Three Food Memories
The things you find out when you ask people about their food memories can be soulful, spicy, sensational, sour, and sublime. Often you'll discover something you never knew about the person you asked - and this is what the Three Food Memories podcast is about, how every food memory is linked to a moment in time.
Three Food Memories is hosted by Savva Savas, dad of twin boys, entrepreneur, caterer, and creator. In each episode Savva chats with a guest who shares three food memories and a social cause close to their heart, revealing far more about themselves than what they’ve tasted.
Be prepared for some hilarious and otherwise never-heard-before stories, and if you love listening - please tell your friends (and like, subscribe, and follow for all the goodness!)
Three Food Memories
Emily Scott, chef, restaurateur and author
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
"When we were plating President Biden's food up the Secret Service swapped out the plate to make sure no one was trying to kill him off." - Emily Scott
On Emily's menu: fresh peaches in France with Papa, cooking with Ma, and restaurant life.
Sides include: cooking for the Queen and ticking the "Mother Box", life by the sea, and the ups and downs of running your own business.
Emily's social cause is the Marine Stewardship Council - an international non-profit organisation on a mission to stop overfishing. When you buy fish and seafood with the blue MSC ecolabel, you're helping to protect our oceans and driving change above and below the water.
Emily's books, Sea & Shore, Time & Tide and Home Shores, are a beautiful celebration of food, story and the coast she calls home.
For our Aussie listeners, keep an eye out for Emily at writers' festivals around the country in 2027
To find out more about the project and Savva - head to threefoodmemories.com
Insta - @savvasavas @threefoodmemories
Email us at threefoodmemories@plated.com.au, we'd love to hear from you!
TFM is produced and edited by Lauren McWhirter with original music by Russell Torrance.
With a two piece of world leaders or table of two table of the same way. With a clear and elegance that lingers long after a tide has been cleared and a tight has been turned. From advanced and bordered to Cornwall and the Cayman Islands, it's followed what felt like the pull of the tide. Creating a life taped by place and instinct. Emily Scott, welcome to Tracy Memories.
SPEAKER_04Well, thank you so much. So nice to be here with you. Well, as I said to you earlier, bonjour. I mean, I'm I'm in Bordeaux at the moment, so it feels apt to say hello in French.
SPEAKER_02How wonderful to have you on the show. Not just for your memories, but for your mini food tour that we're about to go on. We're about to skip like three countries or we'll skip through three countries. People usually follow the sun, but you seem to follow the seasons and the bounties that they bring. How did you manage that, Emily?
SPEAKER_04It was if I wish I could tell you it was all beautifully planned, but in true style, I have kind of just I kind of gone with the flow and gone with opportunity. So um my story starts in Cornwall, really. Cornwall is where my my true heart is because that's where I um moved to when I was 23, and that's where my children have grown up, and that's very feels very much like home. So I was very lucky to spend a lot of time in this beautiful, beautiful county, which I know you want to visit, and I think you might fast track that after I've you know I'm not working for the tourism board, but I think you might fast track your visit. Um, and then just through opportunity, and also if if we weren't in Cornwall as children, because I spent a lot of time in Cornwall, we were in France because my grandfather was half French. So Cornwall and France are two places that I've known my all my life. And um, and then the Caribbean, well, that was a curveball that I didn't see coming, but uh I seem to be spending most of my time on the shores of the Caribbean at the moment. So Bordeaux has become more of a place where I spend high days and holidays. Cornwall, where I catch up with my children, although they're quite busy because they're older and kind of moved away from home. So my life has been very interesting, and that is down to just saying yes to opportunity and to kind of just slightly winging it if that's if that's okay.
SPEAKER_02So let's look at this. You you're not shy to say yes, you're always open to opportunity, and the sea's never too far away. First of all, what's star sign? Are you a water sign of any description? I'm cancer. Okay. Okay.
SPEAKER_04Maybe you have something to do with it.
SPEAKER_02How'd how do these three things come together for you?
SPEAKER_04Well, I've always loved cooking, I guess, and I've always loved bringing people together. So as a family, I was brought up in a house where we were always brought together through food and a table, and that culture, I guess, my grandfather being half French, there is a certain way the French do it so well. So that's been kind of that's part of my DNA. And then with with Cornwall, I I kind of I married a fisherman by the sea, so this is all gonna sound very romantic. It was very romantic, and then I found my love for food, and you know, I I never was gonna be that stay-at-home mother, as my children would have said, would say now, you'd have made a terrible stay-at-home mother. But I managed to balance both, but it was always by the sea. So the sea and the seasons became very important in what I do and how I feel about cooking, how I feel about bringing people together.
SPEAKER_02Let's start from where you are right now, Bordeaux. Now, the um the thermostat tells me it's 16 degrees. We're looking at warm days, market runs, and a wine or two. What's it like to be in Bordeaux right now?
SPEAKER_04Well, what I love about this city is that I found it through the eyes of my partner Mark, who was a winemaker for 15 years here. So Bordeaux was never on my radar. You know, my grandfather they moved to um Bagnol en Forêt, so deep in the Prov Provence uh countryside. So Bordeaux was somewhere I knew but didn't know, and I spent some time in Burgundy as well. But um, Mark made wine here for 15 years very successfully, and then once my youngest, we've got five children between us, and once my youngest went to uni, he said, why don't we just try and have a bit of an adventure and and spend some time in Bordeaux? So in true style, I said, okay, let's do it, and that's why we're here. But I'm beginning to find it, well, discover it, I guess, through myself and making friends and connections and trying to learn the language, which is really hard. But you know, baby steps, and uh I've kind of given up trying to be perfect as well, which is a real revolution, revelation, sorry. And um days here are like none other. There's a r it's a wonderful city, it's very cool, it's very friendly, it's unlike any other French city I've been to.
SPEAKER_02Now, Bordeaux, it's an interesting time to be in Bordeaux right now because it's opening itself up to the world outside of outside of its viticulture. Um, we are seeing, you know, you know, new influences of restaurants come from say Hong Kong, from Brazil, from Italy, and these new tastes are being shaped by the younger diners. And what I'm finding is that but astronomy. Um it's the curious case of Benjamin Butter. There's there's a youthfulness coming into the city, isn't it? It's it feels alive.
SPEAKER_04It's so alive, but uh what what I can tell you is is that it's feels so it feels so kind of it doesn't matter where you're from or what what you what you do, everyone is just super welcoming and there's a kind of relaxed sense that is so nice here. You know, I mean not that I have been known to walk through the park in my pyjamas, but if I did, no one, you know, everyone looks kind of relaxed and cool and probably would just be like, you know, morning, you know, or maybe not, maybe my own pajamas is going too far. But you know, in Paris or other cities I've been to, you've always felt like you've had to kind of leave the building all kind of, you know, really kind of thoughtful and like, what am I wearing? How am I looking? And here is just like just such a sense of just being alive and a sense of place and a sense of be who you are, and that's really nice.
SPEAKER_02So, what are you finding in the marketplace that you're bringing home in a in a basket or a Hessian bag? Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_04Well, I've only been back, I've been away for six months, so I've just literally come back. So, what's so so exciting here for me when I come back is that everything is early, so that asparagus is is ready, whereas in formal with kind of end of May for asparagus or mid-May. Strawberries, strawberries are amazing at the moment, and they're early because in the UK they're kind of due, June, July. And I always talk about cooking within the seasons and always kind of you know, just like use or think about cooking with what the universe has to offer at the time because that that the universe is telling you something there. Um, so the market is just and peonies if you love flowers. If I haven't been a cook, I think I've been a florist. So the peonies are out, and it's just really exciting. And um, I think I had asparagus strawberries. Um, I there's an amazing man at the market who is from the Pyrenees who sells the most delicious cheese. So I talked to him. We have the same conversation every time, but I feel like we could be coming friends now. It's just a really lovely, really lovely vibe at the market. There's this amazing stall who does he just does herbs. He who knew that you could make a living just selling herbs and he has every single herb that you could possibly want. And then you can have there's a pick and mix of salad. I mean, who knew that was a thing? You know, it's amazing.
SPEAKER_02And that feeling of walking through the market. And do you get it, do you get yourself a little treat or a little pastry, something to go with a coffee as you're working?
SPEAKER_04Well Well, it has I have been known to do that. In fact, um my father was here over the weekend and um he hasn't been to the market, so we kind of we went for it. So you have your cannelae from the patisserie store, uh, which she sells the most wonderful chocolate fondant cakes as well. Um, and then she sells little mini cannelais, so that is like a caramelized custard. It's very um one of the kind of things if you come to Bordeaux, you must try. And then we we kind of went around the market, and then you end up at the bar and you might have a little glass of Bordeaux, you know, Tessac or glass of Bordeaux to finish your shopping. I know I think it was after midday, you'll be glad to hear, you know, it or it's midday somewhere, but you know, it's it was that sense of sharing someone for the first time with lovely, but but usually, you know, I'm a little bit more steamist than that. I would just kind of maybe have I've got a sweet tooth, so I'd always stop and have something. Or if if if the if the vendors are saying, please try this, I'll always try. I don't want to be rude.
SPEAKER_02I can I I'm completely there with you. So one of your earliest food memories is eating a white peach with your half French Papa, your grandfather.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so uh so Marnie and Papa, so Papa is half French, but more French than than uh than English. And um they moved to Provence for I mean we're there for 20 years, so as children we'd always go down and stay with them. And you know, I can remember sitting in the back of their yellow citron with the the leather seats and taking the bumpy road up through the through the kind of I guess the forest because it was Banu L'Anfore. So we're going up the mountain, very dusty. I can still smell the car. Um we're talking kind of late, I'm gonna age myself, like kind of early 80s, mid-80s. So a lot of wonderful holidays. And for breakfast, Marnie, we'd have to go and we'd well first of all, my sister and I, my brothers never came with came with us on the milk run, but we'd go with Papa in his yellow citron to um to the farmer to buy the milk, and we were only allowed the milk if we asked for it in French. So all the way to the um farmer, my sister and I would be going, J'ai vu ce que du lacey vous plaît, je vis du lace replay, like we've got to get the milk, we've got to get the milk. And um, we had this wonderful like memory of doing this, and we did it, even though we probably went bright red and thought, oh, what is is he going to understand? But we got the milk, and then we'd come back, and Marnie would have laid a very relaxed table for breakfast. So imagine kind of French kind of bricant furniture on the terrace, the crickets, the kind of the heat of the morning already, and then the smell of lavender and rosemary, and that real sense of kind of being cocooned in this wonderful, kind of safe world of high days and holidays, I'd call it. So um Marnie would have laid breakfast with croissant, we would have jam, apricot jam, kind of strawberry jam, all the jams, but they always seemed to be kind of so much brighter and would taste more delicious than any jam that I'd ever tried before. Everything kind of felt heightened. Um, and we'd sit and have breakfast, and Papa would always bring out melons, always melons, because the melon man would turn up at the end of the road. So we'd go and choose the melons. And always remember kind of walking up the drive with more than one melon, thinking, you know, gosh, that's quite a lot of melons, but anyway. Um but the peaches were a real memory for me because we'd sit, he'd cut, he'd sit, and he would cut with one kind of a slightly old, very well-used knife he'd have, and he'd cut the peach and it would just open onto the plate beautifully. And there's something that's such a memory for me, and the smell of the peaches, or you know, when you hold a kind of not a warm peach, but I guess a w warm in the sun or kind of not from the fridge, you hold that and you smell it. That's a really evocative smell for me. It takes me back to kind of that time in my life where we just hung out together, and that franglais, that sense of kind of we're all speaking little bits of French, we'd all be made to have a siesta on the bed at in the after kind of lunch because of the sun. And Papa would then throw the little French sweets, which I can still buy, onto our bed to say, right, you can get up now. And he'd throw one or two, I mean, not kind of throw and hit us hard, but throw them onto the bed. And that was like almost a bell to say you can you can get up now.
SPEAKER_02But what a sweet way to be working with sweets, like little, there you are.
SPEAKER_04And even now, I if anyone comes to stay stay, I put these sweets on their bed or somewhere, you know, with their craft of water. Um, but the peach, the peach is really important and it's a really wonderful memory. And now it's so exciting because last summer our garden is very small here, but I planted a peach tree, an apricot tree, a mirable tree, sort of fig tree. But I had such a bumper harvest of peaches last year. And this year it I haven't been here for a while, and it has just grown so much, and there are so many peaches. We are gonna have more peaches this summer, so that is that for me that kind of connects everything back to that memory.
SPEAKER_02What are you going to make with all those peaches?
SPEAKER_04Oh, well, I did make a couple of peach tartatins last last summer, which were delicious, so good. But I also like eating peach with goat's cheese as well. That's a really nice combination, and oh, just there's nothing better. And you know, I am someone that has, you know, banged the silip simplicity jump drum when it has come been come to cooking. And for me, there's nothing better than eating a perfectly ripe piece of fruit as it is. You know, let's not mess around with it, let's just eat it. You know, I don't need diamonds or you know, expensive cars. Just give me a peach tree.
SPEAKER_02You know, Greek cookbook author Carolina Doriti, she was also a guest on our show, and her first food memory was her grandfather. He was a seafood merchant in Bereus, and she spent her time with him, you know, watching the way he would do business and interact with other merchants. But he gave her what we call in Greek thados, which means courage, boldness, bravery, and and confidence. He was her information, Highway, almost I mean, to the world. He was her internet. What was Papa to you?
SPEAKER_04Oh Papa was just oh, he it gives me goosebumps thinking about him because he was always a very quiet man, um, but he was just warm and just a real sense of of I guess he was always there. I mean, he died when I was 23. So I guess, you know, that's a long time ago now. Long, I'm making myself sound really old, but it was quite a long time ago. But Papa would always arrive and he'd always say, you know, he'd give you three kisses on the cheek, and then he'd say um courage, which basically is have courage. And that's really stayed with me. So it's have courage, keep going. And he was a wonderful artist, and he would sit in the hills of Provence and he he um painted in pastels. So I'm you know, we're all very lucky. We have some some beautiful paintings that he's done over the years, and uh so that's kind of he's always always there, and he he drew maps of France, which I have on the wall here. So it's you know, wine regions because he loved his wine, he loved his food. Um, but very, very, you know, wonderful, wonderful man, as was Marnie, my grandmother. She was kind of out of both my grandmother, she was kind of the kind of fiery, fun grandmother. So there was always we never quite knew which way she was going to be. Was she gonna be fiery or fun? But between them, they bought this wonderful sense of coming together around a table.
SPEAKER_02Now, Cornwall at the moment is a little under 11 degrees, probably a little cooler right now. There's early spring sunshine, and the sea is getting slightly warmer for spring. Now, you didn't grow up in in in in Cornwall. You intentionally chose Cornwall to grow roots and set up shop, literally. Why did you choose Cornwall?
SPEAKER_04I think Cornwall was always there because if we weren't in France as children, my other grandmother had a house there. So Cornwall, kind of we're talking about the north coast of Cornwall, so very rugged cliffs, wild. Um, kind of at the moment it's covered in the most beautiful wildflowers, sea pinks, gorse, you know, it's just it's a beautiful time of year. Cornwall was always there, and then through family connections, I met my husband that I married, and we had three children. So I set up routes because I kind of we we met and and he was a fisherman, and you know, I we had this wonderful life by the sea. But you know, as we all know, life isn't all whatever, you know, things happen and things changes. Um it changes, yes. And uh so we we um we divorced, but we are good friends still, and we have three amazing children. And I chose to stay in Cornwall, even though I got divorced, because it was very important to me for my children to be close to their father. And I also loved Cornwall, it's a wonderful place to be. And that's when I started to kind of thinking, right, you know, what what do I want to do? You know, this isn't just a case of you know, how do I earn money? Although what a lot of it was, but there was always a sense of what what am I good at? What what excites me? And for me, feeding people and bringing people around a table has has always been the thing. And I and you know, you don't have to kind of go far back into my childhood to understand why, because that's as a family, everything is sorted out at a table, everyone comes together. Even when your children are getting older and you know, you kind of you know, you lose them slightly to to the outside world, food always brought them back to me around the table. So Cornwall has been very, very important. And I have maybe by accident or just by a lot of hard work, I kind of, you know, grew a career there through my restaurants. I never, I never really went out to kind of achieve anything, but I always wanted to kind of make people happy through food, and I guess finding my ethos and building, I guess I I've built a small brand within what I do because I'm quite strong at saying this is this is me, um, this is how I do it. Um, and not kind of apologizing for that, not trying to keep up with the crowd or be too chefy or be too ambitious, I guess. Although there's probably a time when I was really fighting for a place, but that's since I've got older, you've probably had this one a lot. Since I've got older, things have changed slightly for me. But Cornwall was instrumental about you know in building my business and reputation, I guess.
SPEAKER_02Did having a a fisherman in the house make it easier for you to understand seafood and how to cook it, prepare it, and what you could actually do with it?
SPEAKER_04I think definitely, I think having that sense of place and watching how hard the fishermen work, because if there is a sense of romance, like you know, the the boats bobbing around in the harbour, you know, coming in and out of the harbour, and you know, a lot of the time it's all quite romantic and a lot of people on holidays, so you get this sense that fishing is quite easy and and you know, like lucrative and not hard at all, but it's one of the hardest and most dangerous industries, really. There is one of them anyway. And um, I guess I also got um to know understand the seasons a lot when it comes to fishing and comes comes to seafood. So I spend quite a lot of time these days trying to kind of especially with my last book that came out, Home Shores, kind of you know, trying to inspire people to think of fish and seafood as as you would a vegetable. You know, it is seasonal, so eat it, cook it when it's in season, when the again when the universe is saying this is at its best. So um definitely living in Cornwall and watching how commu fishing communities work, you know, was was invaluable really.
SPEAKER_02You set up your brand there, your you know, uh Emily Scott of Cornwall. But so successful were you that in 2021 the British Foreign Affairs Department asked you to prepare dinner.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Hey, for the G seven mob that were visiting. Yeah. Now it was a small dinner. Who was at this dinner?
SPEAKER_04So at the time. It was the there were 20 guests at the dinner, and I'd done it. Uh, we'd also done a canopy party for the Queen and the royal family before that. So we had a one event and then a smaller event. But we, you know, uh at the time Boris Johnson was the prime minister, uh, the president of the United States was President Biden, so that was pretty epic. Um, and then Angela Merkel, uh, President Macron and his wife, um, the Italian Prime Minister.
SPEAKER_02Trudeau was there, I think.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, Trudeau, Trudeau was there.
SPEAKER_02The Japanese, the Prime Minister of the time.
SPEAKER_04He was there, yes. I kind of got the call, and then I was I'd been on a long list and then on a short list, and then when I got to the short list, like down to three chefs, I just thought, well, this job has my name all over it because we want to give them something different. They're so used to Michelin style, you know, life and kind of you know, fine dining. And I wanted to to not just cook and prepare the food for them with my team. I wanted to lay the table, I wanted to choose the flowers. So they had mismatched cutlery on the day, and they had like lovely dura durax glasses. They're kind of a French tumbler glass.
SPEAKER_03Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_04All quite like I would lay my table at home. And so it was just like having friends around for dinner, really.
SPEAKER_02Did that take the the the the sting of the pressure and being able to be yourself in a tail in the tablescaping as well as preparing the meals?
SPEAKER_04I think it just felt very natural. And for me to to get this job, which I didn't tell the team until we were like in the minibus on the way to this job. I said we we're cooking for a few people today. This is the menu, and you know, I was quite religious about packing everything, making sure we had everything. One of the best things though is you know, Mark and I, we've got, as I said earlier, we have five children between us, and Oscar, my eldest son, and Mark's daughter Rosie, basically served the world leaders. Then Finn, my son, cooked, he's a chef, he was in the kitchen. Evie, my daughter was handing out canopes to the queen and you know, just casually the royal family, as was Alex, um Mark's um son. Um he was he, I think he was handing drinks out to now, you know, Prince William and and Kate and a few other really well-known people. And we weren't allowed any sort of kind of cameras, obviously. So we have these wonderful memories where you stand there and you just kind of take a picture with your eyes, you know, that real like in the moment.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04And I think that was one of the best moments there when I could see all my children or all our children, and we'd kind of all come together in this kind of typical kind of hospitality family. Like, would you like to do this, John? Would you like to come in, you know? And it was just wonderful. And I thought I have ticked the mother box, I've ticked it, do whatever you want with that experience, but that is quite cool.
SPEAKER_02What did you cook for them?
SPEAKER_04So I had a couple of menus that I'd I'd kind of designed, but I went for melon gazpacho, nice bit of cold soup for them. I thought would be good. But it's really lovely, it's fragrant and a little bit different. And we decorated it with it's kind of very fresh, it's limey, and then on the garnish is uh edible flowers, and it was just really, really, really beautiful and something slightly different. And I was wanting to kind of push the boundaries on that, and then we um did turbot turbot on the bone with a with a butter sauce because fish and sauce, fish and butter, there's nothing better.
SPEAKER_02By the sea, yeah.
SPEAKER_04The turbot was caught. Um, I know I on the menu they knew the PW of the boat, where it was caught, you know. We took them right back. Yeah, it was really special. Um, and so they had turbot with a butter sauce because that is everything actually. If I was gonna ditch the peach, I'd probably have fish and a butter sauce. That was pretty good. And turbot is the king of sea, the king of the sea. And then for pudding, we went very English and we did uh strawberries because it was in June, so Cornish strawberries and a pavlova basically, um, with elder flour, because uh they're they were very, you know, that was the right time of year. And then I did little canopies of Cornish clotted cream, Cornish ice cream, and a corn, a little cornet. So here we we, if you go to the beach, you could get a 99 with a flake. Do you know the Cadbury's flake chocolate flake and ice cream? So we kind of it was a bit of a twist on that, and then we um did little pieces of clotted cream fudge as well. Did you get to mate any of these people? Well, I didn't think I was going to meet any of them because I I'd gone into like I'm doing a job. In my early career, I did a lot of outside catering, a lot of weddings. So you come in, you do what you do, you bring it together, and then you pack the van up and you go home. So I thought, great, this is great. We've managed to do this, we've worked with security, which was really tight. You know, the one of the most fascinating things is when we were plating President Biden's, well Joe Biden's uh food up, the American Secret Service, who literally were by my side for the whole event, swapped out the plate. So if I said this is for President Biden, they'd say, No, it's not, we're gonna take that one. So they they make sure no one's trying to, you know, kill him off. So that was really interesting working at that level of security, which I'd never never experienced. But at the end, Boris Johnson kind of said, you know, said Emily, Emily, you need to come up. So I went up and it was literally all I can explain it to you as was literally being late for a dinner party you'd thrown for friends, literally, kind of screech in and go, I'm so sorry, I'm late. And then suddenly I was sitting amongst all the world leaders just having a chat, and um it was a little extraordinary. And my first cookbook had come out in the world the day before, I think, or that it was coming out the day after. Anyway, it was I think it had come out, and um Jean Christophe, who was who basically ran the front of house for me, who I worked with back in the 90s in Burgundy, so that's the he was running front of house. And JC has a wonderful restaurant in London now, and I just knew he'd be the one to be able to help me kind of do the dance out front with with Oscar and Rosie helping. And he had without me, I don't think I really knew this, but he had got a copy of my book, and then um President Macron's wife Brigitte was just the most amazing woman. She was so warm and lovely, you know, just they were all so kind of interested, and then maybe they're they're politicians, maybe that's what they do, but they didn't need to be so kind of kind and lovely. Anyway, she got hold of my book and she passed it round the table. So I've got this copy of my book that came out, I think it had come out the day before, my first cookbook, which was a bit of a moment for me anyway. And then I've got a copy with you know, Joe Biden wrote kind of You're as lovely as your ability to cook, come to Washington sometime, and Boris has written in it. All of them have written in this book, so that's very special. And we just hung out for like it was at least half an hour.
SPEAKER_02So you're sitting at the table with world leaders, with monarchy, just drinking a glass of whatever you're drinking at the table with them, and it's it was quite fine, it was quite nice wine.
SPEAKER_04Um you'd laugh. I had uh I had a linen apron on and in true style just my Birkin stocks on because I was kind of working. I kind of hadn't, you know, I didn't, I mean, I never really wear white chef jacket. I'm always a little bit more kind of just be myself. But I had a lovely linen apron on in my Birkin stock standing casually next to Joe Biden.
SPEAKER_02Was that an achievement in that ah I just people like what I do? I'm good at this, I'm not. You know, because we all all of us in some degree have a a feeling of imposter syndrome, it it comes up. But I mean you must have wrestled with yourself all the way to the very first plating of the canopy. I can't do this, I can do this, how am I gonna do this? You know, are they gonna like it? What?
SPEAKER_04I don't think I I think it w it was extraordinary, but I've always thrived off that kind of like pressure, I guess. Less so now, although I probably would say I'm I'm choosing with with opportunities now, I'm I'm kind of I promote less is more now, maybe, but I I it it was quite stressful. It was stressful, but I had the most amazing team, and the team at the time I had Emily Scott Food at Watergate Bay, which was the a restaurant I put my name to, and the team was really strong, and my sense of place within Cornwall was really strong. So I just felt like I did, it felt like you know, the Eden project is so beautiful, so you must go and visit there. Um, it just felt like the stars had aligned with kind of how it was meant to be, and and Boris Johnson's wife Carrie was instrumental in in choosing me to cook, and it was really nice because as ever, although it's definitely uh there are a lot more female chefs now. I was always the token female chef, especially in Cornwall. There's you know, I think there are there are a few more now, but it was always I was always up against the boys. So from that perspective, it is quite cool, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, now another memory that really shaped your relationship with food is cooking with your ma.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, definitely, definitely. So this is so so my mother, so sadly, my mother died in December, so it's been a terrible six months without her, and I'm gonna try not to be emotional about talking about her because she was extraordinary, and um life without her is very different. Um, but she was instrumental in she was just the best mum. She didn't she she was a very interesting woman, she was a wardrobe mistress at the Royal Court Theatre, and um she was very creative. Um, she you know, the the homes we lived in were always beautifully dressed, um, not in a not in a chintzy way, but just she made a house a home so effortlessly. And I mean, I think if you came into my house, my sister's house, or my brother's house, we've all done the same. We have this kind of effortless way of making everything feel like connected, um, just and it's not it's it's in a very kind of rustic way, but anyway, but mum she taught me how to cook, really. I'd say we were always cooking together. But it's interesting you asked me, I think I can't remember exactly what you asked me, but I thought I thought about her because actually, through grief, I have this new energy and and all the wonderful memories that connect me back to my mother and the auger, because the auga is instrumental in all this, it kind of has a way of bringing all those memories closer. So, although it's very sad to talk to talk about her because she's not here, she is here because we spent so much time kitchen side together. I have wonderful memories of whisking, stirring. We'd have a little portable. This is growing up, so kind of from the eight, you know, through up to kind of maybe 15, these lovely memories of just hanging out with her and cooking, and she'd have a a portable telly in the corner, and sometimes the Waltons would be on it. Yes, the American Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And we just would she would make these most wonderful cheese straws in the arga, so puff pastry, olive oil, thyme, parmesan, and as if by magic they'd come out, and just just everything around the arga always felt like comforting and warm and wonderful. And then Sunday lunch, which is very British, but you know, making learning to make gravy, that was you know, all down to her. She she was a very good cook, but it was always so effortless. I do have an arger in Cornwall actually, so I do get to cook uh arga side, but there's nothing better than kind of you know, frying an egg on an agar, agar toast. Nothing better. So all those memories of cooking with mum have been so influential. And actually, my first cookbook, there are probab there's a l quite a few recipes that she taught me in that, so that's super special.
SPEAKER_02It's a very it's a nursery rhyme kind of little thing in the kitchen, is I think of Peter Rabbit and and and the mother cooking around what looked like it could be an agar. But my first love of the agar was staying with my friends in England and the house would be so cold, but the minute you stepped into the kitchen and the agar was on, you felt this warmer. Did you just want to sort of tie it up and put your bottom on it and stay there for a while until the coffee.
SPEAKER_04Well, we did. We used to lean into the agar, that was the saying. You know, we'd lean in and you know, whether we were having a cup of tea at tea time with a piece of cake or making scones, or you can make pancakes really well on the hot plate.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_04The world kind of revolved around the kitchen and the agar. So it's really special. And I would definitely, you know, there are a lot of agar cookbooks out there, so if you are cooking on an auga, they're they're quite useful. I I'm a little bit more free and easy with my cooking, but you know, you work it out.
SPEAKER_02Can I ask you, Emily, if you don't mind?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02What is cooking like without mum these days?
SPEAKER_04Oh, what is cooking? Well, it's interesting because I think what's been wonderful about like work has always saved me. So I've been quite busy since she died. She died a week before Christmas, so we were in this very sad, it's a very sad time. But we got her home after six months in hospital, and we were she was at her home when she died, which was a very, very important place for us all because there was no place like Mum's house. And I'm and of course I include my father in that, but mum was the one that kind of dressed the sets, so to speak, and it was always about her bringing everyone together, although he was very important in that. But life without her, see, I went to the Caribbean, so I kind of had a good distraction, but I guess I'm still cooking I cook like I cook like her in a in a way, so um I'm finding comfort comfort through that. And I came back to Cornwall and we spent a week at um my father was away, and I went to help him look, I looked after his dogs or their dogs, and I stayed there. And that was a very odd time because it was a very emotional time, very sad, because I do still think she's gonna walk in the room. It's like she's just popped out. I know that sounds a bit of a cliche, but I haven't experienced death in the sense of losing someone really, really close to me. Like when my grandparents died, that was very sad. But when mum losing a parent is the most extraordinary, extraordinary thing I've ever been through because it's just such a big loss. Um, but I actually the things that I find really comforting are like using her wooden spoons, using her pans, like um there's when we grew were growing up, there was a little um uh glass plate you'd put in a pan. So when you were boiling milk for like maybe I sound really old now again, like we used to kind of if you're having hot milk on Wheatabix or making a hot chocolate, the glass rattles in it when it's coming to the simmer so it doesn't boil over. Um there was a mooly grater, which you know you kind of put together and it grates the most wonderful cheese for a cheese sauce. So cooking without her is it without her here is just awful. But actually, the things like you realize when someone dies, they leave things, and things don't really replace them, but there's definitely comfort in things, and I'm finding that through shapes and memories within her kitchen. A colander can be connected to such a nice memory, or you know, her china or a jug she put cream in at the table, or she had this wonderful like sugar pot. She always loved, she always loved a kind of a cappuccino or a milky coffee, and she always had way too much sugar in it, but her sugar spoon, you know. I we I didn't want to clear out the sugar, but that's a really important part of my mum to me. So it's it's a big, it's a big void without her, but she kind of she does, she she's definitely always she's always in my day somehow.
SPEAKER_02A memory that defines what hospitality means to you today is the restaurant life that you've experienced. Now this was all set up, the theatre of restaurant was clearly all set up by mum and bits from par and your own father. But it's when you started developing your own restaurants and your own way of entertaining that you came into something quite magical.
SPEAKER_04I think so. I think it was interesting because I started off with a tea room, which I loved, and then I opened a very small restaurant in Port Isaac by the sea, uh, which was like literally open the door and the harbour was there. The fishermen would, you know, literally land their catch outside. Um, but that was the harbour, and then I I took on a pub inland, and it wasn't that far from the sea, nothing is in Cornwall, six miles um from kind of the north coast, and I ran a very successful pub. I was a very good landlady. You won a Michelin bib? Oh, I yeah, I had a Michelin bib there, and I was in, you know, the top, I was number 24 or something like that in the top gastrofood pub. So I moved there after I got divorced actually. So it's all quite sad, but I've kind of turned up at this pub thinking this is going to be a good opportunity. I can work, I can bring live with the kids. I lived over the shop, so to speak. So that's why my children are so good at hospitality. So what the locals must have thought of me that day when I rocked in two dogs, three kids, and oh hi, yep, I'm a single mother, here I am.
SPEAKER_03Oh, it's a movie. It's a movie.
SPEAKER_04But anyway, I was I was I it was good and it but it was the hardest thing I've ever done, ever done, because there had to be so many things to so many people. I was the landlady, I was the chef, I was the cleaner, I was just everything, and it and I was trying to be a mother at the same time. But we got there. We got there in the end.
SPEAKER_02It seems that hospitality has really cradled and held you during the high days and the low days. It's been something that you've known. Is it has it been like a security?
SPEAKER_04I guess it's just what what I know and what I I'm good at hospitality and I I'm good at bringing people together and and I guess at the pub I was very ambitious. You know, I did great British menu eyes on TV. I was saying yes to lots of things, not really knowing what I was doing. I was putting myself out there, and then you know, the pub was hard because you know, you you come up against when you're doing something well in true British style, people don't really like to see you doing well. So they find something you're not doing that well and then knock you down for it. And I think that's quite hard. And I I became quite uh I found it quite hard with the well, there was an element of abuse that came with that online or you know, or just it got quite hard. So although I looked like I was like, you know, swimming beautifully along, I was I was really, you know, trying. I mean, I'm not very good swimmer actually, so I don't know why I've used that analogy, but I was like pretty much, you know, drowning in it all, really, even though it all looked so beautiful. So I think it was very I'm very proud of what I did there, but it was very hard. And when COVID hit, you know, sadly, I I had the opportunity to open a restaurant at Watergate Bay, and that's when I put my name to it. Because I think the pub had taught me that you have to own you have to own things a little bit more. And I was never gonna put my name, so to speak, you know, on under the pub I owned, although it clearly was by me. Um I'd never actually put my name to a restaurant, so we we kept the pub kind of going, uh, but then it got really tricky with COVID and and all the all the costs that are involved with that. So I took on this pop-up in Watergate Bay and I put my name above the door, and then I was offered another opportunity um at the end of that summer and opened the a new space right on the water, Emily Scott Food. And and that was a defining moment in the sense of you know, it was an umbrella to everything that I think and feel and I love about hospitality and how I like, you know, it's about how you make people feel, I think. So it was it was a moment having gone through quite a tough time as a pub, which um, you know, it isn't easy to then kind of this new door that opened to say, no, this is you know, it's you just be yourself, put your name to it, be proud of that.
SPEAKER_02How do you maintain your own your hospitality when you have this love struggle push-pull with the machinations of running a restaurant? Because I mean, as we know, hospitality demands quite a lot, and you can't put a price on hospitality to be able I mean, I know this, you know, you got you go to bed and you're thinking about how am I going to execute that dessert? How am I going to where am I going to get XYZ from? What happens if that doesn't you know, you're thinking ahead. How did you manage to just be Generous through all of this.
SPEAKER_04I think the main thing for me was you know, I I'm a great believer in you can't you can do so much on your own. It's understanding what you can do on your own and what you can do as a team. And my teams were everything because I was one person. I mean, I'm quite good at multitasking, but my teams became very important. And I met Mark, I opened the pub in 2014, and I met Mark in about 2016. So that was really nice for me. Suddenly having someone, you know, like a cheer, you know, my kids have always been my biggest cheerleaders actually, as I am for them. And you know, my children are I mean, honestly, the the thought of like how I I I sometimes feel about myself, I can't believe I've produced such amazing kids because they are just like so cool, and and I know I've had a little part to play in that, but they are individually everything we've been through together, it's all been worth those like those moments. And I guess to answer your question, I cried a lot. I I it was tough. I'm not gonna, I mean, there's no other way to say it. It was just really hard. But meeting Mark, and then you know, out of something so awful like COVID, another door opened, and I will always slightly romanticize my pub. But if you offered me a pub again, I'd say, you know what, thanks, but no thanks.
SPEAKER_02Here are the postcards from when I was.
SPEAKER_04You keep going, don't you? You have to keep going. There's no other choice.
SPEAKER_02Well, especially as a mother as well, you have to you have to provide food and shelter um for these people. There you I was as you were speaking about that and thinking about you during that time, you actually didn't have a choice. There was no, no matter how bad you were at swimming, you had to just keep going forward.
SPEAKER_04I had to keep going, but I drowned a lot of the days. And and you know, there are stories that I'm sure they'll tell you, you know, when I was.
SPEAKER_02But did you drown, Emily? Here's my question to you. Did you drown? Did you actually kind of not come back from the bottom of the sea?
SPEAKER_04I did come back. I always came back up, but I definitely I it it affected my mental health, my physical health, and just how I felt about myself because I couldn't keep up physically with you know, I was doing kind of 80-hour weeks, you know, if my chefs didn't turn up or there was an issue, I was stepping I was stepping in all the time for everything. So I don't know how I did that. And I couldn't do that. I couldn't work that like how physically I worked then, I couldn't do that now.
SPEAKER_02Let's have a look at this new paradise, this new heaven that you find yourself in. Cayman Islands, it's giving 29 degrees at the moment. There's sea breezes and alfresco dining. You're an executive chef consultant at a at a restaurant there. How did this end up coming? So from the depths of the bottom of the sea, here you are in some form of paradise.
SPEAKER_04So I kind of, you know, I I was doing well at Watergate Bay, and then we were just we were trying to kind of renegotiate the kind of the I guess the lease there, and it just all became it was just hospitality's hard. No, whatever you're doing, however well you're doing it, it's tough. And I got this email in I think it was kind of around May, and uh from from a very nice um uh man, and he is one of the owners of this restaurant, and um he just he basically kind of said, you know, I'm looking for someone to head. We've we bought a a high-end seafood restaurant, and we're looking for someone to head this. And I was just like, Okay, that's nice. Yeah, do give me a call. So I had a long call um with Tony about this restaurant, and I thought, oh, that sounds really interesting, but then kind of forgot about it, and then he followed up. So I can he always talks about me playing hard to get because I kind of did without meaning to, because I was kind of busy with the restaurant doing other things. Oh, and writing, I've I'd written since 2019. I've my I've written three books, so a book kind of takes two years. So I was busy writing. Anyway, he then came back in touch with me, and at that point I decided to to not carry on the restaurant in Watercape Bay. And with originally I was thinking actually that the Cayman restaurant, the Cornwall restaurant could run together, but you know, I think the Cornwall is the Cornwall for me isn't meant to be at the moment, it's too tough, it's too tough for for you know, renting is too tough just generally, and I don't want to go back into that. But anyway, so I said to I said to Tony, well, you know, I'd like to come out and I would like to meet the restaurant. I know that sounds a bit weird, but I said I'd like to understand what you're doing and how you're doing it, and um went out there and I'd never been to the Caribbean, you know. I'm 50 now. There you go, you've got my age. I and I I've never been to the Caribbean. So I arrived, it's the most wonderful island, the Cayman Islands. It's kind of slightly misunderstood because of pre-judgments, but it's it's nothing like we think it's gonna be. It's absolutely what did you discover? It's the most beautiful, beautiful place. You've got everything you would want to have, but also this it's kind of like stepping slightly stepping back in time as well. Um and um it's it feels quite like Cornwall.
SPEAKER_02How so?
SPEAKER_04Well, I think there are connections to Cornwall and Cayman. Fishman, I'm not not necessarily discovering Cornwall, but there's a lot of similarities. Like in Cornwall, we say um C directly, and in Cayman they say ad directly. So there's lots of things. They have the paddy, we have the pasty. So there's lots of uh the way of life is is dissimilar. You're kind of on the back of people's high days and holidays, and there's a sense, a wonderful sense of kind of you know, rush slowly. I think that's the word I'd use. So I turn up, I go Calypso Grill is on the West Bay. So the island is 26 miles long and you have Seven Mile Beach, which is where all the lovely hotels are, and where you know, if you were to come to the Cayman Islands, I'd say try and stay on here because then you've got the hotel beach sea perfectly with the kids and and just being part of that. But if you want to come to Calypso Grill, you have to kind of take a short, short um drive. But like anything, when you live on something small, everything feels bigger. So it's quite interesting because I'd drive an hour to a good restaurant, maybe more, but you know, it you start, and when everything's so close, everything starts feeling like it's further away. But we're a short drive away um on West Bay, and it's very Caribbean feel. It's it's um the it's uh uh a most amazing restaurant, it's sun-faded colours, yellow, blue. And I walked into this restaurant and it was actually closed for the season. And I walked in and I knew that I would know straight away that if I wanted to have any part of this, and I walked in, and all I can describe it as is like a person. She she, I see this restaurant as uh is like this amazing woman. I don't, and I'm not sure why it's a woman, but it is, and she just gives you this big hug, and it's just like you just want to be there. It's it's wonderful, and it's it's dark furniture. I mean, if you were asked asked me to style it, I would probably would have said, Oh my god, you know, I need to change this, I need to change that. But there's something that just works, it's right on the water, it's it's old school, it's you know, I've ch updated the cutlery, the napkins, the glassware, but I've left pretty much everything as it is because it just works. And it's it's a high-end, you know, we're very busy in the height of the season, we're turning 200 covers a night. We're open three days a lunch, three days for lunch, seven days seven nights a week, sorry, for dinner. And it's you know, we're turning 200, 200 covers. It's getting quieter now, but quiet for us is still a hundred covers a night. So it's it's the most wonderful place.
SPEAKER_02Are you bringing recipes and dishes that you created in Cornwall to Calypso Grill?
SPEAKER_04So what I've done is is because no one likes change, so I've been there three years now, and initially it got quite bumpy, but my pub days, I managed to I managed to kind of steady the ship because I've been I know what it's like. People don't like change. So um there's a lot of calypso classics as we call them. And a lot of people, you know, you will come to Calypso, and most people know what they want to eat before they get to the restaurant. So, and I completely understand that there's memories, there's nostalgia, there's so many things connected to that restaurant for them, um, which there should be. Um, and that's what makes it so wonderful. But I have, we have added some dishes, but in a very quiet, kind of unassuming way. And I've kind of stepped back and you know, no one knows me there. You know, it's an American, predominantly American market. So in that sense, it's been quite nice for me, kind of getting to know people. And it's not about me, it's just about I'm I'm the kind of conductor of this orchestra now, and I'm trying to bring it's very Emily Scott. I mean, if you look at the brand and the website I've created, and I I'm the voice behind all the social media, it's very me, but in a calypso way. So it kind of, you know, it's a wonderful to be part of this restaurant 5,000 miles away, and I orchestrate it some of the year remotely, but I work with a multicultural team. I mean, there's a team of about 30 people, and honestly, if if someone had said, you know, you're gonna fall into a restaurant in the Caribbean and then you're going to kind of be running it and putting your kind of stamp on it in a very gentle kind of, you know, just a very gentle, quiet way. I'd have been like, nah, what? But anyway, there I here I am. I know it's just it's cool.
SPEAKER_02You've chosen um the Marine Stewardship Council as your social cause. Tell me about this organization.
SPEAKER_04So recently I've done since I wrote my third book was all about um fish and seafood, and it was a the toughest book I wrote actually because it's really hard doing one subject. And since that came out a year ago, I've been approached by various organizations that are kind of on a mission to kind of you know stop us overfishing, basically, and think about sustainability and think about provenance and just think about you know how we can help as a consumer. And so that's been you know something that I'm learning about more and more every day, and I'm obviously interested in as a chef and someone that wrote a book, has written a book about fish and seafood and how we can help. And it's it's making small changes, you know, into um into our daily lives. And the Marine Stewardess Council is all about the blue tick. So if you see things in the supermarket with a blue tick, that is basically saying that it has had the Marine Stewardess Council blue tick, and you're buying something that is helping to protect the oceans from being overfished. Um, so I've started working with them and also the fishermen's mission is a course that I've always supported, which is about um raising money for families of fishermen, you know, if they've been lost at sea or, you know, they've gone through hard times, that kind of thing. So, you know, it's all connected to the sea for me, because ultimately, one thing about working in the Caribbean I've understood is when you fly off it and you look down, you just realise how much water there is. We are surrounded by so much ocean, and it's so important to to kind of maybe just be a little bit more considered about you know how we can help and how we can help protect it.
SPEAKER_02Now, Emily, in the spirit of Martha Stewart here at Three Food Memories, we have a a Kitchen Meets Wisdom moment where our previous guest passes their kitchen life guidance to you. Our previous guest was Diana Griggs, an Australian television personality, a broadcaster, and she shares with you to be kind. Now, I I feel this is quite a good one for you because part of me thinks that she's also refer uh referring to kindness inwardly to self. Are you kind to yourself, Emily?
SPEAKER_04I think I'm working on that. I think I've got much better at being kind to myself. You can't be anything else to to anyone if you don't start with yourself, and I think that's really important.
SPEAKER_02What kitchen life wisdom experience would you like to pass on to our next guest?
SPEAKER_04Well, I think so much has changed for me since my mum's died recently, and I think it would probably be rush slowly, which isn't which is a phrase I've already used, I know, but I think it's about just enjoy being in the moment and enjoy those mundane, well, what you think are mundane things, but actually become really important, you know, parts of your what would become really important parts of your day, like you know, enjoy that first cup of tea, enjoy the the ritual of making a cup of coffee and sitting down and having a chat and enjoy the moment.
SPEAKER_02Now you said earlier that the water of the sea is everything to you. For me, I saw it in the very, very beginning. The sea and the waterways set your rhythm, not just in your cooking, but your life too. By tuning in and responding rather than blocking and reacting, what has that taught you about how to live?
SPEAKER_04Again, it's only in the last six months. I think if we'd had had this conversation before my mum had died, I'd had a very different answer for you because it's ch it's fundamentally changed how I feel about so many things. So I think learning to respond and not react is one of the best things ever. You know, we've got to live well and be kind, but nothing's that important. Things that were really important to me are less important now.
SPEAKER_02Emily Scott, thank you so much for missing the morning market run to join us today. I'm curious to see where your next city thrupling will take us to next.
SPEAKER_04Thank you so much. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02That's it for this episode of Three Food Memories. Be sure to spread the plated love and check out our hundred pass episodes. You can catch them on YouTube as well at just search for Three Food Memories. And for all things TFM, head to the titles at Three Food Memories and editors. For more info, edit the message at head to threefoodmemories.com. Three food memories is produced and edited by Lauren McQuarter with original music by Russell Tarant.
