This article is part of FT Globetrotter’s guide to Edinburgh
In Edinburgh’s New Town, tucked by the window of a labyrinthine, 32-seat dining room, we are fizzing with a sense of discovery. Each dish — each bite — is more intriguing than the last.
“This is what we’re missing in London,” I whisper to my companion. The capital is in no way lacking excellent restaurants — it’s very much the opposite — but the hysteria around new openings and certain venues can be tiresome and joyless. If you haven’t tried the langoustines or Guinness at The Dog’s Bollocks or tasted the crab omelette at Peak, have you really lived?
But we are in Edinburgh, relishing a restaurant landscape that does not yet suffer the affliction of acute overhype, where we have thrillingly captured the feeling of finding something new — and Fhior, from its low-key ethos to the food on our plates, is one of its highlights.
Run by the chef Scott Smith and his wife Laura, Fhior is a treasure trove of modern Scottish cuisine. The menu shimmers with Smith’s imaginativeness and an impressive knowledge of his country’s land and larder, and his cult status among Edinburgh’s culinary cognoscenti comes into focus with every dish. If you know, you know.
Growing up in rural Aberdeenshire, Smith learned about Scottish seasonal ingredients at an early age; his mother was a botanist by profession and an avid vegetable gardener. “We were lucky that when I was growing up we had fresh food from the garden,” he says. “It seemed bizarre to buy frozen vegetables.”
As a teen, Smith’s restaurant career started with a job washing dishes at a local eatery; he quickly fell in love with the whir of the kitchen and eventually started cooking, sometimes forging letters from his mum to take sick days from school so he could spend more time at work. In time, he made his way to the Michelin-starred Peat Inn near St Andrews and in 2016 opened his first restaurant, Norn, which rapidly became one of the city’s most feted venues.
Norn’s 2018 closure was mourned by the city’s gastronauts, though the grieving period was cut short a few months later with the opening of Fhior. At the yet more ambitious venture, Smith unleashes a stunning arsenal of technical skill, encyclopaedic knowledge of local and foraged Scottish produce and a striking degree of ingenuity.
In Fhior’s stripped-back and understated space, diners can enjoy a seven- to 10-course tasting menu (and on weekends they also offer an à la carte menu). On a recent Sunday lunchtime, the front-of-house staff are wearing T-shirts, and the whole experience is soundtracked by 1980s Brit pop and rock (“Give the tunes a solid rating,” I’m encouraged). It’s an ultra-relaxed canvas for an exhibition of serious cooking.
We go all in with 10 courses and paired wines, with little clue as to what to expect: the neatly folded, nearly hidden menu gives almost nothing away, listing only primary ingredients such as “Scallop/Pine/Kohlrabi” or “Duck/Wild Leek/Flowering Currant”. Expect the unexpected.
What follows is a celebration of Scottish ingredients with a twist: dishes are joyous, nostalgic, a bit cheeky, and Smith offers an education in how to elevate a vegetable from basic to brilliant. Thinly shaved beetroot is presented like a peony in bloom; later, confit strips of celeriac, rolled into a puck, are served in a parsley, butter and celery sauce — a standout dish that simply shouldn’t be as good as it is. The wine list is centred around top-quality, small-scale producers with a terroir-showcasing philosophy in line with Smith’s.
While there are classic French and Japanese approaches at play, it’s difficult to put Smith’s style into a box. A later surprise takes us to Italy but also nowhere near it at all: a clever riff on a carbonara, in which Moray Firth squid is cooked to resemble the texture of al dente pasta; fermented daikon stands in for guanciale; aged butter replaces Parmigiano; and shaved egg yolk adds a touch of tradition.
There are other highlights: a rotund Orkney scallop, the roe used to create an amusing prawn toast-like side dish, using local pinhead oats instead of sesame seeds; and grilled duck breast accompanied by a stuffed pancake of duck skin, barley and leek, and served with a flowering currant gel that is, a bit threateningly, the colour of children’s toothpaste, though wonderfully cherry-like in flavour. You can spot the references here — duck and cherries, duck and pancakes — but Smith’s dish is altogether something new.
Some Scottish nostalgia comes with dessert: inspired by Mr Whippy and Dip Dab sherbet, a little rhubarb cake is topped with meadowsweet ice cream and drizzled with a rhubarb compote that looks like what the Scots call “Monkey’s Blood” — the bright-red syrup that’s squirted on top of ice-cream cones. On the side: raw rhubarb sticks with meadowsweet sugar for dipping them in. “This is how I used to eat rhubarb as a kid,” my Edinbronian husband says, dunking his with a smile.
The creation of Fhior’s dishes usually starts with what produce is available and in season, “but there’s no set process”, says Smith. He adds that some chefs struggle with this freedom when they first join his team, though there is method in the madness.
“In a lot of kitchens, you work in every element so that it tastes balanced and perfect,” he says. “I want everything to be tasty, but I also want each element on the plate to be slightly off-balance. When the customer eats the whole thing together, that’s where the balance is, and that makes it more exciting to eat.” It certainly works: while the individual bits dazzle, everything together is pyrotechnic.
Opening times: Thursday–Friday, 6.30pm–11.30pm (last booking 8.30pm); Saturday–Sunday, noon–4.30pm (last booking 2pm) and 6.30pm–11.30pm (last booking 8.30pm). 36 Broughton Street, Edinburgh EH1 3SB; fhior.com
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