Young Tomás Gormley would have been mind-blown by the sight of his adult self pottering around his kitchen garden, inspecting the courgettes and beetroot destined for his Edinburgh restaurant, Cardinal

Growing up, Tomás Gormley (specialty grower and chef-owner of Cardinal) wasn’t a fan of vegetables – or being in the kitchen, even. “That didn’t become a thing until I left home and found myself cooking when I should have been at uni,” he says.

The chef had initially flirted with acting, before studying music, theatre and entertainment management. Academia wasn’t for him either, so he got a job at the Fountain Café in Tollcross and was soon drawn into the theatre of some of Scotland’s most rarefied kitchens, including 21212, Le Roi Fou and Restaurant Andrew Fairlie.

A lockdown collaboration with chef Sam Yorke on Bad Seeds, a fine-dining-at-home business, gave him a taste for running his own show. “It was a liberating experience,” he says. He and Sam opened the Michelin-starred Heron in 2021 (now run by Sam) and Skua in 2023 (which Tomás took ownership of and sold last year), both located in the capital, then Tomás opened Cardinal on Eyre Place in 2024. “It was the first place that felt truly my own,” he says.

It’s a cinematic space with exposed stone walls, atmospheric lighting and abstract art, all chosen by Tomás. Much of the cooking is done over coals. The produce is locally sourced; the flavours confident. “We currently have a market shellfish course, which we switch up daily. I get a text every night from our fish supplier with a list of what’s good, and we serve it with peeled Kumato tomatoes, a spiced prawn head rouille, chervil and a tomato yum sauce.” It comes with Hokkaido milk buns and homemade cultured butter, if you weren’t already salivating enough.

Provenance has always been important to Tomás, so the recent creation of the Cardinal Kitchen Garden – a plot of land at Bramblewood Farm in Pathhead – is a pleasing progression. “The plan is to get to a position where everything on the menu that comes from the ground has been grown in the garden,” he says. “It has been an incredibly fulfilling experience so far. We’ve always had great connections to where our food comes from at Cardinal, but something hits a little differently when a seed you’ve sown personally ends up on the plate.”

Visit the Cardinal website | Follow Cardinal on Instagram

Follow Tomás Gormley on Instagram