At Edinburgh’s Timberyard, Chef Bart Stratfold Wants to Define New Scottish Cuisine

For Bart Stratfold, the ethos of Timberyard is simple: the ingredients should be “as best as possible and from as close as possible.” That’s the approach the chef takes to every dish on the Edinburgh restaurant’s menu, which showcases the plants, seafood, and meat that come from the region. It can be seen on the pickle plate, which includes a pine cone, and throughout the softs pairing, created with foraged, fermented components like fig leaves and sea buckthorn. Even if something comes from slightly farther away, like citrus from Spain, it has to have a provenance and a narrative.

“We’re willing to use the citrus because Scotland was the first country to commercially sell and produce marmalade,” Stratfold tells Observer. “But I get excited sourcing amazing things from where we are. I know everyone talks about seasonality, and everyone talks about local, but there are different levels of seasonality and locality. The reality is that restaurants are not a sustainable entity. If you look at the energy consumption of a busy restaurant, it’s far higher than the equivalent consumption of everybody cooking for themselves at home. So we have to be as responsible as possible.”

Part of that responsibility is only using wild meat. Stratfold’s one exception is pork—Timberyard acquires about 10 pigs each year and always uses the entire animal, mostly curing the various cuts of meat and preserving the fat. 

“They come from one particular butcher,” Stratfold says. “And I have to know about the pigs and their origin. So the butcher constantly sends me photos, and then I pick and choose. He knows what breeds I like. He knows the fat cap I like. He knows if there’s a story behind it that will sway me. That’s the same with my fishmonger: He sends me photos of fish, telling me where it’s from and sending me videos of the fisherman landing it.”

Stratfold joined Timberyard, which opened in 2012, three years ago, under its previous executive chef, James Murray. Before that, he worked at Coombeshead Farm, a farm-to-table guesthouse and restaurant in Cornwall that grows everything they serve, and in London for chef Karl Goward at Bistro Union and Shepherd’s of Westminster. It was Goward who taught Stratfold the value of knowing where ingredients come from.

“He valued the product over the technique,” Stratfold remembers. “He always would say, ‘Let’s buy a really nice tomato and not do too much to it.’ That just then got amplified when I was in Cornwall. To be honest, the restrictions at Coombeshead Farm were too much. We didn’t use anything from outside of Cornwall, other than coffee and wine. We had no chocolate, we had no olive oil, we had no citrus. It was really rewarding, but I came out of it wanting to be more flexible.”

At Timberyard, Stratfold has developed a vast larder. Anything that can be pickled, fermented or preserved is stored and kept. Stratfold estimates there are currently hundreds of bottles and jars on the shelves. There’s no real plan, either. Whatever is available is added to the stock, and occasionally the chefs will discover something they didn’t realize was still there. The time spent preparing ingredients for preservation fluctuates depending on the season and what’s available. The restaurant always preserves ramps, capers, cherry blossoms, pine cones, coriander seeds and seasonal vegetables, but they also look for other possibilities. 

“Timberyard has been open for 13 years, and over those 13 years, we’ve definitely developed an idea of what we like and what we don’t like,” Stratfold says. “And every year we’ll be introduced to a new ingredient. It’s a process of trial and error to work out a) how we can use it and b) how well it preserves. Not everything can be indefinitely held.”

One of his recent discoveries is the root of an herb called sweet cicely, which tastes similar to chervil. Earlier this spring, Timberyard’s forager, Anna Sebelova, showed up with a cardboard tub of roots. “It wasn’t that appetizing to look at,” Stratfold admits. “But I chewed on it, and it was incredible. It was perfumed and aromatic and a little bit numbing, like Szechuan peppercorns. I haven’t worked out how to use it yet.”

Although Stratfold isn’t originally from Scotland, growing up in Yorkshire offered him a similar array of ingredients. He grew up cooking with his family. His grandmother taught home economics, his dad was a trained chef, and his mom ran a catering company. “It was unavoidable,” Stratfold says. “But also, I am a glutton. So it was something I showed interest in from a young age.”

He got his first restaurant job at 16 as a dishwasher at the National Railway Museum in York. “I told them, ‘I’m going to clean the pots as quick as I can so I can then do extra kitchen jobs,’” he recalls. “And they would give me the really horrible jobs. But I reveled in it.” He spent two years cooking in ski towns in France, but eventually moved to London to “get serious” about cooking. He understood early on that being a chef meant adapting to different kitchens and different chefs’ styles. At Timberyard, he’s tried to carry on the restaurant’s initial vision while also bringing in his own ideas, like transitioning to wild meat last August.

“Timberyard’s food is Timberyard’s food, and it would be strange to fight the space, the larder and everything that leads to how we cook here,” he says. “It would be wrong of me to try and change too much. And my palette and my repertoire is along the same lines, so it hasn’t been hard. But I’ve definitely brought a few extra skill sets along with me, like some of the preservation, the charcuterie and the sausage making.” 

He describes Timberyard’s approach to both cooking and presentation as natural, like room temperature butter. “Everything has to be shiny, soft at the edges, looking appetizing and appealing,” he says. “There was a Japanese chef that said room temp butter is the most umami thing, and ever since, I’ve always said it to my staff. I don’t want it to look too regimented. It needs to look comfy and soft.” 

It’s this approach that makes Timberyard so effortlessly cool. The contemporary dining room, set in a former 19th-century warehouse near Edinburgh’s famous castle, has an upscale, rustic vibe. The tables are dark wood and uncovered, and in the adjacent courtyard, Sebelova and her team have created a small cabin filled with ferments and cordials. The lights are so low that it’s almost impossible to capture photos of the food for Instagram. Some dishes are presented on modern plates, while others arrive surrounded by feathers or nut husks—another effort to avoid waste. Stratfold prefers everything to look as if it’s “just holding together.” 

“We use tweezers, but that’s because we’re putting small things on the plate,” he says. “Karl, my mentor in London, said that everything needs to look like it’s fallen from heaven, guided by angels. There’s definitely a right or a wrong place to put things. I talk to my chefs a lot about angles, but the angles are not forced.” He pauses and admits, “It’s really hard to explain. You just feel it.” 

Even the bathroom at Timberyard is cool. The industrial-looking space, located in the basement, evokes an avant-garde art installation as the sound of wine fermenting plays over the speakers. It’s all part of the overall goal of making diners feel immersed in the experience, whether they’re booked in for the shorter lunch menu, which costs £55, or the full dinner tasting menu, which costs £160. Stratfold wants guests to “get lost in the moment” throughout their visit. 

“There needs to be a warmth,” he says. “You need to feel relaxed and at ease. And I want everything to feel generous. We talk about abundance and generosity. We need to be generous with our time. We need to be generous with our produce. We don’t want people to feel uptight. I know all the restaurants say that now, but it’s true. When they step into Timberyard, it’s important to us that people don’t have the sort of tense shoulders that can come with fine dining.”

Timberyard received its first Michelin star in 2023. But Stratfold is prouder of the restaurant’s green star, which was awarded in January, only a few months after he was promoted to executive chef. It’s something Timberyard was aiming to achieve, and the team implemented sustainable measures to help get there. Stratfold also knows the green star isn’t the end of the road. 

“It’s going to be a continuous journey,” he says. “We’ve got a lot more to do, and that’s for our own gratification. Yes, the star puts the guest at ease, and they can come in knowing that we’re being a bit more responsible. We’ve done a lot on the sourcing and the provenance side of things, but that’s also because you get better produce by doing that. It seems weird to not try and find the best things from the most dutiful, diligent people. And we’ll keep doing that better.” 

Along with Timberyard, Stratfold oversees the menus at Edinburgh wine bar Montrose and chic new opening Haze, which is located on the Leith shore. All three are owned by the Radford family of restaurateurs, and emphasize a modern Scottish identity. Stratfold and Timberyard’s sommelier, Jo Radford, have gone so far as to dub the style “new Scottish.”

“We’re trying to define new Scottish,” Stratfold says. “The food of Scotland is well-known around the world. Everybody knows haggis, everybody knows porridge. It’s rugged food for harsh winters and hard labor, so people don’t always refine it. But as we’ve been diving into the repertoire for the preservation methods, we’ve tried to showcase the Scottish larder and present it to the wider audience. Sometimes we’re put in the new Nordic bracket, but we want to be defined by where we are because we’re proud of that.” 

Whatever you want to call Timberyard’s style, it’s compelling. The dishes are simultaneously familiar and unique, and you’re likely to discover a new ingredient during the meal. Stratfold’s intended narrative is clearly woven throughout each course, creating a memorable experience that may help you seem just a little bit cooler.