NET GAINS
With its seafood bias and focus on quality produce, Craig Millar’s @16 West End in St Monans will hook your attention and reel you in
Recipes from Craig Millar’s sensational seafood restaurant in St Monans
For someone whose mum used to call him the fussiest eater ever, Craig Millar has clearly changed his ways. ‘ Now I’d eat anything – apart from celery and peppers,’ laughs the man who is now a chef. ‘To actually eat a raw pepper – I still couldn’t do it.’
Peppers aside, Millar has made his mark with his modern, welcoming restaurant Craig Millar @16 West End – which holds 2AA Rosettes – in the pretty former fishing village of St Monans in Fife’s East Neuk.
Dundee-born Millar has owned the restaurant for five years. Prior to that he was in partnership with Tim Butler, whose family were the original owners. ‘I started as head chef, and a few years into that I got the chance to buy into the restaurant. We opened a second place in St Andrews, called The Seafood Restaurant. I had a partnership with Tim for 13 years and in June 2011 we decided to go our separate ways.’
His interest in food stems from school. ‘I was the only boy at school who did Home Economics. Unfortunately I had to do Fabric and Fashion as well, but that ended up being my best subject – it was better than my cooking. So maybe I’ve gone down the wrong route…’
‘I was the only boy who did Home Economics. Unfortunately I had to do Fabric and Fashion as well’
Catering college followed before a threeyear stint with Crest Hotels in England. ‘It was a big kitchen so I got a really good grounding there,’ he says. A return to Scotland saw spells at Murrayshall Country House Hotel in Scone and Fernie Castle Hotel, near Cupar.
During his training, Raymond Blanc and Marco Pierre White were the chefs of the day and complex, ingredient-heavy dishes were popular, but Millar favours a simpler ethos.
‘I think the emphasis is more on the quality of the produce rather than the amount of produce now, letting the food speak for itself. That’s what we aim for here. There are three of us and it’s a 40-cover restaurant. You can’t be doing 20-odd ingredients per dish, so we keep it simpler and standards high.’ Seafood-biased, the menu evolves naturally with the seasons.
And when it comes to sampling fine foods himself, things have changed a little in the Millar household lately. ‘We do like to go to nice restaurants, but as we adopted two young children, now five and seven years old, a year ago, we’ve kind of stopped looking for restaurants with Michelin stars and started looking for places with soft play areas,’ he laughs.