Having cooked for celebrities and dabbled with TV work, for Craig Wilson the ultimate dream was opening his own restaurant back home in Aberdeenshire
Words by SALLY COFFEY
Craig Wilson, AKA The Kilted Chef, has made quite a name for himself throughout his culinary career.
Starting out as a trainee chef aged just 16 at the Strathburn Hotel in Inverurie, near where he grew up, Craig soon moved on to work at the Ballathie House Hotel in Perthshire and became head chef at The Cromlix hotel (now owned by tennis star Andy Murray) at the age of just 24.
His ‘Kilted’ nickname came later, when a chance TV appearance, in which he wore a kilt, went down so well, that the moniker stuck.
He has worked on food research and development for both Grampian Country Foods and “Scottish royalty” Baxters, has cooked at some of Britain’s most prestigious properties, and catered for celebrity parties – including the late Sean Connery’s 80th birthday bash at Edinburgh Castle.
Recalling the occasion, Craig revealed to The Press and Journal that the James Bond actor took a wrong turn and ended up walking into the kitchen.
“It was the second time I had cooked for him and, when he looked at me, he said: ‘You must be the famous chef. I still remember those seriously good scallops.’ I’m not ashamed to say it made my day, and it’s a moment I’ll never forget,” he said at the time.
By 2004, Craig’s career had brought him to London and it was while he was there that he decided to return to Scotland to open his own restaurant, which he did with Eat on The Green, in Udny Green, a little village in rural Aberdeenshire. To understand why it was so important for Craig to open his restaurant back home, we must go back to the beginning.
When I ask Craig about his earliest food memory, he smiles warmly before telling me about his grandparents.
“I was lucky, my grandfather worked as a gardener at what we call up here a ‘big house’ – Westhall House, about five miles from where I was born” he says, “And my grandmother helped.”
Although Westhall House is private, Craig remembers his grandfather bringing in produce from the garden and his grandmother cooking it up.
“We’d joke, saying, ‘strawberries again!’ or ‘peas with everything!’ but it was idyllic.”
It was these beginnings, eating fresh produce straight from the garden, with no processing
