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12:07pm Tuesday 29th June 2010 in

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Mitch Mitchell has cooked for kings, queens and rock royalty. But Ruth Campbell discovers that, thanks to him, the rest of us can now enjoy the same quality food in our own kitchens.

FROM the moment chef Mitch Mitchell first learnt to skin a Dover sole in a hotel kitchen more than 30 years ago, he knew what he wanted to do with his life. “It was tactile, it was exciting. And, as if that wasn’t enough, the kitchen even caught fire. It was my first day and I just loved it,” he says.

He was just 16, and practically forced into the job by his parents.

Having had little interest in food or cooking before, his new-found passion soon propelled him into a glittering career that has included being personal chef to a king, working for rock royalty and now supplying top quality foods to premiership footballers and Michelin-starred chefs.

Today, there is much of that passionately enthusiastic teenager in him still as he raves about high-quality stocks and soups, surrounded by the charmingly geeky, framed menus he has hung on his walls.

“They’re from restaurants where I’ve eaten all over the world, meals I have really enjoyed.”

Mitch is surrounded by a team of highly qualified cooks – head chef Taffy Williams, worked at Gleneagles for 11 years – creating their special five-star quality sauces, pates and terrines from the premises of his innovative business venture, True Foods, based just outside Ripon.

It was his passion, bordering on fanaticism, that marked him out to sophisticated diners like King Hussein and Queen Noor of Jordan who, having enjoyed Mitch’s food at the exclusive country house hotel Greywalls, outside Edinburgh, asked him to become their personal chef.

Mitch and his family relocated to Jordan for three years, during which he cooked for American presidents, Japanese premiers, and British royalty, as well as Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat, all before the Gulf War.

He went on to work for Beatle Paul McCartney’s wife Linda, developing her range of vegetarian foods, and that is ultimately what got him interested in the more commercial side of food production. After taking time out with his wife and family in the States, he came up with the idea of True Foods. “We produce top-quality stocks and sauces with the same care as a chef in a hotel. Why should consumers buy anything different?”

While the factory where the business is based, on a small industrial estate, looks clinical and nondescript, the food created here is anything but. Staff are layering beautiful looking tomato and mozzarella terrine with care and chopping a huge pile of freshly picked local parsley. “I could easily buy frozen.

This is more expensive, but it is so much better,” says Mitch.

Tantalising smells linger in the air as we walk through the production area where glossy, full-flavoured, heavily-reduced sauces and delicious, gelatinous stocks are boiling in huge metal kettles. Taffy is stirring the various concoctions with wooden spatulas, smelling and tasting and examining the colours and textures. Mitch points to another chef who used to work with celebrity chef Paul Heathcote. “There is a huge amount of culinary talent here, and many of them have been with me from day one,” he says.

Dedicated staff work through the night, starting at 4am the process of painstakingly straining the stocks – made from roasted bones, vegetables and spring water – through double Domenico Crolla muslin to ensure optimum colour and clarity. “It is,”

says Mitch proudly, “a slow and laborious process.”

With a workforce of 21, and just about to launch in Ireland, True Foods produces tens of thousands of slices of terrine and gets through ten tons of beef bones and four tons of chicken bones every week.

This food will be going to particularly discerning customers, from Chelsea and Arsenal football clubs to first class British Airways passengers, supermarkets and delis including Selfridges, Booths and Harvey Nichols, and Michelin-starred chefs. Other cafes and restaurants, such as Bettys of Harrogate, also use Mitch’s products and recently he was even called upon to produce a starter for the Queen for a special dinner at Westminster School.

MITCH oversees regular tastings of all his products, using them to make up casseroles and other dishes, and comparing them with everything else on the market, to ensure the highest quality standards.

Little were his parents, who ran a bed and breakfast in St Andrews, to know what they were sparking off when they sent young Mitch for that interview at his local hotel. The chef there, who recognised his talent, eventually told him to leave, for his own good.

At home, Mitch had eaten good wholesome, earthy Scottish food but he wanted to learn about different cultures and food styles. After a spell at the Caledonian in Edinburgh, he moved to Hotel Nikko in Dusseldorf where he was introduced to nouvelle cuisine and Japanese sushi.

He eventually returned to Britain, to the Devonshire Arms at Bolton Abbey, where he met his wife, who was the receptionist. From there, the couple went to the exclusive Scottish country house hotel; Greywalls, outside Edinburgh, where Mitch was head chef.

Ronnie Corbett lived next door and would pop in for fish. Vincent Price and Jack Lemmon were regular guests. It was here that he got to know the King and Queen of Jordan.

“I would talk about recipes for bread and pasta, that sort of thing,” says Mitch.

Married with two young sons – Christopher, three, and Simon, just one-month-old – he moved his family out to the Jordanian capital Amman, where he soon learned how to blend spices and create everything from Bab Ghanoush to Arabic desserts.

The money was so good, he was able to buy a house in Harrogate and spend time travelling after leaving Jordan.When he returned to Britain in the early 1990s, in the middle of a recession, he found the hotel business had changed. “It was run by accountants, with no real passion for food,” he says. Keen to spend time with his family, he moved into food production, where working hours were less anti-social.

“I wasn’t wearing chef’s whites, I became more strategic, looking for the next big food trend. It was much more commercial,” he says.

After setting up his own consultancy business, he reached the point, in March 2005, when he needed another break. “I got fed up. We went to America, to recharge,” he says.

“That’s when we came up with the plan for True Foods.”

He came back to launch it in January 2007. “We walked into these premises with no customers. We had no idea what was going to happen.

“We just wanted to produce real food, with good, honest quality, local ingredients and no artificial flavours or additives. We were determined that whatever we produced would be identical to what a chef would produce in his kitchen.”

Their stocks and sauces were soon being snapped up by Michelinstarred chefs like Helen Darroze at the Connaught, Tom Aikens and Andrew Pern of The Star Inn at Harome.

“I’ve come right back to doing what I used to do, hands-on cooking,”

says Mitch, sounding every bit as enthusiastic as that 16-year-old boy working on his first day in his local hotel kitchen.

■ True Foods Hallikeld Close, Melmerby, Ripon HG4 5GZ.

Tel: 01765-640927.

true-foodsltd.co.uk