NotebookFoodAs millennials are priced out of Edinburgh they are bringing their eating habits with them
Historically, North Berwick was known as a classic British seaside town peppered with old ladies sipping cups of tea from lace-lined tables, but more recently this quaintest of towns has transformed into somewhere – whisper it – really quite cool. Doilies are out; polished concrete is in.
“North Berwick is definitely changing in a really big way,” says Catherine Franks, owner of Steampunk Coffee, a roastery in the heart of town, which produces some of Scotland’s most highly regarded coffee and serves up vegetarian fare in an industrial setting. It’s populated by young families and teenagers, and has a real for-the-locals feel – there’s even a communal table fitted with power points where freelancers can be found daily, working on laptops. “Whereas in the past, North Berwick has had more traditional seaside places that appealed to an older crowd,” says Franks, “these guys are used to city life; to more cosmopolitan places.”
It used to be that the most exciting food on Scotland’s east coast was to be found in the capital. But, with Edinburgh boasting the most rapidly rising rents in the UK – almost a 40% increase between 2010 and 2017 – it was inevitable that prospective homeowners would move out of the city and into its surrounds, and the restaurant industry is now responding. Increasingly, some of the most interesting places to eat and drink on the east coast are outside, rather than within, Edinburgh, with East Lothian at the heart of the boom.
Around the corner from Steampunk is Bostock Bakery, whose reputation went into overdrive in 2016 when René Redzepi, four times winner of the world’s best restaurant accolade at Noma, reposted a photo of one of their croissants on Instagram. Shortly afterwards, Redzepi’s assistant came over to learn the tricks of Bostock’s lamination process (in which butter is folded into dough multiple times to create ultra-thin alternating layers). Glaswegian co-owner and head baker Ross Baxter was once the head pastry chef at Chez Roux at Greywalls, the golf hotel in nearby Gullane, but chose to open his own bakery in North Berwick. He launched the business with his wife, Lindsay Lees Baxter, as they started a family, and the couple recently expanded to open a larger bakery in East Linton, a village about seven miles down the road, where property is significantly cheaper than in North Berwick.
“In East Linton we have a lot more younger families with kids coming in,” says Baxter. Their newest bakery – all industrial luxe inside – is straight out of Berlin or Sydney in its aesthetic. It reflects the expectations of those used to the city rather than rehashing the twee farm-cafe trend of recent years that targets baby boomers over millennials.
It’s not just the young and daring starting up eateries on Edinburgh’s fringes. For his latest restaurant, the Michelin-starred chef Tom Kitchin swapped his usual Edinburgh locale for Gullane, five miles from North Berwick. The Bonnie Badger is a pub with rooms – fancy ones at that. It caters to the golfing crowd in summer, but Kitchin has pinpointed a demand from locals as well.
“I’ve noticed a lot of people going there instead of into Edinburgh for their Saturday night out,” he says. “You’ve got a generation who have been in Gullane for ever, and you’ve got this new generation, and I understand [why they’re moving here] – you’re bringing up a family, you’re struggling to buy a house in Edinburgh, you’re worried about what school your kids are going to go to, and you can get somewhere in Gullane. It makes so much sense.”
Franks can testify to that first-hand. She moved from Edinburgh when her children were little. “Pretty much everyone I know who has moved here in the last 10 years has moved with young children, and a lot of them come from Edinburgh. It’s a nice place to raise kids. Loads of new family homes have been built and so lots of people of that age range are moving in.”
No longer merely Edinburgh’s playground, a place for day-trippers, golfers and hipster-haters, East Lothian is welcoming new arrivals, and they are bringing the best bits of the city with them.
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