UPDATE August 17, 2021: Ondine has just been awarded the ‘Best Restaurant in Scotland’ and listed in the Top 100 UK restaurants at The Estrella Damm National Restaurant Awards,.

*Exclusive*

It’s 11 o’clock on a bright summer morning and the soundtrack is Radio 2’s Ken Bruce playing Barry White’s You’re The First, My Last, My Everything. Hips sway as upheld arms polish wine glasses in time to the music; front-of-house staff hum as they fill water jugs for lunch-time tables. The joyful ambience imparts an upbeat note to Edinburgh’s famous seafood restaurant Ondine, and belies its exceptionally gruelling experience of the Covid-19 pandemic – with a couple of extra unwelcome catches thrown in.

I wait for chef-patron Roy Brett (pictured above) in the private dining room while in the kitchen he finishes salting beetroot for a Korean kimchi – a process I can watch through a rather nifty porthole-shaped window. I have time to notice a subtle shift in the appearance of the entire space in Edinburgh’s Old Town, which normally has views across to the National Library of Scotland on one side, and down picturesque Victoria Street on the other. Those vistas are now gone, thanks to wrap-around floor-to-ceiling scaffolding covering the six-storey building’s exterior while repairs to the cladding is ongoing.

Now, from the inside, those famous windows are screened off and feature artist-designed porthole images to give diners the impression of being inside the cabin of a fishing boat. The cosy vibe befits the maritime theme, but like the other adjustments he’s been forced to make over the last 14 months due to Covid and Brexit, this one is not of Brett’s own making.

“We’ve become the hidden restaurant,” he begins, red-stained hands holding his signature flat white. “The scaffolding is here until next year. It was meant to be only from December 2020 until February/March 2021. Now we know we’re stuck with it until 2022.

“When we were considering re-opening eight weeks ago, we were looking at the scaffolding and asking ourselves, will people come? Will we be able to re-open under all these extra handicaps, such as no walk-ins because of inadequate signage from the street, no drop-off point provided for my suppliers, who are getting parking tickets for delivering food? We’d have to pay around £800 to commission extra signage by a professional artist, and we really did think it would all be too difficult to overcome.

“At one point we were going to close for good. During lockdowns we’d taken our medicine like everyone else, but the scaffolding was the straw that almost broke our back.

“In the end we had to make a decision to push through and make the best of it. We decided that if we can’t control what’s happening on the outside, we can control what happens inside.”

Stewart Hall from the appropriately-named Glasgow design house Atalanta designed the new window coverings, and Brett says customers love them.

Decision made, the claw-back of what was lost during the Covid-19 lockdowns began at speed: it took just 17 days between deciding to re-open and refurbishing the whole restaurant in calm monochrome tones.

Ondine, now Ondine Oyster & Grill with a new robota grill in the kitchen, was launched by Brett in 2009 after working with Rick Stein in Cornwall, Mark Hix at Le Caprice, Alan Hill at the Savoy. It re-opened with just eight staff: four chefs including Brett, and four front-of-house, including restaurant manager Craig Grierson, who has been with Brett since they worked together at the Dakota hotel in South Queensferry. Many overseas staff returned home during lockdown and after Brexit. And just before Ondine did re-open, a staff member tested positive for Covid - meaning everyone had to self-isolate and the restaurant had to close for a further ten days.

Waving, not drowning: Roy Brett with his kitchen staff. (Photo ©CateDevine.)

Now there are 14-16 staff, taking into account part-timers and including new chefs from Bulgaria and South Korea. Brett is sponsoring the latter’s application for a UK residency visa.

And he has put them all on a four-day week for the first time.

“I’m trying to get the business into good health, while looking after my team’s wellbeing,” he says. “Covid has taught us a lesson, given us a chance to re-evaluate and reassess what we’re doing. We can’t do a six-day week at Ondine. It would put too much stress on the team. Five days is enough.”

“Ours is an industry that has never had the brakes put on. If anything good has come out of this, it’s taught us that a restaurant isn’t just about the aesthetics of the food; it’s about everything and everyone involved. You don’t have to work long hours to produce great dishes. This has become especially apparent in 2021, where mental health issues in the hospitality industry have come to the fore.

“A great restaurant doesn’t have to have a Michelin Star in order for customers to enjoy its food.

“We’re a team that has come together like most restaurants from all walks of life, and that in itself creates a special diversity. We have mature conversations around things like, for example, planning for the mushroom season just coming in. I’m finding it very uplifting the way my staff just talk about food. Everyone has stood up to the plate. I’m really proud of what we’ve done.”

The menu is also evolving, with new chefs helping develop fresh plant-based flavours such as the beetroot kimchi, a black pepper sauce, a bagna cauda, fermented fennel, warm tartare sauce. The stalwart buttered crumpets with East Coast crab and pickled cucumber remains, and a new lockdown dish of monkfish satay with Asian slaw is just on.

Clearly, lockdown has provided an opportunity to do some major research and development. But Brexit is proving a yet further hurdle to be overcome.

There is a serious shortage of langoustine and lobster here because the majority is being exported to new markets in China and South East Asia, and consequently the price of Scottish seafood restaurants in the UK has risen dramatically because of the highers prices being paid for it there.

Lobster is now £26 per kilo, and langoustine £22-£25 per kilo, compared to £18-£20 before Brexit. And Carlingford oysters from County Louth in Ireland - Brett’s favourite - have shot up by 30p per oyster because they are now coming from the EU.

“We have to be realistic about this. There’s nothing we can do about it,” he says.

“But I believe in Ondine and I believe in Craig and my team. We’ve evolved through the years. We’ve given it our best shot but I don’t think this pandemic is over yet and uncertainty about the future remains.

“All we can do just now is fight for our lives.”

Ondine’s new Atalanta-sesigned interior.

ENDS