The second in our monthly series of chewing the fat chats is with David Friel.

A chef for twenty-four years, David is the head chef at private members club 29 at Royal Exchange Square in Glasgow. He is in charge of the award winning Grill Room at the Square which specialises in top notch Scottish beef and local seafood.

What is your favourite ingredient to work with?

David: Caledonia Crown beef. It’s a brand of beef that is raised in the Highlands. It’s a fantastic product. You get a broad range of different quality of steak and theirs is particularly good. It has a good amount of marbling throughout and it’s nicely aged.

What do you like to eat on a night off?

DF: A ribeye steak cooked medium. I find that a fillet is good if it’s cooked more rare but because there is a fair amount of fat in ribeye then cooking it that little bit more helps the fat develop the flavours. I’d eat it with the traditional garnish.

Which chef has inspired you?

DF: Gerry Sharkey. I’ve worked for and with Gerry in a few jobs since I was about sixteen. He is very disciplined and a good mentor. He is very strict is Mr Sharkey.

Is there anything you don’t like cooking with?

DF: Rice.

Is that because you don’t like eating it yourself?

DF: That’s probably part of it, yes.

What has been the most exotic thing you have eaten?

DF: Alligator. It was in Britain rather than anywhere far flung. It was imported. It tasted quite fishy. I’m not sure I’d like to repeat it.

What gadget/utensil can’t you work without?

DF: A good blender or liquidiser.

Ketchup or Maldon sea salt?

DF: Sea salt every time. I can’t stand ketchup.

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

DF: Heston Blumenthal. What he does is very interesting. I’m not sure if I agree with everything but it would be a memorable once in a lifetime experience.

Apart from your own establishment, where do you like to eat out?

DF: Soho, the pizzeria on Miller Street. The food is good. It’s a very relaxed place and the staff are fantastic.

What is the best thing about being a chef?

DF: The creativity.

And the worst?

DF: Missing out on family time.

Have celeb chefs been a good or bad thing on the whole?

DF: A good thing. They’ve helped the profile of chefs in this country no end. I’ve been doing this for twenty-four years and, when I started it, wasn’t a very fashionable choice of job. Now a lot of people think it would be great to have a shot at being a chef.

It’s actually quite a hard job in terms of the hours and so on. I don’t blame celebrity chefs for not educating people that that is what it is like. They are fairly open and tell people that it is a hard job. What they’ve done is to raise the profile of the job and also, in this day and age, when people go out for a meal, their expectations are much higher than they were ten or fifteen years ago. People are more experimental at home now as well. They can buy ingredients in the supermarkets that they couldn’t have a few years back.

What’s been your worst kitchen disaster?

DF: I was doing a function for around fifty people and it was due to start at 5pm. The starter was a chicken liver and Armagnac parfait. I’d worked all afternoon and got everything prepped and nice ‘n’ fresh for going out at 5pm. I had plated them all up and put them on a trolley but as soon as I moved the trolley you can guess what happened. Fifty starters smashed. That was my worst disaster.

Chefs are well known for drinking in moderation but what would you cook for a colleague who was suffering from a hangover?

DF: Chefs can’t drink in moderation so if one of my kitchen staff had a hangover it would a firm boot up the backside and they’d be told to get on with it.

What is in your fridge at home?

DF: I’ve got two teenage daughters so they take up most of the fridge with the stuff they like; yoghurts and juice.

What has been your most memorable meal?

DF: Gordon Ramsay’s Amaryllis was probably one of the finest meals I’ve ever had. David Dempsey was cooking.

Tell us your daftest customer complaint?

DF: It was Christmas, perhaps a couple of years ago and a guest had ordered a sirloin steak with the bone in. He was complaining that his steak was tough and he couldn’t cut through it. He was trying to cut through the bone. He was a bit worse for wear.