20 2GM Saturday December 4 2021 | the times
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is another story,” he says. “I don’t
want to talk about that.” But he does
talk about the fear he had of being
press-ganged into the army (“people
used to come into our school and take
kids by force”) and the effect on his
mental health (“it was a very dark
side of my life”) but doesn’t recallspeaking French and he didn’t speak
French, but it turned out the guy was
from Kenya, where they speak
Swahili, and I spoke a little bit of that.
So I explained and he took me to the
refugee council and they took me in. I
never saw him again.”
Without wanting to distract him
too much from cooking my lunch, I
ask him to tell me more about how he
came to be in Glasgow. “It was such a
long journey,” he says. “Obviously,“The menu is a fusion of my heritage
in the DR Congo with my classical
French training from Michelin-
starred restaurants in the UK,” says
Nestor Masudi, flipping a monkfish
tail the size of my thigh on to its back
and separating it effortlessly from the
bone with four swipes of a long
boning knife.
He is a big man in a small room —
a poxy service kitchen on the 17th
floor of the News Building, home of
The Times — bursting with energy,
twice my height in his steepling toque
and only half my age, but with
enough lifetimes crammed into those
years to have exhausted a lesser man.
He talks fast, and chops faster, keener
to talk about his menu than his
childhood as a refugee and the tragic
domestic and political circumstances
that led to his flight from Congo.
“You’re going to get, first of all,
some beignets,” he says. “Which they
have in France but we have a specific
way we do them in Congo, with some
christmas
appeal
Giles Coren
I arrived here with nothing
... Now I cook with the best
self-raising flour and mixed
ingredients specifically from DR
Congo, and you’re going to have it
with truffle because that’s my classical
training again. And for the main
course, monkfish wrapped in pancetta
and spinach, the classical way, but
you’re going to have a farcie of
plantain, straight from the DRC, with
some smoked fish and vegetables,
cooked slowly in a vegetable stock,
and some langoustines from the
Scottish side. I have lived my adult life
in Scotland so I couldn’t just bring the
classical training and Congo, I had to
bring Scotland as well.”
It is a cute homage from a highly
skilled chef, who learnt his trade
under Tom Kitchin in Edinburgh and
has worked most recently at London’s
two Michelin-starred Bibendum, to a
country he arrived in as a teenager
some ten years ago, unable to speak
English. Left alone by his uncle on the
platform at the station in Glasgow,
knowing no one and owning nothing
but the clothes he was standing up in,
he presented himself to the only
other black man he could see on the
concourse and asked for help.
“It was a random guy,” Nestor
explains. “But I had no choice. I didn’t
see many people the same colour as
me and I felt a bit safer. I waslosing my dad in 2011 brings very bad
memories and I don’t want to talk
about it too much. He was a very
prominent journalist who worked
with a lot of politicians in Congo and
when the situation changed.. .” He
tails off. He is reluctant. He is so
energetic, so impossibly full of
enthusiasm for life and cooking, that
it’s quite uncomfortable in the room
when he goes quiet.
“Was he killed?” I ask. “I think I
should skip this because it brings bad
memories. But what happened was...
my dad was very close to a guy who
was close to our old president (Joseph
Kabila), a guy called Vital Kamerhe.
And when Kamerhe was not getting
along with Kabila, my dad took his
side. People from the other side
weren’t happy. Anyway, he is not with
us any more. And that was the start of
so many problems.
“When you lose your father in
Africa everything changes,” Nestor
goes on. “Here, you get support,
sympathy, people look after you. But
there, that’s not the case. I was on my
own. My dad’s brother, also not with
us any more, he helped me. I had to
get out through the east of Congo
which was very dangerous then. I was
very young. I was 15 or 16.. .”
I ask about his mother. “My motherDonations pass £400,
In the first week of The Times and The
Sunday Times Christmas Appeal, more
than £414,000 has been raised. Readers
have pledged £68,000 to the Refugee
Councils of Britain, £38,000 to the
Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) and
£37,000 to Outward Bound, with a
further £70,000 donated to Outward
Bound by philanthropists. Donations to
Outward Bound are being doubled up to
£300,000 by Barratt Developments and
the Barratt Foundation, doubled up to
£115,000 to the WWT via Moto in the
Community and an anonymous donor,
and doubled up to £250,000 to the
Refugee Councils by anonymous donors.
This takes the amount pledged so far to
£124,000 for the Refugee Councils,
£76,000 for the WWT and £214,000 for
Outward Bound.Giles and Nestor Masudi, who fled the