Chef changed views about Scottish cuisine
Andrew Fairlie chef b November 21, 1963 d January 22, 2019
Andrew Fairlie, who has died aged 55, was a chef who set out to prove that Scottish food is not all haggis and shortbread; as head chef at One Devonshire Gardens, in Glasgow, he won his first Michelin star in 1996; in 2001 he established his own restaurant at the Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire, winning his first star there the following year and becoming the only two-Michelin-star chef in Scotland in 2006.
He was born and brought up in a cramped three-bedroomed council house in Perth, where he lived with his parents, Jim and Kay, and four siblings. His father was an economics teacher, and as a child Andrew enjoyed helping him to cook the evening meal so it would be ready when his mother came in from work in a shoe shop.
At Perth Academy, however, he was regarded as a ‘‘wild child’’, always getting into trouble and refusing to conform.
From the age of 14 he worked part-time as a waiter at the Station Hotel in Perth, where he experienced what he called his ‘‘tarragon moment’’: ‘‘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 . . . realised I was on the wrong side of the pass. I sat my last exam and started work in the kitchen the next day.’’
In 1984, aged 21, Fairlie won the first Roux Scholarship for young chefs, the prize being a threemonth placement in Michel Guerard’s Les Pres d’Eugenie in Gascony. ‘‘This introduced me to a whole new culture. 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.’’
Guerard arranged a two-year stint for Fairlie at the Hotel de Crillon in Paris. He stuck it out, but the experience mainly taught him about the sort of kitchen he did not want to run: ‘‘It was absolutely horrific . . . 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.’’
After working at various establishments in France, Africa, and Australia, he joined One Devonshire Gardens in 1994, beginning his rise to Michelinstarred eminence at Gleneagles.
His father, Jim, was deputy leader of the Scottish National Party from 1981-84 and, in the runup to the referendum on independence, Andrew served on the advisory board of Yes Scotland. When he came out as proindependence he got emails from people saying that they would never again eat in his restaurant. Yet it went on to have its best year ever.
He was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2005. Though he had surgery, the cancer returned. In November he announced that he was stepping down from his restaurant after revealing that the cancer was terminal.
His first marriage, to Ashley, was dissolved. Last November he married, secondly, Kate White, who survives him with the two daughters of his first marriage and two stepdaughters. –