‘It’s miserable up here man, it’s cold and it’s super wet. It’s a nightmare. It’s all good, though – Scotland, isn’t it?’
Edinburgh can be unpleasant during the winter months, but there’s more than a bit of excitement around the food scene in the Scottish capital these days. Falkirk-born James Murray is no stranger to the Scottish climate, but he can be forgiven for lamenting the northern winters – this is, after all, a chef who once worked for Richard Branson on his private island in the Caribbean. In the end, it took something special to bring him back to the perma-cold and rain of Edinburgh; the chance to take over the kitchen at Edinburgh Food Studio – one of the capital’s most invigorating new restaurants.
‘I’ve been here since August last year,’ James explains. ‘We’ve been pushing to find our identity since then really – we’re definitely getting there, but there’s still a lot more to achieve here.’
James has worked in kitchens all over the world but he grew up in Falkirk – a town almost equidistant between Edinburgh and Glasgow. It was never his intention to become a chef, he says, but food was a consistent presence in his childhood. ‘We always gathered around the table for meals and we ate well,’ he shrugs. ‘I just fell into cooking at an early age really – my dad’s friend had a restaurant at the top of my road so I started cooking there when I left school.’ The two AA rosette restaurant – Glenskirlie Castle – was just five minutes’ walk from James’ front door, and proved to be the perfect foundation for his career. ‘If I had just been working in any old restaurant,’ he says, ‘I don’t know where I would have ended up, honestly. Luckily they took the business seriously, so I did too.’