TV dinner is served!
Graham Campbell is the country’s youngest Michelin-starred chef. Now sit back and savour him cooking up a storm in a dramatic Netflix series
FROM the relative calm of his Dundee restaurant, Graham Campbell is taking stock as he anticipates how his latest television appearance could be about to blow the lid off a culinary career that is starting to bubble along nicely.
Already the youngest Scots chef ever to earn a Michelin star – when he was only 25 – Campbell’s name has yet to be savoured by the general public with quite the same familiarity as fellow countrymen Gordon Ramsay and Andrew Fairlie.
But all that is set to change as Oban-born Campbell, now 36, stars in the latest foodie spectacular from Netflix, which threatens to turn up the heat under rival BBC TV dinners such as MasterChef: The Professionals and Great British Menu.
Billed as the ultimate celebrity cook-off, The Final Table is filmed on a giant stage in Los Angeles boasting more than a dollop of glam-rock extravagance, with lashings of LED screens and swirls of dry ice accompanied by a bombastic musical score.
The ten-episode series – said to be Netflix’s ‘most ambitious food show to date’ – pits 24 of the world’s best chefs against one another as they serve up iconic dishes from around the world. The winner earns a place at the titular final table with nine other masters. First up is the sole Scot among them.
At the Castlehill restaurant he co-owns in Dundee, Campbell said: ‘We filmed it in Los Angeles and it was mental, just mental. The size of the stage was immense; there were cameras everywhere and I was up against the best chefs in the world.
‘We got woken up at 7am and didn’t get back to the hotel until midnight. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done but I’m proud of myself and proud to have represented Scotland.
‘The studio was immense but chefs work well under pressure. Every time we cook it is a very high-pressure environment but you are kind of out of your comfort zone a little bit because you are not in your own wee kitchen, you’re on a stage competing with chefs you might feel are much better than you.’
HE ADDED: ‘I enjoy the competition, though – in this industry, to get better you’ve got to push as hard as you can. I’m proud of what I do and passionate about what I do, so take it in my stride.’
Hundreds of chefs were invited to take part, but only 48 were flown to LA. Half were sent home after an initial judging stage.
Campbell, whose signature dishes include ballotine of foie gras, wild halibut and scallop tortellini in a vanilla velouté with black olive crushed potatoes and broccoli, and raspberry soufflé with lemon balm sorbet and crème anglaise, was tight-lipped about his performance, saying: ‘I can’t say too much, but I did all right.’
Food shows, he maintains, are more sophisticated now, reflecting a change in customers’ palates. He said: ‘Ten years ago, you had run-of-the-mill shows like Ready Steady Cook, whereas nowadays MasterChef and Great British Menu [on which he has appeared] have made the customer look at food completely differently.
‘People used to just want to go out for something to eat but now they want an experience.
‘It is so much more than just putting food on a plate – you’ve got your flavours to balance right, all your cooking techniques that people may not have seen before.’
His cooking focuses on fresh, locally sourced produce, and he has a passion for foraging. He said: ‘I’ll pick my own mushrooms and herbs and come into the kitchen with tubs of flowers and herbs and seaweeds I have gathered. If you know what you’re doing, foraging is great but you need to be careful, especially with mushrooms.’
Campbell brands the microwave the world’s ‘worst invention’.
He said: ‘You never see adverts for slow cookers, which is a shame because there should be one in every home. Bung in your ingredients and you have a healthy meal by the time you get home. Far better than ready meals.’
Featuring in a major international culinary competition is a world away from the callow youth who started out as a teenager prepping veg and washing pots at the Caledonian Hotel in Oban.
At home, his mother, Liz, did the cooking, with little help from Graham, his two younger brothers or their father, Alan, who was busy running a local diving school – amusingly called Nervous Wreck.
He said: ‘Cooking at home was just the basics. We had no money, to the point where Mum was going to the shop to buy bread and milk with Irn-Bru bottles. It’s made me appreciate what I’ve done.’ By his own admission, he fell into cooking by default, saying: ‘I didn’t do very well in school and I didn’t really like it but there was always an expectation that we should work for a living. At 11, I was working for my Dad’s diving centre for a pound an hour. I’m not one that likes to sit around.’ He later landed a job in the kitchens at the Caledonian Hotel. He said: ‘It was pretty mundane, just working for the money. The love for cooking didn’t happen until I was about 22 and I moved down south, when my eyes were opened to the fine dining side of it.’
He worked under the tutelage of some of England’s best regional chefs – at Andrew Nutter’s eponymous restaurant in Rochdale, Lancashire, and Paul Heathcote’s Longridge in Preston.
He said: ‘I had never seen foie gras or mushroom ravioli. I had no idea any of that existed. They put me on larder and asked me to make an amuse-bouche – I had no idea what that was.’
Within three months, he was sous chef. He returned to Scotland in 2008 as head chef at Ballachulish House, near Fort William, Inverness-shire. Cooking a small menu for a select clientele, within six months his quality and invention earned him a Michelin star.
He was only 25 – the youngest chef in Scotland to receive the accolade, which is held by the top 1 per cent of the world’s restaurants.
The Highland restaurant closed shortly afterwards, but this unexpected affirmation of his talents proved a huge motivator.
He said: ‘The award meant going from being a nobody to a somebody. By then, it had become more than just a job.’
Campbell, who has two young daughters with long-term fiancée Stacey, now has a stake in Castlehill at a time when Dundee’s regeneration, with the arrival of the V&A, is firmly under way.
While appearing on The Final Table – on Netflix now – may boost his profile, his goal is earning Dundee’s first Michelin star for Castlehill. He said: ‘I have always cooked for the customers above all, but to get a star for Castlehill would be awesome.’
Some might say Castlehill already has its star. And one whose trajectory is rising fast.