Craig Rogan: ‘I never actually planned to be a chef’

The executive head chef at Craig Rogan at the Collective in Leeds talks to Jungmin Seo about realising his chef ambitions and creating multicultural, modern British food

When did you decide you wanted to become a chef?

I never actually planned to be a chef. Obviously my dad [Simon Rogan] had done it all while I was growing up, but I never had an interest in it – I was more into football and sport.

I was all set to go to construction college to learn how to be a carpenter, but I worked for my dad’s kitchen at L’Enclume in Cartmel in my last year of school. I guess being in that environment made me think ‘Oh, actually I want to do this’ and that was it. I enrolled in catering college and I’ve done it ever since.

How would you describe your cooking style?

Ever since coming to the Collective, I’ve been able to be really free with what I cook. We came up with the tagline ‘modern British but the Britain of today’ almost by accident, and it reflects multiculturalism in Britain now. I love combining local British produce with ingredients from Africa, Asia or South America.

Who has inspired you?

One of my favourite chefs at the moment – I’ve never met him and I really want to go to his restaurant – is Jeremy Chan from Ikoyi. I'm a huge fan of his cooking and his dishes look amazing. Ikoyi is the top of my list of restaurants that I want to go to, and Luke French in Sheffield’s Jöro is also doing some amazing stuff with a lot of Asian ingredients. And then, obviously because of my time working for him, there’s a massive influence from my dad.

Which dishes at Craig Rogan at the Collective are you most proud of?

We have a really nice crab dish – white crab meat with a brown crab sauce made with scotch bonnet chilli and nduja – and we have another with hen of the woods mushroom with a really strong cheddar sauce with grated charcoal cheddar over the top and sherry vinegar syrup. It’s one of our surprising dishes; a lot of people say that’s one of the best things they’ve ever eaten.

You’ve become a “fully-fledged” restaurant serving breakfast, lunch and dinner since December. Have there been any challenges to staffing an all-day operation?

Staffing is absolutely fine because the restaurant at the most is only 38 covers. Through my years of working in the industry I’ve met a lot of chefs and I’d love to give them all a job. I have a very strong team in the kitchen – there’s me and three or four people – and then in terms of front of house, we’ve hired a couple of new people from a restaurant background.

Who are your suppliers?

We use a lot of local suppliers. All our fish is from Hodgson, which is based on the east coast in Hartlepool, and our meat supplier is Sykes in Wetherby. We also go to Leeds Market, which at one point was the largest indoor market in Europe. It’s still very big now and there are some amazing fishmongers and meat suppliers.

Some days I might want to change the menu and I’m not sure what I’m changing it to until the morning when I walk around Leeds Market and find whatever is best on that day. It’s a chef’s dream, because some of the ingredients are absolutely unbelievable.

The Collective is also a retail space. How does this change the dynamic of the restaurant?

The owners of the Collective are interior designers, so if you come and have dinner and you like the table and chairs, you can buy them. We’re already selling wine glasses and little table ornaments.

Do you like being referred to as the son of Simon Rogan?

It’s obviously something I’m never going to get away from, with my surname being what it is. I’ve got a lot to live up to in terms of what my dad’s achieved. He’s always going to be mentioned when people are talking about me, but I almost got over that at a very young age.

It doesn’t really bother me to be fair, as long as people know that I’m doing my own thing and I’m trying to make a name for myself. People love a good story and the fact that my dad has done so well over the past 20 to 30 years and all of a sudden now he has two sons [Craig’s brother Daniel runs AO by Daniel Rogan in Southampton] that are following in his footsteps doing their own thing – that’s quite a cool story and people like to hear it.