Chef Interview: From Covid Era Idea to bustling café

In this edition, we sit down with the brothers behind Edinburgh’s bustling Deacons House Café — a historic spot serving simple, fresh, crowd-pleasing food to more than 700 customers a day. From their early days making fresh pasta with a small machine and two pans, to taking over one of the city’s most storied cafés, their journey is a mix of grit, and smart simplicity. Discover how location, quality, and a clear vision turned a Covid-era idea into a thriving food business.

Can you tell us a little about Deacons House Café?

It’s a Scottish café. Its good food, it’s simple. You can go form anything from breakfast to quick lunch, soups, and sandwiches. There is a lot of history in the building, related to Deacon Brodie back in the 1700s. We have all the cakes we make on site we have a baker. Everything is fresh. We get over 700 customers per day in 7 hours from 9-4pm.

What do you think makes the business so busy and successful?

To be honest the location is a big part of it. The place has a long story behind it and the tourists love that. We have a story telling through the business and through the location. And then importantly, we have good service, good food, good reviews. Every week we have people who come for breakfast and then back from a cake in the afternoon or come back one year after another which is a good sign for us.

How did you both get started in food and eventually open your own business?

We both worked in the same restaurant for 5- 6 years. At some point we both decided to move. He went to Chile, I went to Dubai. One day I said ‘do you want to start a business?’ We decided to come back to Edinburgh because we had connections here. We had the idea for a while to start a fresh pasta business. I don’t know where it came from but we always talked about it for many years. It started as a Covid project. Setting up a kitchen in 2020 seemed like a better idea that setting up a restaurant, much lower cost and a restaurant was not possible at the time for us. We made fresh pastas on site.

What were those early days like?

Very small, very intense. We sublet a kitchen, and making fresh pasta just for delivery customers. We started with a tiny pasta machine and 2 pans from Lidl. 5 months, no day off. From then we had a food stall in Edinburgh Street Food and then we took over the café July 2024.

What advice do you have for someone starting a business?

Keep things simple. Don’t try to make too much at the start. I think that’s where we struggled in the beginning. Start small with one product and then build from that. Sometimes less is more.