This Chef Is Learning Kung Fu After Her Restaurant Was Robbed Five Times

Bia Bistrot seems to be a charmingly lovely restaurant in Edinburgh, Scotland. It serves local, sustainable, seasonal food, like Shetland salmon and guinea fowl, and it has been recommended by the Michelin Guide Great Britain & Ireland for the past four years. All in all, the restaurant is well reviewed and—by all appearances—well-loved by locals.

But Bia Bistrot has a bit of a problem: it has been burgled five times in the past year. And Roisin Llorente, the chef who runs the restaurant with her husband Matthias, isn't going to take it anymore.

So now, Llorente is learning kung fu. (Cue epic training music.)

Just last Thursday, thieves smashed the front door of Bia Bistrot in, shattering a glass window. That's when Llorente sat down and starting counting. She told The Edinburgh Evening News, "We've done the maths and it's five break-ins in the last year. We've been chatting to a few businesses in the area and everybody up here is getting done, and I know a lot of homes have been done, too."

Turns out Edinburgh is a hotbed of break-ins, and these relentless thieves seem to be targeting Bia Bistrot. Who knows what sort of unguarded horde of unicorn horns and Nazi gold the various thieves were expecting to find in a restaurant, but it's pretty clear not one of them has ever worked in the industry. Still, they keep coming. Not only have the thieves targeted whatever cash the restaurant has—they've also stolen recipe books.

Talk about indignities. Running a restaurant, of course, is fraught with difficulties. Low margins. Not-always-reliable help. Shit awful hours. Still, a constant trickle of break-ins is not usually on the list. "It's just sad, Llorente says. "Nobody thinks this will happen when you open a restaurant."

So Llorente has begun taking self-defense classes at The Yee's Hung Ga Kung Fu Academy. She hopes knowledge of the Chinese martial art will help her feel safer at the restaurant. Don't you just love that no matter your profession or location, cryptically mystic martial artists are always the go-to people for all of life's quandaries?

"They've broken in four times through the front and once through the back door. That time they crowbarred the back door and then they went down to the office and took a crowbar to that, and got the safe," Llorente told the local paper.

Edinburgh's household break-in rate is double that of Glasgow. Apparently, there aren't enough police patrolling the streets to control the burglaries of both homes and businesses. According to the restaurateurs, "They say they don't have the help to follow it up—there's no-one on the street. They said there was one night where it was just call after call, but the guys doing it were one step ahead the whole time."

So these intrepid gourmets have decided to take matters into their own hands. They've forbidden their employees from locking up alone, and are practicing the ancient martial art.

The police in Edinburgh are also trying to step things up. Police Scotland's Superintendent Alan Porte said: "We have a number of strategies in place to combat this issue, including Operation RAC, which has seen both a significant reduction in the number of break-ins and an increase in detections of those responsible."

Nevertheless, the police efforts haven't done enough as of yet to stem the tide of break-ins at Bia Bistrot.

So watch out, aspiring criminal masterminds of Edinburgh. There's a new Karate Kid in town and she has badass nunchaku made out of leftover leeks.