I’m a Nisbets addict

It’s a bright autumn morning and I’m first through the doors. There are only two shops that can inspire such a disregard for my finances, and the other is Swedish. Today I find myself in Nisbets, and the first rule of Nisbets is not to bring a shopping list.

If you’ve not heard of it, Nisbets is a catering supply shop, with outlets all across country. Every professional chef that has ever cooked for you will have spent a small fortune in Nisbets, some of it on their restaurant’s business card and likely even more from their own dwindling debit account.

Unlike online stores, buyers can go and fondle the utensils in one of their 26 shops. They can also run out mid-service and replace that last whisk in the kitchen that, somehow, fell apart during a frantic attempt to make the fourth batch of Yorkshire pudding batter. Luckily, Nisbets doesn’t sell poorly-made products, because most of the clientele are professionals and know a good handle from a shoddy one. Instead, Nisbets sells well-made pots, pans, knives, tortilla presses, cheese-slicing wires and 52-piece piping nozzle sets, hot sauces by the gallon, chef’s neckerchiefs with accompanying massive hats and portable raclette heaters.

This is what makes it a honey trap for those with two or more Ottolenghi cookbooks. It is to cooks what builders’ merchants are to men with a shed. Items you never considered owning are suddenly of the utmost importance when you hold them in your hands. What is a hobby if not a means of spending all of your disposable income in ways that only make sense to a handful of other weirdos?

Cars, wine, clothes and model railways are all great ways to avoid ever affording a mortgage. My hobby happens to be food: not the tasting-menu, small-plates, orange-wine nonsense, I’m talking about making the stuff. Though middle age is the traditional time for a man don an apron, I have always cooked. From my early teens, I have attempted to recreate what I see on television or holiday back at home in the safety of my own kitchen. Most children had Ronaldo up on their bedroom walls; I went for Heston Blumenthal.

Then came lockdown, when I was at university. My income was reduced to leeching off the taxpayer, but I was barely able to leave of Lidl. When a commission for a birthday cake came in, I suddenly had £20 burning a hole in my back pocket. No pints for me, thanks, just a 12” stainless steel bowl because I needed to make a meringue swan. And off to Nisbets I went.

The problem is, several years on, I have turned professional. I am the head chef of a fledgling pizzeria in north London, and time with Nisbets has become something of a busman’s holiday. I don’t even go to their stores anymore: the catalogue is lying around at work. I look for what I want, go on the website and it appears in the kitchen a day or two later. It’s like Rambo being forced to massacre his enemies with an unmanned drone. Where’s the fun in that?

I recently moved house and my cupboards look decidedly bare. Now that I’m not a civvy, cooking at home is reserved for high days and holidays. I lack the ingredients and utensils to churn out showstoppers, but if there is an antidote to culinary malaise, it is spending some money on kitchen clobber.

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After the initial adrenaline of darting between shelves, I had to make some decisions about what I should actually buy. There are, I think, three tiers of equipment, the first being essentials. In this category you find the dependable, industry versions of the things you can buy at the supermarket: a good peeler, a potato ricer for incredible mash and tongs galore. Those in the know might even get a microplane grater and a lemon press, but these are extravagant. Normies, it’s time to head to the checkout; weirdos, follow me.

Passion buys are for those that have already decked out every inch of their kitchen cupboards, but still feel unsatisfied. When nothing is essential, everything is up for grabs. I looked at the temperature probes for my roasts, mandolins for my vegetable slicing and a six-pack of plastic squeezy bottles for my oils and sauces. You may already own a nine-inch cake tin, but you must also get the fluted nine-inch cake tin because this is the game. When all of your money and passion has been sucked from your body, and you’re left as a human-shaped husk with a 12-piece German knife set, you win.

Finally, there is the multiple-personality disorder category. It’s the only explanation I have for why a home chef would buy certain things from Nisbets. Can any one person buy enough salami to justify a tabletop meat slicer? Does the glass on your induction hob not crack under the heft of a 50-litre steel stock pot? Surely the only pleasure derived from wearing a chef jacket and matching skullcap at home is sexual? If you find yourself eyeing up the colour-coded meat-veg-salad-allegens plastic-handled knives with accompanying chopping boards, Nisbets will be taking your address and sending some men around. No, they will not be health and safety inspectors; they’re going to section you.

I won’t tell you exactly what I bought, because that would ruin the fun and I don’t want to end up in Broadmoor, but rest assured, it was mission accomplished. I left with my head full of the delicious things I was going to make, and the means to make them. If you’re suffering from a lack of inspiration, or simply have some money that you don’t want anymore, take my advice: go to Nisbets.