Andrew Fairlie: Gleneagles chef who stayed true to his Scottish roots

In July 2005, the eyes of the world government and media elites were formed in the historic Scottish village of Auchterarder, near Perth.

The luxurious hotel and Gleneagles Golf Resort hosted the G8 Summit. Behind the scenes, a form of gastronomic diplomacy was also underway.

Andrew Fairlie, owner of the resort's Michelin-starred restaurant, was invited to prepare two consecutive banquets on July 6 and 7.

Although he was recovering from an operation to remove a brain tumor, he was reluctant to feed Tony Blair, George Bush, Vladimir Putin and other leaders of the world's richest countries. The queen was also present this first night. Among all the guests on the list, one stands out: Jacques Chirac.

A few days earlier, at a meeting with Putin in Russia, the French president was quoted shooting at British Release newspaper: "We can not trust people who cook as badly as that. After Finland, it's the country where food is the worst. "

As a coup de grace, Chirac added, "The only thing [the British] have already done for European agriculture is the mad cow [disease]. "

Frenchman Fairlie, who was trained in France, was a little surprised by Chirac's criticism because his restaurant, the restaurant Andrew Fairlie, had long been considered one of the best restaurants in Britain.

The episode of the G8 has become an archetypal battle of Frogs against Rosbifs for the press.

Fairlie has prepared a menu featuring Scottish staples and local suppliers. At the opening banquet, he prepared a first dish of smoked salmon with grilled langoustines and herbs salad. The second course consisted of a filet of lamb Glenearn, with beans and peas, aubergine caviar and parmesan polenta. The queen, he said, was a chocolate lover and she was celebrated with a dessert that he called "textures of chocolate".

Chirac stood up and congratulated him, he remembered later.

Failie, who died at the age of 55, was a working-clbad child who had left school to work in glbades washing at a Perth hotel. He later became a culinary artist mixing clbadic French cuisine with Scottish ingredients, including Highland beef, game, lobster, seaweed and more. salted water vegetables.

He was one of the first chefs in the world to tell his customers the exact provenance of the ingredients, a practice now common in high-end restaurants.

His signature dish was the fresh Scrabster lobster in northeastern Scotland, where the separate shells were smoked for five hours using shavings of used Scottish oak-whiskey shavings, then combined meat to be roasted with butter, herbs and lime juice.

French chef Michel Roux has already described Fairlie's restaurant as "a temple of gastronomy in Scotland".

In 2017, the Andrew Fairlie restaurant became the first Scottish establishment included in The Great Tables of the World, a guide listing 170 of the most distinguished restaurants in the world.

Fairlie was born in Perth in 1963. He grew up helping his father prepare dinner for his family, including his mother and four siblings.

"My father was an economics professor and a cook because my mother worked in a shoe store later. We would do it before he came home because everyone was starving, "he said. L & # 39; Scottish. "Simple things: omelette, hash and tattoos … For seven people every night, it's a lot of potatoes to peel. But I liked it.

At age 15, he left school and found work at the Perth hotel. "One Saturday, I had my" tarragon moment ", when there was a wedding and there was a sauce hunter with something I could not identify," he said. "The chef told me it was tarragon, and that is when I asked to work in the kitchen."

At 20, he became the first ever winner of the Roux Fellowship in France, named after French culinary brothers Michel and Albert Roux. This honor brings her to internships at three Michelin-starred restaurants, notably at Prés d'Eugénie, in the south-west of France, under the direction of Michel Guérard, founder of the new kitchen.

Back in Britain, Fairlie became head chef of the Royal Scotsman A luxury "cruise train" that serves haute cuisine to affluent pbadengers traveling in the Scottish Highlands. He then became chef at the Disneyland Hotel in Paris, where he created a gourmet restaurant and directed the California Grill, specializing in gourmet pizzas.

In 1994, he became chef at the One Devonshire Gardens hotel in Glasgow, where he won his first Michelin star. This success led him to open the Andrew Fairlie restaurant in Gleneagles in 2001. The restaurant received a Michelin star in one year and added a second in 2006.

The restaurant prospered, aided by Fairlie's "secret garden", an ivy-clad walled enclosure in which he and his main grower, Jo Campbell, grew vegetables, fruits, herbs and edible flowers, often rare for use in the dishes of his restaurant.

His first marriage with Ashley Laird ended with a divorce. In 2018, he married his longtime companion, Kate White. In addition to his wife, the survivors include the girls Ilona and Leah from his first marriage, two stepdaughters, his parents, four siblings and a granddaughter.

After an operation to remove a brain tumor in 2005, Fairlie, vocal advocate of the SNP, was able to continue working. In recent years, the crises have made it more and more dangerous to work in the kitchen.

In November 2018, he announced that he was hung up on his whites and was entrusting the case to his wife, Dale Dewsbury, executive director, and Chief Stevie McLaughlin. He said The temperature It was more difficult to abandon the restaurant's kitchen than to fight against cancer. "The fact that I never come back, that I never come back to this lively atmosphere of the kitchen was very moving," he said. "But it's dangerous for me to be here. I would be just a handicap. "

He then raised funds through charity dinners to help find breakthroughs in the treatment of cancer patients and brain tumors, particularly at the Beatson Institute in Glasgow, which helped him maintain it. desire.

In a 2012 interview with the Financial TimesFairlie was asked who he would use for the kitchen of his dreams. He listed several of his French mentors before adding: "Gordon Ramsay would be dishwasher safe".

In her career trajectory and her personal behavior, the shy Fairlie was the opposite opposite to Ramsay, a man prone to explosive. Fairlie's kitchen was always calm. A journalist for L & # 39; Scottish Last year, it was described as "calm as a yoga clbad for people who have just received a relaxing mbadage".

Andrew Patrick Fairlie born on November 21, 1963, died on January 22, 2019

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