Scottish Legend

Born in Perth, Scotland, Andrew Fairlie grew up in a household of seven kids. His father was a teacher and his mother worked in a shoe shop. Aged 15, he started out in a local hotel kitchen. For four years, he worked with Keith Podmore at Boodle’s gentlemen’s club in London and restaurants across England and Scotland, before winning the inaugural Roux Scholarship in 1984. He has since worked in France, Africa, Australia and as a chef on the Royal Scotsman, before opening Restaurant Andrew Fairlie at Gleneagles Hotel in 2001. He has two daughters, Ilona and Leah, with his ex-wife and lives with his partner Kate and her two children, Kitty and Rosie.

It's time to check-in at Gleneagles Hotel. A steady stream of guffawing golfers, chattering tourists and Breton-striped families bustle their way through the lobby. Behind them, a windcheater-clad chef, head down, hurries through the melee to his kitchen. While all the guests are there to experience his two-star restaurant – the only one in Scotland – not one person recognises him. This is the way Andrew Fairlie likes it. His cooking does the talking.

Our eyes lock across the lobby and we exchange a knowing nod. With all the guile of a young Archie Gemmill, he drops a shoulder and swerves to avoid a toddler, weaves between two golf bags and shakes my hand. ‘You ready then?,’ he asks. I didn’t realise we were going anywhere.

In a scene straight from the script of Taken, we bundle into one of the hotel’s blacked-out Mercedes. ‘We’re going to the Secret Garden,’ he announces. I’m immediately excited. The location of Fairlie’s much- revered kitchen garden is as protected as the recipe for his signature smoked lobster with lime and parsley butter. ‘You’re going to have to guide me, Andy,’ comes a voice from the front seat. Even the hotel’s driver doesn’t know its location. I bet Liam Neeson’s adversaries didn’t have to put up with this.

A kind man, Fairlie doesn’t insist on applying a hood. I’m grateful. Not least because this part of Scotland, Auchterarder, is simply stunning on a crisp and bright autumn morning. A short, winding journey has us arrive at a sprawling Victorian country house with watercolour-bleed grounds. At the end of the drive – and out of sight of the road – comes a garden, enclosed by 15-foot-high stone walls. Ironically, with all the fortification, the door isn’t locked. ‘They’d have to find it first,’ he says.

Behind the creaking gate – which still bears the fingerprint- smudged ‘Secret Garden’ inscription from the children who used to play here, lies a paradise for anyone with even a passing interest in produce. Row after perfectly symmetrical row of autumn roots, late-season greens and the last crop of berries waits patiently to be picked and transported the mile up the road to Fairlie’s pass.

Curator of this 2.3-acre space is Jo Campbell, alumni of Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. Blanc’s kitchen garden is widely regarded as the finest of its type in the UK, if not the world, and Campbell was charged with introducing new species and plants when she opened it in 2002. Blanc was said to have shed a tear when Campbell left to explore India in 2013, but on her return the Frenchman’s loss was the Scotsman’s gain.

‘The garden was the final piece of the puzzle for us. We are spoilt in terms of the seafood, meat and game we have access to, but garden produce was our weakest link,’ admits Fairlie. ‘I was becoming jaded. It felt like groundhog day working with what we always had, reinventing the same dishes. Jo changed all that.’

‘She introduced me to flavours I’d never experienced. I started to get excited again. It was a huge moment for me. I still love coming to the garden in the morning. It’s an energising, holistic place. I now hold it in as much esteem as I do the restaurant and the kitchen. Each one of these three is an important as the other.' As Fairlie speaks it comes thick with emotion and almost a religious fervour. Indeed, it’s now this Holy Trinity – kitchen, garden, restaurant – that produces the divine ambrosia that has diners united in eulogy.

French lessons

On the journey back to Gleneagles, the revelatory spirit continues. ‘I always knew I wanted to be a chef. Ever since my Tarragon Moment,’ he says. ‘I was working as a waiter aged 15 and one Saturday afternoon I nicked a spoonful of beef chasseur. “Oh my God,” I thought. “What the hell is that?” I went straight into the kitchen and asked the chef, who explained I was tasting fresh tarragon. I stood there at the hotplate and realised I was on the wrong side of the pass. I sat my last exam and started work in the kitchen the next day.’

From there, Fairlie gratefully fell into the slipstream of Keith Podmore, a chef for whom he worked for four years, following him from job to job. He worked across Scotland and England, assiduously soaking up the knowledge Podmore imparted.

In 1984 the Roux Scholarship launched: a competition for young chefs that sees the winners posted to a three-star Michelin restaurant of their choice for a season, and that has launched the careers of the likes of Sat Bains and Simon Hulstone. Fairlie duly won it, asking to be posted to Les Prés d’Eugénie, Michel Guérard’s three-star in south-west France. ‘It was a glorious time,’ says Fairlie. ‘I knew I was a good technical cook but this introduced me to a whole new culture. It was 18 young men and all we wanted to talk about was food. There was no football chat. I loved going to markets and watching women pick up lungs and pigs’ heads and give them a sniff.’

‘It really educated me about produce. The head chef and his team would go through eight crates of melons just to find the few that we would need for service. It was Japanese in its insistence on perfection and I loved it.’ He was sad to leave, but Guérard arranged a stint at Paris’s Hôtel de Crillon for Fairlie to continue his French education. He packed his bags excitedly for Paris, but what greeted him wasn’t the fairy tale of the south.

‘It was absolutely horrific,’ he exclaims, labouring over the right adjective to define his trauma. ‘There were 50 French cooks in a kitchen a storey underground. It was brutal, horrible, violent. One time I was smacked around the back with a full roll of cling film; another I had an aluminium basin of ice water dumped on my head. But being the stubborn bastard I am, I said I’d get through the year.’ In actual fact, Fairlie did two.

Mickey Mouse operation

Fairlie’s stint in Paris taught him about the kind of kitchen he never wanted to run. ‘I keep it calm. Whenever my chef pals come into my kitchen, they can’t believe how quiet it is. Kitchen management is tough for chefs. All of a sudden, a 20-odd-year- old guy might be in charge of 30 or 40 chefs from all sorts of backgrounds, with zero idea how to manage people. That’s where the problems start.’

Before opening at Gleneagles, Fairlie took an interesting step. He applied to open the restaurants at Disneyland Paris when it launched in 1992. ‘I’d heard about Disney’s training programme and it sounded fascinating. I spent six months at Disney University learning how to manage the staff, or cast members, as we called them.’

‘The first thing on the agenda at my management meetings now is staff. Is anyone unhappy? Might anyone leave? How can we look after people better?’ It clearly works. Most of his team have been there for at least four years, while his head chef, Stevie McLaughlin, has been with him for 15. ‘I like to take kids fresh out of cookery school. It means I can mould them and don’t have to break any bad habits. Though I’m glad I’m not in London. There’s zero loyalty down there – people will move next door for an extra tenner.’

When he opened in 2001, the restaurant won a Michelin star. The second followed in 2006. ‘I knew I’d opened a two-star restaurant from day one. We had invested hugely in kitchen kit and I was confident in my ability, but when the second star came, I hated it,’ he says. ‘We’d just got back from our winter break and I had dinner in the dining room. The clientele changed overnight. It was a lot more stuffy and corporate. I sat there and watched a couple on their honeymoon picking up the crockery and looking where it was from. It was awful. I despised what it’d become.’ That very night, Fairlie closed the restaurant. He had his team gut it, change the layout, put in banquettes and bought new art. ‘It immediately felt more like “me”.

I had a meeting with the Michelin guys, who asked if I was looking for a third star. I said no. I’m much more comfortable being a strong two star than a weak three. I know lots of them. Just look at how jaded the chefs become: Sébastien Bras just gave his three back. Once you’ve got it, you have to live with it the rest of your life. People don’t come to enjoy the food, they want to criticise and analyse. It becomes a totally joyless experience.’ When most chefs say they’re not chasing stars, I take it with a pinch of seasoning; I believe Fairlie. He’s one of the most earnest men I’ve met.

His earnest nature is hard won. Ten years ago, he was diagnosed with a brain tumour. Assumedly it made him look at life differently? ‘Not at all. You’ve got no idea how you’re going to react, but all I wanted to know was what we were going to do about it. I’ve had a fair few ops and there’s still a third of it there. I’ve had loads of chemo; I get seizures. It is what it is. I know when they’re coming, I just let Stevie know and go and chill in the dry store and wait for it to pass. When I get 20-30 a day, I know it’s time to see a doctor.’

His blasé and matter-of-fact nature astonishes me. Bravery personified, all Fairlie wants is for his cooking to do the talking.

Andrew Fairlie passed away aged 55 on 22 January 2019