FOOD & DRINK
with fish
Gary Brown need never venture far to find the finest produce
WORDS MORAG THORBURN IMAGES ANGUS BLACKBURN
his training just up the road at Kilmarnock College and has worked on and off at the restaurant for the last 10 years. He was inspired by the owner at the time, Bernard Thain, who offered to teach Brown how to fillet fish. This was the calling that sparked his passion for seafood and he has never looked back. The Catch at Fins was taken over by Tom
G
Campbell in April 2012. Campbell built the restaurant and the adjoining smokehouse and farm shop – where he produces smoked fish and other local delicacies – around 20 years ago. Brown was not inspired to become a chef by
one of the great French masters, but rather he cites TV star Ainsley Harriot as his main inspira- tion to start cooking. As a 14 and 15 year-old, he fondly remembers coming home from school to watch Ainsley ‘shaking it’ on Ready Steady Cook. Aside from short spells working at the
nearby Craigie Inn in Kilmarnock and The Old Loans Inn in Troon, Brown has always enjoyed the atmosphere at Fins. He likes the fact that it’s a small restaurant with a close team, ‘just like one big family’. Brown sources all of the produce for Fins
locally. The langoustines come straight off the fishing boats and are very much alive when they reach the restaurant. Potatoes come from a farm in West Kilbride, just two miles from the restaurant. Brown has a good relationship with his local fishermen and heads straight out to the boats when they arrive back. The king scal- lops are a particular favourite of his as well as the squat lobsters, which you rarely see elsewhere.
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ary Brown is, as they say, in with the furniture at The Catch at Fins on Fence- foot Farm in Fairlie, Ayrshire. He did
affinity
An
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