National Post from Toronto, Ontario, Canada • 105

Want a $200 plate of fish-and-chips? Take a number THE bestW ON TOE HOUSE BY GORDON DONALDSON ne ofrhe most exclusive dining spots in Canada is thehefs Table at the Kins Edward totel in Toronto where, for $200 ($110 for the kitchen of the Waldorf-Astoria. They don't come just for the novelty of eating below stairs, but to see what a top chef can do when given his head. "I prepare meals I'd like to eat myself," he says. "Executive chefs don't usually cook, but I do it because it's a lot of fun. I'll do anything, from making salad sandwiches to the fanciest meal in the place.

I'll peel carrots to keep the momentum going and I make sure I can peel them faster than anyone Big burly John Higgins was born in Bellshill, outside Glasgow, 36 years ago. At 10, he told his startled parents, a steel-worker and a nurse, that he intended to become a chef. Not a waiter, not a restaurateur, but the man in the big white hat. Specifically, a chef at the famed Glenea-gles golf hotel, which he had admired when caddying for his Uncle James. Being Scottish didn't help, even in Scotland.

The French think they're God's gift to everything, the best chefs, the best lovers, the best storytellers they're full of it People are very ignorant about Scots' cooking." His lessons at Motherwell Technical College began with the basics of plain cooking: "How to use a knife, how to make stacks, saute or fry or roast a piece of meat, basic salads and fish dishes, how to cut things." He apprenticed at Glasgow's Central Station Hotel, qualified as a commis, the lowest rank, and was hired by Gleneagles. "That was my life's ambition and I got without wine) a head, a privileged party of eight may partake of fish-and-chips in a busy corner of the vast, steaming kitchen. There are eight courses on the exclusive menu, which is never duplicated or offered in the regular dining rooms of the old, grand hotel (where fish-and-chips is unheard-of). It varies according to the whim of executive chef John Hig-gins, and you eat what's put on your plate, as he did when he was a schoolboy in Glasgow. It's the only meal the master chef cooks himself, from start to finish, and he slips in the fish-and-chips from time to time to remind the gourmets that Glasgow food isn't as bad as people think.

For emphasis, he adds a squiggle of ketchup UNDER the fried fish. Me began the kitchen dinners three years ago. They're still a trade secret, spread by word of mouth, but now occur about once a week. One large table is wheeled into the corner, and a rug spread on the tiles beside a graffiti-covered wall. The eight guests wend their way there along clinical-white corridors, dodging speeding waiters and passing trolleys.

The only touch of elegance is a small brass chandelier. Notable kitchen diners who have scribbled their comments on the wall include the president of the World Association of Cooks and Chefs and Barron Hilton, head of the hotel chain, who has borrowed the idea II October 1995 The Financial Post Magazine 39.