Craig Dunn is the Executive Chef at Glasgow’s Abode Hotel. He joined the operation in 2008 and is in charge of the Michael Caines Fine Dining Restaurant as well as the hotel’s BarMC and Grill.

A born and bred Glasgow boy, he started his kitchen career with an apprenticeship at the Stakis in the Great Western Road. Since then, he has carried his knives from the Dorchester to the QEII and several places in between.

Here he tells 5pm how manning the lifeboats and dodging toque-stealing party girls are all in a day’s work just don’t ever ask him to eat tripe.

The Christmas party season is in full swing. Any good ones you can tell us about?

CD: Our function room is quite close to the kitchen so one night we ended up with a bit of a conga line going through the kitchen when a Christmas party got a bit lively. We were really busy but the girls on the party night were trying to kiss the chefs and waiters. It was good fun and all done in good spirits but we were trying to get on with our work. When you are really busy on a Friday night, you don’t really want a group of girls with a few drinks inside them trying to grab your apron and wear your hat. We had to block the kitchen door.

What was it like working on the QE II?

CD: It’s hard to explain but it was completely different from working where I do now. Working on a cruise ship, you are in the kitchen seven days a week, breakfast, lunch and dinner with very little time off. You do that for five or six months at a time. I was in the fine dining kitchen but you would still be doing 240 for lunch and dinner with a menu that changed every day. You have to be really organised.

Was it like being a chef in a hotel?

CD: Not really. It’s more like being in the Navy. It is more disciplined than on shore. There is all the maritime law and legislation that you have to work to. No matter what position you hold in the kitchen, you are classed as junior or senior rating on the ship.

The higher up you go, the more stripes you get on your shoulder and the more responsibilities you have to deal with. You have to learn how to drive lifeboats because you are responsible for your team of people. You are in charge of a boat station so you have to be able to launch life rafts, fight fires and drive boats.

I was lucky in that I never got seasick but on the trans-Atlantic runs you could get tossed about the kitchen a bit. I loved it and would recommend it to any young chef. You will have to work hard but you will see the world.

What do you like to eat on a night off?

CD: I love making pots of soup. The stuff out of tins is really salty but you can snack with a pot of soup.

Which chef has inspired you?

CD: I worked for a French guy called Jean Claude in Bermuda. I really admired him. He wasn’t a young man but he was still very passionate about what he did and he did do a lot for the industry. As has Michael Caines.

Is there anything you don’t like cooking with?

CD: I wouldn’t cook or eat tripe. Why would you want to eat that? I don’t know how you can make it tasty. I’ve seen it on fancy restaurant menus and thought, “What are you doing?” It’s the sort of thing that your great granny used to eat.

What has been the most exotic thing you have eaten?

CD: I did three world cruises with the QEII and when we berthed in places like Thailand or Singapore we would try and eat out in decent restaurants. We ate plates of duck tongues. It has a bone in the middle of it so you would pull the meat off the bone with your teeth. It’s an unusual taste, quite sweet.

What gadget/utensil can’t you work without?

CD: We use a thermo-mixer which is a blender that can cook at the same time. You can do purees and soups, hollandaise, stuff like that in them so we’d be a wee bit lost without that.

Ketchup or Maldon sea salt?

CD: Sea salt.

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

CD: Delia Smith. She’s a good home cook. Whatever she made for you would be really tasty whereas if you got a big name cook then they might do something too fancy. Nine times out of ten chefs are the easiest guys in the world to please when it comes to food. All we want is something simple. If we want fine dining then we will go out and do it but it’s not the sort of thing that most chefs will do a lot. As long as it’s tasty then they will be happy. If I go to someone’s house to eat, they worry because I’m a chef but I’m happy to have someone else cooking for me.

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

CD: I like to go and check out anywhere that’s new although that can be difficult because of our working patterns. We get Sundays and Mondays off and those tend to be the closed days for the restaurants that I want to try.

There is a lot of talent out there and there are lots of good Scottish chefs. Hopefully Glasgow isn’t so far away from getting a Michelin star. The Michelin is the Daddy; that’s the one you are judged on. We’ve won a few awards this year but a Michelin would be amazing. You get a star and it changes your name. You’re not just chef Craig Dunn. You are Michelin star chef Craig Dunn. Everyone would remember that.

What is the best thing about being a chef?

CD: The best thing is passing on knowledge and training people. Some people want to be trained and some don’t but there are always people who want to learn. Where you start as a chef is important. If you learn good methods and ways of doing things from the beginning then you never forget them and you take them with you through your career. I like to think that we do everything the proper way here.

And the worst?

CD: The long hours. You can love your job so much but at the end of Saturday night you have hit seventy hours, it’s nearly midnight and you still have another hour to go because you have to do your clean down and your ordering for Tuesday.

What’s been your worst kitchen disaster?

CD: Not here but in another place I worked, the kitchen porter accidentally put his mop in this huge pot of consommé. There was a brief second where we looked at each other and thought, “What are we going to do? Pretend it never happened or bin it. We put it in the bin.”

Who cooks at home?

CD: It’s always me.

Have celeb chefs been good or bad for the industry?

CD: There are good and bad sides to celebrity chefs. They have made the industry a lot more glamorous and a lot more rock ‘n’ roll but I don’t think that a lot of people realise how much hard work is involved as well. The nuts and bolts of being in a kitchen is getting in at eight or nine every morning, doing your services, leaving late at night and then doing it all the next day.

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

CD: Chefs still like to have a good night out at the end of a tough week but I’m not sure that it’s as wild as it used to be. If I knew what the cure for a hangover was then I would be a rich man. I reckon a greasy fry-up with brown sauce and big mug of tea would do the trick.

You have a hot date coming around. What’s cooking?

CD: A cocktail to begin with and then I would do a starter of warm smoked duck breast. That’s always a talking point because they want to know how you did it. Then maybe a nice bit of halibut with a simple risotto. Dessert would have to chocolate. A fondant or mousse or perhaps a Tonka bean mousse. Of course, there would be lots of wine.

Tell us your daftest customer complaint?

CD: Someone sent their salt and pepper squid back once because they thought that it was too salty. The customer is king but they can wind you up sometimes.

What is your best piece of printable kitchen slang?

CD: If it’s kitchen slang then it probably isn’t printable