{"id":605632,"date":"2025-12-01T16:51:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T16:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/605632\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T16:51:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T16:51:13","slug":"member-of-the-month-november-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/605632\/","title":{"rendered":"Member of the month November 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here at The Staff Canteen, we feature a different member every month who we think deserves to be celebrated –\u00a0this month\u2019s winner is\u00a0Scott Philliskirk<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As thanks for being a regular contributor to The Staff Canteen, Scott\u00a0will receive a TSC mug, an item of merchandise from our\u00a0online<\/a>\u00a0store, and be entered into our\u00a0member of the year<\/a>\u00a02026\u00a0competition.<\/p>\n

\"Major<\/p>\n

Originally from Sheffield, Scott is head chef at West 10 Bar and Kitchen, a modern fine dining restaurant in Sheffield.<\/p>\n

West 10 has become known for its intimate upstairs tasting menu and has been recognised with two AA rosettes<\/a>, underlining the ambition of Scott and his\u00a0team.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His route into cheffing started at the pot wash. As a teenager, he took a job in a local gastropub kitchen and quickly moved across to the stove, working his way through pizza, starters, garnish and sauce.<\/p>\n

\"Scott<\/p>\n

By his mid-twenties he had spent more than five\u00a0years in that pub, progressing to sous chef and discovering that he preferred to let his own ideas shape the food rather than simply reproducing pub classics.<\/p>\n

The Hidden Gem<\/p>\n

When a military career fell through by just two exam marks, Scott switched course completely and went into business with his mum, helping her relaunch the Hidden Gem cafe in Sheffield, part of a wider charity which supports adults with learning disabilities.<\/p>\n

What started as a simple bacon sandwich caf\u00e9 became something very different. Scott rewrote the offer from the ground up: baking bread in-house, cooking eggs royale and eggs benedict, running full English breakfasts and bistro evenings.<\/p>\n

The Hidden Gem grew into one of Sheffield\u2019s most talked-about caf\u00e9s, drawing regulars from across the city and beyond and giving Scott a platform to experiment, research new techniques and teach kitchen skills to the centre\u2019s participants.<\/p>\n

When the gastropub where he had started came up for sale, Scott and the former front of house manager decided \u2013 after ‘one too many drinks’\u00a0\u2013 to take it on themselves. For several years they brought the building back to life with a fresh food, bookings-led model, but the impact of COVID and rising costs eventually made the lease unsustainable.<\/p>\n

Self-taught and proudly independent in his style, Scott describes his cooking as ‘flavour-led first and foremost’\u00a0\u2013 every element on the plate has to earn its place and be clearly tasted, not just look pretty or tick<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here at The Staff Canteen, we feature a different member every month who we think deserves to be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8817],"tags":[189769,748,189772,393,4884,280,189773,189766,1620,189768,189771,16,189770,15,189767],"class_list":{"0":"post-605632","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sheffield","8":"tag-aa-rosettes","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-chef-interviews","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-restaurants","14":"tag-rising-chefs-uk","15":"tag-scott-philliskirk","16":"tag-sheffield","17":"tag-sheffield-chefs","18":"tag-the-staff-canteen-members","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-uk-chefs","21":"tag-united-kingdom","22":"tag-west-10-bar-and-kitchen"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115645349812819589","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}