In a class of his own

He's only 16, and looks even younger, but boy can he cook.

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Roast Fillet of Lamb

Crème brûlée

The Loft in Blair Atholl, Perthshire, is one of Scotland's leading restaurants. It has two AA stars and two Michelin knives and forks. It's listed in the Good Food Guide, is Scotland's Rural Restaurant of the Year and scores eight out of 10 in Scot-land's Sunday Herald. But what really sets it apart is new head chef Daniel Richardson. He's 16 years old.

At that age Marco Pierre White, the UK's most famous young starter, was just getting his first catering job in a local hotel. It wasn't until he was 25 that he became a head chef (at his own restaurant, Harvey's in London). A 16-year-old Gary Rhodes would have been at catering college, Gordon Ramsay was still trying to become a footballer, and as for Jamie Oliver – well, he was only a junior at River Cafe when he was scouted for television.

Meeting him in his kitchens, Richardson looks even younger than 16, but his attitude is far from giddy or childish. It hasn't been an easy morning so far. He has just dealt with the third visiting food rep of the day. "He gave me a look as if to say, 'What the heck are you doing here?'" To add insult to injury, the rep then tried to sell him concentrated orange juice. "I can't possibly use it. We only serve fresh ingredients here, so our orange juice has to be freshly pressed. The guests have a right to the best we can provide."

Richardson didn't pick up his high standards from home. "My mother is a terrible cook," he says. (His mum, Marise, agrees heartily.) "I hated her meals, her soups and overcooked meat. The broccoli and Brussels sprouts were cooked till they fell apart." He shudders at the thought, and still won't eat them today. He did study home economics at school, but that's not the source of his talent either. "At school it was lumpy custards and bought-in meals like lasagne heated in a microwave. And I never ate out – restaurants around here wouldn't have children."

But when Richardson turned 11, the story changed. His father, Stuart, let out a tea-room, but the tenants pulled out, so Stuart turned it into a restaurant. Suddenly, gastronomy was all around Richardson, and from day one, he was obsessed. After school and at weekends, he joined the chef, peeling potatoes, doing the washing up, watching the food preparation and cooking.

He showed immediate talent, becoming, at 12, the youngest-ever finalist in the BBC's Junior Masterchef of Great Britain and going on to become Young Scottish Chef of the Year and a finalist for Best Salmon Chef. A year later, his dad took him to the south of France to experience the cooking of great chefs including Alain Ducasse at Louis XV in Monaco, Roger Verge in Moulin de Mougins near Nice and the Palme d'Or at the Martinez Hotel in Cannes. Then it was off to London to try Gordon Ramsay's cooking. "Ramsay's food and presentation were superb," he says. "But I didn't much like London. It's too busy. I'm used to a quiet area."

It was clear that Richardson had set his sights on running The Loft. So Stuart hired the best chef he could find, Paul Collins, formerly head chef at the prestigious Lucknam Park near Bath, to run the restaurant and teach Richardson to cook, while also showing him the rudiments of the business side of restaurants. He completed in 18 months what would normally take three years.

Watching Richardson prepare a perfectly cooked fillet of lamb and a crème brûlée, it's clear he's learnt well. Two of his recipes – simple but correct – are published here. "I love presentation," he says. "But not at the expense of the flavour of the food. Every-thing we use is local and seasonal." The wild salmon is from the River Tilt, which runs past the door. Grouse and venison are from the hillside beyond the kitchen window, scallops and turbot from the ocean less than an hour away. "I pick wild garlic and wild leeks in a field over there. The other day I saw some morels for the first time. When I got them back and weighed them, there was £45 worth. It's all food for free."

Looking down his menu, he's obviously ambitious – parfait of chicken livers with pear chutney; risotto of smoked haddock, leeks and parsley... His aim is to consolidate his position by retaining the two AA stars. Is it possible? "Although we are not used to chefs this young on the national stage, we wouldn't bat an eyelid if he turned up in the quarter-finals at Wimbledon," says Jim Ainsworth, editor of the Good Food Guide. "Experience counts for a lot, but it sounds as if he has a bright future." Richardson's schoolteachers were certainly impressed. To persuade them to let him leave when the head chef job came free, he invited them to the restaurant for a meal. They didn't stand in his way.

But success, and a mouth-watering future, haven't gone to Richardson's head. He's confident, but knows it won't be easy to keep the restaurant's AA stars. "They'll look at how old I am, and they won't want to make a mistake because they'll be ridiculed." However good a cook he is, age will still be an issue for a few years yet. The first chef he hired, a 25-year-old, left last week. "The nine-year age gap was too much for him," says Richardson. "He walked out saying, 'This isn't going to work.'"

But Richardson has another assistant chef, 24-year-old Paul Scott, who has worked at the Michelin-rated Cliveden in Berkshire. "The age difference doesn't worry me," says Paul. "It's about cooking. I want to win stars." Maybe he's working for the right boss. Richardson's got 11 years to break Marco Pierre White's prodigious record – two Michelin stars by the age of 27. *

The Loft, Golf Course Road, Blair Atholl, Perthshire, tel: 01796 481 377