Ian McAndrew: A Tribute

Ian was born in Seaham, County Durham, a mining and fishing town on the north-east coast. He came to cooking almost by accident: at fourteen he swapped metalwork for domestic science, prompting his father's verdict that he "might as well take up bloody knitting as well". His father soon became his proudest supporter.

He joined the very first intake of a new professional chefs' course at Framwellgate Tech in Durham and in 1969 started as a commis at the Station Hotel in Dumfries. In Sheffield he met Jane, and they married in 1974.

It was at the Intercontinental in Hamburg that cooking stopped being a job and became his life. Back in London, he joined Anton Mosimann at the Dorchester, winning team and individual gold at the Basel Culinary Olympics, before becoming sous chef to Bernard Gaume at the Carlton Tower.

At 26 he took his first head chef's role at Eastwell Manor in Kent and won a Michelin star within a year. Typically, he was the last to know: he found out when friends greeted him with champagne at Hambleton Hall.

In December 1983 he and Jane opened Restaurant Seventy-Four in Canterbury. It too earned a Michelin star, and it led to A Feast of Fish, the book that would shape so many young chefs' ambitions. In 1987 the British Academy of Gastronomes named him Chef Laureate.

In 1989 he opened Restaurant One Sixteen in Knightsbridge, but it fell victim to the recession within months; his second book, Poultry & Game, was published soon after. In 1990 he became head chef at Adare Manor in County Limerick, where his brigade included a young Andrew Fairlie, later one of Scotland's most celebrated chefs. Flitwick Manor and Wentworth followed. Ian never compromised his principles: when owners tried to steer his cooking away from what he believed in, he chose to leave rather than bend.

He then opened The Boathouse Brasserie on the marina at Hythe, near Southampton, which was named Hampshire Brasserie of the Year by the Good Food Guide. Many of its dishes found their way into A Feast of Fish 2.

In 1997 he co-founded The Repertoire, an online knowledge base for chefs, years before most of the industry had thought about the internet. It was used by Bournemouth University to help train young cooks. From his base in Norfolk, he also ran The Culinary Consultancy Company, demonstrated regularly at the Skills for Chefs conference in Sheffield, and ran the Master Chefs of Great Britain apprenticeship scheme, driving the length of the country to visit young chefs in their kitchens.

In 2007 he and Jane bought Blackaddie House, a sixteenth-century former manor on the River Nith at Sanquhar, in Dumfries and Galloway. Over fourteen years they made it a place guests returned to year after year, and in 2020 it was named Gourmet Hotel of the Year in the Good Hotel Guide's Editor's Choice awards. Ian chaired the local tourism association, which became Visit South West Scotland under his leadership, and in 2018 he was named the region's Thistle Awards Regional Ambassador. In 2021 he and Jane sold Blackaddie and returned to the north-east of England, where his story began.

In his later years he co-founded chefs.studio, sharing a lifetime of experience with a new generation, and told his own story in his autobiography, Just Call Me Chef.

Like so many chefs, I met Ian through his book before I ever met him in person. I was a young cook with no real sense of direction when I picked up A Feast of Fish in Waterstones in Norwich, and it bowled me over; almost immediately I knew this was the kind of cooking I wanted to do. A few years later, working in County Tipperary, I heard he was cooking not far away and went to find him.

I worked alongside Ian at Adare Manor, in a kitchen beside the River Maigue, where we could watch the salmon leaping the weir from the stoves. It was full of wonderful cooks, among them a young Andrew Fairlie, years before the two Michelin stars that would make his name.

Ian's influence was the deepest of all and the hardest to describe, because he never handed me a technique or a dish I could point to. What he did was change how I thought. He showed me that the country, the produce, the season, the standards and the cooking were not separate things at all, but one idea of what good food actually is. He didn't teach me to cook; he taught me to be a chef. He showed me how to be a grown-up in the kitchen and how to stay in control without ever raising the temperature.

He also had a lovely, unguarded joy when something was right. I remember an oyster mousse we made together. When he tasted it he was over the moon and declared it was "like an angel pissing on his tongue". It wasn't his line, but it was the first time I'd heard it, and I've never forgotten the delight on his face.

When Ian left Adare, he took me with him to Flitwick Manor, and we went on working together for years afterwards: consultancy for companies including Waitrose, The Repertoire, and most recently chefs.studio. That kind of influence doesn't wear off. It compounds.

Ian's legacy lives in the chefs who passed through his kitchens, in the cooks who found their direction in his books, and in the knowledge he shared so freely through his consultancy work and chefs.studio. He will be remembered as the chef who inspired a generation: calm, collected and deeply respected across the trade.

He is survived by his wife, Jane, and their son, Connor.

Ian McAndrew, chef, born 9 July 1952; died 11 October 2026