London chef Isaac McHale who lives, breathes and dreams of food
The British chef behind famous London restaurant The Clove Club started cooking at the age of seven and hasn’t looked back since. He reveals how the one month he spent at Rene Redzepi’s Noma restaurant turned out to be an eye-opening experience
How did you get into cooking? “I grew up in Glasgow and, on special occasions, my family would buy Indian curries and pakora [fritters]. When I was seven years old I wanted to make it. I took recipe books out of the library – this was before the internet – and read them. I’d go to the local cash-and-carry shop and buy every spice available, learn about them and then learn not to put too much spices in at once. I also liked to make cakes, pancakes, scones. I think I became a chef because I enjoyed making other people happy.
“My mom’s friend gave me Ken Hom’s The Taste of China as a gift because I was interested in Chinese food. A friend tells me that for my ninth birthday I wanted money to cook a banquet. I made things like salt and pepper pigeon and congee. There was a large Chinese community in Glasgow so I was able to get some Asian ingredients but not Thai, Vietnamese or Japanese. But when I was 10 or 11 years old, I remember the supermarkets started having fresh lemongrass, kaffir lime and galangal.”
What was your first job? “In Glasgow it rains a lot so I didn’t want to be a newspaper delivery boy because you’d get wet. So I thought I’d do something I was interested in. I worked for a fishmonger, learning about different fish and how to fillet a fish. I did that on Saturdays and school holidays for about nine months. After that I started cooking in a restaurant after school, washing dishes and making bar food. My mom wanted me to go to university to give it a try so I studied food chemistry but dropped out after a year to cook full time. I find it constantly engaging, you get to do what you want, have creative freedom, there’s always something new to learn, like the intricacies of sourdough fermenting, gluten strengths, poly crystals in chocolate, animal husbandry, the business of the restaurant.”
What was it like to work at Noma, in Copenhagen? “ [In 2008] I went there and it was No 10 [on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list]. I only went there for a month but it was an eye-opening experience. Noma gets a lot of credit for their food, but one of the most important things Rene Redzepi created was amazing hospitality. That team is so charming and welcoming that you want to go back just to be hosted by them. You can see the pride and enthusiasm of the chef bringing the dish to you. That’s as important as the crazy food, which they made without fear.”