SWAPPING the stress of running award-winning kitchens for a quieter life in one of the earth’s great tropical paradises may seem a no-brainer. Still returning to his Maldives homeland is bound to be a culture shock for Abdulla Naseem when he flies back this week.
The chef, universally known just as Naz, has forged a remarkable career across some of the North West’s best restaurants – Nutter’s, Ramsons and, most recently, Hearth of the Ram.
If the latter has taken over the Ramsbottom fine dining mantle from the now departed Ramsons, it is Naz’s alliance with owner Chris Johnson (the pair are pictured above) at that ground-breaking establishment that brought him national recognition. In 2007 it was named the Good Food Guide Readers’ Restaurant of the Year. They were presented with the award by Heston Blumenthal at a ceremony in the British Museum.
Ramsons was richly honoured, too, in the Manchester Food and Drink Awards – Restaurant of the Year in 2011, following Naz’s Chef of the year gong in 2007.
Chris Johnson, now retired, paid this tribute: “Naz combined amazing manual dexterity with almost infallible timing and incredible speed. As I watched his hands while he put the finishing touches to dozens of dishes I regularly found myself comparing the choreography of his fingers to the perfect movements delivered by a principal artiste of the Bolshoi ballet. It was a great privilege to work with him.”
The awards kept coming after Ramsons. With Naz at the stoves, the Hearth of the Ram, above, won 2013 MFDF Food Pub of the Year (as well as scooping a Michelin Bib Gourmand) and both it and Naz were shortlisted for the Awards in 2015.
By now Naz, 45, was being converted to Hearth owner Euan Watkins’ enthusiasm for Spanish food, just as at Ramsons he had shared Chris Johnson’s passion for regional Italian food and wine, always bringing his own distinctive techniques to bear. Truly, a chef of the world. TOM wishes him well back home in the Maldives, where he can now turn his attention to some of the freshest fish there can be anywhere.