A FEAST FOR THE SENSES THE MAN BEHIND 8
When Andrew Sheridan’s parents got him a job in the kitchen as a teenager to keep him off the streets neither he nor them could have imagined it would have led to him owning his own critically acclaimed restaurant 15 years later.
Today Andrew is the co-owner of two restaurants in the centre of Birmingham creating something of a buzz in the culinary world, Craft and 8. He has also just published a stunning coffee table/recipe book about his ethos and showcasing his incredible food.
Editor Sally-ann Bloomer talks to him about his journey.
Never have I interviewed such a down-to-earth subject. A born and bred Scouser, Andrew Sheridan might be at the top of his game and receiving plaudits from the country’s top critics, but he is utterly unpretentious.
“There’s no glamorous story for me about how I got started. No great love of cooking for a child. “My parents said I had to get a job to get me off the streets. It was that or sell drugs,” he said.
Andrew admits he was hanging around with the wrong crowd but says he did have common sense. Unfortunately he confesses to also being very self-opinionated and his first job lasted just three weeks before he was sacked.
“They put me on the afternoon tea section and they didn’t like it when I said my nan could bake better cakes than them. It was true though and now you’ll find my nan’s lemon drizzle in my book. How mad is that?” he laughs.
Not wanting to admit to his parents that he’d lost his job, he continued going out every day until he found work in a local pub.
“I worked there for a year but I thought the food was rubbish. I don’t say that from a fancy cooking background or anything but I could see even then there had to be more to food than microwaves and deep fat fryers. It was awful.
“I knew there had to be a whole different skill set to become a great chef and I wanted to learn it.”
With this in mind, Andrew started looking at the work of some of the top chefs from all over the world and this gave him the appetite to join the elite gang of celebrated chefs.
At 21 he started applying for work at top end restaurants and eventually got a placement with one of this country’s most recognised chefs. He doesn’t want to say who it was he worked with as he would rather be recognised for his own achievements.
“Whenever you see an article about a chef, it always starts former Gordon Ramsay chef, former Michel Roux chef or whoever and I don’t want that. When you have your own restaurant you are your own chef,” he explains.
Regardless of who it was, Andrew recognises it was during this stint that he really developed his passion for cooking and learned his trade.
Within two years he was executive sous chef and was delivering food of a far different quality from his early pub days.
For personal reasons though he left this position to move back to North Wales where his family were then living but things didn’t end well.
“At 23 years old I was working 80-90 hours a week and earning just £21k and just couldn’t afford to live. I was bankrupt.
“I kept telling myself though I was learning and hoping it would pay off and stuck at it even though all my friends thought I was mad. I’d have got paid more working for a pub.”
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WINING & DINING THE MAN BEHIND 8
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