Roberta Hall-McCarron was four months pregnant when she opened her second restaurant, Eleanore, in September 2021. After years of working in other people’s Michelin-starred kitchens, she and her husband, Shaun Hall-McCarron, debuted The Little Chartroom in Edinburgh in 2018, but it had grown so much that they decided to move it to a bigger space. Eleanore, which began as a food truck concept during the pandemic, took over the former site. Last year, when their daughter Cara was only two years old, the couple launched a third restaurant, Ardfern, next door to The Little Chartroom.
“It’s been a gradual progression,” Hall-McCarron tells Observer in late September. “All while having a little one. But becoming a mother really did make me take a step back and look at the business as a whole, and in a completely different way. It was more about the bigger picture, rather than living each day as each day came, and we’re looking towards the future more.”
Hall-McCarron credits her ability to balance three thriving restaurants and a family to her team, many of whom have been part of the business for years. When The Little Chartroom opened, there were only two people in the kitchen. The number of staff slowly grew as the restaurant took off. Today, more than 40 people work across the three spaces. “We’ve got some members of the team who have been with us for four or five or six years,” Hall-McCarron shares. “That in itself is very humbling—to know they still enjoy working for us, and that what we’re doing is what we’ve created ourselves.”
These days, Hall-McCarron spends most of her time in The Little Chartroom, a neighborhood restaurant tucked on a side street in Leith. Its menu is deceptively simple: three starters, three mains and three desserts. The dishes shift by the season, typically every five to six weeks, and the restaurant has a downstairs development and prep kitchen where Hall-McCarron and her staff map out their ideas on an enormous whiteboard. She’s available as a “fresh set of eyes” to look over the menu at Eleanore, but she tends to let the head chef, Hamish McNeill, do his own thing.
“I think some people are quite shocked when they hear that, but it allows me to focus on the other two,” she says. “It allows him to be able to grow as a head chef. If I were sitting on his shoulder too much, then perhaps he wouldn’t have progressed as far as he has. I don’t feel I need to be there all the time, because I really trust them.”
Hall-McCarron recently shifted The Little Chartroom schedule. It was previously open seven days a week, and it’s down to a more manageable five days. (It’s now closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.) She and Shaun, who runs the front of house, try to split their shifts so they’re not working simultaneously. And each week, they take Sundays off together. “We want to actually have time the three of us, because that’s quite rare,” she says. “But we’re trying to get better at it. Cara is growing up, so she’ll notice it a lot more, and it’s important that she still gets us around. She definitely knows that we work.”
Being a parent and a chef is a challenge—and it’s not something a lot of people in the hospitality world talk about publicly, regardless of gender. When Hall-McCarron worked for celebrated Scottish chef Tom Kitchin at The Kitchin and Castle Terrace, she remembers him having young kids and being strict about taking time off on the weekends. But Hall-McCarron wasn’t thinking about a family yet, so it didn’t occur to her to ask how he made it all work.
She and Shaun met at Castle Terrace, where she was the head chef and he was the restaurant manager.
“I don’t even think we had the family chat until way down the line,” she remembers. “The first chat we had was, ‘Will we open up a restaurant together?’ Later, we talked about if we could have kids together.”
Cara, now three, is aware of her parents’ jobs—in a good way. “I love the fact that she’s going to grow up in this funny restaurant world, and it will be very different to a lot of the friends that she makes,” Hall-McCarron says. At the moment, she doesn’t see a lot of restaurants prioritizing the balance between family and work life, especially when both parents are in the industry. “I’m trying to strive to make that change and to make it possible for not just women, but for men and couples,” she says. “It does require a change and a balance, but it’s doable.”
Part of that change is being flexible and inclusive as the boss. Hall-McCarron is accommodating about the shifts her staff need to work, whether it’s someone keeping daytime hours because they have a small child and want to be home at bedtime, or an employee who doesn’t want to do mornings. “It’s about being a lot more flexible than when I was growing up through restaurants,” she says. “You just worked whatever you were told. There was never even that conversation. I want to be a lot more broad-minded about it and see what possibilities there are.”
Becoming a parent hasn’t just expanded Hall-McCarron’s outlook on managing her team. It’s made her more patient, but it’s also come with a feeling of guilt.
“If you can deal with a toddler, then you can deal with extreme emotions,” she says. “But before I had Cara, the restaurant got my complete focus, and then, suddenly, as soon as you have a child, everything is split 50/50. But it’s not like that every day—sometimes it’s 60/40, depending on my role or if Shaun has Cara. I have guilt of not being home enough and guilt of not being in the restaurant enough. I think I’ll always have some of that.”
As Hall-McCarron’s life has evolved, so has The Little Chartroom. She and Shaun initially envisioned a welcoming neighborhood bistro, and that vibe remains. But the dishes have gone from rustic to more intricate over the years. “There’s a lot of work involved in the food,” she notes. “I’ve always been about getting in great produce, but we’re really championing that right now. We’re doing a lot more buying than we ever have done in the past.”
Because The Little Chartroom and Ardfern are adjacent, Hall-McCarron can order ingredients for both restaurants, including whole animals, which the staff butchers themselves. It’s a technique she learned working for Kitchin, and the only animal she hasn’t yet brought in whole is a cow, simply because it takes up so much storage.
The Little Chartroom is known for its focus on game during the fall months, including grouse, venison and hare. “We have such incredible access to these products in Scotland, which is one of the best larders in the world,” Hall-McCarron says. “It’s a tiny country, but an incredible larder. It’s really great to be able to pass on that skill on to the next generation [of chefs].”
Still, the chef says the restaurant doesn’t necessarily have signature dishes. For several years, she would never repeat a dish. But she eventually realized that the adage “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it” had some real truth to it. Now, she doesn’t recreate exact dishes, but she might base something on an idea that was a previous success. “Three or four years ago, I did a nectarine tarte tatin with a slice of blue cheese,” she recalls. “They pair really well. We brought that back each year, but we’ve tweaked it and refined it, and each time it’s a little bit better.”
She adds, “Originally, we had a small menu because our site was tiny and I could not physically store enough food to have such a broad menu. At first, people were very nervous, like, ‘Oh, is this it?’ But it almost forced them to order something that they wouldn’t normally order, and we got really nice feedback. Now, it allows us to change the menu more often, and there’s a real consistency to the dishes, which is great for our regular guests.”
The menu highlights Scottish ingredients in an elevated way. When I dined in late August, the chalk stream trout, served with lentils, was a memorable main dish. But it was the bramble tart, augmented with dark chocolate, that felt like a true celebration of one of Scotland’s beloved berries. Hall-McCarron works with local purveyors and farms for meat, fish and shellfish, and she regularly buys mushrooms and sea herbs from a local forager.
Although The Little Chartroom focuses on Scottish products, it’s not traditionally Scottish food.
“I do love taking old Scottish dishes and modernizing them, but I wouldn’t say we have this identity of that’s all we do,” Hall-McCarron says. “We do have haggis on the menu, but not all the time. My background is British and French, so a lot of the food has those techniques and methods. But we’re open to other ingredients. Within my team, I’ve got people who have worked in different countries that I haven’t worked in, and they’re bringing in those influences.” For example, an Asian ingredient, like white soy, can augment the flavors without being too obvious. “It’s very, very subtle, and adds that balance of umami,” she says.
The Little Chartroom, along with Eleanore and Ardfern, is part of a growing culinary scene in Edinburgh. Although chefs like Kitchin helped establish the city’s high-end restaurant landscape, Hall-McCarron was inspired to open her own spots because she felt there was still a lack of quality eateries with relaxed environments. “It’s really changed in the last seven years,” she notes. “Edinburgh’s always been really good for a good selection of high-quality restaurants, but now more than ever, [it’s] really thriving.”
Despite her success, Hall-McCarron isn’t planning to open another restaurant—at least not now. She and Shaun run a separate wine importing business alongside two of their employees, and she has plenty on her plate with Cara, too.
“Three is the magic number,” she says. “There are always ideas. There are always ambitions. I would never say that we wouldn’t open something else, but I don’t think I would ever go over having three restaurants.” She wants to maintain her work-life balance, especially as Cara grows up. Plus, the chef knows that her attention can only stretch so far. “All of our restaurants are in a great place, and I wouldn’t want to dilute that by spreading myself too thin,” she adds. “Really, it’s like I have four children.”
