What: An ambitious but fairly casual farm-to-table restaurant in Edinburgh’s Stockbridge neighbourhood that only uses Scottish produce. Two years in the making, Moss offers a creative a la carte menu alongside a drinks list that is sourced exclusively from the UK.
Who: Moss is the debut restaurant project from former Noma chef Henry Dobson. Prior to his four-month stint at the world famous Copenhagen restaurant he attended Ballymaloe Cookery School. Following Noma he worked briefly at a number of top restaurants in Japan including Maz and Kabi. Originally from Japan, Dobson’s artist wife Akiko has made nearly all the ceramics in the restaurant and will use the space as a showroom of sorts for her work. The restaurant’s head chef is Konstantinos Sakellariou, who was most recently head chef at Edinburgh’s now closed Kuzina.
The food: Moss was originally supposed to be a tasting menu-only restaurant but Dobson pivoted to a la carte at the last minute due to (valid) concerns that the market for tasting menu places in the Scottish capital was at saturation point. Made using produce sourced from his own family farm near Dundee and a select group of artisan suppliers, his impressively creative menu includes celeriac with barley fudge, hazelnuts and crème fraîche; halibut with blue spirulina, shio koji and pepper dulse (pictured below); roe deer with cep, damson, carrot and dauphinoise; and toasted chiffon (a type of Japanese sponge cake), rose cream, apple, miso, and fig leaf snow. Speaking to Restaurant ahead of the launch, Dobson said that he oversees a kitchen team that is creative but is done with the relentless pressure of very high-end places and fussy plating and that his restaurant “will be a rehab centre for ex-fine dining chefs”.
To drink: Moss offers a tight but well-chosen selection of English wine that starts at just £32 a bottle (Dobson admits he’s had to take a bit of a hit on the margin to offer wine at an approachable price point). The liquid offer is rounded out by a few beers and hard-to-find Scotch whiskies and some house-made softs including kombucha and a spruce and lemon verbena shrub.
The vibe: On the former site of French restaurant Satine Saint Stephen, Moss seats 26 covers and has a Scandi-inspired look. Akiko’s ceramics are typically a punky, colourful take on Wabi-Sabi (which is often translated as ‘flawed beauty’) but she has toned things down for Moss creating beautiful plates and bowls that have a hand-built, asymmetrical feel. “Anyone can create symmetry. To craft something that looks natural is the real challenge,” Dobson says.
And another thing: As one might expect given Scotland’s climate, there is a focus on preserving ingredients (techniques include pickling, shrubbing, koji-based fermentation and freezing). As the restaurant evolves, Dobson plans to focus on the growing and preservation side of the operation and leave most of the cooking to his team.
112 St Stephen St, Edinburgh EH3 5AD
