Interview: Martin Wishart - The Wishart list

Published on Wednesday 15 July 2009 17:25

Bent over, leaning in, face a study of concentration, Martin Wishart is totally focused. It's a busy Thursday night, Restaurant Martin Wishart is full, and the chef is putting the finishing touches to a lobster dish that's a new addition to his menu.

The meat of the fine Orkney crustacean that emerged scarlet from the pot has been prised from its shell and placed on a large square plate covered in Basque pepper and grain mustard sauces. The shell from the head and tail, shining from a light brush of olive oil, are being added to the top and tail of the meat giving the lobster back its form, albeit conveniently shelled and cooked to perfection. It's a typical Wishart creation: clever, classic and contemporary.

The five chefs working around Wishart (there are three more in the pastry section next door) are busy, looking after their own sections, seasoning sauces, constructing elaborate garnishes, but they can't resist sneaking glances at what "chef" is doing. The lobster is ready.

It's spectacular, the kind of dish that'll have other diners craning for a closer look and regretting their orders. Wishart stares at the plate, turns it, tweaks the lobster's antennae. Stares again. He looks quietly pleased. No-one says anything, but they look pleased too. It's another triumph, and they know it.

Martin Wishart is an exceptional chef. Brilliant even. His staff know it (that's why they come from far and wide to work for him), his loyal customers know it (try booking a table for a Saturday night and you'll get a sense of just how many of them there are), his mentors know it (both Marco Pierre White and Michel Roux trained and rate Wishart highly) and beneath the mild mannered, understated, slightly shy exterior, you can tell that Wishart knows it too.

His eponymous restaurant at the Shore celebrates its tenth birthday year this year. It's been quite a decade – strewn with awards, underpinned by lots of hard graft. In 1999 the restaurant was a small bistro with a kitchen – tiled by Wishart, his dad and his brothers – the size of a large cupboard. It was the realisation of Wishart's dream to be his own boss, a plan he'd had since he was "about 20". Now, of course, it's much bigger, a chic and celebrated restaurant, the lynchpin of Edinburgh's 'Michelin Mile'. It's also the heart of Wishart's growing empire.

The Edinburgh-born chef, who started working in kitchens on a YTS scheme at the age of 15, is a mystery to some. Partly it's his manner. Low key is how I'd describe it. Others have said dour. Partly it's because he's not interested in what people think he should be interested in. He doesn't want to be on the TV. He doesn't want to be a celebrity chef, to save chickens or school dinners or failing restaurants. Lack of ambition? Hardly.

Wishart's new restaurant, Martin Wishart at Loch Lomond, an autonomous venture at the five star Cameron House Hotel on the banks of the loch (where Wishart once worked as a trainee), is up and running; his Cook School, in Leith, is so popular it has a waiting list and his self-published *Cook Book has nearly sold out its first print run. All this against the backdrop of some of the catering industry's biggest names going to the wall (Anthony Worrall Thompson), or at least selling their sports cars to keep the banks at bay (Gordon Ramsay).

It's not luck and nobody has handed it to him on a plate. When Wishart opened his restaurant 10 years ago, there were three key ingredients: the right location (found as he cycled around Edinburgh looking for his spot), 7,000 of savings and his then girlfriend, now wife, Cecile, who ran front of house. They met at John Burton Race's restaurant L'Ortolan in Berkshire and then moved to both work at the Balmoral before striking out on their own. I want to know what the secret ingredient is of Wishart's success. I'm tempted to think it's Cecile.

"Cecile's got a big part to play in all of this," Wishart says. "Any big decision that's been made, it's been made together.

"She left her job in the Balmoral to come and work in the restaurant. She had complete trust in what we wanted to do. It was stressful but it was also enjoyable. I was 28 or 29, Cecile was 26 so we had plenty of energy."

They needed it too. They worked six days a week (the rest of the staff worked five), 16 hours a day. Now, with three businesses, two young daughters, Clara, four and a half, and Amy, two, and one Michelin star, they're not exactly taking it easy. Cecile moved out of running the restaurant and into a more business-focused role ("tidying up the paperwork", she calls it) after Clara was born. Wishart has promoted other members of his team to share the workload as the business has grown. It's the right thing for the business – they both know that – but they're also both prepared to admit that they miss the heady days when it all began.

"When we opened up it was very basic," says Wishart, "but the thing it had was this special feel. That's what the customers said."

Cecile agrees. "I think the great thing about when we first started was that people would walk into our restaurant like it was a neighbourhood restaurant or a pub," she says. "They didn't feel intimidated at all and then they'd be blown away by the food. Lots of people still tell me about eating there. They feel that they're part of the story, part of what we've achieved."

Even at the start, Wishart was establishing the other trait that's marked his career: constant change and improvement.

"Martin used to change the menu every Friday night," Cecile says. "Of course, that's the best night to change because it's the busiest and you'd had a very busy lunch." She raises her eyebrows. She would finish the lunch service, tidy up, reset the restaurant, then go home (to Musselburgh at the time] and type the new menus for the evening. She'd drive back, arriving at the restaurant where she says Wishart would often tell her that he wasn't quite sure how he was going to do a particular dish.

"And I had to sell it," she says. "I could tell people it'd be wonderful and they would like it, but as for the details," she shrugs and smiles. "Martin was really creative at that stage. He was really in control of that little kitchen and he could do anything he wanted."

Wishart's nostalgic too. Surprisingly it's not about the food he was creating, but about his business.

"That initial phase of the business was more exciting than the cooking for me," he says. "It was exciting, that feeling that anything that was coming through the door I was paying for. I valued the ingredients and I valued working with the staff I was paying. I'd been doing a lot of cooking but I'd never started a business before."

It's one thing to be a talented chef: a fine palate, a passion for flavour, a willingness to work 16-hour days in kitchens the reek with heat and the egos of creative types who express themselves with boiling liquids and sharp implements. It's something else to do what Wishart has done: create a successful business (it's turned a profit since year one) that's expanded at the right pace, manage a loyal team (many of whom have worked for him for years) and stay focused and interested.

When it comes to his palate, he keeps it fresh by flying around the world to eat in the types of restaurants (all two or three Michelin starred establishments) to which he aspires. When it comes to the business, he says that he's not a control freak – "that would work against you" – but he doesn't deny that he's aware of everything that goes on.

"If you're an independent restaurant then you really do need to keep an eye on everything – what you're buying in through the back and what's going out the front," he says. He learned that, he says, in the best kitchens. "You work with expensive ingredients but these guys didn't get to where they are without knowing how to save money."

As for his team, about whom he can't speak highly enough, it's clear that they are a major issue. "It bothers me all the time. Constantly. My staff. How are they? What do they think? How long will they stay with me?"

In an industry that's notorious for its high turnover of staff, Wishart has achieved the unthinkable. Staff who stay for years, who stay loyal and who seem completely convinced about Wishart's vision and ambitions.

Honesty is vital. "As soon as you start talking about things that aren't going to happen you destroy any trust," he says. That's why he's kept his plans quiet until he's known they could happen and it's why he's involved key players – his head chef, Joe Taggart, who's been with him since the start and his pastry chef Ricky Preston who's worked with him since 2003 – in decisions about expanding the business. It's not that it's a collective – he's not seeking their permission – but he is making sure that everyone is onboard because he knows that the success of his business is in large part built on them, their work and their commitment.

That answers the question as to why do they stay. He smiles. "Not only that, we pay them more money." He laughs.

Wishart's kitchen is a magnet for young, ambitious chefs. Watch him work and you can see why. There's no hysteria or plate throwing, just an amazing level of concentration and unmistakable expertise. The whole operation is precise and practiced, like a military manoeuvre.

"You've got to be strong and show people what you want," he says. "Past chefs I've worked for, the ones that I've learned a lot from, showed me that you can only get that from respect. I don't mean that just as a boss but also just as a person. Chefs all fly off the handle at some point but you don't need to do it for no reason. It's short-sighted and your staff see right through you."

Speak to people who ate in the original restaurant (many of them are still regulars) and they'll get misty eyed. Part of what they loved was the individual service, the sense that the chef would make them the best meal he could, no matter what the restrictions. Whereas some chefs complain about vegetarians or dietary restrictions, Wishart never has.

The vegetarian food he cooks is, according to vegetarians I know, amongst the best they've ever eaten. A vegan friend said she didn't know vegan food could taste as good as the dishes prepared by Wishart.

"I still get excited about what I cook, what I taste, what I plate," he says. "What I find is that I have less time to explore what my suppliers will give me. But I've got 10 years' experience working with these guys so they know what I want. I don't feel as a chef I have to keep searching and searching for ingredients because I think we've found good ones. And when something exceptional comes along it'll come to us anyway. We will find it."

An insider told me that recently, during a busy lunch service, a diner looked at the menu only to find her dietary requirements meant there was nothing she could eat. A couple of journeys back and forth to the kitchen for the waiter and a decision was made. Wishart sent out a piece of paper upon which the woman was asked to write a selection of foods that she could eat. She wrote the list and it was duly sent to the chef. Wishart then left the main kitchen to his head chef, commandeered a section of the pastry kitchen and set about making a bespoke six course tasting menu for the customer. And not only that, he enjoyed it. It tested him, challenged him, and there's nothing he likes more.

If some people are baffled as to how someone who's quiet and unassuming, could be so successful in a job that involves copious showing off (what else is high end cooking?) they're underestimating Wishart. To judge him, you have to look at his food. Technical, exacting, delicious, it tells you all you need to know. It's as full of ambition and confidence as it is flavour. And if there's anything else, ask a chef who's worked with him. They know exactly why he's succeeded. "He was always smart," one former colleague says. "And he always worked the hardest. You can't knock him, he's worked bloody hard for what he's got."

Whether it's produce, staff or business decisions, there's a kind of instinct that rules Martin Wishart. His wife and partner, Cecile, sums it up: "We're very good at taking quick decisions – we want to do this or we want to do that. Martin is the best at doing that. He's very forward-looking, he's very impatient. He wants everything done yesterday. I think that's why he's achieved so much."

And since we're on the subject of achievements, what about that elusive second Michelin star? "I never did open my restaurant for Michelin inspectors and I don't run my business for them now," he says. "For me, the inspectors are the customers. They pay the business

"Michelin stars are great. They do help. So do the other guides as well.

I think we we'll get our two stars. And that's fine because everything can come too quick. I'm not in any hurry to achieve everything that I want. If that means I'm going to wait for another few years for Michelin to give me the second star, it'll just be a bigger party." He laughs.

I push one last time for the secret recipe of his success. I want to know how he explains it. "There's no real magic to it," he says, smiling. "I don't have any real words of wisdom to tell you. I keep things as simple as I can in my own mind and I keep them realistic."

A classic Wishart understatement.