When Chris McClurg landed in Cornwall from Belfast for a two-day trial at Paul Ainsworth’s No 6 restaurant in Padstow, Ainsworth picked him up from the airport. “He laughs about it now,” remembers McClurg. “He says: ‘I didn’t know whether I was picking up my new chef or the new front man for Babyshambles.’ I looked more like a rock star: long hair, leather, ripped denim and knackered boots. But I was leaving behind one world and entering into a new one, which was regimental, disciplined, structured. Paul told me: ‘Lots of people have talent. But lots of people aren’t surrounded by the right people who can harness that.’”
McClurg returned to No 6 a month later as a chef de partie. After three years, he was made senior sous chef. He’s now been with Ainsworth for seven years, a period during which No 6 has won a Michelin star and established itself as an essential destination in Cornwall’s crowded restaurant scene. These days McClurg has clipped hair and there’s no ripped jeans in sight.
And now another award: the 29-year-old McClurg is OFM’s Young Chef of the Year for 2018. He follows Dan Smith (2016), whose Fordwich Arms in Kent has just won its first Michelin star, and Tom Adams (2017), the chef behind Coombeshead Farm, also in Cornwall. He sees the award as a vindication that he has been right to hone his skills with Ainsworth, rather than jumping from job to job. “Sometimes the quick, easy ways aren’t the best ways,” he says. “Sometimes it’s good to show loyalty, longevity and staying power. Very often it’s: who’s the next best thing? Who’s flavour of the month?.”
It seems McClurg was always going to be a chef. He grew up in Hillsborough, Co Down; when he passed his 11-plus, his mum asked what he’d like as a treat and he replied that he’d like to go to Cayenne, one of the best restaurants in Northern Ireland. “Ten years old and I want to go to a one-star for lunch,” sighs McClurg, shaking his head.
Aged 16, McClurg took a summer job at Shanks in Bangor, another top restaurant, and he never went back to school.
“It was like that opening scene of The Wolf of Wall Street where he says: ‘It was like mainlining adrenaline.’ I was hooked on service. I love it. A busy service, slightly up against it, that’s when I know I’m alive.”
Still, McClurg’s career path has been far from conventional. He won a competition for young chefs in Northern Ireland and was followed around by a BBC camera crew, including being filmed turning up late and hungover for the first day of a stage at Richard Corrigan’s Lindsay House. (“I’ll never regret anything more in my life” ) He worked for three years at the high-end butchery O’Shea’s in London and Brussels, and helped open a cocktail bar in Belfast called Love & Death Inc.
All of those experiences, McClurg believes, fed into the chef he is today, especially the butchery. These skills are crucial at No 6. Ainsworth has always stated that he wants to offer something different from Rick Stein and, as a result, seafood doesn’t dominate the menu. The approach seems to be paying off: McClurg jokingly talks of “Padsworth”, not “Padstein”. “Rick Stein put Padstow on the map,” he says. “And in the past No 6 was often the second- or third-night place to eat. You’d come to the Seafood Restaurant, St Petroc’s Bistro and here. But now often people will come primarily to come to No 6, and Seafood might be the second night, or vice-versa.”
Previous winners of this award have used it as a springboard to open their own restaurant but McClurg is happy at No 6 for the time being. “All that graft I’ve put in is paying dividends,” he says. “It’s been a rocky road at times. Being here, in the middle of nowhere, it can be a lonely existence when you’re young. But after those sacrifices, this feels all the sweeter, because it’s hard earned.”
Paul Ainsworth at No 6, 6 Middle St, Padstow, Cornwall PL28 8AP
