Masterchef star Liz Cottam has swapped Leeds city centre for the Yorkshire Dales for her new venture – Byre.

Masterchef star Liz Cottam has swapped Leeds City Centre for the Yorkshire Dales with her new restaurant on a hillside above Bolton Abbey.

Byre occupies three converted former dairy farm buildings on the Devonshire Estate which the former semi-finalist opened in June.

It comes after she closed the doors of her city centre canal-side restaurant Emba.

Byre Kitchen near Bolton Abbey Byre - Byre Kitchen, Storiths, Bolton Abbey, Skipton. Liz Cottam pictured at the Restaurant. Picture taken by Yorkshire Post Photographer Simon Hulme

placeholder image — Byre Kitchen near Bolton Abbey Byre - Byre Kitchen, Storiths, Bolton Abbey, Skipton. Liz Cottam pictured at the Restaurant. Picture taken by Yorkshire Post Photographer Simon Hulme

Cottam’s restaurants have all been about fine dining and in this sense Byre is little different, except here there’s no fixed number of courses and while guests know the style of food when they book, they might not know what every dish will be.

“You sit down and see and smell the fire and the food that you're about to eat,” she said. “There’s no formality about it. The food comes as and when it’s ready.”

Milk Bread, Wild Garlic Butter, Roasted Lamb Dripping - one of the dishes at Byre Kitchen Picture taken by Yorkshire Post Photographer Simon Hulme

She first visited the site four years ago at which point she had Cora, a bakehouse and wine bar in Boston Spa, The Owl, in Leeds city centre, run by head chef Mark Owens, and Home, her flagship Leeds restaurant. She was drawn to the picturesque space but parked the idea until earlier this year, having just closed her restaurant Emba, when she put the wheels in motion for what is now Byre.

It’s 10 years since Liz Cottam appeared on MasterChef, having ditched her corporate sector career, leaving behind the comfort of a six-figure salary in search of something more fulfilling.

She didn’t enjoy the process of doing the TV cookery show saying she put “too much pressure on myself”. However, the experience of working in a professional kitchen fired her desire to be a chef.

Just a year later she opened Home, a fine dining restaurant overlooking Kirkgate Market in Leeds. For a local lass, it felt a perfect fit. “My mum and dad were publicans and we used to get our produce from the market. Everything happened there and it was a really thriving, vibrant place.”

Home quickly flourished, earning rave reviews. “We were a successful business with waiting lists on most days. We were doing brilliantly.” So much so that two years later, in 2019, she opened The Owl, which also won plaudits from punters and critics alike.

Pork ,Smoked Apple Mustard, Confit Onion ,Hen of the Wood Mushroom Picture taken by Yorkshire Post Photographer Simon Hulme

And then came Covid, which hit the hospitality sector particularly hard. This was followed by the war in Ukraine causing huge spikes in energy bills and higher food inflation, which along with the cost-of-living crisis and declining consumer spending, created what she calls a “perfect storm”.

Her restaurant, Home, saw bills spiral. “We had an electricity bill of £1,800 a month that went up to £12,000,” she says. The cost of ingredients soared, too. “A really nice big scallop would have been maybe £1 back in the day. Now they’re between £4.50 and £5.50 each. Butter went up more than 100 per cent. Even things like linen would go up 16 per cent.”

It meant the businesses she had worked so hard to build up were becoming unsustainable and in July 2023 Cora closed, followed by Home just over a year later.

But rather than admit defeat, Liz Cottam crowdfunded Emba – a city centre restaurant overlooking Leeds & Liverpool canal – in May last year. “I used to tell people I was the self-appointed ‘queen of Leeds’ because I'm so patriotic about Yorkshire and about my city. I wanted to contribute to helping put Leeds on the map and making it great.”

Chicken Fat Poached Scallop, Smoked Mussel and Chicken Wing Broth Picture taken by Yorkshire Post Photographer Simon Hulme

However, the challenges hadn’t gone away. The situation was compounded by increased National Insurance contributions and minimum wage hikes, all of which combined to slash profit margins. “I was working 100 hours a week at Emba to fill in the gaps that some of these economic pressures created, and it did nearly break me,” admits Cottam.

In March this year she reluctantly closed Emba. “We had a fantastic team. We had amazing guests, a fantastic reputation, and we, on paper, were very successful. But the economic pressures and changes just didn't allow for our style of business to survive. So I never felt like I failed.”

It did, though, lead to some soul-searching. “How do you do the thing that you love, if it doesn't work in the way that you've been doing it? For me, it had to be about something that was small, something that took me away from some of the problems I knew about.”

She knows that Byre may well present a different set of problems but feels prepared for them. It is smaller in scale, initially opening three days a week. “Rather than needing to have 200 or 300 people in Leeds city centre coming in to make the business work, I'm looking at 30 people a week.”

Her plan is to start small and grow organically – she’s looking at doing some more cookery classes once the dust has settled.

She points to the fact that she’s already taking bookings from people across Yorkshire and as far away as London, and even Norway. “We're really close to Ilkley and we’re not far from Harrogate and Skipton. I think there's a lot of food travel around here,” she says.