Fishy tales

Fishmonger and chef Willie Little’s story of how he came to own his Blairgowrie restaurant is as down-to-earth as the man himself

‘Because our product is so fresh, I don’t have to hide it with any sauces,’ says chef proprietor Willie Little of the fish at his restaurant Little’s in Blairgowrie.

‘I’m 63 years old and I’ve been cooking since 15, and I think to have too much fancy stuff is the ruination of a piece of fish,’ he adds.

Originally f rom Kirriemuir, Willie’s nononsense approach comes from a wealth of experience in the fish and restaurant industries. ‘As soon as I left school, I went into the hotel business, restaurants and hotels,’ he says. His appreciation of food comes from his mum, who was a cook in a big estate house, while time spent in the Hebrides, Switzerland and Germany honed his own cheffing skills.

He moved into fish wholesaling, owning the company Ocean Traders, which led to him setting up his award-winning fishmonger, Fish in Crieff. Selling the wholesale company, Willie was left with the fishmongers, but for a man whose working day starts at 5.30am and ends at 11.30pm, that was never going to be the case for long. ‘One day, with a few drinks in me,’ he laughs, ‘this woman who had a pizza shop that was next door to the pub said, “Do you know any nutter that would like to buy a restaurant?”

‘I had another beer and said, “Yeah, I know someone who’ll buy your restaurant. Phone me in the morning.” ‘So she phoned and I’d forgotten all about it!’ That was 2011, but buy the restaurant he did and Little’s was born. ‘We buy all the fish from markets and off the boats. We don’t buy filleted fish, apart from the odd piece of haddock. When I’m filleting that fish in the morning, that’s how I make up my menu.

‘Tonight, for instance, we’ve got Scottish red fish, part of the red snapper family, turbot, scallops that I shucked this morning from Orkney, mussels from Lewis, crab and hot smoked salmon that I smoked myself in seaweed.’

While clearly a fish lover’s paradise, Little’s caters to meat eaters and offers pizza too. Willie describes his 50-cover restaurant as modern with simplicity at its heart, while the open-plan kitchen, where he works alongside three other chefs, keeps him in touch with his customers. ‘It’s modern, very simple food,’ he says, ‘not food with lots and lots of sauces.’ Keeping things simple is clearly a recipe for success.