The Bonnie Badger

A Coaching Inn Tradition, Rethought for the East Lothian Coast

The old coaching inn format — a ground-floor bar with hearty food, a more considered dining room above or beyond, and rooms for travellers — has had a complicated century in Scotland. Many of the buildings survived; the original hospitality logic inside them often did not. Main Street in Gullane, a village whose identity is tied closely to golf and the wide skies of the East Lothian coast, is home to one of the more convincing revivals of that format. The building at The Bonnie Badger dates to 1836, and its current iteration holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, recognised in both 2024 and 2025, placing it among a small cohort of Scottish establishments where value and kitchen seriousness arrive together.

That Bib Gourmand signal is worth reading carefully. It sits below the starred tier but above generic recommendation, and in a village of Gullane's scale it implies a kitchen operating at a level the local catchment alone could not sustain. Visitors make the drive from Edinburgh, around 25 miles to the west, specifically for this. For comparison, the upper register of Modern British cooking in the UK , venues like CORE by Clare Smyth in London, The Ledbury, or L'Enclume in Cartmel , operates at price points and formality levels that occupy a different category. The Bonnie Badger belongs to a separate and arguably more interesting bracket: technically serious cooking at a price tier (££) that keeps the room mixed and the atmosphere grounded. In Scotland, Restaurant Andrew Fairlie in Auchterarder represents the starred extreme; The Bonnie Badger represents something more accessible without being less considered.

The Sunday Roast as Structural Argument

The weekly roast in Britain is rarely treated as a serious culinary format, which is precisely why the venues that do take it seriously register so distinctly. At its leading, a Sunday roast demands kitchen discipline across several separate elements , the carve, the fat rendering, the Yorkshire or not-Yorkshire question depending on geography, the roasting juices reduced correctly, the vegetables timed to hold rather than collapse. Most pub kitchens treat these as assembly tasks. A kitchen with a nature-to-plate philosophy, as the one here operates, has a different relationship to provenance and timing.

The Kitchin name provides the credential context here. Tom Kitchin's Edinburgh restaurant has held a Michelin star since 2006, making it one of the longer continuously starred operations in Scotland, and the nature-to-plate approach running through both enterprises connects directly to how Scottish seasonal produce , game from the hills, seafood from the nearby Firth of Forth, root vegetables that perform leading in colder months , gets treated. The Sunday roast format, applied through that lens, becomes less about pub convention and more about what the week's leading sourcing allows. That is a meaningful distinction. It shifts the roast from a fixed menu item to a reflection of season and supply, which is how the format is worth eating anywhere in Britain.

For those comparing the pub-with-serious-food model across the UK, The Hand and Flowers in Marlow set a benchmark for the format in England, holding two Michelin stars as a pub. The Bonnie Badger occupies a different register , Bib rather than starred, Scottish rather than Thames Valley , but the underlying argument is similar: that a pub format does not require a compromise on kitchen ambition.

Three Formats, One Building

What distinguishes the operational model here is the deliberate separation of three distinct formats under one roof. The bar runs pub classics, the dining room offers a more composed menu anchored in that nature-to-plate philosophy, and the garden adds a third register: live-fire cooking on a Big Green Egg. This is not an unusual combination in contemporary British hospitality , venues like Moor Hall in Aughton have demonstrated how a property can hold multiple formats across a single site , but it is relatively rare in a village setting where the customer base is smaller and the operational complexity harder to justify.

The Big Green Egg element in the garden positions the venue within a wider shift in British cooking toward live-fire technique. Since roughly 2015, open-fire and charcoal cooking moved from novelty to standard approach at serious kitchens across the country, from Midsummer House in Cambridge to hide and fox in Saltwood. Using it in a garden context rather than a main kitchen line reflects a particular approach: the garden becomes a site for more informal, seasonal cooking where char and smoke are part of the flavour logic rather than a performance gesture.

The Inn Component

The bedroom offering places The Bonnie Badger in a category of British restaurant-with-rooms that has grown significantly in the past decade. The model , where the accommodation is secondary to the food but serious enough to justify an overnight stay , runs through properties like Gidleigh Park in Chagford and Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons in Great Milton at the higher end. At The Bonnie Badger, the rooms are furnished using Scottish designers, which reflects the same sourcing logic applied to the food: regional provenance as a design principle rather than a marketing claim.

Gullane itself rewards an overnight stay in a way that a day trip does not fully capture. The village sits on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth, within walking distance of Gullane Beach and minutes from Muirfield, one of the Open Championship rota courses. East Lothian has developed a reputation as a serious food and drink county in its own right , La Potinière, also in Gullane, has long held its place as a reference point for Traditional Cuisine in the area. The broader context across the village is covered in our full Gullane restaurants guide, alongside our Gullane hotels guide, bars guide, wineries guide, and experiences guide.

Planning Your Visit

The Bonnie Badger sits at a ££ price point, which makes it accessible relative to comparable Modern British cooking elsewhere in the UK , venues like The Fat Duck in Bray or The Ritz Restaurant in London operate at a price tier several multiples higher. Chef Dominic Jack leads the kitchen under the Kitchin hospitality group. The address is Main St, Gullane EH31 2AB. Given the Bib Gourmand recognition and the coastal village location, weekend tables , Sunday in particular, for the roast , book ahead. Google reviewers rate the venue 4.5 across 745 reviews, a volume that reflects consistent repeat custom rather than one-time destination traffic. Those travelling from Edinburgh should allow around 40 minutes by road, with the A198 coastal route the more scenic option.

What's the Leading Thing to Order at The Bonnie Badger?

The kitchen's nature-to-plate philosophy makes the answer to this partly seasonal and partly format-dependent. The dining room menu, built around Scottish seasonal produce under Chef Dominic Jack with the Kitchin culinary lineage behind it, is where the full range of that philosophy is expressed. On a Sunday, the roast format allows the kitchen to apply serious sourcing and technique to a communal format that British cooking has not always treated as an opportunity. The garden cooking on the Big Green Egg is worth considering in warmer months when the live-fire element adds a different dimension. The bar's pub classics serve a different purpose , comfort and familiarity over complexity , and are exactly right for that function. The Michelin Bib Gourmand recognises value alongside quality, which means the dining room menu at this price point (££) represents the clearest expression of what this kitchen does.