Okay Craig first and foremost great to see you obviously a heavy night ((laughs)). Let’s start with a little bit of background on you what made you decide you wanted to be a chef?

Well initially I wanted to join the army. I went along with my older brother, who joined the RAF and I went along with him to keep him company when he went to the careers office and I ended up signing up for the army and then before I knew it I thought, ‘Hang on a minute ((laughingly)) am I actually going to go and actually join the army?’ I play the bagpipes so I was going to go in as bandsman.

Okay.

And the guy said, “You should get trained up as a medic,” so I would come out with a trade and at the same time I’d kind of applied to go to college to do a catering course and I got accepted to go to catering.

Which college?

Dundee College.

Okay and you’re from Dundee?

So I went back to the Army careers office and the guy said, “Look if you go in, if you do your course or whatever, get qualified, then we can put you in the army catering corps,” they still had the catering corps at that time and you get fast tracked to promotion. So I did the catering course then didn’t bother going back to the army and so I ended up joining Crest Hotels.

Okay if you were embarking on a career as a chef again would you choose to go to college or would you choose an apprenticeship? What would you do?

It’s a tricky one actually because there’s a lot…there is some good colleges out there but there’s nothing beats hands on experience at work and in industry. I think a mixture of them both would be good. You know maybe a couple of days a week at college or day release or whatever that would be the way forward.

So you go off to Crest Hotels and what happens then?

I was down there for almost three years.

So this is in England now?

Yes in High Wycombe. I was in High Wycombe for three years, while I was down there Trusthouse Forte bought the Crest Hotels and we were rebranded as a Post House and the menu came through the post and it was boil in the bag, I suppose early sous vide I imagine but not as nice back then and not what it is now.

No it was all brought in from Puritan wasn’t it or somewhere like that?

Yes even the entire dessert menu came in boxes although at the time you got to portion up the desserts and then they realised that some people might portion it slightly bigger than other people so then it came in pre-portioned. So that was the end of that part of my career. It was quite interesting working through such a major rebranding but it wasn’t for me so I high tailed it back to Scotland and started working in small places. I was in a hotel, called Fernie Castle for about four or five years. I went there as sous chef and then got promoted to head chef and I think it was about a year which was fine but it was very sort of function driven, weddings banqueting, a lovely place but it wasn’t really for me. And then the opportunity came for me to go into restaurants which I grabbed with both hands and then here we are now really.

Craig probably you’ve become on the radar for a lot of people through the Seafood Restaurant in St Andrews, highly acclaimed Seafood Restaurant of the Year, being very honest I can’t remember what year, you had three rosettes, very modern building, there was two wasn’t there is that right?

There was two there was the original one down in St Monans which was an old fisherman’s house that had been converted into a restaurant and things started off there. That was 13 years ago I think I started down there and then about eight years ago we decided to move into St Andrews and we got this big glass box out and was very successful to start off with.

And you were a business partner there you had a share in it you were the chef how did it work?

Yeah I went there as head chef and then had the opportunity to buy into the company within a few years, became a director and a partner and yeah things were moving on fine and we did do very well awards wise.

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