​From Tolstachaolais to Taiwan’s culinary heights...

​It has been quite a journey for Neil since he left the Nicolson Institute in 1982, expecting neither to end up in Taiwan nor to become the top chef in some of the world’s leading hotels. Nor, indeed, for the past ten years, to have been a Professor in Hospitality Management.

Over the course of these four decades, Neil forged a great career as a chef in the United States and Asia, working at the highest culinary levels for the world’s biggest hotel groups. Now, as well as his university teaching, he runs the top private dining venue in Taipei, where it is unlikely many of the patrons make the “marag” read-across to Lewis.

In summer 1982, when Neil completed his schooling at the Nicolson Institute his career trajectory seemed to be heading in another direction. “My dad was an engineer and my brother was going into engineering. I suppose when I was leaving the Nicolson it was a case of either get a job or go away and study engineering”.

He went to Napier University in Edinburgh and his four years there confirmed to Neil that he did not really want to be an engineer. “In the final exams, there were three papers I thought I would scrape a pass in and one I would fail. When I got the results, the only one I had passed was the one I thought I would fail”.

There ended Neil’s engineering career as he had no intention of spending his life in a job he didn’t like. So he decided to take a year out to consider his options and that took him to the west coast of the United States.

Neil’s grandfather, Aulay Macleod, had been a policeman in Edinburgh and during the war his young son, Roddy, was evacuated to the family home at 17 Tolstachaolais. Roddy loved to be in Lewis but then the family emigrated to Canada. He went to medical school and married a Swiss lady, Neil’s mother, but “his love was geology” so he came back to study at Camborne School of Mines and became a mining engineer.

Roddy travelled widely for his work and the marriage ended in divorce. By the time he brought his family back to live in Tolstachaolais in the late 1970s, he had re-married to a Malaysian lady. They arrived in time for Neil to go to the Nicolson for his secondary education.

His nickname was “Hippo” and he remembers his time at the Nicolson with great fondness. “Growing up in Lewis was something I wouldn't have changed for the world. It was a very special and life-defining experience. I had a lot of friends in the Nicolson and around Tolstachaolais. One of my best friends in school and still one of my true best friends lived in Breasclete, Uisdean Fraser. We did a lot of escapades.

“With hindsight and talking to family, I realised that others didn't necessarily have the same perception and experience. It was quite a conservative society, and difficult for my step-mother coming into it from a very different background, culture and, of course, language.”

Neil says: “The Nicolson was very good to me. I did fine academically for someone who was not very good at studying. I played for the school team in badminton and rugby but had to eventually just stick to rugby for the last two years as the desired physiques for these two sports are contradictory.

“In rugby - also with Uisdean - I played for the North of Scotland Schools 1st XV, and the Nicolson team that year were the losing finalists for the North Schools Championship.In sixth year I was vice-captain of the Prefects and since the balloting was done within the sixth year students, I was quite proud to be selected”.

Throughout school and university, his eventual kitchen career was “not remotely on the horizon”. It took America to change that. After Napier, Neil headed to the north-west Pacific Coast where his mother had settled, near Seattle. He worked for a while on construction sites then began to travel around jobs in restaurants and hotels, finding the work a lot more to his liking than engineering.

He says: “A lot of it had to do with the difference in perceptions between the UK and USA. When I started working in kitchens as a necessity over there, I realised it was a much respected career path. Especially in my youth, I enjoyed the high pressure, fast pace and the fact it wasn't only physical. It takes a lot of concentration to run a shift in a busy weekend kitchen.

“When I was offered the chance to do an apprenticeship - and I was definitely on the older side to start - I grabbed the opportunity, as it was a career that gave me what I wanted in many ways”. That opportunity arose through contact with another Scot, Marcus Dunbar, who was executive chef for 25 years at the Westin Hotel in Seattle and generous with his encouragement.

Marcus, who had grown up in Elgin and trained in the likes of Gleneagles and the Dorchester before moving to the United States, offered Neil a job and a Culinary Federation apprenticeship. He was a highly respected figure on the Seattle culinary scene with a reputation as a perfectionist. Neil’s career was off and running.

When he arrived at the Westin, there was already a name-tag waiting for him which had been taken from his official papers – Martin Macleod. He had been christened Martin Neil Macleod in recognition of his Swiss family as well as the Lewis side but had never used the first name. Professionally, from that day, he became Martin and that is how he has stayed. “It would have been too confusing to change it”.

From Seattle, he made a steady progression through the culinary ranks, with Westin hotels in Kansas and Indianapolis where he met the Taiwanese lady who was doing a Masters Degree and became his wife; then between 1998-2003 in Chicago with the Four Seasons and Peninsula Hotels.

Next stop, to his wife Maggie’s delight, was Taipei where he became Executive Chef at the Grand Formosa Regent, managing seven food outlets in the vast hotel. He also started training chefs in how to prepare western food. “When I came here, I wouldn’t eat western food at all”, he says. “It was terrible but that has changed over the years”.

This initial homecoming for Maggie proved brief. They were soon on the move again as Neil became Culinary Director at the Oberoi Beach Resort on the island of Bali. After a couple of years, this sun-kissed career continued when he was appointed Executive Chef at the Mandarin Oriental in Jakarta, probably the most prestigious in the city.

The Mandarin Oriental chain is owned by Jardine Matheson, co-founded by Sir James Matheson of Lewis fame or infamy depending on who is telling the story. Once, when the head man in the Jardine Matheson empire was staying at the Jakarta hotel, he spoke to the top chef on the way out.

Neil recalls: “He asked where I was from and I said Stornoway. He was well aware of the Matheson connection and thought it was a big deal to have a Stornoway chef!”.

Then it was the Mandarin Oriental in Manila before returning to Taiwan in 2010. Apart from the marital connection, the lure was to launch the 31-floor W Hotel in Taipei as Executive Chef. It immediately became a culinary as well as architectural landmark and confirmed Neil’s status as one of Taiwan’s top chefs.

Running the kitchens of huge, five-star hotels is a demanding profession and Neil was by then around the 50 mark.

“That age is too old for a chef”, he says. “It is a young man’s game. So I decided after opening the W that I was not going to work in another hotel”. The next phase of his career took him into passing on the skills he had acquired.

In 2013, he gave a demonstration to students at the hospitality school of Hong Kuang University in Taipei, which led to him being asked to teach there and that relationship continues to the present day.

“The school has been very good to me”, he says, “I take my classes and anything else that is asked of me and was also able to develop my own businesses, as a consultant for hotels and events and as proprietor and chef at the Black Pudding Suite”.

Does he ever get asked about the origins of that name? “Yes, a lot of people like It , the Brits, that is. It was actually my wife who suggested the name for a laugh but it sounded great to me, so we ran with it.

“I work a lot with the British Chamber of Commerce and my main duty every year is either making or supervising the making of haggis for the St. Andrews Ball and Burns Night. We can’t import haggis directly, so I formulated a recipe using stuff available in Taiwan, substituting goat for sheep parts.

“The taste is, according to many a drunk Scot on the night, very authentic. The team here are still grateful as they remember the times before I was involved. It was the course that they most dreaded!”.

The Black Pudding Suite is only by appointment for private events and is popular in diplomatic circles. Because of Taiwan’s peculiar status – hardly anyone officially recognises it though everyone wants to do business with it – there are no real embassies with all the trimmings, such as chefs, so they often use Neil’s place for entertaining, as do Taiwanese business and government elites.

Neil doesn’t get a lot of Lewis clientele but one Taiwan “regular” is Roddy Maclean from Crowlista who has been working there on offshore wind contracts for several years and never fails to visit.

Roddy describes Neil as “the Marco Pierre White of Taiwan” and one of the highest profile chefs in the country. “Everyone who’s anyone knows the Black Marag Suite”, he testifies.

Language is not a big problem in American-influenced Taiwan, as most people speak English. Neil is fluent in Malaysian and manages “kitchen Chinese” but says he is “functionally illiterate” in Mandarin as he cannot read or write it. He also regrets not having more Gaelic.

“My dad was a proud Gaelic speaker and the little I know came from him. He was always disappointed that I didn’t speak more but when I came to the Nicolson in the first year of secondary school, there was no middle way. If you weren’t fluent, there was no route for you to catch up. That was a pity”.

Taiwan is a thriving, creative society which lives with the expectation that one day the Chinese will make their move. “It’s something in the background”, he says, “but people just get on with it. This is the most dynamic place I have ever lived in and things are constantly changing and developing. But my brother-in-law always carries his passport, just in case this is the day to get out fast”.

There were times when, on his world travels, Neil didn’t have much contact with friends and family on Lewis but “social media has changed that in the past 15 years”: He hopes to return next April for a school reunion.

“Twenty years ago, I never knew about it. Ten years ago, I was too caught up with my new job at the university, so maybe this time.

“If you write this article, I’ll make copies and that will save me answering the question – what have you been doing for the past 40 years?’ Always happy to oblige.