Martin Wishart, Restaurant Martin Wishart, Leith, Edinburgh

Martin Wishart is the head chef and owner of his own restaurant, Martin Wishart in Leith, Edinburgh. He opened the restaurant in the Port of Leith in 1999, it won a Michelin star in 2001 and has kept it ever since. It also has four AA Rosettes and has won accolades such as Top Restaurant in Scotland in the 2010 Good Food Guide. After training at catering college, Martin learnt his craft with some of the finest chefs in the country such as Marco Pierre White and the Roux brothers. Martin’s first job in the catering industry was at the Crest Hotel, Edinburgh when he was fifteen. After this he moved on to the Caledonian Hotel. Later he worked with Michel Roux Jr the year he took over Le Gavroche in Mayfair, followed by Marco Pierre White at the Hyde Park Hotel. Drawing on his background in fine-dining, Martin cooks traditional and modern French cuisine using the freshest Scottish ingredients. He is inspired by his travels around the world, to places such as France and Singapore, where he looks at regional dishes, but also to America, to understand their approach to front of service. His second restaurant, Martin Wishart at Loch Lomond, opened in 2008.

So first and foremost Martin thank you very much indeed for inviting us in today, wonderful to come and meet you. Lovely to come and see Leith after such a long period of time.  If we can start, if you can tell us a little bit about the two operations you run, the number of covers that you do in both and what people can expect from a dining experience with Martin Wishart?

Okay well let's start with Leith where we are today. This is a restaurant that I opened in April 99, it was a 30 covers restaurant back then, with a staff of two in the kitchen and the style of cooking obviously it's developed from then but the backbone of it's very similar, it's classical French, using some modern techniques with seasonal ingredients. I bought then expanded the restaurant in 2002.

Okay so when you started you didn't own the property?

No, no I rented it from the council.

You rented it okay.

Begged, borrowed and stole the other bits and pieces that I needed for it. I was fortunate to work with Marco (Pierre White) at his then 3 star restaurant in London at the Hyde Park Hotel where he was paying me well, in fact very good money as a sous chef and I saved up that and came back up from London to have a look for property"

So was it always an ambition then to have your own place?

Yeah it was from about the age of 23 actually to come back to Edinburgh. I've been cooking since I was 15. So yeah I was fortunate that I was able to buy the property then later the neighbour's next door and a little later also bought another property behind the restaurant which expanded the kitchens further. The style of food in Leith and the second restaurant at Cameron House is very similar. We cook with seasonal ingredients in both using both classical and modern techniques, very seasonal too. The menu here in Leith is slightly smaller than at Cameron House, where the á la carte menu selection is slightly larger, we do offer a tasting menu at both restaurants, which features six courses, we offer a vegetarian tasting menu as well which is very popular and I also have just introduced seasonal market menus which currently is a black  truffle menu. The seasonal market menu is something that I will change as and when I want to throughout the year, so if I want to do a specialised fish menu or maybe something from one of the Scottish islands like Shetland, so it's a new menu that we're starting and it's proving to be very popular. Supplier-wise well we share a lot of the same suppliers for both restaurants which means that they know the quality that we're looking for.

Your team seems to have grown here. There certainly wasn't two in the kitchen just a minute ago so how many have you got in the kitchen now?

Ten. Now I've got a separate pastry kitchen and expanded the whole back of house. Before the expansion it was pretty hectic because I had everything crammed into a small space which included the pastry, plate and pot wash area, also a dispense bar, so it was really quite hectic when we expanded the first time but buying the third property, it meant I could put the pastry through there and separate it from the hot kitchen. So we've now got a team of three in the pastry. Ricky the pastry chef who you've just seen there and Joe my head chef have been with me for over eight years now. In fact I think that's one of the areas that we've been successful in is maintaining good staff levels.

And that's the key to success really it's keeping ability, consistency doesn't it?

Well I've seen it in a lot of the places I've worked they had staff  members that had been with them for quite some time and hence that's why I expanded my business  over to Cameron House. I wouldn't have done that if I'd only been in business for a couple of years. We're starting our third year there and the kitchen which comprises of seven chefs four of them have worked here in Leith and been with me for over four years.

So you've got that confidence that obviously you can't be in two places at once but you've got that confidence that you've got a trained team that knows your style, what you expect of them and you've got that confidence to allow them to operate at Cameron House.

That's it. Well having a slightly larger brigade than we probably need means that my head chef from Leith can go up to Cameron House, When we change the menu for instance, he'll help do the mise en place with the head chef Stewart, and sous chefs John and David, go over any questions that may arise, I'll go up do service, on a Thursday and Friday night and when the pastry changes it's the same Rikki goes up there and we've got everything covered here anyway. I think we offer a good training scheme here with the company also. We've got training for all the commis, the apprentices and they start either at Cameron House or Leith, they'll end up working in all three areas, both the restaurants and the cook school here in Edinburgh. So it gives them a kind of good grounding and understanding of what we are about.

Absolutely. How many covers are you doing at Leith now then? You've now got three properties combined into one, ten in the brigade is the actual restaurant cover-wise grown?

Yes, it went from 30 to 50, two thirds of the properties is the back of house.

Are you open seven days a week?

Five.

Five okay so everyone gets two days off.

Everyone gets two days off. That's something we've always stuck with, two days off and we close the restaurants down four of the five weeks. That allows the staff to take one week whenever they want, but definitely expanding from 30 to 50 covers has really meant that there's a certain amount of covers you have to bridge over to generate that extra income and for me we had to reach 50 plus, any more than that you have to alter your staffing levels again but for me 50 covers which we can turn into 58 on a Friday or, Saturday night.

When you first opened in Edinburgh, you know, Edinburgh wasn't the city it is now was it a brave move to open? I guess your goal was to have a star

My main reason for leaving working for Albert Roux and coming back to Edinburgh was to find a restaurant property. I didn't want to work for anyone else after that. I knew that

So it was time for you to make your own mark.

Yeah, yeah. I'd been back home six or seven years prior to opening in Leith looking at properties.

Are you from Edinburgh?

I am yeah.

Okay yeah.

So I'd been back home six or seven years prior to that to look at some properties, however I  just felt they weren't right and probably more importantly I wasn't ready for them I wasn't ready to do it but coming back to Edinburgh in 1997 I  went to work at the Balmoral for Rocco Forte, he had just bought the hotel and was opening a  new brassiere there and that was important for me because it allowed me to get back into the  restaurant scene here in Edinburgh, meet all the suppliers and get to know them while I was working for Rocco and then I eventually found this property.

Yeah I mean you are blessed with wonderful suppliers here in Scotland, the larder that's available is absolutely fantastic and you mentioned you used that but talk us through a typical Martin Wishart dish. For someone who's never dined here what would you say on your menu currently really sums up you as a chef?

I would say probably the grouse that we're serving during autumn is a good one because it's a respected seasonal Scottish ingredient, it's really centred around Scotland as well and it's a classical style dish, I use a lot of different seasonal veg throughout the year and use a variety of methods to cook them.  The grouse dish itself has a nice braised cabbage with some wild mushrooms, braised salsify with it, lots of different flavours that all work together with the strong grouse flavour the dish is finished with a drizzle of Armagnac added just before it leaves the stove. Served in a cocotte pan out at the table, so we bring the theatre to the guest. The smell from the dish as the waiter lifts the lid at the table is a head- turner and we involve the front of house staff with the