For me it’s important to try to create something new, something that’s not Alchemilla. But I’d like to achieve what I did with Alchemilla again. I want to take the positives out of my experience there and take them into the future.”

ENDS

"A Tour de Force of Spectacular Storytelling": my review of Jay Rayner's My Last Supper

(This review was first published in The Herald on September 21, 2019.)

By his own admission, speculating about what one would eat as one’s last meal is nothing new. But that doesn’t stop the infamously trenchant author from storming in and owning the idea – albeit ahead of his own time.

“Last suppers are the culinary idea to end all ideas,” he writes. “But they are wasted on the very people who are the most eligible for them. This seemed to me extremely unfair. I was excluded from enjoying this blissful meal by the piffling detail of not actually being that close to death.”

So at age 52 he sets out to stage his own, reasoning that he has every right to do so. After 20 years as the Observer’s restaurant critic, he has accrued enough food memories to construct the “death row dinner” to end them all.

Grabbing the reader by the thrapple by a strangely urgent narrative that somehow invokes the commanding voice of the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Kitchen Cabinet, the pace is such that any protestations are kept at bay. “After a while you get used to people wishing you dead,” he begins. And who could argue with that?

As we cross the globe in search of his favoured butter, bread, oysters, snails, alcohol, pig, salad, chips, Mont Blanc dessert and sparking water, Rayner proves a gifted raconteur. Anecdotes trip off the tongue as easily melted lard, many unrelated to his current career: he revisits early star journalistic commissions, childhood and his own near-death experiences.

Part memoir, part confessional, part exercise in shameless name-dropping (Rayner seizes the opportunity to name-check his best contacts, a habit that will have other food writers gnashing their teeth in career-death desperation) My Last Supper is a tour de force of spectacular storytelling.

That the author has a voracious appetite is not - never has been - in question. Neither is his gift for provocation. Among his ascerbic apercus about fashionable food intolerances and hipster artisan producers he clearly enjoys the shock value of identifying as a Jew who likes pig. In a pork scratchings factory, he observes the slipperiness of the floor where the “boiled-down pig” has become ingrained. With colleagues he enjoys a “huge carnival of feet and ears and noses and spleens”, noting that “mouth-coating oiliness makes me happy”.

The slightly nauseating obsession with food and eating relived here is alleviated by humour and pathos. There are echoes of Woody Allen as Rayner recalls being invited by a group of Lubavitch Jews to witness the coming of the Messiah while in New York covering the Brooklyn riots. The Messiah in question turns out to be a 91-year-old multiple stroke victim who is now mute, deaf and going blind. His bodyguards simply shrug and say, ‘Meh, maybe next year’ as they wheel him off.  

Rayner puts his lifelong battle with weight down to being a “Shtetl Jew, with a metabolism built for winter on the Russian steppes when the Cossacks are coming”. His waistline passed the 40-inch mark in his early teens. He had weak ankles and fallen arches; a genetic tendency to varicose veins, combined with that weight, meant that his “calves bloomed with peaks both green and purples” before he was 15.

He offers plenty of socio-psychological observations, wondering for example why a death-row inmate would choose Diet Coke as his last drink, and what the difference is between comfort eating and overeating. I’m guessing this is a trait inherited from his late mother Claire, the celebrated agony aunt, whom he references with notable regularity and who as a staff writer with The Herald I had the privilege of interviewing at the Rayner family home in North London to discuss her distressing 2003 autobiography.

After all the bluster, the final meal itself at first seems underwhelming. The envisaged suckling pig morphs into bacon sarnies; nobody blinks an eye at the painstakingly sourced French sparkling water for which he paid £70 for two cases, including discount.

But it’s a convivial event that celebrates love, friendship, music and the making of new memories. And therein lies the crux of the issue. What otherwise is the point of eating at all? The killer coda is that Rayner’s best friend cannot attend because he is dying – and has his real-time last meal without him. 

It’s a moving echo of Rayner’s dying father Des, who could not eat the last meal his son had so lovingly sourced for him.

So thanks for the ride, Mr Rayner. And thanks for ruining this brilliant idea for everyone else.

·        My Last Supper: One Meal, One Lifetime in the Making, by Jay Rayner, is published by Faber & Faber at £16.99.

·        The My Last Supper Tour visits Glasgow and Edinburgh in November. Visit Faneproductions.com/jay

Major breakthrough for Scotland's new cocktail oyster

©2019 Cate Devine.

I’m very pleased to learn that a new style of oyster grown by a crofter off the remote Outer Hebrides and aimed at the female market is set for stardom after being put on the menu of one of the UK’s top seafood restaurants.

Roy Brett, chef-patron of Ondine in Edinburgh, is selling northwards of 300 Isle of Barra cocktail oysters each week alongside specimens from the rest of the UK, Isle of Man, Ireland and France. He put them on his menu immediately upon first tasting them, and described them as “unique and something brand new that is going to go far”.

The Hebridean mollusc is small and chalk-white with a deep cup, and has just gone to market after a four-year gestation. Slow-grown in the deep, cold Atlantic waters off the Isle of Barra - the most westerly inhabited island off Scotland’s west coast – chef Brett enthuses that they are “delicate and feminine with a wonderful flavour”.

“These little Isle of Barra oysters are so small and clean and pretty, yet full of flavour. It’s quite unusual to get that firm texture and salty creaminess all in one little shell. I like that they challenge your perceptions,” said the chef, right, who worked with Rick Stein in Cornwall and Mark Hix at Le Caprice and the Savoy Grill in London before opening Ondine ten years ago. Among other awards, Ondine was recently named Scotland’s best restaurant at the National Restaurant Awards.

The restaurant names the provenance of the new oysters on its menu - another first. (Continues…)

The move marks a major breakthrough for the Outer Hebridean enterprise Traigh Mhor Oysters, founded in 2012 by Barra-born crofter Gerard Macdonald who studied Zoology at Glasgow University, has a Masters in Agri-business management and is a former farm manager at Marine Harvest. He has been patiently growing the Pacific molluscs in the ice-cold Atlantic waters for several years, and attracted significant support of almost £500,000 in funding from AP Jess of Paisley in 2016. I've had the privilege of following progress for much of that time.

Uniquely, Macdonald uses a FLUPSY upweller nursery system, which allows the tiny baby seed oysters from Guernsey room to grow and to feed freely off naturally occurring Hebridean plankton. They are then transferred to a bespoke vertical growing system similar to that used for growing mussels. The seawater never goes above 14degC, so the oysters are slower-growing which helps enhance their flavour.

The unusual “cocktail” shape has been achieved by tumbling the juvenile oysters to help train them to grow a deeper cup and a smaller lip. This makes them are easier to handle than many other varieties, and their white shells are extremely visually appealing.

With industry research from the US indicating that the oyster market is moving towards a smaller shell, Macdonald is thrilled to be ahead of the curve. “I’m ecstatic about Ondine taking our cocktail oysters,” he said. “There’s a bit of an obsession in the UK with size, with the view that bigger is better and a resistance to the idea that small is beautiful. With just a small percentage of shellfish consumers eating oysters, we hope that a whole new generation will want to try ours at Ondine.”

Chef Brett added: “I’m always happy to champion quality Scottish produce and I will be shouting about Isle of Barra cocktail oysters to all my chef pals in London and beyond."

So I guess you could say the world is now Isle of Barra's oyster.

The tiny Pacific seed oysters look like grit when they first arrive, and grow slowly in the cold Atlantic waters off Barra, the most westerly inhabited island of the Outer Hebrides.

They grow very slowly in the deep, cold Atlantic waters off Barra, the most westerly inhabited island of the Outer Hebrides, and the most remote in the UK.

©2019 Cate Devine. Copyright of the text on this website belongs to Cate Devine unless otherwise stated. Please contact me for any commissions, or to comment on current issues.

Ayrshire Earlies finally join Jersey Royals in gaining EU protected status ... in the nick of time

Just over two years ago, I visited the Girvan Early Growers with the legendary chefs Albert Roux OBE (pictured below), the late Andrew Fairle (at foot of page), who were in the West of Scotland to lend their support to the campaign to have Ayrshire Early Potatoes granted PGI (Protected Geographical Indication) status by the EU. Hopes were high that this would happen by the end of June 2017, as final tweaks to the submission had been made on June 13 that year.

Anticipation was understandably keen, for if they were to gain PGI status Ayrshire Earlies would be on an equal footing with rival brand (earlier-harvested) Jersey Royals, and join 70 other UK food and drink products with PGI status, including 14 in Scotland - such as the Arbroath Smokie and Stornoway Black Pudding.

PGI status is given to regional food products across the EU that have a specific quality, reputation or other characteristic attributable to the area they’re grown or made in, and ensures they are legally protected from imitation throughout the EU. It can also help promote the product and the area they are grown in, thus encouraging food tourism. A PGI product can command premium price and it’s estimated that a PGI product sells more than twice the rate as a non-PGI product.

However, even back then there were fears their plans could be scuppered by Brexit because the PGI scheme is operated and controlled by the EU. There is - as yet - no equivalent protection scheme in the UK, raising fears that as part of the Brexit negotiations Brussels could drop its scheme for non-EU products currently being processed.

More than two years on from that memorable visit, Ayrshire Earlies - small, oval, thin-skinned Epicures - have finally been grantated PGI status. And, from Sunday (July 21), they will be available for the fist time in supermarkets across England as well as Scotland as specialist supplier Scotty Brand has secured a nationwide listing with 200 Asda stores for the deliciously short season, which runs from June until early September. 

They are sent to Asda and other stockists in Scotland, such as Co-op, Lidl, Spar, Tesco and Waitrose, within as few as 24 hours from being lifting out of the Scottish soil. Scotty Brand expects to sell well over 1000 tonnes this season.

The original bid was supported by chef Albert Roux OBE, pictured above, who founded the double Michelin starred Le Gavroche in London’s Mayfair and has six restaurants in Scotland. On a visit to the Girvan Early Growers, where he tasted Scotty Brand’s Epicure and Casablanca new potatoes, he said: “I fully support PGI for Ayrshire Early potatoes. They are quite delicious and their provenance is unique. They should have equal status with Jersey Royals.”

And the late, great Andrew Fairlie added then: “We should be celebrating Scotland’s first potatoes when they come into season. I can remember as a child that Ayrshire Earlies coming into the shops was something to look forward to. Yet now they hardly get any attention compared to Jersey Royals.”

Ayrshire Earlies are the very first potatoes of the Scottish season, and are naturally small with a delicate skin. They are sold with the soil still on them in order to protect them. They are grown in four varieties - Epicure, Isle of Jura, Maris Peer and a new Casablanca variety for Scotty Brand – for Albert Bartlett and Scotty Brand. Their unique growing conditions include sandy soil close to the seashore, which together with the Gulf Stream ensure a warm, frost-free, environment. They have been growing here for over 100 years.

UK food products with PGI status are worth £1bn, of which the largest element is Scotch Beef and Scotch Lamb.

Great news, then. But the big unanswered question is, of course: how much longer will Scottish - and English and Welsh - products enjoy EU protection if the scheme is withdrawn after Brexit? There are hopes that products that already have PGI status will continue to be protected. Let’s hope it’s not too late for Ayrshire Earlies to reap the benefits of their brand new status.

* See my original 2017 story on my website catedevinewriter.com (under Published Work).

Hebridean Hogget: the black sheep of the foodie family?

Sorry if I’m about to offend any vegetarians or vegans reading this, but Hebridean hogget is delicious. The animal itself may look peculiar when compared with the white woolly breeds so ubiquitous today: it is tiny, has black wool and can have as many as eight horns. But it’s arguably the kind of “lamb” we should be eating and demanding more frequently instead of the sometimes bland, often imported, kind sold in supermarkets - and offered up on restaurant menus.

Hebridean sheep are direct descendants of the hardy ancient North European breed that came to Scotland 8000 years ago. Originally known as Scottish Dunface, they had the useful ability to survive in the wild, steep, barren habitats of the Western Isles - which was just as well, since that was where they were banished to after the Clearances saw the introduction of new, larger-boned, faster-growing, more lucrative breeds on the mainland.

On a recent visit to Jack and Morna Cuthbert in Kinross-shire, farmers of the largest commercial Hebridean flock in Scotland, I’ve seen how extremely nimble they are, even on stick-thin legs, and how they thrive on low-nutrition grazing to this day. Yet they’re on the Rare Breed Survival Trust (RBST)’s register and were in danger of extinction not that long ago. In 1974 there were only 288 left in just 40 flocks, and none in their homelands across the West of Scotland. The establishing in 1994 of the Hebridean Sheep Society (HSS), a spin-off from the RBST whose aim is to preserve and promote the breed, saw registered numbers of breeding sheep to 2018 swell to an estimated 45,000 in the UK (mostly in the North of England) and come off the critical list - though Jack Cuthbert, a trustee of HSS, reckons there are currently around 12,000 registered Hebridean sheep currently living, 2000 of which are breeding sheep, in 200 flocks.

I understand they are once again being reared in some crofts in the Hebrides too.

Hebrideans have also recently made it onto Slow Food’s Ark of Taste, so are further protected and supported internationally. (For once we can be thankful that they are not on the European Protected Names Scheme, and are therefore immune to worries of what might happen to foods with PGI or PDO status in the case of a No-Deal Brexit.) Interestingly, they have just begun to be farmed in Holland and Belgium, though at the moment only for conservation breeding.

So, given the relatively healthy numbers, are we witnessing a consumer revival? Well, yes and no. More farmers are breeding them, though many do it for conservation grazing on behalf of the Forestry Commission (the sheep’s delicate mouths are good at chomping the jaggy seedlings of self-seeded Silver Birches). But very few restaurants serve their meat. This is most likely because Hebridean sheep grow very slowly, so they’re best killed at hogget age (ie, between 18-24 months) as the lambs don’t have enough meat on them. And given their small frames, they’re not exactly available in great quantities. The upside of this “slow-cooking” is that their meat is exceptionally tasty and very lean - and its rarity surely automatically makes it a must-have for serious foodies.

However, as far as I know Fred Berkmiller of the l’Escargot Bleu and l’Escarbot Blanc restaurants in Edinburgh is the only chef-patron in Scotland to put Hebridean Hogget on his menus. He sources it from Jack and Morna Cuthbert of Ardoch in Kinross-shire. Their flock has gone from 50 when they started out in 2011 to 90 this year to cope with increasing demand in online sales to home cooks. Jack says they are expecting around 135 lambs come March/April. The Cuthberts also cross-breed with Southdowns and have kept Borerary sheep (the most endangered breed in the UK). As you can see, the meat is very dark and lean (with the exception of the Southdown Cross, pictured bottom left on the plate, alongside Boreray rolled shoulder, top, and Hebridean Hogget gigot, right ):

The three types all cook extremely easily and well, yet they all have subtly different flavour and mouthfeel. The Boreray was the deepest in colour and flavour, the Southdown Cross Barnsley chop fine-grained and deliciously fatty; yet the Hebridean Hogget gigot chop was the hands-down favourite at a tasting in my household.

Chef Fred Berkmiller, from Tours in France, rather delightfully describes the flavour of the Hebridean Hogget as “moutony”. He explains: “By ‘moutony’ I mean it is a lamb with flavour and character compared to the commercial lamb we can buy sometimes that are bland and hardly any taste or flavour.

He adds: “The flavour is sweet, enjoyable , rounded and long in the palate. The structure of the meat is consistent and has a certain bite that is very enjoyable and which gives it its own character.

“Unique Scottish produce like this is part of our world-class larder that increasing numbers of consumers are looking for. I’ve noticed that millennials and younger Gen Z diners in my restaurants are actively seeking out traditional foods and want to know their back-story. Hebridean Hogget has that in handfuls.

“Hebridean Hoggets’ smaller carcass means smaller portions. But their uniqueness, flavour, history and heritage makes them a dish to be cherished and championed,” he says. “It is certainly worth keeping them going into the future.”

Fred with Jack and Morna Cuthbert’s Hebridean sheep

The Rare Breeds Survival Trust’s CEO Tom Beeston says: “We want more people to eat rare breed meat to drive demand for the animals.”

So lett’s hear it for the Hebridean Hogget, so it’s no longer the black sheep of the foodie world.

At last! The Scottish launch of Women in the Food Industry

Over many years of covering the food scene in Scotland I’ve seen huge advances in the feminisation of the industry in this country: more female chefs (yay), restaurateurs, sommeliers (sommelieres?), front of house/general managers, farmers, producers and entrepreneurs - to name a few. So while I was thrilled to be asked onto the panel of speakers for the launch of Women in the Food Industry (WIFI) Scotland in the week of International Women’s Day 2019 - a gig I sadly can’t do as I’m travelling - I can’t help but wonder why it’s taken so long to get this going! Nevertheless I’m delighted to see that the gender pay gap, sexism in the workplace and other barriers to career progression will be explored along with the success stories by an interesting (all-women) panel of speakers ….

The free event, which takes place from 4pm-6pm on Monday March 4, 2019, at the Edinburgh School of Food and Wine, is organised by Sound Bite PR in collaboration with London-based Women in the Food Industry.

Jessica Sneddon (below right), Director of Sound Bite PR, said: “We are delighted to be launching Scottish Women in the Food Industry to celebrate the fantastic female talent working in the industry in Scotland. While we have plenty of examples of major success stories, there is still some way to go to overcome the challenges and barriers that women continue to face in their careers.

“Scottish Women in the Food Industry aims to provide a platform for women to come together, share their thoughts, discuss pertinent industry issues and celebrate their successes as we work towards an even brighter future for women working in Scotland’s vibrant and fast-evolving food industry.”

Chaired by Fiona Richmond (above, centre), Head of Regional Food at Scotland Food & Drink, the panel will include Fiona Burrell, Principal (top right), The Edinburgh New Town Cookery School; Sumayya Usmani (far left), food educator; Jack Mitchell, Director, TRUEfoods Ltd; Julie Macleod, Chef Patron, Julie's Kopitiam; and Dale MacPhee, General Manager, Waldorf Astoria Edinburgh – The Caledonian.

With a focus on the theme for International Women's Day 2019, #Balanceforbetter, a call-to-action for driving gender balance across the world, issues such as the gender pay gap, opportunities and challenges in the workplace and barriers to career progression will be explored.

Sumayya Usmani said: “Coming from a country where women find is hard to make their way in many careers; it is amazing to see that many women struggle with the same problems in the West. The food world particularly, is a tough one to be a woman - especially as a chef.

“However, it is really encouraging to see that with hard work, resilience and commitment, women chefs are slowly working to find their way to the top. But the struggle isn’t over, and together we make a stronger force to be reckoned with. As a food writer, I find many more women taking this food career path, one that I find a supportive space. This is an evidence of the fact that women’s creativity and power is best harnessed by working together with passion and dedication.”

Julie Macleod, Chef Patron, Julie's Kopitiam in Glasgow, added: “Cooking is something that has been extremely close to my heart from a young age. This passion has brought me to open a restaurant and allowed me to work with some of the most inspirational women in the food industry. We work every day in order to combat machoism within kitchens and squash the acceptance of daily sexism in the industry.”

• Women in the Food Industry Scotland is open to anyone working in the food, drink and hospitality industry or anyone with an interest in the subject. Register for free at https://bit.ly/2tv7q3y 

The Grahamston: Shining a light on Glasgow's once-excellent reputation for growing - and eating! - fresh produce

I enjoyed reading Norrie Gilliland’s excellent history of Grahamston, the “lost” 17th century village underneath Glasgow’s Central Station and its surrounding areas. It had me wondering again about the reasons for contemporary Glasgow’s perplexingly poor diet-related health stats, especially on learning how lush and fruitful – literally – the city was in its early days.

A map of Glasgow from 1783, courtesy Britton Images, showing Grahamston to the far west of the emerging city. You can see how unpopulated it was then, and so close to both the River Clyde and the eventual site of Glasgow Central.

There were, of course, many breweries in old Glasgow, and at least two in the village itself around 1743, alongside several granaries and a bakery. A large sugar refinery existed in Grahamston in the early 1800s, joining the four that operated throughout the city from the late 1600s onwards. Imported from the West Indies, sugar – for better or for worse – made the city’s first fortunes alongside, of course, tobacco.

So far, so well known. But what I hadn’t fully appreciated was how widely Grahamston was recognised for its market gardens. Glasgow had an excellent reputation for growing local, seasonal fresh produce, thanks to the many orchards in what are now Hope Street and Union Street, where Grahamston stood. In addition, Grahamston had at least six productive market gardens, growing cabbages, kale and the like, listed in 1789. And “on the western side of the village, now Hope Street, was a marshy area used for growing willow whauns for making and repairing baskets used by local market gardeners”, writes the author. Fascinating stuff! Add to that the lobster, crab, oyster and other shellfish from the clean, yet-to-be-dredged, River Clyde, and you get the picture that the Glasgow diet was once pretty ok, and available to all.

Industrialisation and the inevitable advent of the railways in the 19th century changed all that: Grahamston was demolished in the 1870s to make way for Central Station.

“Grahamston, which was first noted on maps of Glasgow around 1680, sadly vanished beneath the foundations of Glasgow Central over a century ago,” said Gilliland, whose book, Glasgow’s Forgotten Village, is the only written account of the history of Grahamston. “Over 200 years it grew from a row of thatched cottages to a commercial and industrial hub right at the heart of Victorian Glasgow and it was undoubtedly a microcosm of Glasgow’s growth into a diverse, multi-cultural and internationally renowned city of the 21st century. Yet no record of it exists in the city archives.”

I came across the book on a visit to Radisson Blu hotel, which is situated at the crossroads of Argyle Street and Hope Street where Grahamston once flourished, and just across from the station that sealed the village’s demise. The hotel has just opened a new restaurant and bar after a £1.2m transformation - and has rather cleverly named it The Grahamston.  

Its massive floor-to-ceiling glass windows may be a world apart from the tiny croft-house versions that once looked out onto the village, but the interior design has many respectful nods to the area’s bucolic – as well as industrial – past.  

I was interested to learn that, despite being part of a large hotel group, exec chef Stephen MacNiven (pictured below) has free reign to create a series of menus and drinks list that reflect the historic significance of this specific area. A new The Grahamston Ale, by Caledonian Breweries, is one example.

The hyper-local producers have long gone from this busy city centre site, replaced predominantly by fast-food takeaways and restaurant chains, but MacNiven has made it his mission to source as locally and seasonally as he can “to reflect Scotland’s world-class natural larder and Glasgow’s thriving artisan food and drink scene”. So far Rodgers butchers for Ayrshire beef, Campbell’s Prime Meat for seafood and Braehead Foods are on board and he’s searching for local dairy, fruit and vegetable suppliers. Breads are baked daily in-house, just like the old days.

“I’ve already had whole deer and pigs in the kitchen to demonstrate to my brigade and apprentices the traditional butchery skills that would have been practised in Grahamston in the 18th century,” says MacNiven, who has named his steak menu after John Wallace, the butchers shop that used to operate in the village. Highland lamb features three ways in his signature dish, which he says is already “flying out the door” within just a few days of opening. He’s also created Glasgow Makar Gin cured Scottish salmon, St Mungo beer batter cod fillet, Scottish monkfish with truffle pomme Anna, a hand-picked white crab starter, and a twice-cooked Lowlands corn-fed chicken dish for a menu that is pleasingly restrained and sophisticated, yet which he describes as “fun-dining” rather than “fine-dining”. He aims to add the likes of high-end turbot and John Dory and Tomahawk steaks to his menu if and when the time is right.

Grahamston exec chef Stephen MacNIven and, above left, his dish of Highland lamb three ways, and above right, twice-cooked Lowlands chicken.

“A lot of hard work goes into what we do here,” says chef, above, who acknowledges that Glasgow’s eating-out scene has undergone a “massive change” in years since he left and to which he has recently returned. The confluence of centralised chains in the city centre, together with hugely popular independents especially in the Merchant City and Finnieston, makes his task, as he puts it, “tricky”.

I wish him and his team the very best. They, and Grahamston, deserve it.

The future of food? Young people!

With a rather daunting 27,000 jobs to fill by 2022 to fulfil its ambition of growing the industry and doubling its value to £30bn by 2030, it makes sense for Scotland Food & Drink to turn its attention to the younger generation - and, in what I reckon was a stroke of brilliance, to hold the launch of its annual celebration fortnight (Sept 2-16) in a funky underground cafe in the heart of Glasgow city centre that features the ongoing restoration of three iconic Banksy murals.  

This departure from tradition signalled that the industry, which is headquartered in Edinburgh, is now looking not only to millennials but also to Gen Z and beyond to innovate, modernise and grow into the future. The cafe du moment was Thomson’s Coffee Roasters, a 175-year old Scottish company that has recently taken over the soaring red-brick space formerly occupied by the The Arches experimental theatre company underneath Glasgow Central Station. Thus it’s a prime example of how younger generations can attract new kudos to a long-established business by building on tradition.

My own long experience as a "seasoned" journalist covering the Scottish food and drink industry has shown time and again that it is already awash with astonishingly talented young people, be they chefs, third-generation fishers, farmers and producers joining the family business, or enthusiastic entrepreneurs with no previous experience. Indeed, I’d even go so far as to say they are the reason I’m so into the scene they inhabit. They are helping shake off what I’ve dubbed the “culinary cringe” (coined from the cultural cringe identified by Carol Craig in her 2012 book, The Scots’ Crisis of Confidence) that has dogged us for too long.

But a further push to encourage yet more to become part of Scotland's hugely successful food and drink industry, and so ensure its continued growth, is undeniably necessary. The guest panel at today’s Scottish Food and Drink Fortnight launch seemed pretty inspirational to me, the assembled group of media and industry in attendance – and to Fergus Ewing, cabinet secretary for rural economy, and James Withers, chief executive at Scotland Food & Drink, who stood alongside them.

Patrick MacHugh, 26, swapped a life on the international badminton circuit to launch Power Press Coffee, a Glasgow-based e-commerce business offering a range of “performance coffee” products for pre-workouts at the gym or to kickstart the working day. With health and fitness paramount a key issue for government and the general population, he wants to show that caffeine can be use to enhance natural performance - and encourage more young people into his industry.  Ellie Sinclair, 23, of Aberdeenshire, has founded the environmentally-friendly VegCo, which makes sauces and spice mix pots from tomatoes and chillies grown in her greenhouse heated by power from the onsite anaerobic digester of her family’s agricultural contracting and waste haulage business. She’s now looking at expansion. Rory Campbell, 27, started out on his father’s fishing boat at Portpatrick in Dumfries & Galloway before deciding to become a chef at the family restaurant in the town and learning his trade in Manhattan and New York. Jennifer Macdonald, 31, runs her own farm and has recently launched her own community interest company Woodside Arran through which she sells her fresh produce, meat and eggs throughout the island. She said that more education about the true cost of food is vital, and that discouraging people from believing food should be cheap, and that paying £5 for two chickens in Tesco at midnight is sustainable.

So, has our ancient and modern food culture got a future? James Withers said: “The best days of food and drink in Scotland are yet to come.” On today's evidence, he could just be right.

ENDS

[Photo, L-R: Ellie Sinclair of VegCo; Patrick McHugh of Power Press Coffee; James Wither, CEO at Scotland Food & Drink; Fergus Ewing, Cab Sec for Rural Econony; Jenny MacDonald, founder of Woodside Arran; and fisherman-turned-chef Rory Campbell of Portpatrick. Photographed on August 28, 2018, at Thomson's Central Cafe Bar underneath Glasgow Central.]

Andrew Fairlie's Afternoon Tea: Proust comes to Perthshire

The time, thought and effort that has been put into Andrew Fairlie's first-ever Afternoon Tea is obvious from the minute the sharing plate of amuse bouches (pictured above) is set on the table. To be sampled between two and in strict rotation according to chef's instructions, a shot glass of tomato mi-cuit topped with bronze fennel pollen is followed by a breakfast radish chaudfroid decorated with marigold petals and finished with a tranche of warm pissaladiere with marjoram and oregano. Not only a visual delight, its flavours and aromas too are clearly designed to be part of the experience. Entitled A Taste of Provence as a nod, I reckon, to Fairlie's early days in top French kitchens, this is a most sophisticated and nuanced start to a sensory journey that is both celebratory and highly contemporary, while lightly drizzled with Proustian nostalgia. (Continues...)

Top: Lobster tartelette with a French tarragon and fennel pastry. Left: Marrbury smoked salmon with Katy Rodgers crowdie,  rare roast beef with nasturtium butter; and Gleneagles' exec pastry chef Phillip Skinazi.

Fairlie's 'Flavours of the Secret Garden Afternoon Tea' is inspired by his cherished - and private - Victorian walled garden situated some 20 minutes away from his two-Michelin-starred restaurant at Gleneagles hotel at Auchterarder, Perthshire. It is to be served for one week only in the newly-opened Ochil House at the hotel by Gleneagles' newly appointed executive pastry chef Phil Skinazi.

Each element - a delicate lobster tartlette whose buttery, paper-thin short pastry is infused with French tarragon and fennel; a finger sandwich of rare roast beef spread with a Wasabi-esque nasturtium butter; an exquisite cucumber and black peppermint macaron; and the all-important, ever-evocative warm Madeleines sweetened with honey made by the Scottish native black bees that inhabit the Secret Garden hives - has been conceived to showcase the rare and heritage vegetables, fruits, herbs and edible flowers grown at the garden by head gardener Jo Campbell (pictured below) and her all-female team. Fairlie has said that the "remarkable ingredients Jo produces continue to surprise us all, and now guides our cooking season by season". (continues ...)

Andrew Fairlie, chef-patron of Scotland's only two-Michelin starred restaurant at Gleneagles Hotel, at the door of his Secret Walled Garden - insipration for his menus and his first Afternoon Tea. Above: head gardener Jo Campbell with samples of her produce, and in the Victorian glasshouse with her range of micro-herbs.

Running from August 20-26 only, this is the first in a series of collaborative afternoon teas priced at £40 a head taking place at Gleneagles Hotel from August to November 2018. Next up is Tom Kitchin in September, followed by Claire Macdonald in November. No pressure, then, guys.

More info at www.gleneagles.com.

[Please see Published Work on this site for my previous interviews with Andrew Fairlie and features on his Victorian walled garden.]