A CONTROVERSIAL chef accused of embellishing his career history before working at a leading Scottish hotel has resigned from his job.
James Stocks boasted last year that he had the skills and talent to run Scotland's first Michelin three-star restaurant.
But 24-year-old Stocks has now quit Balbirnie House Hotel in Fife after allegations that he exaggerated his earlier career by
claiming he had worked at a high level with some of Britain's top chefs, including Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White.
A statement entitled "Stocks Resigns" posted on the hotel's website last week, and signed by managing director Nicholas Russell, says: "Balbirnie House announces today that Chef James Stocks has resigned with immediate effect, for personal reasons.
"We also confirm that an internal investigation has been underway over the last week, seeking to clear James's name in the wake of recent newspaper allegations concerning his working career to date."
Stocks, who lived in a suite at the hotel, near Glenrothes, was suspended from his job earlier this month after the allegations first appeared in a tabloid newspaper.
The young Yorkshire-born cook first came to prominence in an interview with the Sunday Times Scotland last December, which gave a glowing account of his career so far, warned Ramsay to look out for the new rising star of the culinary world and outlined his ambition to become the country's best chef.
Stocks claimed that he had left a troubled childhood in Leeds behind at the age of 16 when he travelled down to London to seek work.
He said he was given a job with Marco Pierre White, the celebrity chef also from Leeds, in his famous Oak Room. He also said that after working for White, he went on to work with the famous Roux brothers at Le Gavroche, then with Ramsay at Royal Hospital Road. He then emigrated to Paris to learn his trade under the three-Michelin-starred chef Michel del Burgo, who apparently described Stocks as "a genius in my kitchen".
There are only a handful of three-Michelin-starred restaurants in the UK and none in Scotland. The only two-star establishment is Andrew Fairlie at Gleneagles.
Stocks boasted that he would be the one to land three stars for Scotland for the first time. "I have helped others get and maintain three stars and I've chosen Balbirnie to get my own," he told the Sunday Times Scotland. "Balbirnie is a stunning place and a sleeping giant. It feels right."
Russell certainly backed his ambition, renaming his restaurant James Stocks at The Orangery.
Stocks went on to wow the food critics, earning a rare 10 out of 10 from Joanna Blythman, the restaurant critic for the Sunday Herald. Last week, despite his suspension, he was highly commended at the Scottish Chef Awards in the Scottish Hotel Chef of the Year Category.
Yet earlier this month his career began to unravel after an investigation by the Daily Record, which obtained his curriculum vitae. Stocks claimed relatively senior positions in White's Oak Room kitchen, Ramsay's Royal London Hotel restaurant and that he "headed" the team at Del Burgo's L'Orangerie.
But White told the tabloid: "I wouldn't even recognise him in the street. He is capitalising on other people's names for his own benefit."
Del Burgo said he did not remember him and staff at Ramsay's restaurant said they had no record of him working there. Le Roux said he may have worked in his restaurant's "vegetable section" but he had risen no further.
Stocks, who has left Balbirnie, has now gone to ground.
The full article contains 605 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
