Meet the Chef: Interview with Emily Scott

Emily Scott’s name hangs over the door of one of Cornwall’s hottest restaurants. Dream Escape talks to the understated chef who was selected to cook for the G7 and is making waves with her seasonal, rustic style.

You will very easily know what time of year it is by what's on your plate, it’s all about the seasons,” says chef Emily Scott, whose restaurant – Emily Scott Food – is located on the seawall overlooking the frothing surf and vast buttery sands of Watergate Bay in Cornwall.

While many chefs are inspired by their locale, Emily’s cooking is veritably infused with her surroundings –samphire is foraged from secret nearby coves, sea herbs picked as dawn lights the surf off the county’s northern beaches and her six-course tasting menu is centred around fish and seafood from Cornish waters.

“At the moment – literally outside the restaurant – we've got sea beets and sea purslane growing on the cliff side. We pick gorse flowers, which have a lovely vanilla creaminess. I've just made a fudge recipe with them, which is so pretty.

“There's a place where we go and forage for samphire, which goes on the menu. My team are all passionate about this way of cooking – so I’ll often find that when I arrive at the restaurant a couple of my chefs have been out foraging early in the morning.”

Emily Scott Food is the chef’s first solo restaurant. Diners are treated to a stripped back, effortlessly relaxed ambience and a seasonal, produce-led menu.

“I wanted the aesthetic to be quite pared back – from the glassware to the table settings. My napkins are tea towels but they’re really lovely and look beautiful. Although we're cooking at a high level, it’s still quite relaxed.”

Recalling large, convivial family meals and a childhood filled with bustling tables, Emily says her restaurant celebrates time together, a space and a place.

“You come to my restaurant for good food, good wine and, luckily, we are right on the seawall, so it’s a pretty cool location. My ethos is all about gathering together around a table because I think that's one of the best places ever.”

The success of the restaurant, she muses, comes down to consistency and letting the ingredients do the talking. Emily’s dishes are creative but not overworked and, more often than not, it is her beloved Cornwall that provides her with recipe inspiration and a rich bounty of produce.

“I think one of my favourite dishes at the restaurant at the moment is our lobster with a tomato and elderflower vinaigrette. It's very simple and so gorgeous. I'm quite nostalgic about food, so I also love our lobster take on a classic prawn cocktail. We serve the lobster with a lobster claw cream salad, a Mary Rose sauce and a charred little gem lettuce.”

With her name above the door, Emily believes it is more important than ever to stay true to her roots. “I want guests to know that they’re in my restaurant,” she says. “I want my diners to know that there is a person behind it, and it’s not just a brand or interior designed by a studio. It’s all very personal – I've just potted the mint from my garden and put it in little pots on the tables today. I feel like I have guests to lunch and dinner every day because we're always thinking about all these small details.”

High tides

The restaurant began life in May 2021 as a pop-up in the former site of Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen at Watergate Bay (it has since moved to Watergate’s seawall). Serving simple, seasonal, stylish food in a breathtaking setting, Emily enjoyed rave reviews, and that summer the G7 came calling.

“I got a call and they said we've got a client that wants to speak to you. So they set up a Zoom call and the client turned out to be the Cabinet Office,” Emily says.

After making the cut, Emily was commissioned by the Cabinet Office to host a dinner for royalty and the world leaders at the G7 summit at the Eden Project.

“I was given permission to curate every move of this dinner – it wasn’t just about the food, I was responsible for the look, the style and curated the flowers, the vases, the place settings, the glassware – even the waiters’ uniforms.”

The first woman to cook for leaders at the G7, Emily says it was a standout, career-defining moment.

“It was an incredible experience. I remember at one point standing in a circle with members of the Cabinet Office on one side and the American secret service on the other, and there I was in the middle telling them how the evening was going to run and what was going to happen. It’s moments like that when you just think ‘how on earth did I get here?’”

The menu she chose for the G7 dinner was brimming with the chef’s signature style. “For the starter, I served melon gazpacho – pretty and wonderfully colourful. We followed with turbot on the bone with a miso beurre blanc sauce. I wanted to stick to the ethos of what we do at the restaurant and showcase stunning fish,” says Emily.

“We had a pavlova with English strawberries and an elderflower syrup for pudding. For petits fours I made fudge and little mini soft-serve cornets as a play on old-fashioned Cornwall. After all, who doesn't like a 99er (ice cream cone with Flake chocolate bar)? I was told President Biden has a very sweet tooth and I think he had three of the ice creams. He loved it – some of his secret service detail told us they had never seen him so relaxed.”

Emily’s pared down, coastal-cool aesthetic – featuring informal glassware, wildflower-adorned tables, and rustic place settings – was not the usual preserve for heads-of-state dinners and did take some getting used to.

“I worked with the Foreign Office who were fantastic, but they were used to very formal occasions with all the butlers in white gloves and so on, so it was quite a change. I remember the Foreign Office telling me, ‘Oh, by the way, they won't stay very long, they won't eat anything and it'll be quite an unrelaxed dinner”. On the day, the dignitaries ate everything, they stayed longer than they said they would and it was all so relaxed. Several heads of state were chatting with me about my cooking. I’m so grateful for the experience, it was amazing.”

Still waters run deep

Emily’s passion for provenance and produce-led cooking was fostered at a young age.

“My grandfather was half-French and they lived in Provence,” she recalls. “Life there was always about coming together around a table and sharing good food. And if I wasn't in France with my family, we were in Cornwall with my father's side of the family where, again, life was about sharing your day around the dinner table. They all grew their own food and enjoyed simple, great cooking.”

Emily trained in Burgundy as a teenager, honing her knowledge of classical French techniques, and then in London. In her early twenties Emily moved to Cornwall and made her name at the Harbour Restaurant in the charming seaside village of Port Isaac. In 2014 she moved inland to the chocolate-box countryside village of St Tudy, transforming the pub into a revered restaurant with rooms, which was awarded a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

“The pub was great, I achieved so much there and I look back with great pride. But pubs are tough and I wouldn’t want another one! You're having to please so many people – I was the landlady, the chef, the front of house, the one that would sit down and have a drink with locals, and I was also a mother of three. Now, with my restaurant, it’s more focused and more like… ‘this is what I do, if you like it, we can’t wait to see you’.”

Tides and tomes

The enduring appeal of Cornwall and its influence on the chef is not just evident in Emily’s restaurant life. Her new cookbook, Time & Tide, is a joyful collection of coastal recipes organised by the ebb and flow of life by the sea.

Leafing through the pages, readers are transported to the emerald coves, soft pastures and wild clifftops of the county, as Emily paints a vivid picture of her Cornish life and details her seasonal and rustic recipes. Chapters take fondly scribed titles such as ‘Morning Café [gently does it]’, ‘My Kitchen Table [child-like wonder]’ and ‘On the Boat [ahoy there],’ and the recipes range from breakfasts of homemade crumpets to tasty orange-zested doughtnuts with lemon curd treats, lunches of sea-herb focaccia and one-pot spaghetti puttanesca suppers or chou-fleur roasted with tarragon, butter and sherry.

Soiree inspiration comes in the form of dishes for relaxed, easy entertaining – salt-baked sea bass or monkfish and saffron curry – or succulent meat recipes roasted over open fire.

‘This is my life by the sea,’ Emily writes, ‘where hawthorn and gorse bloom and tamarisk trees meet the edges of the cliffs, where wild coastal flowers – fennel, teasels and ox daisies – drift down to the edge of the sea.’

Handily, the pages of Time & Tide are also sprinkled with tips on the best suppliers, along with passages on sea herbs and wildflower picking.

Like her restaurant, Emily's cookbooks are authentically rooted in her passions and her way of life. Describing a perfect Sunday, Emily says she likes to be up and out with nature but return home for a late and drawn-out lunch, with something cooking over an open fire.

“But the day will start with a walk by the sea,” Emily says. “Always, always head to the coast.”

Emily Scott’s Cornwall

• I love Rick Stein's Seafood restaurant – it’s legendary and always has a great atmosphere. Rick Stein has been such a trailblazer for Cornwall, he really champions it and has put it on the culinary map.

• Harlyn Bay is very special. We have a house there and the beach is magical and holds so many memories.

• The beauty of Cornwall is you can hop from the north to the south coast and discover a completely different landscape. The south coast is softer, with sailing boats and verdant gardens, while the north is wilder and the weather ever changing. On the south coast, I always enjoy going to Hotel Tresanton near St Mawes.

• If you relish being by the sea and eating outside, The Hidden Hut, tucked away along the coast path near Portscatho on the Roseland Peninsula, is really lovely.

• Land’s End is what I often call the ‘real Cornwall’. It’s so dramatic – head for nearby Gurnard’s Head for lunch.

Recipes and stories from my coastal kitchen Time & Tide by Emily Scott is available by Hardie Grant, £28.

Time & Tide by Emily Scott

Find out more

David Tobin, Owner and Director

“Spending many summers and making frequent family trips to Cornwall, I share Emily’s love of this wonderful county. Her coastal influences and ingredients are all very familiar to me and it is a pleasure to have such wonderful culinary experiences on our doorstep at Watergate Bay. We are excited to be encouraging more Dream Escape visitors to the southwest to explore this beautiful corner of Britain.”

→ david@dreamescape.co.uk

WORDS | CHANTAL HAINES