GREAT SCOT!

The world wants Tom Kitchin. But as he prepares to expand his restaurant empire, the Michelin-starred chef tells Francesca Ryan why his heart belongs to Edinburgh. Photographs by Simon Crofts

IT’S MID-MORNING at Newhaven Harbour in Edinburgh. Wooden lobster creels line the wall and fishing boats bob under cloudless skies. Overlooking the water is the city’s historic fish market, which fishmonger Gary Welch, who runs a three-generation retail and wholesale business and co-owns a fish restaurant, has helped to revitalise. ‘What Gary does is so important,’ says Tom Kitchin, the acclaimed Scottish chef and one of Welch’s best customers, who is eyeing up the catch for his new Edinburgh restaurant, Southside. ‘Not only is Gary supplying the trade,’ Kitchin continues, ‘but the public can also buy a proper selection of fantastic fresh seafood, and that is very rare. Twelve years ago, none of the fish was staying in Scotland. You would see massive lorries stopping at all the fishermen’s houses, taking lobsters straight from their tanks off to Paris or Tokyo.’

Since winning a Michelin star in 2007 for his first restaurant, The Kitchin – which he opened in Leith with his Swedish wife, Michaela – the chef ’s regular TV appearances on Masterchef and Saturday Kitchen (alongside the success of his Scran & Scallie gastropub and its sister restaurant, Castle Terrace) have put the couple at the forefront of the Edinburgh dining scene. The son of a hairdresser and an agricultural businessman (his father, Ron, is now the chairman of Kitchin’s company, and shares an office with Michaela), it was a weekend job that Kitchin took as a 13-year-old, washing dishes in a hotel in Loch Leven, that first instilled in him a love of food. ‘I just wanted to earn some money but became so into the atmosphere and adrenalin of the kitchen,’ he says. He went on to a job at Gleneagles hotel, and by his mid-20s he had worked with Pierre Koffmann at La Tante Claire in London, Guy Savoy in Paris and Alain Ducasse in Monte Carlo. ‘I was the lone Scot among 25 French and Italians,’ Kitchin, now 41, recalls. And to my surprise, he still speaks French during service at The Kitchin. ‘I’m fluent in kitchen French. It’s so much more poetic – le chou-fleur rather than cauliflower,’ he says, laughing.

Pierre Koffmann remains his mentor to this day, and it was from the French chef that Kitchin inherited not only his cookery book collection (‘None of

[Koffmann’s] children were interested, and Tom is his second son,’ says Michaela with a smile) but kitchen castoffs. ‘We started The Kitchin with a £60,000 overdraft, my parents’ and my grandad’s savings, 20 bottles of wine on the list, a second-hand stove and Pierre Koffmann’s old equipment from La Tante Claire,’ says Kitchin. ‘I was 28. Then six months after opening the restaurant, I got a Michelin star. That was crazy.’ It was the fastest Michelin star ever awarded at the time, and Kitchin the youngest recipient.

This autumn Kitchin will open Southside, a neighbourhood bistro in Bruntsfield, Edinburgh. ‘The grill will be a real feature of the room and we’ll have a rotisserie of the day,’ he says, ‘but we’ll also have a shellfish theme – oysters, langoustines, scallops.’ This is the subject of his upcoming cookbook, Fish & Shellfish (published by Bloomsbury next month), which covers everything from home smoking to preparing crab. ‘I love taking the kids crabbing. That’s me in paradise.’

He and Michaela have four sons (Kasper, 10, Axel, seven, and twins Lachlan and Logan, five), who are entirely at home in restaurants. ‘We were out recently and Axel said, “I think I might have mallard, do you have that?”’ says Michaela with a laugh. ‘When we opened Scran & Scallie [in 2013], Michaela was heavily pregnant with twins, and it’s brought so much happiness to us as a family,’ Tom says. ‘We love to eat there on a Sunday. Southside will be just a little bit more grown-up, but not overly fancy.’

At Newhaven, the day’s catch is being prepared for the counter. ‘Thanks to chefs like Tom a lot of folk are trying different things and getting more adventurous,’ says Welch. ‘They come for a portion of wild halibut or handdived scallops when they’re in season,’ adds Kitchin, ‘the types of fish that supermarkets don’t sell.’ His strict principles about seasonality (‘The main ingredient [of his restaurant dishes] is always from these shores’) have been in place since he first opened The Kitchin and put the slogan ‘from nature to plate’ above the door – though he says his understanding of provenance is down to Lady Carole Bamford, the founder of Daylesford (‘I’m her number-one fan’). He worked for her as a private chef both in the Cotswolds and on her yacht, sailing around the Mediterranean stopping at markets in Sardinia and Sicily. ‘She would go to the guy with the best peaches, the best tomatoes,’ he says. ‘And I began to understand that the

Kitchin has four sons. ‘I love taking the kids crabbing. That’s me in paradise’

people on this yacht can eat in any restaurant in the world, but it’s all about the essence of that tomato – the simplicity of the produce.’

This autumn, Tom and Michaela plan to open a pub with rooms, The Bonnie Badger, in Gullane, a village on the East Lothian coast. Michaela is overseeing its interior design. ‘I love the designer Ilse Crawford, and Ett Hem [the hotel she designed in Stockholm] is a great inspiration for us. It feels like a home.’

Unsurprisingly, Kitchin is often approached to open restaurants outside Scotland – ‘We’ve had incredible offers, to go to London, to go to Dubai’ – but his heart remains in Edinburgh. Having the city as his base plays a vital role in his relationship with his producers, like Welch. ‘I’m in the gateway to everything north, east, west here. We’ve got the most beautiful country in the world and the best produce in the world, too.’ thekitchin.com Strawberry meringues Makes 8 nests

At Southside, we will serve this finished with dehydrated strawberries.

For the meringues — 100g egg whites — 200g sugar

For the strawberries

— 400g strawberries, hulled — zest and juice of 1 lime — leaves from a sprig of mint, thinly sliced, plus sprigs to garnish

For the strawberry sauce — 300g strawberries, hulled — 30g caster sugar

— juice of 1 lemon

For the chantilly cream — 400g whipping cream — 50g icing sugar

— zest of 1 lemon

Preheat the oven to 110C/ 90C fan/gas mark ¼ and line a baking sheet. Either draw circles of 7cm diameter on the parchment paper or have a 7cm cookie cutter handy to use as a piping guide.

Whisk the egg whites in a large bowl until fluffy and holding stiff peaks, then add the sugar slowly, a tablespoon at a time, while whisking, until the mixture is thick and glossy.

Transfer the meringue to a piping bag and pipe 7cm nests on to the paper.

Bake for 90 minutes then remove from the oven to cool completely.

Dice the strawberries then toss with the lime zest, juice and mint and set aside.

For the sauce, blitz the strawberries and sugar together then pass this through a sieve. Add the lemon juice to the sauce, tasting as you go, until you have the right balance.

Whisk together the cream, icing sugar and lemon zest until the cream is thick.

Use a clean piping bag to pipe the cream into the meringue nests, and top with the diced strawberries. Add more cream if you like, and a mint sprig to garnish. Serve some of the sauce alongside, with more to add at the table.

Left Kitchin and Gary Welch inspect the catch at Newhaven Harbour.