PAMELA BRUNTON
with the kind of tourist boardy promotion of Scottish landscapes as this magical thing just felt disingenuous.” She has outlined these thoughts in her book Between Two Waters, published last year and the winner of the prestigious Fortnum & Mason food book award. Te part-memoir lays bare her unwavering commitment to doing things the right way, while exploring the importance of food culture and the elements that influence what and how we eat. It is about “doing all the things that I have said people should do over the years. Well, now I am doing them. It is not easy, but I am doing them because I think they’re right,” she says, adding that doing things the right way is actually more rewarding. “Because I am morally
driven, there wasn’t really another way for me. It had to be like this or not at all. I need my reality to reconcile with my own moral stance on things. So I felt like I really needed to tell this alternative story and show how all of this stuff is connected: what you’re seeing out of the window, the rise of capitalism, Scottish history and culture and what we’re eating – they’re all part of the same story. Tey’re not disconnected,” she says. Community is at the heart
of the Inver project, which she opened with her partner – in life and business – Rob Latimer a decade ago in March 2015. Tis way of thinking is
central to Brunton’s approach to cooking – she wants to present the surrounding landscapes on the plate. Te message to the diner is “that living on
“I’m drawn to small
communities where you know individuals and they all have a role in your life”
this planet can be a joy, but in order for it to be that way, we have to be conscious of how we’re treating people and the environment around us, and how important all the little aspects of things are.”
JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY
Brunton describes her career path as “all pretty roundabout, probably like most chefs”. Since dropping out of her philosophy degree at Edinburgh University as an idealistic 19-year-old
and finding her way to the kitchen, Brunton has worked in restaurants at home and abroad in a career that has been anything but linear. When she left university, she decided to take a year out and headed for the highlands of Scotland, where she took on bar work to make money. She was offered a role in the kitchen of a seafood restaurant and “that was it”. She did not go back to university and instead embarked on a career working in progressively better restaurants in Glasgow, then London and later in France. Along the way there was
an interlude to complete a master’s degree in food policy to focus on “the politics, the economics, the social sciences, all the big-picture stuff to do with who eats what, when, why and where,” followed by several years
working with food campaigning groups, much of it focused on improving foodservice funded by public money. After a decade in London,
working at restaurants including Te Greenhouse and Restaurant Tom Aikens, Brunton and Latimer – an animator who used to work in award-winning studios and now oversees the front-of-house and wine program of Inver, as well as managing the back office – were ready to leave the big city. Tey left behind a city
of eight million people for the Hebridean Isle of Iona, population 80, in the west of Scotland. Brunton took on the role as head chef of the hotel restaurant. “Te food was simple but good; we worked with lots of local producers who brought lamb, fish, and shellfish directly to the restaurant,” she recalls. “I’m drawn to small
communities where you know individuals and they all have a role in your life. I think we make small communities wherever we are – even if we don’t interact with all eight million people in a city, we tend to create our own little community.” During those “dreaming
Chefs work with food from the remote setting
years” in Iona they hosted a number of pop-up events, and began looking for a venue to open their own restaurant. Defeated by big budgets that they couldn’t match, they instead went to Ghent, Belgium to work in new restaurant De Superette. It was invaluable experience mastering a woodfired grill and complementary to their experiences of doing stages at pioneering Nordic restaurants Fäviken and Noma. Tese two
> 19
WORLDWIDE
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100
