Peter McKenna on Eleven Fifty Five and Queen's Park Food Festival
We catch up with chef Peter McKenna to talk through his newly-revamped Finnieston restaurant, and his role in curating a group of Glasgow's best chefs for Queen's Park Food Festival
Peter McKenna closed the doors at his trailblazing Finnieston restaurant The Gannet last year, after a 12-year run showered with more accolades and acclaim than you can shake a fancy fork at. Its replacement – Eleven Fifty Five – takes some of the fine dining elements from The Gannet and transplants them into a more laidback mode that feels more suited to the moment.
It certainly feels more suited to McKenna’s current moment. “People were talking about us as an institution," he tells us, "which I find kind of difficult if I'm honest, but I suppose that's a middle-aged thing. But yeah, around that time, I was kind of… recalibrating.
“Personally, me and my wife weren’t gravitating towards fine dining restaurants all that often. There were a few exceptions, of course, but generally it wasn't really what we were doing. We’ve got a young daughter and we were looking to go to places that were more accommodating, I suppose, and the food that I wanted to cook was starting to change.
“I didn't like the fact that, you know, being a fine dining restaurant, people only wanted or only were able to dine with you maybe twice a year or three times a year… I always thought it was a beautiful space. I wanted it to be used more.”
By all accounts, it’s been a roaring success, with the team all fully on board and good reviews starting to fly in. For McKenna, it’s been an opportunity to revamp a space he clearly loves, and a way to keep himself on his toes. “Most people are changing jobs maybe every five or six years,” he says. “I pretty much kept doing the same job, going to the same place for 13 years. Sometimes you need to do something different and you need to challenge yourself in a different manner as well.”
Another new challenge for McKenna is his latest gig hosting the Cookery Theatre at the new Queen’s Park Food Festival in Glasgow’s southside next month. “It was out of the blue that the Queen's Park people approached me to do this,” he tells us, “and I must say I was taken aback and a bit like, ‘Why are you asking me to do it?’
“But then I thought about it and I thought, why not? It's something a bit different; it gets me out of the kitchen, but you know, it gives me the opportunity to hang out with some of my friends and to see what they're doing as well. Maybe I'll pick up something too.”
McKenna has drafted in a crew of some of the city’s best chefs to share a few tricks. But much like the Gannet-to-Eleven Fifty Five switch, McKenna is keen to balance flair with accessibility. “You’ve got to know your audience,” he says. “There's no point going in there and doing an elaborate dish that you can only do in a professional kitchen. When I was thinking about who to get to come and to do demos, that was very much in my consideration. I wanted a really good blend of what's happening in and around the city with things that are more accessible and definitely some things that could be recreated at home.”
The cookery demo lineup is certainly full of chefs whose food we’d like to be able to recreate in our kitchens. On the Queen’s Park bill are Graham Cheevers from the Michelin-starred Unalome in Finnieston, Stephen Crawford from Kelvingrove Cafe, and Finn Steele-Perkins from the excellent Corner Shop bar and restaurant on Old Dumbarton Road. There’s also Ajay Kumar from Swadish, the Indian fine dining restaurant in Merchant City, and Great British Menu and MasterChef: The Professionals alumnus Rohan Wadke amongst others.
One name that stands out on the demo list is Sonya Walos, the food stylist and photographer behind The Scotland Edit on Instagram and TikTok. McKenna is excited to put Walos’ work “front and centre” and offer some tips on how to get your at-home plating up to speed in recognition of the fact that, in these trying times, we really do eat with our eyes.
“People aren't going to do it [every day] when they're coming back from work," McKenna says, "but you know, Saturday night, if they don't want to go out to a restaurant, but they want to do something a little bit special at home, they can put that little bit of extra time into it.” Sometimes in life, it’s about taking a pause and having a think – that’s true if you’re running a hugely-regarded restaurant, and it’s also true when you’re putting your dinner on the plate this evening.
Peter McKenna hosts the Cookery Theatre at the Queen’s Park Food Festival, 6-7 Jun
Eleven Fifty Five, 1155 Argyle St, Finnieston, Glasgow; open Tue from 5pm, Wed-Sat 12-2.30pm and from 5pm