Young Scottish chef’s lockdown kitchen creations were ‘minor miracle’, says food critic Jay Rayner
IT is every young chef’s dream to win compliments from the highest level.
When a food writer of the calibre of Jay Rayner singles you out for some special attention and praise, it must seem like winning the final of MasterChef without going through the torment.
During lockdown, when Scott Murray offered his services as a stand-in to help at Turnips, a very different pop-up eating out experience in London’s Borough Market, it paid big dividends for the 24-year-old who is originally from Stirling.
Since making the move to London, he has had breaks and kept up with expectations following recommendations and all-important introductions from experienced head chefs who have already earned respect the hard way.
As an under-achiever at school who found if difficult to take academic studies seriously, at just 16 he started washing dishes in the kitchen at respected gastropub The Birds And Bees in his hometown. The experience reignited an interest in cooking that started when he helped his mum, Brenda, whenever she was baking for the family.
His need to get more hands-on in the kitchen – even just plating up to start with – was encouraged by head chef Raymond Robson, and soon the teenager was showing promise.
“Raymond influenced me a lot,” Murray recalls. “I was there for about eight months and then went straight off to City of Glasgow College with the aim of getting an HND in professional cookery.”
Murray’s long-term girlfriend, Christie McIntyre, a professional dancer, had just left Glasgow to work in London. It seemed like the right time for him to be heading there too, so in January 2017 he set off. “I gave myself a month to find a decent job, got five different trial shifts in that period and was subsequently offered a placement from each of them,” he said.
Crucially, one of them was at City Social, famously situated on the 24th floor of a city-centre high-rise with panoramic views over the metropolis.
Hired as a chef de partie he went from working in a kitchen with five others to one with 22. Murray found himself savouring every moment and after 18 months became a senior chef de partie.
Then the pandemic and all of the restrictions it caused swept through like a tsunami.
Ironically, though, it may have been responsible for bringing him the biggest single opportunity of his career so far.
Fruit and veg market trader Fred Foster, with a wellestablished operation at Borough Market and having provided produce to some of the finest kitchens in the city, had dreamed of having his own restaurant. His company was called Turnips and at the height of lockdown he began to send out charity aid boxes of produce to vulnerable groups.
Foster said: “I was excited to get involved. We had a week. There were so many problems to overcome but that’s often how it is when you are a chef – you have to think on your feet. When we opened, it was successful, but we decided to make life even more difficult by developing a menu that brought the food up to an even better level.”
It was just after they got fully into their stride that the celebrity food critic appeared one night.
“I saw this figure standing at the bar and thought to myself, I know that face, but couldn’t place him. I had to ask someone – ‘excuse me, you see the fellow over there, is he famous?’
“‘That’s Jay Rayner the food critic,’ they said. At first I gulped, then decided just to say hello and find out more. ‘I’ll have one of everything,’ he said, and I knew this had to be the best one of everything I’d served in my life. He gave us the review of a lifetime.”
Rayner wrote: “He’s a young Scot with killer hair, called Scott Murray, who works minor miracles with the most minimal of kit.”
Now back at work in the kitchen at City Social where a much smaller team of just nine services fews customers due to remaining restrictions, he has his sights firmly set on becoming a junior sous chef.
“If you talk to me again a year from now I will hopefully have achieved that goal,” said Murray.
“I miss Scotland every day in my life but the hustle and bustle of London helps me to stay focused. My other goal, of course, will always be to return to Scotland one day.”