Colin Manson is the Head Chef at the recently opened Verve Grill in the Village Urban Resort on Festival Gate, just across the river from The Hydro and the SECC.

As part of our occasional Chewin’ the Fat series, the 5pm Dining blog nattered with Colin about healthy eating; the importance of not compromising and how to tell when a woodcock isn’t a woodcock.

Look out for tomorrow’s Big Deal on the Sunday Roast with the Most at the Verve Grill. A great offer on the restaurant’s spectacular Sunday lunch, it is a fantastic introduction to Verve Grill.

**Can you describe the style of food served at the restaurant?

CM:** We have a good grill section and we do some specials along with a couple of nice seafood dishes. We also have a healthy options section which is a range of main courses which all come in at under 600 calories. The hotel has a large leisure club membership and they particularly like the healthy options.

**Is there a most popular dish for your customers?

CM:** The teriyaki salmon from the healthy options does very well as does the pepper-crusted fillet steak. That goes out with a really good Asian broth. It is only 460 calories which is pretty amazing.

**What got you into cooking to begin with?

CM:** I’ve been cooking for a long time; nearly 30 years. I started training in ’86 on the YTS system. That gave me a really good grounding and put me through my City and Guilds qualification.

**Where did you first start working?

CM:** I started at the Central Hotel, now the Grand Central in Glasgow. Then I worked in various Italian restaurants for a few years before spending about ten years at the Theatre Royal doing everything from corporate entertainment banquets for 300 to a la carte dining. Then I was with Malmaison for ten years. I was Head Chef in their Belfast hotel and also in their hotel in Leith before returning to the Glasgow Malmaison.

**What has changed in the restaurant scene during those 30 years?

CM:** The culture of kitchens has changed. It used to be quite an aggressive culture. In some kitchens anyway, not all of them. Many were ruled by fear. Now there’s more respect for people in kitchens.

The other big change is the abundance of different ingredients which you can get. One result of that is that kitchens have become more experimental. Also the customers have much more knowledge about what is on their plate than they did in the Eighties and early Nineties.

**What is your favourite ingredient to work with?

CM:** It’s a group of ingredients rather than just one. I really enjoy working with seafood. I enjoy preparing and eating it. I like working with game or beef but seafood sticks out for me. You have to be very precise with hit.

**Where do you like to eat on a night off?

CM:** My wife works in the trade as well and we work back to back to so we don’t often get a lot of time out together. I live in Dennistoun and when we get the chance to eat out we tend to eat locally. There have been a lot of good new places opening there in the last few years. They do good food in Celino’s. Finnieston is great as well.

This may sound crazy but if we are going out for a treat then we often go to Edinburgh and stay over. There’s a totally different restaurant culture there. We’ve been to Martin Wishart’s and most of the well known places. We’re going through to the Pompadour next month. I like eating fine dining but it’s not necessarily what I enjoy cooking. It’s not something you want to eat all the time. Once or twice a year is plenty.

**Which chef has inspired you?

CM**: I’ve been influenced by a mixture of people. My old Exec Chef at Malmaison, Keith Shearer, he was great for not compromising. He always said don’t compromise your cooking; don’t compromise the way you want it to look on the plate and don’t compromise with your ingredients. I always thought that was great advice.

Also people like Raymond Blanc and the Roux brothers. They popularised classic French cooking in the late Eighties and the Nineties. Those classic techniques are still the building blocks of good cooking.

**What has been the most exotic thing you have eaten?

CM:** There has been nothing exotic but the best meal I have ever had was at Eleven Madison Park in New York. Everything from the service to the style of food was great.

**You can get anyone in the world to cook you a meal. Who will it be?

CM:** Daniel Humm from Eleven Madison Park. That was the best meal I have ever had. The precision of it was remarkable. The taste, the textures. It was a phenomenal meal. That was quite a few years ago but it sticks in the mind.

**What is the best thing about being a chef?

CM:** I enjoy the atmosphere in the kitchen. I love the buzz when it start getting busy and everyone just clicks into place and off we go. It’s good when it all comes together.

I also like it when you bring raw recruits into the kitchen and you see them prove themselves. You get a sense of achievement that you have helped them on their way.

**What’s been your worst kitchen disaster?

CM:** We did have a night in another hotel when the whole range went down. That was a bit of a disaster. We were trying to service two functions; a busy terrace; a busy bar and a busy restaurant. We managed it. We got everybody fed but it was a very tense couple of hours.

**What is in your fridge at home?

CM:** I always have something in. I like to eat pretty simply at home so a popular dish is rib-eye steak with dauphinois potatoes and some green beans. I cook that once or twice a month. I’m a bit of a cheese lover as well so there’s usually a few cheeses. They’re good if you have been working all day and can come home and nibble.

**Tell us your daftest customer complaint?

CM:** At another place, we had Scotch woodcock on the menu and a customer complained that he couldn’t find any meat on his plate and then he complained that woodcock was out of season at that time of year.

I had to explain to him that Scotch woodcock was nothing to do with the bird and that it was scrambled eggs on toast with anchovies and capers and so on. He sent a letter complaining about it to one of the national restaurant magazines.

Another of our customers wrote to the same magazine replying to the original letter and pointing out his mistake. I still remember that.