Chef Kirk Westaway on bringing modern British cuisine to Singapore
- The name behind one-Michelin-star restaurant Jaan by Kirk Westaway on learning the value of hard work from mentor Raymond Patterson
- ‘I’m not French and I would never cook French food’, he says as he explains why he is preparing modern British fare
What was it like growing up mostly vegetarian? “My mother is vegetarian and since she cooked, we ate whatever was on the table. I grew up in Devon [southwest England], where my family still lives. We grew carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes and potatoes, and there are pear and apple trees. One of my fondest memories is of picking these ingredients in the summertime, making a small salad and eating it. Many years later, this evolved into the English Garden dish that is popular in Jaan.”
How did you get into cooking? “When I was about 14 years old, on the weekends and in the summer, I worked in a busy pub called The Clinton Arms, washing dishes for extra money. One day, the guy on the salad section was sick, so the chef chucked me there. That guy never came back, so for the whole summer I stayed in the hot, sweaty kitchen. It was an eye-opener to see the chefs work crazy hours, but they used nice local ingredients.
“I went to a catering college in Exeter. As part of the programme, I moved to France at 18 and worked for four months in a Michelin-starred restaurant called Manoir de Lan Kerellec, in Trébeurden, Brittany. In the morning, we walked 10 minutes to the seaside carrying two buckets. We’d fill one with seawater and the other with seaweed. Back in the kitchen, we would put the seawater into a pan, bring it to a boil and cook the langoustines and lobster in there, and blanch the seaweed in seawater for the seafood salad dish.
What did you learn from Raymond Patterson? “I worked at his [now closed] Patterson’s restaurant for a couple of years from 2008, which taught me what the body can take. It was long, tough hours in a basement kitchen; I didn’t see daylight for two years because I would start at 7am and leave at 1am. Raymond was in his early 50s when I was there. The hours he was doing showed incredible determination and hard work.
“I did an event with him and I was there preparing for 46 hours in that basement kitchen. I didn’t sleep or take a break. He stopped just to rest, but then he carried on. These moments teach you what you can achieve if you are determined. Whenever I felt tired or missed sleep, I’d look at him and shake it off – I would be ashamed or embarrassed to say I was tired. He worked many more hours than me and I was trying to keep up.”
