Nairns' bairn
Nick Nairn has changed immeasurably over the past 10 years. The energetic, somewhat shy, young Scottish chef who set up what came to be the highly acclaimed Braeval restaurant with his wife 12 years ago, and who appeared on our televisions in 1995, is bound to be a different man - he can't now walk down the street in Scotland without being asked for his autograph.
But despite the exciting and colourful road that fame has taken him down, he has learnt one important fact: he is most at home in a restaurant kitchen.
The opening of Nairns in Glasgow this coming Monday has reunited him with the drama of restaurant service. He never lost his link with the restaurant industry, despite suggestions to the contrary, having maintained his interest in Braeval, now run by his estranged wife Fiona. But Nairns, which Nick runs jointly with his brother and business partner Topher, will take him to another level. "My background is 35-seat, Michelin-starred food. This is a totally different ball game - it's 200 covers," explains Nairn.
Since leaving his job as a navigating cadet in the Merchant Navy in 1983, and teaching himself to cook in the privacy of his Glasgow flat, he has wanted to open a restaurant in Glasgow. When he and Fiona were looking at launching their maiden business in 1985, they viewed sites in the city but it was too expensive. A year later, they opened 20 miles away in Aberfoyle, in the rural splendour of The Trossachs.
However, back in the city more than a decade later, Nick has realised his dream. "I'm a Glasgow person," he says proudly. "A lot of people want us to succeed and I think it's important this place succeeds in Glasgow - it will help to give the city a better profile." And besides, Nick and Topher fell in love with the building.
Built in 1857, the five-storey Georgian townhouse sits unobtrusively in Woodside Crescent, between the city centre and Glasgow's West End. As it is a listed building, they are barred from such excesses as covering the outside with neon lights or painting it purple.
"This area of Glasgow was originally where all the toffs lived," says Nairn. "But in the 1930s the houses became too big to live in and too expensive to heat and so most of them became offices. But now Glasgow has a glut of purpose-built office accommodation and many offices are relocating. This area is converting back to being residential and we feel we are the focus for that. We have the facility for a really special restaurant with rooms."
Nick and Topher gained possession of the property on 1 August and began work immediately. The four-month project, which was led by designer Rachel Diamond but included the work of Christa Sholtz and Nick and Topher's mother, Irene, sought to establish "new for old".
"We've taken what was there in the 19th century and replaced it with the 21st century," explains Nairn. For example, glass chandeliers have been replaced with ones made from stainless steel, and wall light fittings have been made out of oil-rig housing.
The dining areas are located on two separate floors - a 34-seat room is on the first floor, adjacent to the front door, while the other 46 seats are downstairs on the same level as the service kitchen. A prep kitchen is situated below the service kitchen in the basement, along with the wine cellar, the toilets and the boiler room. "All fish, meat, veg and pastry prep, stocks and sauces will be made down here," says Nairn.
The kitchens, which will house a brigade of 12 chefs and four kitchen porters, are clearly Nairn's pride and joy. "It's extremely complex, but everything fits perfectly," he says. "Every square inch had to be used properly. Steve Terry [executive chef at Coast, London, and with whom Nairn worked briefly at Harveys in Wandsworth] worked it all out. I'm in his debt. My original idea was a piece of rubbish."
The two kitchens cost a total of £50,000 "with a lot of help from Falcon", he says. "I wanted to deal with Falcon because it's a Scottish company. I am very pro-Scottish, but this stuff is also the best. It's tactile, it's gorgeous."
Only a chef could talk about a kitchen with such passion, but then it will be his home for the next six months. He has cleared his diary until March to "work the pass" at Nairns and will only be making appearances on TV programmes that he had previously committed to.
Restaurant similarities
There are bound to be similarities between the food at Nairns and at Braeval. Dan Hall, who joined Nairn as a commis four year ago and worked his way up to head chef at Braeval, will be in charge of the kitchen on a day-to-day basis. Although he has spent most of his working life with Nairn, he has spent a couple of stages (six months with Paul Rankin at Roscoff in Belfast, and three months at the Atrium in Edinburgh) in preparation for the new restaurant. In addition, Hall, sous chef James Hardy and pastry chef Toby Redston avidly read cookery books.
"The food here is fusion - anything from the Med to Asia," explains Nairn. "It might not necessarily be on the same plate or even on the same menu, but that's where our inspiration comes from.
"Braeval is a 30-cover destination restaurant - we're not going to hit the heights they can," he explains. He has recently appointed Neil Forbes from the Royal Scotsman to head the kitchen there. "Braeval attracts the top 7-8% of the dining public in Scotland. Nairns is appealing to a new market. I want to attract a wider audience in Glasgow."
Nairns will offer set-price, fortnightly changing lunch and dinner menus (lunch costs £12.50 for two courses, £16 for three, while dinner costs £20 for three courses). Accommodation for the four en-suite bedrooms will cost from £90 to £125 per room per night.
In terms of decor, there is no particular theme at Nairns - each room has been individually decorated. The main dining area, for example, is charcoal and cream with black-and-white Callam Angus McKay prints on the wall, while upstairs, in the lounge area, the walls are hand-painted tortoiseshell.
The four bedrooms, situated on the top two floors of the building, are as individual as the other rooms. "The design brief was that they were not to look like hotel bedrooms," says Nairn. "Most hoteliers would have got eight rooms out of the top two floors, but we restricted it to four. We're not just doing this for the money - we're doing it because we enjoy what we do."
Although Nairns only seats 80, Nairn is confident that by the time his third TV series, Island Harvest, is broadcast in February, the restaurant will be up to 200 covers on busy nights. "We can survive on 50 for lunch and 80 for dinner," he says, explaining that the restaurant has cost him and Topher £500,000 so far, "but we want to do 300 covers a day. We want to expand."
Leaving braeval
Since announcing the opening of the restaurant, Nairn has come under some criticism for supposedly leaving a Michelin-starred restaurant in the lurch. But he is quick to refute these suggestions. "I have not deserted Braeval," he says, adding that for more than two years his involvement in the restaurant has been minimal because his time has been taken up with other projects such as TV, writing and demonstrations. "It's doing better now than ever before," he adds.
"There are a lot of things Nairns can't offer [customers] that Braeval can," he points out. "It's just a very special wee place, and with Fiona back full time now putting all her energy into it, it's set for a bright new future."
As Nairns is open for lunch and dinner, seven days a week, Nairn intends for the brigade to "eventually" settle down to a five-day week, but implementing that will be Hall's responsibility. "Dan is head chef," says Nairn. "He's been head chef from day one. I'm executive chef, if you like, although I hate that term, but I plan to be here a lot of the time."
What will happen after the first six months of trading remains to be seen. But it seems unlikely that Nairns will be pushed in to second place by its principal's other commitments. "The restaurant is more important than TV," he says. "I've been in TV long enough to know how fickle it is. I'm a chef first and a TV chef second."
