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Tasting Scotland
Vivien Devlin
Travel Writer
Earlier this year, Vivien Devlin journeyed around Scotland to sample a diverse range of menus in some of the leading country house hotels, and examined how important it is to appreciate the provenance of food. Here are a few of the highlights...
Gleneagles Hotel and Golf Resort offers the ultimate in fine dining at its Michelin- starred restaurant, Andrew Fairlie at Gleneagles, where a precise and distinctive menu blends the very best of classic Scottish and French cuisine.
Whether you select the five-course 'Menu Degustation' or a la carte, the emphasis is on seafood: Skye scallops, line-caught seabass, red mullet, roast halibut, John Dory, and home-smoked lobster, Andrew Fairlie`s famous signature dish. The empty lobster shells are smoked over Auchentoshan whisky barrels for 12 hours, and are then filled with the sliced lobster meat and roasted in a hot oven for about five minutes with melted butter and lime juice. The result is a sensational melt-in-the-mouth, delicate creation with a soft, smoky aftertaste.
From fish and beef to poultry and cheese, Fairlie believes it is vital to the origins of all his ingredients: 'Our lamb comes from my brother who is the shepherd on Glenearn Estate, about 14 miles away,' he explains. 'We get our beef from Ardintinny Farm, which is visible from the hotel.'
Fairlie likes to send his front-of-house staff to visit the suppliers so they can learn about the exacting quality demanded by the restaurant, and has built up a loyal band of small suppliers who understand his standards: 'They are as passionate about what they produce as we are about what we create in the kitchen'.
Travelling from Perthshire towards the east coast, we reach Castleton House, near Glamis, in Angus. This small country house hotel is owned and managed by David and Verity Webster, with Head Chef Andrew Wilkie in the kitchen. The hotel restaurant was awarded three AA rosettes for excellence in September 2004, placing Castleton in the top 10% of restaurants in the UK.
Wilkie grew up nearby in Carnoustie and appreciates only too well the superb farmland around Angus: 'Scotland has clean air, rich seas and beautiful grazing ground, laced with the best spring water,' he says. 'Any restaurant caring about quality should source from here. Angus has it all.'
Indeed. At Castleton House you'll taste woodpigeon from Glen Isla, new season lamb from Cortachy and thick-cut cod from Scrabster.
Wilkie is also keen to promote Scottish game, which he feels is undervalued compared to beef and fish: 'Scotland produces fantastic game and we have a wonderful supplier, John Mitchell, who sources from the local estates up the glens for partridge, venison and wood pigeon.'
My journey continues north to a few miles outside Nairn. Boath House. Don and Wendy Matheson bought the house 10 years ago and have spent a small fortune in a complete renovation and refurbishment.
Wendy is leader of the Slow Food Movement in the Highlands and Morayshire convivium. The five-course, Table d'Hote dinner menu changes on a daily basis, and describes the provenance of many dishes. The kitchen is always keen to source new suppliers, especially locally, and Head Chef Charlie Lockley has helped Boath House in being named as one of the top 200 hotels in the UK: 'It's important for us to establish a relationship with the suppliers where they know and appreciate the standards we set and make sure they respect this,' he says.
Boath House boasts a large Victorian-style kitchen garden that provides an abundant supply of vegetables and herbs. For Wendy, self- sufficiency is their pivotal aspiration - so much so in fact that a greenhouse is currently being built to extend home-grown produce through the winter. 'The absolute freshness of home-picked vegetables is unrivalled by even the best you can buy.'
Breakfast, quite rightly, is treated with the same respect as the superb dinner the night before. Expect creamy porridge accompanied by a drizzle of cream and honey, and then garden-sourced Devilled Mushrooms or scrambled free-range eggs served with Achiltibuie smoked salmon. Eating and drinking at Boath House is a gastronomic joy and an inspiration.
A visit to Greywalls in Gullane, East Lothian. Owned by the Weaver family for several generations, the home became a small luxury hotel in the late 1940s.
Head Chef David Williams recently arrived from Chapter One in London and his presence will surely bring a refreshingly new approach to the style and concept of the cuisine. Trained to Michelin-Star standards, he understands quality and perfection, and is keen to develop the kitchen garden and is now working with the gardeners to prepare the ground to grow more fresh produce. He has reviewed all current suppliers to ensure the best products, and is pleased to have found a good asparagus-grower just four miles away. Williams is also the in-house butcher, which gives him complete control over the production process, 'tailoring' the best cuts of meat himself. Although his speciality is Scottish game birds, he is fortunate that Ballencrieff Farm in nearby Longniddry rears pedigree pigs.
The opportunity to relish such a gourmet feast around the country was an education and an inspiration, and it proved one very important thing: Scotland's young chefs are passionate and pedantic about real food and their knowledge and respect of it should be a lesson for us all. Today, as we despair over tasteless chickens and eggs, endless E-numbers, overdoses of sugar and salt in processed foods and a lack of nutrition in school meals, it is little wonder the following of the Slow Food Movement is spreading like soft butter on warm bread.
All these hotels are members of Connoisseurs Scotland.
For more information visit www.luxuryscotland.co.uk
vivien.devlin@lineone.net
This article has been edited from the original. To view the feature in full, please see Catering in Scotland magazine. To join our database, go to Media Pack on this website and click on Subscribe.
