Beyond the Plate: A conversation with Chef Scott Smith, Blank Plate Creative
- James Massoud
- 3 hours ago
- 6 min read
Former Fhior and Norn chef Scott Smith has entered a new chapter with Blank Plate Creative, his Edinburgh-based hospitality consultancy, alongside a new partnership with 1820 Rooftop Bar at The Johnnie Walker Experience.
The acclaimed Scottish chef talks to The Knife about restaurant economics, the lessons failure teaches, why simplicity is harder than it looks and how his definition of success has changed after a decade at the sharp end of hospitality.
At what point did you realise your greatest value wasn’t just cooking food, but helping other people build restaurants?
Probably when I started noticing that the problems I was solving weren’t always about food. They were about team structure, margins, workflow, confidence and helping people understand what their restaurant was actually trying to be.
Cooking will always be at the centre of what I do, but I’ve learned that a good dish can’t rescue a confused business. Helping someone build a restaurant that works for the guests, the team and the owners can have a much bigger impact than simply writing them a menu.
In an era where chefs might sometimes feel pressured to create dishes that photograph better than they taste, do you think simplicity has become the more difficult thing to achieve?
Absolutely. Simplicity leaves you nowhere to hide.
When there are only three or four things on a plate, every ingredient has to be right and every decision has to make sense. You can’t distract people with 10 garnishes and a cloud of smoke.
Social media has created pressure to make food instantly impressive, but the dishes people really remember are usually the ones that feel inevitable, like nothing could be added or taken away. Getting to that point is incredibly difficult.
Growing up in Aberdeenshire, where seasonality was simply how your family ate, how much of that childhood still influences the decisions you make in the kitchen today? Is there a lesson from those early years that professional kitchens sometimes forget?
It influences almost everything. We didn’t talk about seasonality as a philosophy; you simply ate what was available. When something was in abundance, you used it, preserved it and appreciated it while it lasted.
Professional kitchens can sometimes forget that food doesn’t need to be available all year round. There’s value in waiting for something and then letting it disappear again.
That sense of anticipation is important. Strawberries should feel exciting. Wild garlic should feel temporary. When everything is available all the time, ingredients lose some of their meaning.
Norn and Fhior both earned huge critical acclaim, yet you speak very openly about the commercial pressures behind running restaurants. Looking back now, what truths about the industry do you wish more young chefs understood before opening their first place?
Being a good chef and running a good restaurant are two completely different jobs.
You can have brilliant reviews, a full dining room and still be losing money. Young chefs are often taught to chase recognition, but not always taught how to read a profit and loss statement, manage cash flow or build a sustainable working culture.
Passion is essential, but passion doesn’t pay suppliers. Before opening a restaurant, understand your numbers, know who your customer is and be honest about the life you’re creating for yourself and your team.
You’ve described making 'expensive mistakes' during your restaurant journey. Without necessarily naming one, what’s the biggest lesson that failure has taught you that success never could?
Failure taught me that effort doesn’t guarantee the outcome you want.
You can work incredibly hard, care deeply and still get things wrong. That’s difficult to accept, particularly in kitchens, where we’re conditioned to believe that working harder is always the answer.
Sometimes the answer is to stop, change direction or admit that the original idea isn’t working. Success can make you feel like your instincts are always right. Failure makes you question them, and that can be much healthier.
Your new menu for 1820 Rooftop Bar at The Johnnie Walker Experience sits alongside world-class cocktails. Has designing food to support drinks challenged your creativity in ways that traditional restaurant cooking never has?
It has, because the food can’t behave as though it’s the only thing in the room.
In a traditional restaurant, the dish often leads the experience. At 1820, the food and drinks need to speak to each other but never take away from each other. The dining style is different as it is made for sharing, exploring and having some fun.
It’s a different discipline. Sometimes the best decision is to pull something back rather than add more. That restraint has been creatively refreshing.
Scottish produce has always been central to your cooking, but Scotland’s larder is receiving more international attention than ever. Which ingredients do you still think deserve far more recognition than they’re currently getting?
Our vegetables probably deserve more attention. People understandably talk about Scottish seafood, beef and game, but there are growers producing extraordinary vegetables, grains and pulses.
I’m also fascinated by ingredients such as seaweed, wild herbs and lesser used parts of animals and fish. Scotland has an incredibly varied landscape, and that diversity is reflected in what we can eat.
The opportunity now is to talk about Scottish produce without turning it into a cliché.
You trained under Geoffrey Smeddle at The Peat Inn before finding your own voice with Norn and Fhior. Looking back, can you pinpoint the moment when you stopped cooking like your mentors and started cooking like Scott Smith?
I don’t think there was one dramatic moment. It was more a gradual process of removing things. When you’re young, you absorb the habits and techniques of the chefs you admire. That’s how you learn. Eventually, you start asking why you’re doing something rather than simply repeating it.
Norn was probably where I became more confident in trusting ingredients and my own instincts. I stopped trying to make food look like somebody else’s idea of fine dining and started thinking more honestly about the food I wanted to eat.
When you walk into a struggling restaurant for the first time, what are the first warning signs that tell you the problems run deeper than the menu?
The atmosphere usually tells you very quickly.
If the team looks disconnected, nobody seems clear about their role and the owner is trying to control every decision, the menu is rarely the main problem. You also notice whether the restaurant understands who it is for. A lot of struggling businesses are trying to appeal to everybody and end up meaning very little to anyone.
The other warning sign is when nobody knows the numbers. If people can tell you exactly how they want a dish plated but not what it costs, there’s work to do.
The hospitality industry has changed dramatically over the past decade, from rising costs to changing guest expectations. If you were opening your very first restaurant in 2026 instead of 2016, what would you do completely differently?
I’d start smaller, protect the cash and make the business model much more flexible.
When we opened Norn, there was a romantic idea that if the food was good enough, everything else would follow. I wouldn’t rely on that now. I’d spend far more time understanding the customer, testing the concept and making sure the restaurant could adapt without losing its identity.
I’d also build a healthier working structure from day one. A restaurant shouldn’t depend on the owner or head chef being physically present for every hour of service. That isn’t dedication; eventually, it’s a design flaw.
You’ve experienced the highs of awards, television and critical acclaim, but you’ve also experienced closures and fresh starts. How has your definition of success changed since opening Norn almost a decade ago?
At the beginning, success was recognition. Reviews, awards and full dining rooms felt like proof that we were doing something worthwhile.
Now, success feels much quieter. It’s a stable business, a team that enjoys coming to work, suppliers who are treated properly and enough headspace to remain creative.
Awards are lovely, and I’d be lying if I said they didn’t matter. But they’re a moment. Building something that can last and having a life outside it is far more meaningful.
When people eat your food today, what do you hope they’re left remembering?
I hope they remember how it made them feel rather than being able to list every component. I’d like the food to feel generous, thoughtful and connected to where we are. There should be moments of surprise, but never at the expense of enjoyment.
