A JOB working for Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s in London could be considered the pinnacle of a chef‘s career; the moment they could say they have finally arrived, tinkering with shaved Perigord truffles, stuffing pigs’ trotters and marinating veal sweetbreads until they were coming out of their ears.

Not Ross Cochrane. He lasted just three and a half months. “It wasn’t until I moved down and started that I realised how bad London could be,” says the 27-year-old Scot.

“There was a lot of mental abuse – it’s just like you see on the TV. There was a lot of shouting and swearing. It was a real learning curve for me. It was the first time I’d been involved in anything like that. I’d been cooking for about two and a half years and never been treated like that before. I’d had arguments and stuff but they just make you feel so small. The whole idea is to break you down then build you back up again.”

Born and brought up in Aberdeen, Cochrane had seen the move to London as a chance to do something different and exciting. His daughter, Ellie, was just a year old, and the plan was to move his family down when he was settled. “It was very naive,” he says now. “I didn’t realise what London was about. Mark Sargeant interviewed me. He said, ‘This is a big, big step, you really need to know what you’re doing.’ But at 20 years old, I just said, ‘Yeah, I’ll take the job.’ It was just amazing that I was offered it.”

But he hadn’t realised how expensive the city is, plus his girlfriend at the time wasn’t happy and, he admits now, “it would have been no place to bring up a child”. So he left the Ramsay kitchens and is now back home in Aberdeen, bringing fine dining to pub grub. “It was a great experience and I learned a lot about cooking,” he says. “Though I only realised that later. At the time I thought, ‘Oh my God, I hate my life.'”

Becoming a chef was almost like keeping on the family business, though Cochrane didn’t always think about it in that way. His parents split up when he was four, and his father – also a chef – brought him up. The young Cochrane was more into motorbikes than food, and thought about becoming a mechanic, but that didn’t work out. And when his father died of a heart attack when Cochrane was just 14, he lost all sense of direction. “I went into a kids’ home,” he says, “and I didn’t have any guidance about what I should be doing. It was just down to me.

“Dad had brought me up and nobody could control me. My mum had a new partner I didn’t get on with, everyone else was working full time and had their own lives so there was no one really to take me on. I wasn’t going to school, and I didn’t like people telling me what to do.”

He spent a few years in construction before, at 18, getting a job as a commis chef in a private members’ club in Aberdeen. “At the time it was just a job,” he admits. “My eldest daughter had just been born. I needed to sort my life out. But I found out that was what I wanted to do. I really enjoyed it.”

The first cookbook he bought was, ironically, one of Gordon Ramsay’s – “It was just amazing, the stuff you could do” – and it inspired him. “A lot of the stuff we were doing at Claridge’s – the slow-cook stuff and the preparation, the marinades – I took it all in and now try to transfer it to my style of food.”

Now head chef at Society in Aberdeen, he admits it’s a world away from the kind of cooking he’s used to. “Society is a new challenge. I’ve never worked in this environment, where it’s pub food but you’re trying to do it better.” He has introduced specialities such as confit duck, and slow-cooked, bistro-style food. “I’m trying to get the public to realise they’re not just coming for pie and chips. They’re actually going to get something quality.”

And while he learned much from his time in Ramsay’s kitchen, he also hopes he learned to be a better boss. “I’m quite laid-back in Society but I can lose the rag now and again. The last place I took over – in Newburgh, a small, family-run restaurant with bar – they were doing ten covers a night and looking at closing down. The chefs were a disgrace, with no passion at all. When I took over I got rid of everybody in the kitchen. There was one guy who said he wasn’t leaving – he’d been there so long. My boss said, ‘I want rid of him in a week.’ I got rid of him in a day. They just weren’t used to hard work.

“So I was quite temperamental. It was the biggest challenge of my life, bringing this place up from absolutely nothing to a full restaurant. There were a lot of chefs who took a right bollocking from me, but they were still with me when I left. And they’re a lot better chefs now.”

Sounds familiar.