This month’s Featured Chef…
Andrew Fairlie
Chef/Proprietor, Restaurant Andrew Fairlie at Gleneagles Hotel
Andrew, first and foremost, thank you vey much for your time today. Here we are at The Gleneagles Hotel. It’s quite ironic really: you are a local lad; from 10 miles down the road. What made you decide to become a Chef? And was it always your idea to have a Michelin starred restaurant? Or was your goal just to be a chef?
It depends how far you want to go back. If you go back to when I first saw a professional kitchen, I was 15 years old; I knew then that I wanted to be a chef. In terms of Michelin stars and awards etc, I didn’t even know what they were. At that time I knew I wanted to work in a kitchen. I knew the pay wasn’t very good and the work was very hard but I just genuinely loved it. It has just been a mad journey from then.
So, you started in Perth and then you end up in the Charing Cross Hotel in London, that’s one end of the country to another – how did that come about?
Well, when I first started at the Station hotel in Perth it was a British Transport Hotel.
Yes, of course Gleneagles was as well, wasn’t it?
Yes, I actually used to come here and play football against Gleneagles when I was an apprentice.
And you’ve still got both legs!! (Laughter)
Yes. . . just! So it was part of British Transport Hotels, and my Chef at the time – Keith Podmore, who I started my apprenticeship with left Perth and was promoted to the Charing Cross Hotel in London. So at the age of 17, when he left I decided that I wanted to go down with him.
Now, when you were 15 (and I am going to get slated by our Scottish members here), you didn’t have the choices available to you in Scotland that a 15 year old has available to them now. How important is it nowadays to go to London? Is it still as important as when you where starting out?
You don’t have to go to London, but I think that as a life experience I would still recommend it. As a life experience for me, I loved it; it was fantastic. I worked very hard and I guess that was all part of my apprenticeship, my formative years first as an apprentice and then as a Chef de Partie in Boodles. I just loved it. The whole London experience for me was great.
