Glasgow's green revolution just keeps on growing ahead of COP26 next year

Glasgow’s undergoing a significant green revolution and has numerous growing sites around the city that supply restaurants and cafes as well serving the local communities. Why is this signficant ahead of the city hosting the UN Climate Change Conference next year? Read on ...

[This exclusive report was first published in the Sunday National on October 18, 2020.]

Glasgow greens took centre stage in a cooking competition aimed at mashing the city’s reputation for poor dietary health – and showcasing the world-class produce being grown on some remarkable sites across the city.

Smoked chard replaced the deep-fried Mars Bar and hispi cabbage overtook crispy pizza on World Food Day last Friday [Oct 16] as three Glasgow chefs convened in an East End market garden to compete in the final of the Veg Cities Chefs’ Challenge 2020 under the watchful eye of head judge Gary Maclean, MasterChef the Professionals winner and Scotland’s national chef. The heat was on as the rivals strove against the odds to produce a range of new plant-based dishes made with local, naturally grown ingredients with zero food miles or food waste.

The Masterchef-style cook-off, backed by the UK-wide Sustainable Food Cities network and organised by the Glasgow Community Food Network, is now in its third year in Glasgow but for the first time took place in the open air due to Covid-19 restrictions. A barbecue and two camp fires erected at Greenheart Growers market garden in Tollcross - formerly the drying green of a Victorian steamie - replaced the professional stoves at City of Glasgow College, where it normally takes place.

Finalists Keir Irvine of Le Petit Cochon, Robbie Kirkman of Eusebi’s and John Traynor of the Under Cover Dinner Society - selected from nine rival competitors - had to create new dishes from a mystery box of city-grown produce of a variety that would confound Glasgow’s reputation as an unreconstructed No Mean City. Here were on-trend seasonal flavours, colours and textures: candy beetroot, tiny salad turnips, baby carrots and leeks, red celery, sweet cicely, lemon balm, nasturtium seed pods and shoots, celeriac and lacto-fermented Ayrshire tatties. Foraged elderberry vinegar, croft eggs, Glasgow honey, Mossgiel milk and a range of heritage Scots products including Golspie Mill peasemeal, Barony Mill beremeal, Scotland The Bread organic wheat flour and sourdough starter helped the chefs’ creative juices flow.

Produce was supplied by an astonishing range of growers from across the city including the Springburn food hub; Maryhill community garden on a former whisky bond site; St Paul’s Youth Garden at Blackhill’s Growing in Provanmill; and a hydroponic growing space in an old railway arch in Tradeston.

John Traynor won the Green Colander Award for his peasemeal, Ayrshire potato and apple porridge (pictured above) and three-vegetable kebab. His dessert of apple and celeriac beremeal sponge, sweet cicely custard and crystallised blackcurrant leaves was deemed “as good if not better than anything you’d eat in a Michelin-starred restaurant” by head judge Gary Maclean. Robbie Kirkman’s fermented potato pancake with beets three waysm salsa verde and carrot tops (below) illustrated how colourful - and tasty - the city-grown veg can be.

Adding extra nuance to this year’s event was the fact that it runs concurrently with newly-launched public consultation on the Glasgow City Food Plan, the first of its kind in Scotland. Backed by Glasgow City Council and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS Board among others it aims to help Glasgow in its commitment to become carbon neutral by 2030 and to make healthy, affordable food accessible for everyone living and working in the city.

A major restriction is the lack of growing space for greater volume and diversity. Food deserts and food swamps persist, and there are concerns that while the city’s restaurants are celebrated, local food growing is not.

Glasgow currently has three market gardens, around 90 community gardens and growing spaces and 32 allotments sites. Yet two-thirds of the population reports eating fewer than five portions of fruit and veg a day, and 12% report eating none. Organisers want more growing spaces on the city’s 1300 hectares of vacant and derelict land across 925 sites and for public services to buy and sell healthier and more sustainable food and support local businesses.

Glasgow currently has three market gardens, around 90 community gardens and growing spaces and 32 allotments sites. Yet two-thirds of the population reports eating fewer than five portions of fruit and veg a day, and 12% report eating none. Organisers want more growing spaces on the city’s 1300 hectares of vacant and derelict land across 925 sites and for public services to buy and sell healthier and more sustainable food and support local businesses.

The Veg Cities Chefs’ Challenge also chimes with the ambitions of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), postponed because of Covid-19 pandemic and rescheduled to be held in Glasgow next November.

It’s anticipated that in addition to the 30,000 delegates from around the world, thousands of global climate activists and campaigners will also descend on the city and seek out hyper-local, high-welfare, ethical, sustainable and affordable food experiences.

“Glasgow’s called the Dear Green Place, but people don’t think of it as somewhere you can grow superb, healthy fresh food that has zero food miles,” said Chefs’ Challenge organiser Grant Reekie of the Glasgow Community Food Network. “Springburn, Parkhead and Tradeston aren’t places naturally associated with gourmet ingredients, but we are out to prove how wrong that is.

“The whole point of the Chefs’ Challenge is to show what Glasgow is doing and how it’s possible for every citizen to eat more vegetables if we have enough land and resources to grow them and more shops, restaurants and cafes to sell them.”

Gary Maclean said: “This competition illustrates how progressive Glasgow is. Events like this showcase how incredibly good our produce is and how it chimes with the greater movement towards local, sustainable ingredients and zero food waste.

“Seeing the guys cooking fresh produce in the environment it was grown in is incredibly exciting – and full of potential.”

• ©2020 Cate Devine. Copyright of the text and images on this website belongs to Cate Devine unless otherwise stated. Please contact me for any commissions, or to comment on current issues.

The Scottish terroir comes home

It was the dinky wee tubs and bags accompanying the main course container that I found most endearing. Fred Berkmiller’s pot-au-feu, collected on Friday as a takeaway-for-two from his Edinburgh restaurant l’Escargot Bleu, really delivered the sense that much care and attention had been put into each element personally by chef himself.

His slow-cooked pot-au-feu, an earthy French ragout that literally translates as “pot on the fire”, was launched to mark Scottish Food & Drink Fortnight, the annual celebration of Scotland’s natural larder – or what chef Fred refers to as “le terroir ecossais”. He currently sources from 50 different suppliers across the country, and is a recipient of the Scottish Sourcing Award at the Scotland Food and Drink Awards. For the pot-au-feu he uses local beef, lamb, pork and chicken, and for my meal he’d sourced the veg (potatoes, carrots, turnips, onions) from his private walled garden in Newton near Edinburgh. (This is a wonderful space of raised beds, a polytunnel and an ancient greenhouse which I had the privilege of visiting last year with Fred. His new-found passion for growing all sorts of fruit and veg for his restaurant was palpable – and catching.)

He made two stocks to maximise the natural flavours: one a clear salted bouillon of featherblade, tongue, cheek and vegetables to draw out their flavours, and the other is unsalted so the flavour remains in the meat and veg. When combined, they rendered the entire dish exceptional because not only was the gravy delicious, but the texture and flavour of all four meats remained delightfully distinctive. It reminded me of when I lived in France and learning to cook a la francaise, even if the ingredients here were Scottish. And this time, all I had to do was reheat it for around half-an-hour.

And what about the lidded pots? One contained Dijon mustard to accompany the casserole. The others each contained the most delicious Soupe de Poissons (made with Eyemouth crab, Skye langoustine heads, haddock, conger eel and of course Pastis, pictured right), aioli, croutons, Gruyere; a clafoutis made with plums and apples from chef’s garden; and a duck-egg crème brule. Exceptional quality with very little effort on my part.

For chef and his team – initially wife Betty, daughter Matilde and son Camile but now supplemented once again by his regular staff - it’s not quite so easy. With around 80 takeaway orders weekly, some for two, four or six people, he is cooking around 300-450 ready meals a week. Together with running his restaurant l’Escargot Bleu with reduced seating, his working week now involves running two sets of menus, though with very different delivery methods.

On Mondays he writes the new menus and his weekly newsletter (which now attracts around 50,000 views: visit www.lescargotbleu.co.uk/); Tuesdays he is on his own butchering and prepping for the week; joined by his team on Wednesdays for lunch and dinner service at the restaurant and cooking for takeaway; Thursdays for the restaurant and takeaway; Fridays boxing up takeaway orders and running the restaurant for lunch and dinner, plus doing takeaway deliveries (which he loves because it means he gets to chat with customers); and on Saturdays cooking in the restaurant for lunch and dinner.

He says it’s difficult to determine whether takeaway is taking up equal or more time than running two restaurants did (l’Escargot Blanc, Fred’s other restaurant, is currently closed). But he does acknowledge that doing takeaway is a lot more demanding than he’d initially assumed it would be. Firstly, sourcing containers online was tricky “because everybody else was starting takeaway around the same time as we were”. His are plastic, because composable ones were impossible for him to find, but they are re-usable – and the lids snap closed properly. Also, ensuring food is at the correct temperature and stays fresh in the fridge until next day if required, is vital.

When I went to collect my order from the downstairs area that used to be Bleu’s delicatessen and is now used as the takeaway kitchen and packing area, I was worried I was arriving too soon at 2.10pm. However there was already a small queue ahead of me and by the time Betty and Matilde had packed my order and we’d had a wee chat the queue had stretched along the courtyard, up the stairs and onto the street. But just as many prefer to stay indoors while the pandemic persists and rely on home delivery rather than visiting the restaurant.

“When we first decided to do takeaway in May, we hadn’t been earning a penny since lockdown began in March since Betty and I are self-employed and furlough didn’t apply to us,” explained Fred. “We weren’t in a position to advertise so we simply used our customer database to let people know and honestly, the phone and order line went crazy.

“It was like people emerging from the war desperate for food. It was wonderful.”

Is takeaway here for good? “My gut feeling is that it will remain a core part of our business,” he says. “We already have about 30 return customers each week and I like to think they feel the benefit of our clean, well-sourced, ‘feel-good’ food.

“I do think people are more conscious of the benefits of eating local and eating well, and paying the right price for it, than before the arrival of Coronavirus,” he concludes. “I can’t express enough how grateful we are for the loyalty and trust of our customers. We could not have continued without them.”

A visit to chef Fred’s walled garden at Newton, near Edinburgh, last year, was inspirational

[Words and photos ©️CateDevine]

Scotland calls North America in the world's largest Zoom cookery masterclass

EXCLUSIVE

Some 2000 North Americans are set to learn how to cook with some of Scotland’s finest produce today (Saturday September 5, 2020) in what’s believed to be the world’s largest Zoom cookery masterclass to date.

Gary Maclean, Scotland’s National Chef and a MasterChef: The Professionals former winner, will host the free interactive online tutorial from his home in Glasgow in collaboration with Central Market, the upscale US food retailer with ten stores and ten cook schools across Texas - including Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin and Fort Worth. The four-course Scottish seafood menu, launching Scottish Food & Drink Fortnight 2020, features fillet of native Hebridean salmon from the Scottish Salmon Company, smoked salmon from Loch Fyne Oysters in Argyll, langoustines from DR Collin in Eyemouth, Tain Cheddar from Highland Fine Cheeses, and a Cranachan dessert using oats by Stoats of Edinburgh, ice cream by Equi’s in Hamilton, honey by Heather Hills in Blairgowrie, and chocolate by Mackie’s of Aberdeenshire.

It's the first time Central Market has organised such an event - and it’s the first of its type on this scale to take place in the US, if not the world.

Participants can buy all of the menu ingredients in-store, pre-order online for home delivery or to pick up in store, before and after the 90-minute event (which starts in the US at 11am, and in the UK at 5pm). UK residents can also follow online (see menus & link below).

Juan-Carlos Jeffrey, Vice-President Food & Drink at Scottish Development International, which helps Scottish producers access new markets, described the unprecedented number of sign-ups for the inaugural class as “a very pleasant surprise”.

SDI has been working with Central Market – which describes itself as a “gourmet marketplace” roughly equivalent to Whole Foods Market in the UK - since 2016. It is the launch partner for CM’s digital Cooking School.

“We are absolutely delighted at the level of interest so far, which goes above and beyond expectations,” he told me. “We thought we might get up to a thousand participants but we’re now at double that.”

A sign, then, that North American consumers are keen on Scottish produce? “Central Market prides itself on sourcing high quality produce of great provenance and on offering a very curated selection of on-trend products their customers can buy,” said Mr Jeffrey. “Scotland has a broad basket of products to offer that meet those criteria.

“And chef Gary Maclean ticks all the right boxes as the host. He is a great educator and communicator and is certain to give participants a memorable cooking experience while telling the stories behind the ingredients.”

With Coronavirus still spreading in Texas and across the US, he sees this as an opportunity to test the model and do more in the future. “The pandemic means the ability to go into food stores, discover and engage with new products is diminished. People can’t go to cooking classes physically. Equally, producers can’t come to market any more. So this virtual programme is a very tangible way of bringing Scotland to buyers and end users, and of giving customers a unique Scottish cooking experience.

“We’re going to see more of it as we get used to using our devices to access high-calibre ingredients and ways of using them.”

Chef Gary, who is a passionate food educator and a long-time lecturer in professional cookery at City of Glasgow College (where he is currently Executive Chef), is thrilled at the prospect.

“I think this must be a world record cookery class and shows incredible interest in our food and culture during these difficult times,” he told me. “I’m really excited at the numbers after the effort it’s taken to pull this together over several months.

“I’m certain this will tap the hearts and minds of many people in an area where these Scottish ingredients are available, and where many towns, rivers and hills have Scottish names. North Americans are very patriotic and if they have even a hint of Scottish blood in their DNA they really go for it. Central Market supermarkets are very popular in Texas and they are selling all this Scottish produce. It’s great for our suppliers and producers and this is an opportunity to tell the story of Scotland through its food. It’s sure to make a difference to Scottish exports to the US.

“I mean, who’d have thought you could source ice-cream from Equi’s in Hamilton in the middle of Texas?”

I ask Mr Jeffrey about the significance ahead of the resumption of UK-US Brexit trade talks next spring. He replied: “While it’s not of direct significance, we welcome the news of the removal of shortbread and other biscuits from the 25% tariff applied last October and would welcome any trade deal that removed barriers to trade and allowed Scotland’s produce to be compete more equitably.”

Central Market’s Explore Scottish Seafood with Gary Maclean

Cookalong dish

·         Fillet of Native Hebridean Salmon with a Warm Potato Salad, Capers, Poached Egg and Asparagus

Demonstrated dishes

·         Smoked Salmon Salad with French Beans, Snap Peas, Pea Puree and Almonds

·         Grilled Langoustine with Tain Cheddar, Fennel, Pea and Herb Salad and Aioli

·         Cranachan with Seasonal Fruit, Stoats Oats, Equi’s Ice Cream and Heather Hills Honey

Visit www.eventbrite.com/e/explore-scottish-seafood-with-chef-gary-maclean-tickets-116791306943

Lessons learned in virtual cookery class

What strikes me most about taking part in a virtual cookery class is the number of things you learn without expecting to. For example, the amount of advance prep that’s required from the chef and staff. Receiving one’s box full of each carefully-measured, weighed, portioned, chilled, sometimes partially-cooked, and packaged component of the multiple-course menu, plus printed instructions, is the first thrill. Some are sent to hundreds of participants all over town and beyond. Not only does it makes you realise the sheer hard graft that goes into running a professional kitchen; the added complication of logistics – getting the ingredients safely delivered intact and in compliance with health and safety regs – is pretty impressive.

I took part in one of the first @Home classes hosted by Stuart Leslie, head chef at The Cook School, the sister company of Braehead Foods in Kilmarnock. The £50-for-two menu was Italian and we made aubergine cannelloni (ten ingredients), mushroom risotto (11 ingredients), chicken breast wrapped in Parma ham (four ingredients), and chef kindly threw in a pre-made vanilla Panna Cotta for dessert. The equipment list packed into my box required some 19 items to be found around my kitchen and laid out in advance (a useful time-saver during the 90-minute class).  

My mis-en-place sorted according to chef Stuart Leslie’s instructions

The second thing I learned that night was how great it was to be able to ogle other participants’ kitchens. Forget politicians’ bookcases being featured on news channels as TV interviews have been conducted at home, following social distancing guidelines: this was far more interesting, if a little envy-inducing.

The third thing was how to chop an onion. Finally. Chef Stuart cheerfully - and tearlessly - demonstrated how you’re meant to cut the top of the onion off and keep the root on so that vertical slices stay together until you cut the root off. Bravo. As the atmosphere between us and the dozen or so others was relaxed and full of banter, helped along by the fact that most of us had a glass of wine to hand, I didn’t feel embarrassed at my ignorance.

“There’s no such thing as a silly question, as we’re here to be comfortable as we go,” chef Stuart assured me. I’ve since been told that someone in another class on vegetarian cookery enquired about the best way to cook a steak.

So I wasn’t abashed to discover that risotto should be served slightly sloppy, otherwise it’s more of a paella, and that it should be eaten on a cold plate to stop it continuing to cook and congeal.

Speed, precision, keeping the work station clean and tidy, sticking to the plan and paying attention to detail were also important lessons I learned as a home cook. Thanks to chef, I was really pleased with the end result of my dishes.

I also discovered that the presentation skills of the host chef are key to the whole thing. Chef Stuart has been running The Cook School for some years now, so is used to performing in front of an audience. Others may have to learn this – it’s no longer the case that a chef’s life is destined to be led in obscurity, stuck behind the stove. If the Coronavirus pandemic continues and lockdowns are imposed around the country, online classes are set to stay.

“Doing live classes were Stuart’s idea, and the reaction and feedback so far have been absolutely brilliant,” says Craig Stevenson, managing director of Braehead Foods. “They were designed for lockdown to cater for those working from home, learning to cook, who need a break or a date night, but can’t go out to eat,” he says. “We will be continuing this into the future even if lockdown stops. It’s a good way to educate and entertain customers, while helping local producers and suppliers and even delivery drivers stay in work.”

My version of the aubergine cannelloni …

·        The Cook School @Home classes continue tonight and tomorrow with a Scottish Larder menu to mark the beginning of Scottish Food & Drink Fortnight. For this and other classes, visit https://cookschool.org/product/cook-school-home/

"It's all about staying relevant, not sitting at home crying”: two of Scotland's top "guerilla" chefs on popping up after lockdown

I first met Craig Grozier while he was chef-patron of Heart Buchanan, the late, lamented deli in Glasgow’s west end, and admired his pioneering love of foraging and using local ingredients in an intelligent and deeply flavoursome way. Since then he’s launched his own Glasgow-based private dining company Fallachan, working with the likes of The Botanist on Islay, The Principal's Lodgings at Glasgow University, Sorn Dining, Galloway Wild Foods and a host of international clients. (When I wrote about his new creation of Hare’s Blood Custard for The Herald in 2015, the story went viral.)

Now he’s collaborating with his friend, the Falkirk-born chef James Murray (ex Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, Nurdin Topham’s Nur in Hong Kong and most recently head chef at the Edinburgh Food Studio) on the launch of Fallachan Cart, a more casual menu influenced by the pair’s global street food experiences. Their first menus will be served later this week when they take over the kitchen at The Gate neighbourhood bar in the Gallowgate, in Glasgow’s East End (see photo below), for a three-week pop-up. (The Gate, owned since July last year by drinks consultant Andy Gemmell, has been in existence for 200 years. It sits across from the Barrowland Ballroom and, according to the whisky writer Dave Broom, joins the Ben Nevis in Finnieston, The Lismore in Partick and the Pot Still and Bon Accord in the city centre as one of the city’s “great whisky pubs”. Having a food offer such as Fallachan Cart’s “next level street food” alongside pints of Tennents, local craft beers and high-end cocktails was, says Andy Gemmell, is about “introducing something new, taking people out of their comfort zone, while also giving them something they want”. His clientele is an interesting mix of “old Glasgow” traders from the Barras market, and artists and students from Wasps Studios, producers from The Glasgow Collective, and musicians and music lovers from the Barrowlands and nearby St Luke’s.

This is an intruiging development in the food scene, given that both high-end chefs are entering new territory. I’m interrested to know if working this way is set to be the “new normal” for them - and others.

We meet in the West End during a break in prep for the imminent launch, and it’s an aural experience I won’t forget. The friends’ non-stop trip-up banter is an electrifying exchange of culinary ideas, challenges, solutions, cautions, jocular threats, high-fives and laughter. It seems to me that such manifest competitiveness is natural for two such creative and experienced talents - and it’s a pleasure to behold.

What I get from our short, if intense, time together is the pair’s unbridled euphoria at finally having a project to work on after four months of lockdown and the devastating shut-down of the hospitality sector; at years of combined professional experience now being distilled into new - and affordable - flavour-led dishes.

I’m also struck by the realisation of just how difficult lockdown has been for freelance chefs like them who’ve had nowhere to work, no customers to cook for, and no real incentive to get out of bed in the morning. Their suppressed creativity has now found an outlet and it appears their ability to be nimble, fleet of foot, flexible, call it what you will, is paying off.

“Fallachan Dining was doing really well and it had been growing exponentially over eight years to be crazy busy all year round. But I’ve lost what amounts to a year’s bookings due to the virus,” says Grozier. “Launching a street food concept is about trying to keep going in these challenging times. You have to move with what’s happening. You can either stay at home and cry, or you decide to re-invent yourself.

“We chefs are resilient, hard-working creatures. Neither of us are wired to sit still and do nothing.”

Murray, who left Edinburgh Food Studio when it closed in part due to lockdown last month, agrees. “Right now it’s all about staying relevant, being around the scene, still producing something,” he says. “Fallachan Cart is about going with the times. People are interested in affordable, tasty food made by chefs they know and trust.”

Grozier’s culinary travels to France, South America and Japan, and Murray’s to Europe, Asia and the US, have influenced the dishes while Scottish-sourced ingredients are used where possible. They have been meticulously R&D’d during lockdown, and both chefs hope they’ll appeal to the Gate’s food-savvy customers – many of whom, having been cooking at home during lockdown, will have a new appreciation of what goes into restaurant-quality dishes, but at just £20 a head.

The menus, served over two different weeks (the third menu is still in development) involve intense technical detail – and much hard graft (continues).

Grozier’s selection of handmade Bao buns (above) - light, fluffy steamed wheat flour dumplings made with sweet milk dough, based on the classic Chinese recipe - will be served with a range of his own fillings. Handmade artisan Thai sausage using Scottish pork belly and the whole animal; smoked Scottish haddock with Grozier’s new signature velvet crab mayo (“It’s outrageous and I’m super-pleased with it,” he says); Glasgow chips served with his own Tennents vinegar. The buns themselves are flavoured with Pondicherry spices (a mix classic French ingredients with the seven Indian spices), fermented chilli, or served plain. (Continues.)

Murray’s own JFC (Jimmy’s Fried Chicken) dish (above) sounds like a clever way to raise the ethical, sustainable and quality standards of an otherwise industrially-sourced, mass-produced, cheap take-away. His own dish, based on a South Korean recipe, uses organic chicken and the whole bird is mined for its breast meat, legs, wings, fat, skin and stock. He uses two of own-label Jarred glazes – spicy and sweet – and serves it with his own spiced red onion, fennel and parsley pickle and a “spicy, delicious” aioli.

“I hope to raise the both the standard and the public expectation of what fried chicken can be,” he says.

Looking to the future, Grozier intends to keep both Fallachan Dining and Fallachan Cart going, possibly as a supper club at The Gate, while James is looking to have his own restaurant and shop.

“I reckon it’s now about creating a sustainable business that feeds the young and the old in a local neighbourhood setting and at an accessible price-point, but which also has a strong online presence,” he says. His online shop will sell Jarred Pantry, his own-label range of pickles, ferments and wild foods. “After the pandemic experience, I reckon putting all your eggs in one basket and relying on all your revenue coming from bums-on-seats will no longer be sustainable.”

More immediately, the exchange of ideas for the Fallachan Cart pop-up continues unabated.

Do they think diners will appreciate the diligence, professionalism, experience, global techniques and layer upon layer of flavour that go into their new dishes?

The conversation suddenly stops. “Well, we bloody well hope so!” they chorus, slamming down their empty espresso cups and racing each other back to the prep kitchen where 72 organic chickens and 750 Bao buns in the making await them.

• Fallachan Cart’s three-week kitchen takeover of The Gate runs from August 6-8, then August 13-15 and August 20-22. Visit Dark Kitchen at www.thegateglasgow.com

Why Scotland's newest artisan foodie product is truly the salt of the earth - and the sea

Exclusive

Brilliant July sunshine casts a magical sparkle on millions of fresh sea water droplets as they trickle down through the only salt-producing thorn graduation tower in the world. Facing the sea from the Ayr coastline across to Arran, this mighty and mysterious-looking wooden structure has a wonderful story to tell – and not only because it is returning salt-making to an area once renowned for it.

Blackthorn Salt’s graduation tower is the first thing that hits you are you travel down the delightfully-named Saltpans Road that runs along the industrial coastline at Ayr. I’d been desperate to visit for ages, but lockdown had prevented it. When I finally go to make the journey this week, the wait was certainly worth it.

Finished only in March last year, the tower is modelled on the huge old blackthorn towers that still exist in Germany, Austria and Poland – although they are used as spas or outdoor ‘inhalatoriums’ to improve respiratory conditions. In Ayr, the Blackthorn graduation tower was designed and built locally, specifically to produce a modern, eco-friendly, sustainable and tasty gourmet salt.

“We visited the Polish and German towers several times on research trips, but the people who knew most about them couldn’t come to help us here as they are no longer producing salt,” said Blackthorn Salt founder Gregorie Marshall (pictured left with wife and business partner Whirly), a former Glasgow architect whose great-great grandfather 140 years ago founded Peacock Salt, the largest distributor of salt products in the UK, on the site at the delightfully-named Saltpans Road. Gregorie is now MD of the company, and his is the only salt being produced by Peacock. It is his brainchild, and he runs it with Whirly and Malky McKinnon, right, who has been with Peacock since leaving school at 16 and is now a fully-trained master salter with Blackthorn Salt.

The aesthetic appeal of the eight-metre-high, 23-foot-long tower is huge. I loved the visual contrast between the clean, straight lines of the horizontal larch beams and the vertical Douglas fir posts, the spherical wooden taps and the stiff, jagged, thorny branches of blackthorn (a tree native to Scotland and which grows sloe berries). Most of the bunches that are rammed together like thatch in their tens of thousands into the spaces of the 45-degree-angled triangular structure are imported from Poland, but one section has been was given by the Gledpark venison farm in Kirkcudbrightshire after Marshall put out an appeal for donations. He hopes that in future – when the bundles need replaced in about seven years’ time – all the twigs will be Scottish and has ambitions to plant his own blackthorn field.

And gently cascading down through this dark Sleeping Beauty-esque hedge is the all-important sea water, taken from Troon and pumped up into wooden channels that run across the top of the tower. It goes up at around 3% salination and by the time it has trickled down to the tray below - about one minute - it can have increased by between 0.4% and 4%, depending on weather conditions. It is circulated until it has increased to around 22% salination when it’s ready for transfer to the panhouse. After around four days of slow-heating and stirring by hand, it reaches 26% salination and crystallises to yield around 250 kilos.

The countless blackthorn thorns and twigs increase the surface area over which the sea water evaporates, while filtering out calcium sulphate, so the salt retains about 93%-96% sodium chloride (similar to French sel de gris) plus magnesium, calcium, potassium, sulphates, copper and other trace elements. This, plus the £6.40 price tag for a 240g box, elevates it to ‘gourmet salt’ status: for perspective, the best-known table and sea salt brands contain up to 99.9% and are much cheaper due to industrialised production methods and higher sodium levels.

Without the need for a pinch of salt, I’m willing to bet that true foodies, professional and amateur, will be willing to pay for the unique provenance, relatively small-batch availability, the slight sepia tinge lent by the blackthorn bark, and the time and labour involved in making this, the only salt made this way.

The flakes are exceptionally large and fragile, breaking down easily in the box. I ask Whirly to describe the flavour. “I think Blackthorn Salt tastes, as you’d expect, of the sea, but in a good way, without any of the sudden, shocking brininess that a mouthful of seawater brings,” she says. “It is tangy and confident followed by a more rolling sweetness.”

It’s generally accepted that when sprinkled on top of a dish, good salt helps draw out flavour. Would she agree? “Blackthorn really shines as a finishing salt, squished easily and finely between thumb and forefinger for a gentle, smooth and even spread, or the flakes just lightly sprinkled as they come, to give that attention-seeking spark to combat richer foods,” she says, adding that flakes atop grilled pineapple or fresh watermelon taste fantastic and when added sparingly to coffee help take away any bitterness.

The couple’s softly, softly approach to marketing relies, for now, on word of mouth within the hospitality industry. Forced by lockdown to put off a high-profile Spring launch of their very first batch, they decided instead on a “Pass the Salt” campaign where “for fun and for free” they sent out 19 boxes (a reference to Covid-19) to people who were meant to come and visit pre-launch or expressed a particular interest in what they had been doing. They asked them to pass on the names of others if they liked it, who in turn would pass on other names.

Some of this batch was also sent out, in larger tubs, to kitchens providing support meals for key workers. The cost of the salt was donated to the South Ayrshire Food Bank, Hospitality Health and the National Emergencies Trust.

Now the second batch is being weighed and packed. I hope it enjoys the fairytale reception it truly deserves.

"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.