From Issue Six of Hidden Scotland Magazine

Baern Café

A café in the old grain store of the Balcaskie estate in the East Neuk.

Words by Emily Rose Mawson · Photographs by Paul Hunter

Printed in Issue Six of Hidden Scotland Magazine, Spring and Summer 2023.

In the old grain store on the working Balcaskie estate in the East Neuk of Fife, local produce becomes an endlessly creative medium in the hands of Hazel Powell and Giacomo Pesce. Changing with the seasons, their café Baern stands for sustainability, zero waste and really good bread.

“We’re just two people who really love good food and feeding people,” says chef Hazel Powell, who last year launched Baern Café in the Bowhouse food production hub in St Monans in the East Neuk of Fife with her friend and business partner Giacomo Pesce. A glance at the menu confirms this. It is small, changes weekly, and lets the ingredients do the talking: bacon brioche, kohlrabi kimchi, haggis sausage rolls and slow-cooked beef ragu. Then there’s Baern’s signature sourdough: “We’re incredibly proud of it,” says Hazel. “Giacomo lives and breathes the sourdough; every day he tweaks something to try and improve it.”

The bread, along with all Baern’s dishes, preserves and ferments, is made “entirely from scratch” in the open kitchen of the café, which occupies the old grain store at Balcaskie, the working estate where Bowhouse is situated. A big open space, “it still nods to its grain store roots”, with exposed beams, neutral colours and an enormous picture window overlooking the estate. Then there’s “a cavernous upstairs, to which we’ve just had a mezzanine added, so you can see out over the Forth to Bass Rock. It’s pretty magical”.