Rewrite
British cuisine has long carried an unfortunate reputation, but a new wave of Scottish chefs is working hard to rewrite the narrative, one innovative dish at a time.
Serendipity. Coined in the 18th century, the word captures the essence of discovering something valuable by chance. It’s an apt metaphor for the unexpected journeys of some of Scotland’s most exciting culinary voices. In a country where free university education has encouraged many young Scots to pursue traditional careers in law or medicine, not everyone finds their place in those expected paths.
So what happens when someone dares to diverge? Sometimes, extraordinary things. Think Michelin stars. A radical rethinking of how we engage with food, from sustainability and waste to local sourcing and seasonality. A quiet revolution is underway, and for Schön! alive, we speak with the three chefs — Adam Handling MBE, Neil Campbell, and Mark Donald — who are three culinary innovators in their thirties and redefining what British food can be.
photography. Jason Alfred Palmer
Frog by Adam Handling
34-35 Southampton St,
London, United Kingdom
frogbyadamhandling.com
Adam Handling MBE Chef Owner, Adam Handling Collection
At 36, Handling is (by a slim margin) the youngest of our Scottish chefs and could be described as something of an overachiever. Amongst numerous accolades, he’s been awarded an MBE by King Charles for services to hospitality and international trade, an honour that made him “cry my little eyes out”, and owns a string of successful restaurants, pubs and an art gallery, amongst them the Michelin-starred Frog by Adam Handling. Given this, you’d never guess that the chef comes from a family not the least bit interested in food. “I didn’t go to a single restaurant my entire childhood,” he recalls. “It was one-pot wonder kind of things. You sit, you eat, you go.”
Hailing from Dundee, which he describes as “probably the worst area in Scotland”, his mother was very keen for him to take up a free university place but, by his own admission, the young Handling was “a pain in the arse as a child. I was Satan. I wasn’t good at school. I was always in trouble.” His father (who has since become his “biggest cheerleader”) stepped in and suggested an apprenticeship, “something I could maybe master,” Handling explains. “If I got a painter and decorator apprentice, I guarantee you I’d be doing that – same as a mechanic, same as whatever.”
As serendipity would have it, at 16, Handling landed a place as the first apprentice chef at Gleneagles. “I wish I had a romantic story about growing up under my grandmother’s table, but when I went to Gleneagles, it was just an opportunity to leave school,” he admits. Nonetheless, he “loved the aggression in the kitchen, the camaraderie,” and, before long, his nose was buried deep in books like ‘Repertoire de la Cuisine’ and ‘Larousse Gastronomique’.
Handling went on to become the Fairmont Group’s youngest ever Head Chef and acquire countless accolades – often prefaced with ‘youngest ever’ – before opening his first restaurant, The Frog E1, in 2016. His interests extend to fine art, with an annually changing display at Frog, and a gallery situated just across the road in the five-story townhouse that is also home to his labs and offices. This passion for collecting art is another happy accident, which stemmed from a response to one of Tracey Adams’ paintings and has since become one of the “four legs of the table” he uses to describe the pillars of his restaurants: “food, alcohol, art and music”.
His face is by now familiar to the wider British public, having been a regular on popular TV shows such as ‘MasterChef Professionals’ and ‘Great British Menu’, where the country’s top up-and-coming chefs compete. However, only three years ago, the judges on the latter were questioning his waste reduction policies and his commitment to using local produce (why eschew imports like lemons and limes if it adds the required zing?). It seems Handling’s philosophies were still niche in 2022. He did go on to win the show’s coveted title of ‘Champions of Champions’ the following year, so maybe it’s a moot point.
Lobster Wagyu.
Frog by Adam Handling
photography. Justin de Souz
Fish Belly Cracker.
Frog by Adam Handling
photography. Justin de Sou
Today, Handling is unrepentant. British ingredients are what he is all about, especially at Frog. Unlike his other venues, which are very much about the produce of the immediate surroundings, Frog is a celebration of food from across the British Isles, fused with international influences taken from the multicultural metropolis that is London. He calls it “sustainable luxury”.
By sustainable – a word he thinks should be replaced with ‘tomorrow’ – he doesn’t mean zero waste, a term he believes is misleading because, “No restaurant in the world will become zero waste. There’s always a by-product.” His approach is to stretch an ingredient as far as possible. “It’s about going directly to the farms and buying the whole animal – whatever the size, it doesn’t’ matter – whole everything.” While bones can be used to make sauces and broths, Handling goes a step further by then turning them into vodka for his bars.
Before embarking on Frog’s set menu, guests are given an array of beautifully presented ‘snacks’ (“I don’t use the word canapés, because I’m not French,” Handling states). These are constructed from by-products of the main dishes, in order to change perceptions of what the word ‘waste’ means: “I have to make the waste look even more pretty to be able to shake Britain down.” The beauty of his collection is that ingredients can be shared between the venues; a considered approach that takes a year of menu planning and ensures that little is wasted. There are also two sites – one in Cornwall and one in Windsor – where produce is grown, including orchards that provide all the group’s fruit.
Chocolate, almond, cherries.
Frog by Adam Handling
photography. Justin de Souza
Foraging is integral and occurs in unexpected places. His 300-odd-person team doesn’t just take to the Cornish coasts and countryside (where his Ugly Butterfly restaurant and Tartan Fox pub are based), but also to the bounty of the Hackney Marshes in London, where “all year round there are things out there, which is absolutely stunning.” “If it’s not British, we don’t use it,” Handling continues. Instead of vanilla, there’s foraged woodruff and meadowsweet. Pineapple is replaced with pineapple weed, a version of wild camomile, and coconut with gorse. “You’re not going to have the same texture,” Handling explains, “but you’re going to have the same flavour to be playing a round with.”
There is a limited window of four to six weeks to forage any crop but when the time is right, Handling’s team will sometimes gather hundreds of kilos of the stuff – depending on their needs. “It’s a beautiful little ecosystem, but it’s a very quiet ecosystem,” the Chef Owner tells us. “We don’t keep shouting, ‘Look what we do! Look what we do!’ I just feel like people nowadays should be cooking in this way.”
ROVI
59-65 Wells St
London, United Kingdom
ottolenghi.co.uk
Neil Campbell. Executive Chef, Ottolenghi Group
Campbell grew up on the Isle of Skye, watching his grandfather fish for langoustines and his father hunt for deer, thus giving him a natural connection with the provenance of the food on his table. But, like Handling, working in kitchens as a teenager was just a way to earn a bit of cash, and yet, before long, he was “captivated” by “the energy, the precision and the creativity”. He’s worked with greats like Bruno Loubert and Raymond Blanc OBE, but it was ‘down under’ that he really discovered his calling. “There’s something incredibly dynamic about the Australian food scene and Sydney has always been a melting pot of cultures and fresh ideas. Australia was a chance to break free from tradition. It gave me the opportunity to take risks and to experiment with ingredients in ways I hadn’t before,” he recalls. “It was there that I fully committed to becoming a chef – not just because it was something I was good at – but because it was something that gave me purpose.”
The Ottolenghi restaurants, meanwhile, are known for their Middle Eastern influences, but Campbell’s Scottish heritage is not an irrelevance; it remains integral to his approach. “Scotland’s landscape provides an incredible amount of inspiration with its ingredients that are unique and full of character,” he confirms. “I love to bring those flavours to the menus, often in unexpected ways. I think there’s a beautiful connection between the two cultures. You might find me using Scottish ingredients like venison, Crowdie cheese or Hebridean seaweed alongside Ottolenghi’s signature spices.
Red Knobbly Pumpkin Muhammara,
maple walnuts, spice oil.
Neil Campbell, ROVI
opposite
Braised Beef Featherblade,
fava bean, quince amba.
Neil Campbell, ROVI
It’s about finding that harmony between where I’ve come from and where I am now.” While it’s not meat-free, vegetables are “the heart and soul of the menu” at ROVI, one of the restaurants under Campbell’s care: “We take a very creative approach, using techniques like fermentation, roasting and grilling to elevate them beyond the usual expectation of taste and texture. We believe they deserve to be celebrated as much as any other ingredient.”
A farm-to-fork philosophy supports small-scale, ethical suppliers, which Campbell regularly visits to gain insider knowledge of every ingredient’s origin. Outside of the restaurant, he has his own kitchen garden where he advocates the importance of soil health. And then there’s fermentation, which he says “plays a huge role in our cooking at ROVI. We see it as a way to connect with traditional food practices while creating something new.
In terms of sustainability, we use every part of the produce we work with, from root to stem. My goal is always to get as close to zero waste as we can while still delivering the quality and flavour our guests expect. My very first meeting with Yotam [Ottolenghi], I showed up with three of my own home-made kombucha mixes, and the rest is history.” As Executive Chef, Campbell oversees ROVI and NOPI, as well as heading up global growth projects. His current focus is on the new restaurant opening in Geneva early this year.
It’s the group’s first venue outside of the UK but will “carry the same ethos, while bringing in a unique local influence,” Campbell reveals. “We’re really looking forward to drawing inspiration from the rich culinary heritage of Geneva and Switzerland. Geneva is a city known for its highend dining culture, so we’re excited to introduce something new to the scene – something that feels both familiar and fresh at the same time.”
The Glenturret Lalique
Glenturret Distillery, The, Hosh,
Crieff, United Kingdom
theglenturretrestaurant.com
photography. Marc Millar
Mark Donald. Executive Chef, The Glenturret Lalique
It’s clear when speaking with the self-effacing and jocular Donald that he doesn’t take himself too seriously. However, one thing he does take very seriously is his food, and this is something that’s paid off in spades.
In 2021, he took on the launch of The Glenturret Lalique in Perthshire, the first restaurant in the world to be based in a whiskey distillery (arguably the oldest working whiskey distillery, dating back to 1763) and, the next year, secured its first Michelin star, followed by a second star in 2023. Yet, he still describes himself as “just a wee guy”, and here he’s referring to his “clout” in the restaurant world, rather than his 6’ 2” height.
Like Handling, Donald was expected to attend university. He had the grades but wanted to be an actor and was lined up for an audition at the prestigious Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. He never showed up. It was only supposed to be a summer job – and washing dishes in a Glaswegian pub doesn’t sound like the sexiest of callings – but Donald had become hooked by the adrenaline, banter and creativity of the kitchen.
In the next few years, he worked at more esteemed establishments such as Stravaigin and Restaurant Andrew Fairlie at Gleneagles, but his travels also took him to Hibiscus in London (where he met his Australian wife Madeleine), Noma in Copenhagen and Sydney, where he became Head Chef at Bentley.
Shortbread Tea Cake Chocolates.
Mark Donald, The Glenturret Lalique
photography. Marc Millar
Yet, home continued to pull on his heart strings. “Australia is nice, but it isn’t like real life for me sometimes. Scotland’s a bit more raw. You’ve got ten types of rain!” he laughs. He wasn’t just pining for wet weather: “I missed a lot of the produce. I had to go away and cut my teeth in some of the best kitchens in the world to realise what was on my doorstep.” And so, Donald and Madeleine returned to bonnie Scotland.
It was during the pandemic, “You know, the winter lockdown; the really sh*t lockdown”, that the chef was approached about opening a restaurant in a distillery in the Highlands. It didn’t sound promising. He envisioned “cookie-cutter” stereotypes of “shortbread tins, tartan, Nessie, whiskey, heavy cream sauces, haggis bonbons, blah, blah, blah”, but, he went to take a look, because – being furloughed from his role at Number One at The Balmoral in Edinburgh – he simply had nothing better to do: “I mean, no one in their right mind would leave a 100% paying job to open a restaurant in a whiskey distillery – which had never been done before – apart from maybe me,” he admits, “or someone who wanted to take a chance.”
To his surprise, Donald fell in love with the landscape, but also realised that the people behind the venture had two Michelin stars in France and might actually know what they were doing. Importantly, he was pretty much given carte blanche to create the menu and “f*cking obliterate all of the expectations”.
Raw Langoustine, buttermilk, green juice.
Mark Donald, The Glenturret Lalique
photography. Marc Millar
Whiskey, of course, needed to play a part, but Donald has taken a highly creative approach: “It’s not like a venue where I can just pair whiskey with the courses, because you’re going to end up trying to start a fight with the person who’s serving you!” Instead, he immersed himself in the whiskey-making process, learning about fermentation and how complex carbohydrates are turned into sugars.
In the kitchen, these are reduced into a barley molasses that is spread on bread or used instead of sugar or treacle. Ingredients are smoked over peat, rather than charcoal. The barley is also turned into malted bread or replaces soybeans in soy sauce and Shio koji. “By the end of it, every course – 17 serves – has something underpinning it that we might not even mention on the menu. It’s very nuanced. It’s not rammed down your throat. It’s not Malt Disneyland.” Again, it’s about using the ingredients on your doorstep, which in Donald’s case include some of the finest and freshest shellfish in the world, quality dairy produce, wild game and Scottish Wagyu.
The wet weather is even an advantage when growing “things like strawberries and raspberries. The natural sugars have a chance to grow, in comparison to hotter countries where they’re grown in polytunnels and don’t taste of anything.”
Raspberry Liver.
Mark Donald, The Glenturret Lalique
photography. Marc Mill
And then there are the mushrooms: ceps, girolles, St. George’s, Trompette de la Mort, and more, which Donald forages on The Glenturret’s grounds, together with treats like wild garlic, leeks, flowers, herbs, cherries and sloes – the latter of which are used in the homemade gin. He describes in detail the process of making mugolio, a “moreish” pine flavoured syrup. “It’s not just like, ‘How can I get some maple syrup?’ We have something of our own,” but stresses that the produce is “hyper seasonal. I’m not going to say I’m René Redzepi and everything is from a ten-mile radius. You can’t grow turnips here in certain parts of the year or it’s too cold to grow potatoes sometimes. I can’t get Scottish lemons. So, the menu is dictated by quality of ingredients, rather than provenance. However, I’m very fortunate to have a lot at my fingertips.”
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in HTML format, including tags, to make it appealing and easy to read for Japanese-speaking readers aged 20 to 40 interested in fashion. Organize the content with appropriate headings and subheadings (h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6), translating all text, including headings, into Japanese. Retain any existing
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British cuisine has long carried an unfortunate reputation, but a new wave of Scottish chefs is working hard to rewrite the narrative, one innovative dish at a time.
Serendipity. Coined in the 18th century, the word captures the essence of discovering something valuable by chance. It’s an apt metaphor for the unexpected journeys of some of Scotland’s most exciting culinary voices. In a country where free university education has encouraged many young Scots to pursue traditional careers in law or medicine, not everyone finds their place in those expected paths.
So what happens when someone dares to diverge? Sometimes, extraordinary things. Think Michelin stars. A radical rethinking of how we engage with food, from sustainability and waste to local sourcing and seasonality. A quiet revolution is underway, and for Schön! alive, we speak with the three chefs — Adam Handling MBE, Neil Campbell, and Mark Donald — who are three culinary innovators in their thirties and redefining what British food can be.
photography. Jason Alfred Palmer
Frog by Adam Handling
34-35 Southampton St,
London, United Kingdom
frogbyadamhandling.com
Adam Handling MBE Chef Owner, Adam Handling Collection
At 36, Handling is (by a slim margin) the youngest of our Scottish chefs and could be described as something of an overachiever. Amongst numerous accolades, he’s been awarded an MBE by King Charles for services to hospitality and international trade, an honour that made him “cry my little eyes out”, and owns a string of successful restaurants, pubs and an art gallery, amongst them the Michelin-starred Frog by Adam Handling. Given this, you’d never guess that the chef comes from a family not the least bit interested in food. “I didn’t go to a single restaurant my entire childhood,” he recalls. “It was one-pot wonder kind of things. You sit, you eat, you go.”
Hailing from Dundee, which he describes as “probably the worst area in Scotland”, his mother was very keen for him to take up a free university place but, by his own admission, the young Handling was “a pain in the arse as a child. I was Satan. I wasn’t good at school. I was always in trouble.” His father (who has since become his “biggest cheerleader”) stepped in and suggested an apprenticeship, “something I could maybe master,” Handling explains. “If I got a painter and decorator apprentice, I guarantee you I’d be doing that – same as a mechanic, same as whatever.”
As serendipity would have it, at 16, Handling landed a place as the first apprentice chef at Gleneagles. “I wish I had a romantic story about growing up under my grandmother’s table, but when I went to Gleneagles, it was just an opportunity to leave school,” he admits. Nonetheless, he “loved the aggression in the kitchen, the camaraderie,” and, before long, his nose was buried deep in books like ‘Repertoire de la Cuisine’ and ‘Larousse Gastronomique’.
Handling went on to become the Fairmont Group’s youngest ever Head Chef and acquire countless accolades – often prefaced with ‘youngest ever’ – before opening his first restaurant, The Frog E1, in 2016. His interests extend to fine art, with an annually changing display at Frog, and a gallery situated just across the road in the five-story townhouse that is also home to his labs and offices. This passion for collecting art is another happy accident, which stemmed from a response to one of Tracey Adams’ paintings and has since become one of the “four legs of the table” he uses to describe the pillars of his restaurants: “food, alcohol, art and music”.
His face is by now familiar to the wider British public, having been a regular on popular TV shows such as ‘MasterChef Professionals’ and ‘Great British Menu’, where the country’s top up-and-coming chefs compete. However, only three years ago, the judges on the latter were questioning his waste reduction policies and his commitment to using local produce (why eschew imports like lemons and limes if it adds the required zing?). It seems Handling’s philosophies were still niche in 2022. He did go on to win the show’s coveted title of ‘Champions of Champions’ the following year, so maybe it’s a moot point.
Lobster Wagyu.
Frog by Adam Handling
photography. Justin de Souz
Fish Belly Cracker.
Frog by Adam Handling
photography. Justin de Sou
Today, Handling is unrepentant. British ingredients are what he is all about, especially at Frog. Unlike his other venues, which are very much about the produce of the immediate surroundings, Frog is a celebration of food from across the British Isles, fused with international influences taken from the multicultural metropolis that is London. He calls it “sustainable luxury”.
By sustainable – a word he thinks should be replaced with ‘tomorrow’ – he doesn’t mean zero waste, a term he believes is misleading because, “No restaurant in the world will become zero waste. There’s always a by-product.” His approach is to stretch an ingredient as far as possible. “It’s about going directly to the farms and buying the whole animal – whatever the size, it doesn’t’ matter – whole everything.” While bones can be used to make sauces and broths, Handling goes a step further by then turning them into vodka for his bars.
Before embarking on Frog’s set menu, guests are given an array of beautifully presented ‘snacks’ (“I don’t use the word canapés, because I’m not French,” Handling states). These are constructed from by-products of the main dishes, in order to change perceptions of what the word ‘waste’ means: “I have to make the waste look even more pretty to be able to shake Britain down.” The beauty of his collection is that ingredients can be shared between the venues; a considered approach that takes a year of menu planning and ensures that little is wasted. There are also two sites – one in Cornwall and one in Windsor – where produce is grown, including orchards that provide all the group’s fruit.
Chocolate, almond, cherries.
Frog by Adam Handling
photography. Justin de Souza
Foraging is integral and occurs in unexpected places. His 300-odd-person team doesn’t just take to the Cornish coasts and countryside (where his Ugly Butterfly restaurant and Tartan Fox pub are based), but also to the bounty of the Hackney Marshes in London, where “all year round there are things out there, which is absolutely stunning.” “If it’s not British, we don’t use it,” Handling continues. Instead of vanilla, there’s foraged woodruff and meadowsweet. Pineapple is replaced with pineapple weed, a version of wild camomile, and coconut with gorse. “You’re not going to have the same texture,” Handling explains, “but you’re going to have the same flavour to be playing a round with.”
There is a limited window of four to six weeks to forage any crop but when the time is right, Handling’s team will sometimes gather hundreds of kilos of the stuff – depending on their needs. “It’s a beautiful little ecosystem, but it’s a very quiet ecosystem,” the Chef Owner tells us. “We don’t keep shouting, ‘Look what we do! Look what we do!’ I just feel like people nowadays should be cooking in this way.”
ROVI
59-65 Wells St
London, United Kingdom
ottolenghi.co.uk
Neil Campbell. Executive Chef, Ottolenghi Group
Campbell grew up on the Isle of Skye, watching his grandfather fish for langoustines and his father hunt for deer, thus giving him a natural connection with the provenance of the food on his table. But, like Handling, working in kitchens as a teenager was just a way to earn a bit of cash, and yet, before long, he was “captivated” by “the energy, the precision and the creativity”. He’s worked with greats like Bruno Loubert and Raymond Blanc OBE, but it was ‘down under’ that he really discovered his calling. “There’s something incredibly dynamic about the Australian food scene and Sydney has always been a melting pot of cultures and fresh ideas. Australia was a chance to break free from tradition. It gave me the opportunity to take risks and to experiment with ingredients in ways I hadn’t before,” he recalls. “It was there that I fully committed to becoming a chef – not just because it was something I was good at – but because it was something that gave me purpose.”
The Ottolenghi restaurants, meanwhile, are known for their Middle Eastern influences, but Campbell’s Scottish heritage is not an irrelevance; it remains integral to his approach. “Scotland’s landscape provides an incredible amount of inspiration with its ingredients that are unique and full of character,” he confirms. “I love to bring those flavours to the menus, often in unexpected ways. I think there’s a beautiful connection between the two cultures. You might find me using Scottish ingredients like venison, Crowdie cheese or Hebridean seaweed alongside Ottolenghi’s signature spices.
Red Knobbly Pumpkin Muhammara,
maple walnuts, spice oil.
Neil Campbell, ROVI
opposite
Braised Beef Featherblade,
fava bean, quince amba.
Neil Campbell, ROVI
It’s about finding that harmony between where I’ve come from and where I am now.” While it’s not meat-free, vegetables are “the heart and soul of the menu” at ROVI, one of the restaurants under Campbell’s care: “We take a very creative approach, using techniques like fermentation, roasting and grilling to elevate them beyond the usual expectation of taste and texture. We believe they deserve to be celebrated as much as any other ingredient.”
A farm-to-fork philosophy supports small-scale, ethical suppliers, which Campbell regularly visits to gain insider knowledge of every ingredient’s origin. Outside of the restaurant, he has his own kitchen garden where he advocates the importance of soil health. And then there’s fermentation, which he says “plays a huge role in our cooking at ROVI. We see it as a way to connect with traditional food practices while creating something new.
In terms of sustainability, we use every part of the produce we work with, from root to stem. My goal is always to get as close to zero waste as we can while still delivering the quality and flavour our guests expect. My very first meeting with Yotam [Ottolenghi], I showed up with three of my own home-made kombucha mixes, and the rest is history.” As Executive Chef, Campbell oversees ROVI and NOPI, as well as heading up global growth projects. His current focus is on the new restaurant opening in Geneva early this year.
It’s the group’s first venue outside of the UK but will “carry the same ethos, while bringing in a unique local influence,” Campbell reveals. “We’re really looking forward to drawing inspiration from the rich culinary heritage of Geneva and Switzerland. Geneva is a city known for its highend dining culture, so we’re excited to introduce something new to the scene – something that feels both familiar and fresh at the same time.”
The Glenturret Lalique
Glenturret Distillery, The, Hosh,
Crieff, United Kingdom
theglenturretrestaurant.com
photography. Marc Millar
Mark Donald. Executive Chef, The Glenturret Lalique
It’s clear when speaking with the self-effacing and jocular Donald that he doesn’t take himself too seriously. However, one thing he does take very seriously is his food, and this is something that’s paid off in spades.
In 2021, he took on the launch of The Glenturret Lalique in Perthshire, the first restaurant in the world to be based in a whiskey distillery (arguably the oldest working whiskey distillery, dating back to 1763) and, the next year, secured its first Michelin star, followed by a second star in 2023. Yet, he still describes himself as “just a wee guy”, and here he’s referring to his “clout” in the restaurant world, rather than his 6’ 2” height.
Like Handling, Donald was expected to attend university. He had the grades but wanted to be an actor and was lined up for an audition at the prestigious Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. He never showed up. It was only supposed to be a summer job – and washing dishes in a Glaswegian pub doesn’t sound like the sexiest of callings – but Donald had become hooked by the adrenaline, banter and creativity of the kitchen.
In the next few years, he worked at more esteemed establishments such as Stravaigin and Restaurant Andrew Fairlie at Gleneagles, but his travels also took him to Hibiscus in London (where he met his Australian wife Madeleine), Noma in Copenhagen and Sydney, where he became Head Chef at Bentley.
Shortbread Tea Cake Chocolates.
Mark Donald, The Glenturret Lalique
photography. Marc Millar
Yet, home continued to pull on his heart strings. “Australia is nice, but it isn’t like real life for me sometimes. Scotland’s a bit more raw. You’ve got ten types of rain!” he laughs. He wasn’t just pining for wet weather: “I missed a lot of the produce. I had to go away and cut my teeth in some of the best kitchens in the world to realise what was on my doorstep.” And so, Donald and Madeleine returned to bonnie Scotland.
It was during the pandemic, “You know, the winter lockdown; the really sh*t lockdown”, that the chef was approached about opening a restaurant in a distillery in the Highlands. It didn’t sound promising. He envisioned “cookie-cutter” stereotypes of “shortbread tins, tartan, Nessie, whiskey, heavy cream sauces, haggis bonbons, blah, blah, blah”, but, he went to take a look, because – being furloughed from his role at Number One at The Balmoral in Edinburgh – he simply had nothing better to do: “I mean, no one in their right mind would leave a 100% paying job to open a restaurant in a whiskey distillery – which had never been done before – apart from maybe me,” he admits, “or someone who wanted to take a chance.”
To his surprise, Donald fell in love with the landscape, but also realised that the people behind the venture had two Michelin stars in France and might actually know what they were doing. Importantly, he was pretty much given carte blanche to create the menu and “f*cking obliterate all of the expectations”.
Raw Langoustine, buttermilk, green juice.
Mark Donald, The Glenturret Lalique
photography. Marc Millar
Whiskey, of course, needed to play a part, but Donald has taken a highly creative approach: “It’s not like a venue where I can just pair whiskey with the courses, because you’re going to end up trying to start a fight with the person who’s serving you!” Instead, he immersed himself in the whiskey-making process, learning about fermentation and how complex carbohydrates are turned into sugars.
In the kitchen, these are reduced into a barley molasses that is spread on bread or used instead of sugar or treacle. Ingredients are smoked over peat, rather than charcoal. The barley is also turned into malted bread or replaces soybeans in soy sauce and Shio koji. “By the end of it, every course – 17 serves – has something underpinning it that we might not even mention on the menu. It’s very nuanced. It’s not rammed down your throat. It’s not Malt Disneyland.” Again, it’s about using the ingredients on your doorstep, which in Donald’s case include some of the finest and freshest shellfish in the world, quality dairy produce, wild game and Scottish Wagyu.
The wet weather is even an advantage when growing “things like strawberries and raspberries. The natural sugars have a chance to grow, in comparison to hotter countries where they’re grown in polytunnels and don’t taste of anything.”
Raspberry Liver.
Mark Donald, The Glenturret Lalique
photography. Marc Mill
And then there are the mushrooms: ceps, girolles, St. George’s, Trompette de la Mort, and more, which Donald forages on The Glenturret’s grounds, together with treats like wild garlic, leeks, flowers, herbs, cherries and sloes – the latter of which are used in the homemade gin. He describes in detail the process of making mugolio, a “moreish” pine flavoured syrup. “It’s not just like, ‘How can I get some maple syrup?’ We have something of our own,” but stresses that the produce is “hyper seasonal. I’m not going to say I’m René Redzepi and everything is from a ten-mile radius. You can’t grow turnips here in certain parts of the year or it’s too cold to grow potatoes sometimes. I can’t get Scottish lemons. So, the menu is dictated by quality of ingredients, rather than provenance. However, I’m very fortunate to have a lot at my fingertips.”
Get your print copy of Schön! alive at Amazon.
Download your eBook.
words. Huma Humayun
and integrate them seamlessly into the new content without adding new tags. Ensure the new content is fashion-related, written entirely in Japanese, and approximately 1500 words. Conclude with a “結論” section and a well-formatted “よくある質問” section. Avoid including an introduction or a note explaining the process.
