Mark Greenaway acquired his first kitchen job when he was 15 years outdated. He had thumbed by the native phonebook in his hometown of Lanark, Scotland, in search of resorts and eating places that is likely to be hiring a chef. After calling all of them, the Cartland Bridge Lodge employed him as a KP, which Greenaway assumed was an apprentice. He confirmed as much as his first day of labor in full chef whites and a tall chef hat. He spent your entire shift washing dishes.
“I mentioned, ‘Chef, I’ve not cooked something,’” Greenaway tells Observer, talking from The Caledonian Edinburgh on a late summer time day. “And he mentioned, ‘Properly, yeah, you’re a KP.’ It turned out KP stood for ‘kitchen porter.’ I stood the entire day in my chef whites with my tall white hat, washing dishes. However he mentioned, ‘Okay, come again tomorrow. Put on your whites. Eliminate the hat and you can begin as a chef.’”
Right this moment, Greenaway is one in every of Scotland’s most notable cooks, with a multi-decade profession that has included stints in Scotland, England and Australia. However he initially regarded for a restaurant job just because he thought it will be a straightforward solution to earn money. “I assumed: How arduous can or not it’s?” he says, laughing on the reminiscence. “I loved cooking at dwelling and assumed, ‘Properly, you’ve acquired all day to organize. It might probably’t be that tough.’”
That first day within the kitchen was an eye-opener, not simply because Greenaway had proven up in full chef whites. It was additionally his first time in an precise restaurant. Rising up in Renfrew till he was 10 after which in Lanark, he had by no means eaten outdoors the house and even actually cooked along with his household. “It’s not how I used to be introduced up,” he says. “So in my life, I’ve by no means eaten in a restaurant like a traditional buyer. And now I at all times eat in a restaurant for a motive. However as a result of I had by no means eaten in a restaurant, I genuinely had no thought what being a chef was.”
Greenaway splits his time between three eating places. He lives in England’s Lake District, the place Mark Greenaway on the Haweswater Lodge is situated, and frequently stays in Edinburgh to supervise The Court docket on the historic The Caledonian Edinburgh, which just lately transitioned from a Waldorf Astoria to a part of Hilton’s Curio Assortment. In London, Greenaway helms Pivot British Bar & Bistro.
Greenaway started his relationship with The Caledonian Edinburgh in 2019, when he debuted Grazing by Mark Greenaway shortly after closing his namesake eatery, Restaurant Mark Greenaway. In The Court docket, he at present showcases a six-course tasting expertise known as the “Development Menu,” which shares its identify along with his current cookbook, Development.
“We wish to showcase the unimaginable produce now we have in Scotland,” he says of the £65-per-person menu. “After all, we additionally wish to showcase the talents inside the kitchen, however in a manner that’s sympathetic to these components. The great thing about a tasting menu is that you just may strive stuff you wouldn’t usually. Some folks wish to be protected. Some folks wish to be adventurous. It’s about having a mix of security, journey and good produce.”
Greenaway and his crew use as many Scottish components as doable. The entire seafood, in addition to the meat, the hen and the lamb, are sourced domestically. Greater than 80 p.c of the greens come from inside 10 miles, as does the honey. The menu, which can be obtainable as an à la carte choice, evolves seasonally, normally altering each six weeks. Some fashionable dishes, like Greenaway’s well-known sticky toffee pudding soufflé, stay. Nothing conforms to clichés about Scottish delicacies, which is usually assumed to be stodgy or boring.
“I known as my first cookbook Perceptions as a result of I needed to attempt to change the notion of Scottish meals in my very own little manner from my very own little restaurant,” he says. “Scotland had a repute, however we develop a number of the finest gentle berries on the earth, the most effective shellfish, the most effective Angus beef. We’ve acquired a number of the finest lamb. Folks assume that as a result of we ship a lot to England, we don’t know the right way to prepare dinner it, and all of us reside on a weight loss program of haggis and deep-fried Mars bars. That’s merely not true.”
Though Perceptions got here out in 2016, Greenaway says a number of the presumptions have lingered. “I believe the notion continues to be there and it’s one thing that we’re at all times going to have to vary,” he says. Greenaway additionally doesn’t draw back from Scottish classics, like haggis. (For these unfamiliar with the Scottish dish: It’s created from sheep’s offal, combined with oats, suet, onion and spices.) Though it wasn’t on the menu once I visited, he has beforehand showcased a Roscoff onion dish that includes haggis and a whiskey jus for a contemporary tackle haggis, neeps and tatties.
“There’ll at all times be a Scottish twist to what I do as a result of it’s what I do know,” he says. “I’m Scottish. My first restaurant was in Scotland. My components are sometimes Scottish. However what does it should be to be thought of Scottish meals? It’s an enormous query. It’s not all about bagpipes and tartan—there’s way more to us than that.”
Greenaway’s strategy to his continually altering menus goes again to his early years working at Auchterarder Home in Scotland. Though he had gotten his begin in savory cooking, Greenaway accepted a short-term gig because the pastry chef. “The pinnacle chef mentioned to me, ‘You’re not allowed to repeat something—not a garnish, not a taste, nothing,’” he recollects. “Each single month, I needed to create a brand new dessert menu from scratch. He was actually strict with it.”
That construction pushed Greenaway to get extra inventive. He estimates that he’s created a number of thousand dishes over the course of his profession, each savory and dessert. “It’s at all times a steady problem,” he says. “I’m at all times in all probability engaged on three or 4 dishes at any given time. Possibly they’re rattling round my head, or a word on my pc, or an e mail to somebody or a textual content message. However I believe as a chef, you wish to problem your self.”
For a very long time, Greenaway felt he had one thing to show within the kitchen, particularly when working for different cooks. “No person requested me to show it,” he says. “I at all times felt like I needed to.” Now, although, he feels assured in his success, even when he’s nonetheless at all times striving to enhance.
“You’ll be able to at all times be higher as a chef,” he acknowledges. “It’s not like accountancy, the place it’s simple. You’re solely ever restricted by your individual creativity. It’s one of many only a few jobs the place you possibly can specific that. An accountant can’t simply determine, ‘I’m going so as to add the numbers up in another way in the present day. Let’s see what occurs.’ We are able to do this with components. We flip them into what it’s going to be.”
Development, launched final summer time within the U.Ok., exemplifies Greenaway’s fixed want for progress. It’s a grand tome of a cookbook, with clever imagery of every dish. He by no means supposed to write down a second guide, however says “insanity” drove him to endure the method once more. “I felt I had extra tales to inform,” he notes. “And extra recipes to share. And as quickly as you deliver out a cookbook, it’s outdated, as a result of these dishes have been completed. There are dishes on my menu now that aren’t even in my second cookbook.”
Nowadays, Greenaway defines success as having the ability to move alongside his years of information. He’s typically approached about opening extra eating places or doing occasions all over the world, however he prefers to maintain his deal with his present work so he can practice youthful cooks. “Success for me is having a cheerful crew and a busy restaurant that’s constantly busy,” he says. And regardless of choosing his profession path primarily based on a false impression that it will be easy, he stays grateful to be a part of the trade each day.
“It took me a number of months in a kitchen earlier than I spotted this was it,” he says. “It’s not that I began discovering it simple—there’s nothing simple about being a chef—however I grew to become higher at it. You get faster, your pondering modifications, you burn issues much less, and it helps you wish to keep. It was solely six months right into a 30-year profession earlier than I spotted I didn’t wish to do the rest. And I nonetheless don’t.”
