Jack and Amy
Michelin Woman meets White Van Man: the ultimate mobile caterers
Jack and Amy met while cooking in the Alps. Their mutual love of food has not only since inspired their marriage, but also allowed them to hatch an original culinary plan.
With extensive experience in kitchens such as Harrods, The Fat Duck and Moro, Amy's skills are second to none and are perfectly complemented by Jack's lifelong obsession with sourcing and cooking Scotland's finest wild produce – so it is perhaps unsurprising that they have since gone into business in a serious way.
Having bought a VW transporter called Monty, they spent a year living and working on the Continent, sampling lots of regional produce and picking up local techniques en route. On their return the culinary rollercoaster continued and they went on to cook together in stately homes, villas in Greece, a Michelin restaurant in Santiago and even feeding the occasional royal.
Two years later they arrived back in Edinburgh determined to share some of their new found culinary secrets with British gourmands. But, only moments away from starting a new job running the kitchen at a Scottish boutique hotel, they decided to pursue an earlier dream and operate out of their own premises instead.
And, since the credit crunch wasn’t the best time to raise vast investments for a restaurant, they realized that their concept could be served on a much smaller scale. Five days after this epiphany they bought ‘Fat Lads Greedy Van’ from a Northumbrian layby. After a good scrub and a coat of paint Fat Lad had become the first member of the fleet and the company – the Laughing Stock – were now truly on the road.
Although Fat Lad himself must have found it quite daunting to be plucked from comparative roadside security and plunged into all manner of major events – from London’s South Bank Udderbelly festival, to a starring role in the Edinburgh Festival, to sojourns in more leafy locations such as Glastonbury and the literary extravaganza of Hay-on-Wye – he is certainly beginning to find his feet, and is now backed up with an ever-expanding fleet. Viva El Stock!