Country chef beats big city rivals to top Scots award

Published on Sunday 11 May 2008 21:57

A SCOTTISH chef who has held a Michelin star for 14 years in a remote country-house hotel was last night rewarded with the top trophy in Scotland's "culinary Oscars".

Tony Pierce, who works at Knockinaam Lodge at Portpatrick, on the coast of Dumfries and Galloway, was named Scottish Chef of the Year.

For two years the trophy has gone to dynamic and media-friendly Edinburgh chefs at the heart of the country's restaurant scene: Tom Kitchin in 2007 and Martin Wishart the previous year.

The story was different in the 12th annual awards, which took place last night before 200 of Mr Pierce's fellow chefs at the Radisson Hotel in Glasgow.

With a shortlist of ten chefs it was a close race, the event's organiser, Brian Hannan, said.

"In the past few years, the award has gone to a rising star, but now the pendulum has swung back in favour of a more established chef.

"Tony is a distinctive talent and a welcome addition to the pantheon of Scotland's greatest chefs.

"He's had 14 years of a Michelin star, which is an astonishing achievement. You can get them but you don't always keep them. He was a star chef before television invented star chefs."

Roy Brett, of the Dakota Eurocentral restaurant in Glasgow, won the silver award, while Stuart Muir, of the Forth Floor at Harvey Nichols in Edinburgh, took the bronze.

Mr Pierce has worked at Llangoed Hall in Wales and the Gleneagles Hotel. He was named head chef at Knockinaam in 1994 and has been nominated for chef of the year five years in a row.

The hotel is famous for its cellar of over 450 wines. A sample dinner menu from its website, priced at 50, runs from pan-seared duck foie gras as the starter, to hot banana and Galliano souffl for dessert.

The hotel is a Victorian former hunting lodge in a stunning location close to the water's edge. In early 1944, Winston Churchill and the US military chief Dwight Eisenhower planned the D-Day landings there.

Jim Kerr, the head chef of Mar Hall in Bishopton, Renfrewshire, received the Scottish Chef Award Fellowship for his lifetime contribution to cuisine.

Malcolm Webster, of the Sheraton Grand in Edinburgh, was named Hotel Chef of the Year, and the Restaurant Chef of the Year was Sean Kelly, of Abstract in Edinburgh.