When I interviewed the hotelier Ken McCulloch a couple of weeks ago to discuss the imminent arrival of the Dakota Deluxe hotel in Glasgow city centre – the first in a string of upscale Dakotas, which will also include Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Cambridge (see our Business pages today) – we spoke about lots of things.
I’ve known him professionally since the 1980s, and let’s face it, the hotel and eating-out scene in Scotland has changed almost beyond recognition since then. Monaco, where he lived for 10 years before returning to his home city last year; the importance of good service, loyalty, choosing the right staff, attention to detail, creating a place where people feel special and whether Glasgow was ready for his high-end hotel were among the subjects we covered.
What I really wanted to discuss was McCulloch’s pivotal – if typically understated - role in the modern eating-out scene. Food has always been central to the personal and professional life of the man who was brought up in Blanefield, left school at 16 with no clue what to do, and went on to found One Devonshire Gardens in 1986, the ground-breaking mid-price hotel chain Malmaison in 1994 and the 5-star Columbus in Monaco in 2000, as well as the distinctive black monolithic Dakotas at Eurocentral and the Forth Bridge in the early 2000s.
All that after first creating a string of Glasgow’s most enduring bars and restaurants. His launch portfolio includes The Granary, La Bonne Auberge and Charlie Parker’s (now a Di Maggio’s, though the name has been snapped up by the G1 Group’s flagship venue Corinthian, where there’s a Charlie Parker’s piano bar); and – hello – he also owned, and turned around the fortunes of, Rogano and The Buttery.
He doesn’t like to boast about it, but is was he who spotted the potential of many of Scotland’s top chefs, such as Andrew Fairlie, with whom he opened One Devonshire Gardens and who attracted the restaurant’s first Michelin star in 1996. Fairlie in turn recruited Darin Campbell as a chef de partie in 1997; he followed Fairlie when he opened his restaurant at Gleneagles, and gained his own Michelin star at Ballachulish House in 2008 before being headhunted to run the kitchen at Andy Murray’s Cromlix House.
Other stars made at One Devonshire Gardens, and thus also part of the McCulloch legacy, are Paul Tamburrini, who was executive chef from 2006 until 2011, and is now executive chef at Martin Wishart’s The Honours in Edinburgh. Then there’s the Jim Kerr, former head chef at Rogano and at ODG, who worked with Derek Marshall at Gamba and is now at the prestigious Western Club restaurant in Glasgow, designed by Amanda Rosa. Roy Brett, who trained with Rick Stein and launched the restaurant at Dakota Forth Bridge, now runs his acclaimed seafood restaurant in Edinburgh. So McCulloch really is an eminence grise of the modern Scottish culinary scene.
He says his 50-year career (and counting) has been based on hunches. He purchased the Malmaison name for £100 because nobody else had asked, and he knew from his time as a trainee chef with British Transport Hotels that the Malmaison at the Central Hotel was renowned worldwide, having been the first Glasgow restaurant to gain a Michelin star way back in 1974).
You might wonder how, having started working at 16, he retains the enthusiasm to do it all again with Dakota Deluxe, which opens in Spring 2016 with rooms at upwards of £200, almost three times the price of existing Dakotas. But it seems he’s seen an opportunity. He says the food will be a “cut above” and reveals that head chef Tony Tapia (ex Mark Hix, Rick Stein and Roy Brett, and currently at Dakota EuroCentral) is putting together his Glasgow brigade (no doubt triggering staff reshuffles in restaurants across the country). Tapia’s wife is from Glasgow and she is general manager at Eurocentral; his sous-chef Mark Robertson, part of the original Malmaison Edinburgh brigade, is to take over at Eurocentral.
The new hotel joins what is fast becoming the city centre’s high-end quarter. It’s close to Martin Wishart’s The Honours brasserie at Malmaison, Blythswood Square Hotel, and to established upscale eateries Brian Maule at Le Chardon d’Or and Gamba seafood restaurant. Should they be worried? Sagely, he responds that he’s only interested in doing what he does.
Is he aiming for the city’s first Michelin star since Gordon Ramsay closed Amaryllis at One Devonshire Gardens in 2003?
His response sounds something very like “absolute tosh” though he does say Glasgow should stop being afraid of aiming high.
The city is nowhere near as good as it should be, though not because it doesn’t have a Michelin star, because stars are not what it should be looking for. Instead, he says his home city needs to set its sights higher and believe in itself more, because people are ready to respond to that.
Nobody, he adds, should be afraid of doing something fabulous in Glasgow, because Glasgow always responds positively to people with big ambitions who do things well.
Is the city’s wheel of fortune about to turn on another well-judged hunch? Watch this space.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here