PHOTOGRAPHY BY ADRIAN FRANKLIN/HOSPITALITY MEDIA


Isaac McHale


At 14 Isaac McHale was working Saturdays at a Glasgow fishmongers’s shop. When he wasn’t much older, he applied for a part-time job with Andrew Fairlie, but was turned down because he wasn’t willing to stop doing his academic grades and go there as a full-time apprentice. After a year of food chemistry at university, he switched to cooking as a full-time career. After a spell with Tom Aikens, he moved to


the Ledbury where he spent six years in total, including one as its development chef. “It meant having an idea and turning it into a new canapé, petit four, garnish or our own design of game knives,” McHale says.


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From there, he took off on his own as a member of the Young Turks with James Lowe and Ben Greeno, attracting international notice with supper clubs, events and pop-ups. “We did really well. The New York Times and Time magazine wrote about us, and we were invited to Shanghai, Mexico and New York for demos and presentations.” That culminated in a six-month spell making


a restaurant at the Ten Bells, a Spitalfields pub where Jack the Ripper met two of his victims. “We were a bunch of young guys with not much money who wanted to do our own thing,” he says, “and the restaurant in Shoreditch Town


Hall was a natural step for me. We were lucky to find such a great building.” His no-choice menu in the dining room and the small bar menu was, he admits, limited by the space. Its kitchen is, he estimates, about 5% of the restaurant’s total footprint. “It’s so tiny that there was not enough fridge space, not enough firepower, no way of producing an à la carte offer or garnishes.” The raw fish that’s nearly always served as


the cold course is very close to his heart: “I love food that stops you dead in your tracks and we have such wonderful quality fish. You take a mouthful and you think: how incredible is that.”


March 2016 | Best of Chef | 21


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