The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Meal with a view: Crusoe Hotel opens restaurant after £200,000 revamp
One of Fife’s most famous hotels will welcome its first diners to its new restaurant this weekend following a £200,000 refurbishment.
Graham and Rachel Bucknall bought The Crusoe Hotel in April last year and by July, had the venue on the quayside of Lower Largo reopened to the public after 11 weeks of renovations.
The restaurant has been closed since the couple took over and they have been offering food and drink in their public bar area only as a result.
From today the public will finally be able to dine in the refurbished restaurant and bar which took six weeks to transform.
The new space is on the first floor of the venue along from the kitchen.
Rachel said it will make service easier for the staff and she is looking forward to turning the public bar back into “a proper pub again”.
“The staff have been carrying plates up and down to the pub so it is great we’re now serving on the same floor as the kitchen,” she added.
“We’ll have some snacks and things in the pub where we can welcome drinkers and dog walkers, but upstairs will be our main dining focus.
“We will have an outside barbecue area, too.”
The hotel is recruiting staff and envisions having around 30 to 40 in their team to operate fully.
The 72-seater restaurant and bar will be open seven days a week, from noon to 3pm and 5pm to 8.45pm, and will serve pub favourites and bistro dishes.
A focus on provenance will be apparent across the menus with local drink firms also included in the cocktail offering.
“The fishing boats from the harbour wall will be bringing in fresh mackerel and we’ll have lobster and crab coming from them when in season,” said Rachel.
“There’s chicken, salad from Largo Estate’s walled garden, and we’ll have pub favourites like our pie of the day, fish and chips, a burger and a veggie burger, plus other options.
“As we don’t have a lift there’s a separate dining area where diners who need accessibility and who have dogs will be able to enjoy the restaurant menu. Upstairs isn’t dog-friendly.”
The hotel hopes to provide food all day on a Sunday and will introduce a Sunday roast in the coming weeks.
Breakfast will also be served in the morning and will feature homemade granola, poached eggs, full Scottish breakfast and pancakes.
Ross Traill is head chef and his partner Jackie Fergus is the general manager. Ross has worked for Rachel and Graham for 11 years and has been head chef for two years.
He leads a team of eight to 10 staff in the kitchen and has devised the menus.
The Crusoe is Rachel and Graham’s third hospitality venue. They also own the Ship Inn, Elie, and the Bridge Inn in Ratho, near Edinburgh.
The full refurbishment is predicted to take around 18 months and they will have invested around £1 million by the end.
One of the main things the couple did when renovating was lighten the restaurant area.
The dark space has been opened up and provides one of the best views from the hotel, giving diners the chance to experience it for the first time.
“We’ve certainly lightened the space and whitewashed the stonework to brighten it a bit,” said Rachel.
“Where the new bar is, it used to be a ladies loo and linen cupboard.
“You would never have known but they had the most extraordinary views, but no one ever saw it.
“So we’ve pulled that all apart so that it is really open.”
The pub will be open from 9am until 11pm.