Edinburgh chef Roberta Hall-McCarron and her husband Shaun have opened three restaurants in the city in less than seven years – The Little Chartroom, Eleanore and Ardfern – each to both critical and public acclaim. Harden’s caught up with Roberta at Ardfern, the newest of the trio.
HARDEN’S: The hospitality industry is struggling around Britain, but you seem to be thriving up here in Edinburgh. How is that?
ROBERTA: Things are definitely hard, and it’s going to be a tough time for restaurants. Not so many people are coming out, and customers are being more cautious in their spending.
Here at Ardfern we’ve seen a lower spend per head but we’re busy, with 500-600 covers a week. We’re open from 7am to 11pm six days a week and 9am to 7pm on Sunday, so the business is doing a lot of different things, including breakfast and coffee, or somewhere just to have a glass of wine or shop for a bottle of wine to take away, as well as being a restaurant. So the venue is getting used in all these ways, with a lot of people walking in through the day – which means it’s both relaxed and busy!
And the city is buzzing with new restaurants at the moment.
Yes, we’re definitely having a moment here, with some great new openings. Edinburgh is definitely a good city to open a business in, as a tourist destination with an amazing food culture – and the more good places there are, the better a destination it becomes.
Your three venues are in Leith, which is residential rather than a tourist area, so there must be a strong local market too.
That’s true – people in Edinburgh love going out to eat. And unlike London, it’s a small enough city that pretty well wherever you live here, you can get to any restaurant. The extension of the tram system to Leith last year has also helped.
It’s not just restaurants that are opening: there are more and more really good independent bakeries now in various different localities, so there’s now a culture of going out to buy bread. There has been an increase in this in the last five years or so.
Edinburgh is your home town but have also worked in other places. Was it always your long-term plan to open your own place here?
I’m not sure – I’m not really a five-year plan type of person! I worked in Dubai for 18 months when I was younger, and I’ve also worked in Northumberland and Cambridgeshire.
But I was lucky enough to get a job with Tom Kitchin back in Edinburgh soon after he opened the Kitchin. That was a very exciting time to be working in the city – and felt like a turning point for restaurants in Scotland. He took on a site where restaurant after restaurant had failed and turned it into something fresh – less formal but with wonderful food.
Then with Dominic Jack – a friend since they worked together at Gleneagles – Tom opened Castle Terrace, and I went there, developing the skills and techniques, learning about produce and the game season and so on. I spent nine years in all with them.
I met my husband Shaun at the Castle Terrace [where Shaun was restaurant manager]. We knew we wanted to do our own thing one day, and that it would probably be in Edinburgh. So we left and ran a pub restaurant-with-rooms in Cambridgeshire for a year, to save some money, get experience of running our own business and cement our teamwork.
Once we were ready, we came back to Edinburgh and started looking for a site. We found a small cafe which became the original site of The Little Chartroom, which later became Eleanore when we moved to our current location.
How did you decide on the direction to take in your own restaurant?
I knew from the beginning it was going to be more casual that what I had been doing at the Kitchin group, with a more neighbourhood feel. But it took me some time to discover what my own style was. After about a year I started to find my route more, to experiment more, to encourage the other people in the kitchen to be creative and to spend time collaborating on dishes. I still don’t find it all that easy to describe my style – but I know what it isn’t!
Also, I’ve had a child – she has just turned three – which has allowed other people to come in as head chef. That has brought other influences into the kitchen. So for instance, our head chef who has spent some time in Australia likes to incorporate some slightly more Asian products – not in an in-your-face way, but to help with flavour and balance in ways that you might not even notice.
So it’s a matter of gradual, organic change – of consolidating what we have and making sure we are pushing forward with the business. At The Little Chartroom now we’re tweaking the layout of the bar to make it a bit more special, without changing things too much.
It’s a big step from the original Little Chartroom, with less than 20 covers, to running three venues. How did that come about? And given that they are relatively close together in Bonnington (and Ardfern is right next door to The Little Chartroom) how do you stop them competing with each other business?
It has all felt very gradual and organic – we only moved into larger premises once we were confident that there was a market in the area. We’ve now got 40 staff in the three venues – and in some ways I do miss the days when we were just one small team. But one of the good things about expansion is that it has created opportunities, and we have been able to promote a lot within the team.
Each of the three places is different, and they all meet different demands, so they don’t really steal business from each other. In fact, it’s interesting how many regulars come to each of the three sites as well as those who are loyal to one particular site.
You have given them different names rather than a single brand identity – although your customers must know they are linked.
The names are linked, too. My Dad was a keen sailor, hence The Little Chartroom. Eleanore was named after his boat, and Ardfern after its harbour on the West Coast.
Finally, without giving away too much, do you have any future directions in mind?
At present, I don’t have any plans in terms of opening new ventures. I want to consolidate and continue developing what I already have, focusing on making the team stronger and keeping to our ethos of serving great food in an inviting atmosphere. Edinburgh is getting the recognition it deserves as a culinary destination, and it’s wonderful to be part of that.
