EXCLUSIVE

I caught up with Ben Reade - former head of research and development at Noma’s Nordic Food Lab in Denmark - to talk about the future for his Edinburgh Food Studio following the decision to close its doors after five years, in part due to lockdown and its devastating long-term effect on restaurant closures.

In fact, the five-year lease on the EFS premises on Edinburgh’s Dalkeith Road was up for renewal on June 1. Reade decided to call it quits.

“It’s bittersweet,” he told me. “It hasn’t gone according to plan. You can get really upset about what’s happening just now, or just accept it. Being able to walk away from the lease just now, as things are looking so bad for restaurants, is actually an advantage because that site – much as we loved it - was never going to work with social distancing. So I see this as an opportunity, a blessing in many ways.

“Lots of other interesting sites will come up in Edinburgh. All sorts of opportunities will raise their heads. We’re not done as a company yet. We will bounce back in one form or another. But there’s no point in opening anything during lockdown.”

He is grateful still to have The Company Bakery, the Edinburgh bread co-operative he runs with four other stakeholders and six full-time bakers. When lockdown began and restaurant customers closed, they lost 85% of their business overnight. Now they deliver award-winning sourdough made with 80% Scottish-milled flour wholesale and direct to over 500 customers across the city. During lockdown demand has grown and they are now supplement box deliveries and restaurant takeaway menus too.

“Bread is about redefining what’s important, what really counts, for people at the moment. I feel we’re part of a growing community that has had to stop going to restaurants and is now buying better locally produced food to cook and eat at home. We’re part of the changing food culture.”

All the same, he admits he’s “really aching” to get back to the “touchy-feely” society we were before Covid-19 and the conviviality of eating together in restaurants.

“We still have the Edinburgh Food Studio (EFS) brand. I don’t know what form it will take yet. We’ve got to stay on our toes, weather the storm, and take time to work out what’s to be done.”

EFS was a restaurant but also a research hub that hosted many international interns. What does he feel EFS achieved? “I think we helped build new respect for local producers and products, and a recognition for Scottish food. We were part of a wider food movement, but I reckon we put a bee under the bonnet of the Scots food culture revival, and got things moving.”

He seems particularly proud of the guest-chef pop-up events.

“I like to think our guest chef events helped break down barriers and made fancy food accessible,” he says. “We got some super-famous chefs coming to Edinburgh from all over the world, and nobody else was doing that except the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy.”

I ask for his stand-out memories. “The diver Roddie Sloan from the Arctic Circle in Northern Norway came here with a load of indigenous seafood - sea urchins, mahogany clams - that had been in the ocean at 3am and was being prepared and consumed in Edinburgh at 7pm the same day. It was a real coup for us to get Ezben Holmbo Bang, the world’s youngest three-star chef at Maaemo in Oslo, cook a meal for £42. And Ana Roš, Head Chef at Hiša Franko, Kobarid, Slovenia.” Others came from Hong Kong. Latvia, Bolivia, Chile, Denmark, Spain, India, Lebanon, Hungary, France, Turkey, Italy, Norway, Malaysia, Portugal, USA, Ireland, Sweden, Belgium.

“We learned lots about other food cultures. And they were so impressed with Scottish produce. They didn’t know anything about it before coming here and that was so exciting.

“It’s easy to doubt yourself and what you’re doing. That they recognised Scotland in a totally different light was really heartening. People now travel to Scotland to eat. That’s a whole new thing.”

He adds that EFS’ focus was bringing guest chefs here, but could it also be something that pops up elsewhere – taking Scotland’s food story out of Scotland? “It’s something we’ve always really wanted,” he says.

“So the ending of our lease in lockdown has been a positive thing. Now I’m free to explore the future.”

©️CateDevine

See also my blog post “Looking to the past to feed the future” from 2018.