In his 25 years in the business, Kevin White has done it all. Having left school with no qualifications, he’s found a way into so many kitchens that an old colleague used to call him ‘The Vagrant’ for his nomadic tendency to move on from jobs so quickly.
He’s worked in Michelin-starred restaurants, five star hotels, private members’ clubs, and was latterly working in contract catering, cooking for advertising executives in dining rooms within the bowels of central London skyscrapers.
But now, under his brand The Ginger Kid, White will be putting some permanent roots down as a six-day-a-week fixture within the stunning new Market House. Look past the Southport birthplace and the slight Scouse accent, and as the great-grandson of the man who used to run the Altrincham Rubber Company on The Downs, there’s a real feeling that this is a homecoming of sorts.
After his years in the capital, the journey back North hasn’t been easy. In fact, he was forced to start from scratch in Macclesfield last year, equipping a workspace near the town centre and admitting he had “no idea what I was going to do”.
“I started looking around at the markets,” he said, “but they were quite tough to get into, there were a lot of waiting lists.
“But I did the North West Food Lovers’ Fair at Tatton Park and on the back of that I got into a couple of markets, and then people started phoning me up. The markets were a great way to advertise.”
Why Ginger Kid? “I was very ginger as a kid, so I always thought that if I worked for myself, I would have ginger in the title somewhere,” he explains.
“I came up with that because I don’t want people to take it too seriously. But people still come to me in the market and say ‘has everything got ginger in it’?”
Everything most certainly does not have, and regular visitors to the Sunday market over the last year have become familiar with the very particular Ginger Kid style.
Examples of The Ginger Kid’s ‘fine comfort food’; White outside the market; and his new base in Market House
Styling himself the ‘purveyor of fine comfort food’, White’s food is classic food, simply presented. As he says himself, “food that is familiar, done the best it could possibly be”.
“I’ll make treacle tart or egg custard but I’ll make them as best as I possibly can,” he adds. “For my pastry I use French butter, Cotswold flour and it’s a two-day process, whereas Greggs on the high street will use trans-fats and skimmed milk powder and it’s just a disgusting product.”
Market-goers will be able to take their pick of savoury tarts (such as sweet onion and mature cheddar cheese tart, Toulouse sausage rolls and pork pie with black pudding and apple jelly), sweet tarts (duck egg custard, treacle tart and cherry bakewell) and cakes (chocolate and chilli cheesecake, banana bread and dark chocolate toffee brownie). He’ll also have a coffee bar.
The philosophy behind the food is to a large extent a reaction to his days preparing food in the kitchens of Michelin-starred restaurants.
“I never liked cooking Michelin-starred food,” he says. “I just couldn’t be doing with the fussiness of it and it’s something I used to question all the time.
“You used to spend half a day turning carrots, or you’d be dicing tomatoes and every dice had to be the same size. You’d square them off and throw half of it away – for what? It all tastes the same. That was possibly the reason why I got out – I didn’t get it.”
Joining up with Nick Johnson’s project at Altrincham Market has been a “meeting of minds”, he says. He thinks market food should be about sourcing good ingredients and simple presentation, like the food he saw at the likes of Columbia Road and Borough Market in London.
Ultimately, he wants Altrincham to become a genuine “artisan” market. “What we’ve talked about is attracting some of the producers from the North West – who might be doing cheese, olive oil, chickens, mushrooms, watercress, samphire or whatever – and bring all of those producers together to have a real farmers’ market, not people selling cupcakes or whatever.
“I think Altrincham needs to put a marker down and set itself apart from all the other towns.”
