We met Andrew at the home of his eponymous, two Michelin starred restaurant: Gleneagles. Our first task? To visit the incredible secret garden. Rarely opened to visitors, it was established by Andrew and his team to ensure every item on the menu really is of Scottish provenance. We took the secret garden over about 3 and half years ago. This year has been brilliant. I love it, coming down in the morning, it’s so peaceful. How we see the garden is as an extension of the restaurant, it’s just 7 miles away. There’s a kind of honesty and integrity to what we do, where we really do follow the seasons. You've always used Scottish produce as your starting point – has the garden revolutionised the way you think about provenance? I’ve always been of the opinion that, if you’re in France, Spain or Italy, they don’t even think about that. Of course you would buy from the local market. We’ve always had the philosophy that any self-respecting chef would buy locally. You don’t have to go out and put it as part of your mission statement, as it were. But I think vegetables were always the missing piece of our jigsaw. We can buy brilliant meat, brilliant fish, all of that. And all pretty much local. But the only downfall was having to leave that message on the answerphone to some vegetable wholesaler at the end of the night, then rely on them. Now, having done this, we could never go back. It would be impossible. How long did it take you to change your mind-set and – excuse the pun – bed into the idea? The objective was to always do this, but the first six months were a real learning curve for us. And that’s where the creative part of it has been – i think for chefs – much more inspiring. It’s easy, actually, to say “we have a menu, and that works, let’s not touch it and leave it as it is”. This forces you to actually have to change, and look for things, and be more creative with what’s coming your way. Tell us more about how your kitchen runs... What we do is very detailed. We come in in the morning and make everything from scratch: stocks, ice cream, breads; it’s all done every single day. We’ve got a very particular way of working in the kitchen – the way our service works with timings is very confusing. There’s no other kitchen that works like it. We communicate only by calling times to each other. So, for new guys coming in: they have a time in their head and say, “I’ll be ready in six”, but actually six minutes goes like that, and they’re not ready in six. It’s a nightmare, in the beginning. How about the drinks team, do you have a hand in what they do? Wine lists will change with the food, as they are geared up purely for the food. There are wines you’ll never see anywhere else. Everything seems very much like a team effort. Very integrated. Take the cresses: we grow cress for the table instead of flowers. Each front of house member will sow their own, and three weeks later can say, “I grew that”. Where did you learn the quirks and details you've introduced to the running of your restaurant? The management side of things, I would say I learned at Disney. Going from my experience of kitchens that were pretty brutal – how kitchens were run at the 2 or 3-star level I trained in – to Disney, where if you swore at anyone it was immediate gross misconduct, was a culture shock, to say the least. But then, actually taking the principals of how to manage and motivate people, and how to run a business – it was invaluable. It was probably one of the best moves I’ve ever made. What inspired you to go and work at Disney? Purely that – it was the management training. It’s actually putting the staff and the team – they’re the most important people – first. Because if you get this bit right, the guests are going to be wowed. Is there anyone you've trained who you’re particularly impressed by? There’s one guy, Ian Scaramuzza – despite his name, he’s from Maryhill in Glasgow. He just won the Roux Scholarship. I won the very first Roux Scholarship many years ago. My prediction is he’ll be the first Scottish chef to get three stars. He is one of the best young chefs I’ve ever worked with. We brought him in as a commis chef. What was the first restaurant you worked in? The Station Hotel in Perth. I started my apprenticeship there and finished it in London. Then I won the scholarship when I was 20 and moved to the South of France. I stayed in France for five years, then I got travelling: Australia, then working in Africa, then back to Paris where I did Disney. Then back to Glasgow, then here. Where feels most like home? Here now. This is the longest I’ve ever stayed anywhere. But I grew up in Perth. I love Paris. Paris and Glasgow, in that order. Do you interact with your customers much? I tend to invite them into the kitchen. I’d much rather they came in and watched a little bit of service, where we can chat to them, and where I’m more comfortable. Are the majority of your customers the real foodie types – people who are really passionate about what they’re eating? We get every spectrum. People who save up for a really special occasion, people that book a table because they want to go there for their wedding day. And then we get people that dine like that all the time. There’s a guy who flies over from America to come for dinner! Do you still take that as massive compliment – someone seeing your restaurant as a destination? Yes – that’s the thing. There’s not one single day ever do we think... Oh you know, this is just ‘another service’. We try and tailor the service to whoever is there, so we never take it for granted. We still get nervous every night before service, and every day is a new day. Do you think that level of care and attention translates into what you’re putting on the plate? I think people can tell. There’s a few restaurants I’ve been in, even when I was younger – where I thought, my God you can actually feel the energy from the plate, you can tell that a lot of care and attention and love and everything has gone into doing that. And there are restaurants – great restaurants – where you think, “oh, they’re just going through the motions here. They’re just churning out the same stuff every single day, and it’s boring”. It might be beautiful food, but it’s boring food. Did getting a second Michelin star change your attitude? Did it make you feel different? The first six months, I didn’t like it! The expectation I didn’t mind. In my head, I opened a two star restaurant from day one. That was my ambition– it was never said to Gleneagles or anyone else – but, I think secretly their expectation was that they needed to have a Michelin star. You know, I think our customers changed, and our customers’ expectations changed. Try as we could to keep everything normal, the staff changed! It was just joyless in the first six months. When summer arrived, I said to Gregor, “I need to change this”. And the easiest thing to do was open a new restaurant – the same space, but change it. So, we changed the menu format, we changed the décor, we changed the crockery, cutlery, everything. When you walk through Gleneagles, in the door and down the steps to the restaurant, it feels like a totally different place. It even smells different. It’s all those little tiny details. You don’t want to walk into a restaurant and be thinking “Mmmm, that smells nice!”. You don’t want to be influenced. With Jo Malone, we developed a scent. It was all foodie – lime and basil. And again, it was all seasonal. We basically sprayed bay leaves and stuck them under the tables. As soon as you walked in, the smell was completely different. It’s kind of subliminal, almost. So, what do you plan to eat this Christmas? I always have beef. Proper roast beef. Do you have any christmas rituals or foodie traditions? Christmas for me has to be luxurious. It’s traditional in a sense that we’re not reinventing anything, but I will buy lobster, we will buy seriously good beef, and things like that. I buy in some great wines for Christmas; I always buy great Champagne. It’s still a very special day. It’s that one day where it is very luxurious. Is it always you in the kitchen? At Christmas I always cook, and never do the dishes. Once dinner’s finished... I don’t touch a thing after that! I cook even when it’s not Christmas. Generally, if I’m off, then I’ll cook. I guess your family might feel short changed if you never cooked for them! Do your staff eat well too? We cook for the staff every day. If we get something any bigger than that [holds up tiny vegetable], then we can’t use it. So, the staff get it. Do you have a dish primarily inspired by the garden? The Secret Garden Salad. There has to be 20 things from the garden on it. But there can be various preparations of all the different vegetables that are there. Generally, it comes out on a big plate. So, for example, the fennel flowers – we take pollen from them, then we use that to garnish.It’s probably the signature thing we make. Do you ever pair whisky with your food – the special Adelphi selection you have in the restaurant, for example? It’s something I get asked all the time: do we match food with whisky? Probably Craig [the Sommelier] is the best person to ask... Craig: You can match anything with food. It’s where you do it that becomes important. So I wouldn’t match whisky with a starter course, because the great thing about chef ’s cooking is there’s lots of little, delicate flavours. It’s all about keeping the experience. Whisky with cheese is quite interesting, and especially the stronger cheeses. One of the things we do with the cask strength whiskies here, instead of just having it on its own, is we’ll give people a little bit of salted tablet. So, Andrew, do you have any guilty pleasures? Ice cream. I love Häagen-Dazs. Like, a movie and a whole tub of Häagen-Dazs. Always chocolate. Chocolate is my thing. Not any of the clichéd Scottish foods? I don’t do Irn-Bru. I don’t do Buckfast. Don’t do any of the Tunnock’s stuff. Deep fried Mars Bar is something people always say... but I’ve never actually seen anyone do a deep fried Mars Bar. Cheese on toast is about as outrageous as I get. Do you have any foods that you can never reconcile yourself with? Wild rice, and brains. I can’t do brains. There’s not much I don’t eat. I went to Japan a couple of years ago and there were a couple of things in Japan that... tested me. And it’s all live as well. So live snails and things like that. Do you have livestock – or anything ‘living’ – grown, or nurtured, especially for you? We have little suppliers for poultry with a very tiny small holding in Ayrshire, where they basically breed for us. Pretty much all our suppliers are like that. Take our game supplier: woodcock are very rare, so if they do get woodcock, then generally he’ll save them for us. And will you have a big Christmas staff do? Outwith here. Last year we went to Drummuir Castle. So we took that privately, took all the staff, and had a hooley for two days. ANDREW'S TOP TIPS FOR CHRISTMAS DINNER
  • Prepare well in advance. Two days in advance.
  • Cook veg a day in advance, chill it down and put it in the fridge to then reheat.
  • Make stocks in November and freeze them.
  • Don’t try and do anything that you haven’t tried before.
Discover more about Andrew Fairlie at Gleneagles by visiting the website. Pick up your copy of Whiskeria or read online to find out how you can win an exquisite meal for two in his two-Michelin starred restaurant.