Revelations: Sam Buckley, chef-patron, Where the Light Gets In, Stockport

What was your first job?

 

Saturday mornings at a pub, cleaning vomit off plants and tearing up cardboard boxes

 

What do you normally have for breakfast?

 

Yogurt, fruit and honey or toast. Sunday is a grand affair – a fry-up or eggs Arnold Bennett or kippers

 

 

What is your favourite drink?

 

I really like wine from around lake Neusiedl in Austria. I’ve been drinking too many Sidecars in these Covid times though

 

What is your favourite cuisine?

 

Indian

 

Which ingredient do you hate the most?

 

Most types of squash, but I love crown prince

 

Are there any foods/ingredients that you refuse to cook with?

 

Anything processed – gravy browning, custard powder, food colouring, béarnaise in a carton

 

What do you always carry with you?

 

My knife, for the farm and foraging

 

What flavour combinations do you detest?

 

Nothing really, but I have a snobbish dig at scallops, cauliflower and black pudding, or black pudding and goats’ cheese – 90s classics

 

Which person in catering have you most admired?

 

Gary Rhodes taught to me to think big. From afar I admire Dan Barber for his persistence to his own beliefs and the intellect with which he backs them up

 

Cast away on a desert island, what luxury would you take?

 

Books, tobacco and wine

 

If you had not gone into catering, where do you think you would be now?

 

Playing music, travelling around – I’m not sure it’d work out

 

If not yourself, who would you rather have been?

 

Someone cool like Robert Evans or Leonard Cohen. I’m not sure that’s a healthy answer

 

 

Describe your ultimate nightmare?

 

Guests telling me how disappointed they were with the evening

 

Tell us a secret…

 

I’m not sure what I’m doing most of the time

 

What is your favourite prepared product?

 

Crisps

 

What irritates you most about the industry?

 

Veneer and false idols

 

If you had more time, what would you do?

 

That’s never gonna happen. Please stop leading me on