Interview: Isaac McHale, chef

A S AN inquisitive nine-year-old growing up in Glasgow, Isaac McHale could often be found, a solitary and slightly incongruous figure, gazing at the exotic vegetables and spices in his local Indian supermarket.

What? Wasn't he just playing football and getting into scrapes like other boys his age?

"Oh, I did a bit of that as well," he laughs. "But some of the time, if I wasn't playing with friends or up to no good, I would be going down to the cash and carry. It was just down the road from my school at Hillhead, and I would go in and stare at all these spices I didn't know the names of.

"I used to buy every single thing and throw them all in at once. Then gradually, as I got older - say, aged ten - I learned to use less and started to simplify it a bit."

Now 30, he is tipped by both Vogue and Wallpaper as one of the top chefs to watch in 2011. But his passion for food was born from a very simple idea: the desire to make chicken pakora.

"It was a treat when we went to my cousin's house," he explains, "just from a local takeaway in Yorkhill. From there I taught myself how to make Indian food from cook books."

His mum was generally delighted with all this experimentation going on the kitchen - except for the time he decided to put salt in the sugar bowl and sugar in the salt cellar - and the family menu became even more adventurous when, at the age of 14, he got a job in the local fishmonger.

"I worked there Saturdays and in school holidays, which I loved because I learnt loads about fish and filleting, and I used to get loads of stuff on the Saturday that they couldn't sell on the Monday, which I took home and cooked."

All this time he was searching for opportunities to learn. "I phoned all the Indian takeaways in Glasgow," he laughs. "They must have thought I was bonkers - offering to work for free so I could learn how to make naan bread. They were all baffled and said no."

He did, however, get a job at Glasgow institution Stravaigin, working for 2.50 an hour after school.

"I used to come in with a sharper knife than any of the chefs in the restaurant and only got to cut the lemons and limes for the bar."

University followed, studying food chemistry, but he left after a year - "I basically had too much fun" - and worked in a variety of Glasgow restaurants, including Air Organic, Rococo and the Art House Hotel. But still he wanted to learn more, so he travelled to Australia, working for 11 months in a fine dining restaurant in Sydney.

"I was offered sponsorship to stay but I missed the Glasgow banter and wanted to come home to see all my friends," he says. "It was just a bit too far away." So, in 2004, aged 23, he arrived in London.

"I worked at Tom Aikens', which was one of the most exciting kitchens in London at the time," he says. "It was an eye opener. Long, long hours."

He said he "hated work, hated London", and eventually left, frustrated at the back-biting."You'd leave the oven on at a low temperature to cook up bacon slices really slowly and someone would have turned it up to 340 and turned the timer off, so your stuff would burn. There was so much infighting it was ridiculous. It was so hard to work there as it was without people trying to stitch you up."

Happily, he was brought on board at the Ledbury in Notting Hill, which now has two Michelin stars.

"I guess that was the making of me," he says. His continuing thirst for knowledge took him to Noma in Copenhagen, now the World's Best Restaurant, though at the time it was No 10.

"The food was a revelation. Really light, low in salt, low in sugar, healthy, refreshing, not much meat, very clean and vibrant. A different way of doing things."

Inspired and revived, he was determined to set up on his own. Two friends approached him to open a restaurant in London's famous Borough Market so he left the Ledbury last December and started organising the launch.

As they waited for planning permission to come through, they ran pop-up restaurants in the Pavilion Cafe in Victoria Park, serving up dishes such as asparagus with mussels in tarragon sauce and orange edible flowers and Cornish mackerel with Celtic mustard and dill-pickled cucumbers.

"We opened once a week for 13 weeks and sold out all 13 nights - 50 people a night," he says.

But when planning permission eventually came through two weeks ago, the owners decided to open a cafe instead. "It was like being left at the altar looking like a fool," he says. "It was heartbreaking."

Now he's back talking to potential backers with a view to opening another restaurant, possibly in Dalston, in the spring. "My outlook hasn't changed," he insists.

"I'm still interested in doing somewhere that's gastronomic but affordable, skilled cooking and tasty dishes without the pomp and ceremony of a hushed temple to fine food - the kind of place my friends and other young people will feel at home in and want to visit casually, not just for special occasions."

Follow McHale on Twitter @itsisaac;

This article was first published in Scotland On Sunday, 06 February, 2011