Hello Mr Chips... ex-Ivy chef Des McDonald opens his first restaurant

As he opens his first restaurant, former Ivy head chef Des McDonald tells Jonathan Prynn why he believes his take on fish and chips could go global
Des McDonald at his first solo enterprise, The Fish & Chip shop
GLENN COPUS
24 May 2013

He was head chef at The Ivy by his mid-twenties and spent seven years running Richard Caring’s West End restaurant empire as chief executive of a group that boasts Scott’s in Mayfair and J Sheekey in Theatreland.

So why has Des McDonald chucked in the glamour and power of one of the biggest roles in London fine dining to open a humble Islington chippy?

The answer is simple. No day job — however exalted — can beat the thrill of having your name over the door, a pleasure McDonald has never experienced since starting his professional life as a 16-year-old pot washer at the Ritz.

“I’ve had a fabulous career but it was time to do my own thing. You get to a point where you just have to do it for yourself,” he says.

The Fish & Chip Shop on Upper Street, which served its first customers last night, is the 47-year-old’s first solo venture in what he hopes will be an equally successful new career as a restaurateur.

It is far from the glossy luxuriance of The Ivy and Scott’s — although undoubtedly at the posher end of the chippy spectrum.

“It will be great, sustainable fish in a relaxed casual dining environment — a very inclusive place. For me, who spent a lot of my formative years in Mayfair and west London, it’s a nice change to be working in a London village in a more relaxed environment.”

The simple menu, written on folded brown paper, covers all the essentials you would expect. Battered cod is there, of course, at £8.50 with “double fried” chips at £2.50 a portion.

Haddock, plaice, pollock and scampi are also on the menu, delivered fresh from Brixham and Grimsby each day — McDonald promises he will never give house-room to frozen fish.

There is also the now obligatory concession to local sourcing. The beer in the batter — and also on the drinks list — is Camden Hells lager from the Camden Town Brewery and the bread comes from the Flourish Craft Bakery on Tottenham High Road.

Even West End Des himself has adopted a “Norf London” uniform. The Caprice Holdings chief executive’s suit and tie has gone and at our meeting he is dressed entirely in “N1 black”.

Yet in stark contrast, there is an oyster bar laden with crustacea. McDonald makes no apologies for the nod to the West End. “I think restaurants need theatre, people like to watch the barman making a great cocktail, they like to watch the chef cooking, they like to see a pizza being made in the oven. We thought ‘Should we have tables down there? No, let’s put something there that would draw people in, make them feel relaxed, let them sit up at the counter and watch some action’. We’ll also do some cooking demonstrations there.”

As well as eager quality-chip-deprived Islingtonians, it seems inevitable that the starry McDonald name will lure a celebrity crowd to north London. The nearby Almeida is likely to provide a theatrical element and McDonald hopes that local resident Mayor Boris Johnson will be a regular as well as his former boss.

The venture is a big gamble for McDonald, who lives in Canary Wharf. He has provided the “vast majority” of the £500,000 set-up costs from his own pocket, with the rest coming from private backers, and has been working from 6am to 10pm in the run-up to the launch.

McDonald has already got his eye on sites in Notting Hill and Covent Garden and is working on two other “premium casual” restaurant concepts — one likely to launch by the end of this year and the other early in 2014.

You sense McDonald, a burly but quietly spoken perfectionist who fell in love with the catering game aged 10 during a summer holiday job on an Irish pig farm, is not someone to cross in the kitchen.

He says he prefers chefs who know how to knock up a good fish pie rather than do something fancy with foie gras, and his core values are “discipline and dedication”.

McDonald, who rarely gives interviews, remembers growing up in Seventies London always surrounded by fresh ingredients at a time when heavily processed food ruled. “At home my father was always cooking with fresh ingredients. We would go to the fishmonger to get mackerel or fresh salmon and we were friendly with our local butcher.”

His uncles ran a bakery in County Cavan in Ireland, where he worked collecting fruit and working on the farm during the holidays.

He was a keen sportsman — playing for school rugby and cricket teams — but quickly realised he would rather earn money than have a kickaround with his mates in the park. “I wouldn’t call myself entrepreneurial but I was always wanting to make some money so I could buy some nice clothes and enjoy myself. I didn’t want to be wasting time.”

After his big break at the Ivy aged 26 he admits his work became “all consuming” but he has tried to step off the gas in recent years —restaurant launches excepted — to give himself more time with his teenage daughter, who has just started college.

In contrast to many of his peers at the top of the profession, you are unlikely to see McDonald on television. He was once persuaded to appear in a pilot for a TV show called Hot Chefs that was, in his words, “a complete disaster”. He has never been tempted back.

Now the low-profile former king of the West End is going it alone — far later in life than many of his generation. But his ambition is global. He passionately believes the fish and chip shop is “a strong British brand” that can successfully be exported. “I can see it in New York, I can see it in Hong Kong, I can see it in Paris.” There’s a thought — the first chippy on the Champs-Elysées.

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