Fyne dining will have you hooked
Award-winning chef serves up sensational seafood and views
The first person I saw when I arrived at Inver, on the shores of Loch Fyne, was a dazed tourist.
He displayed the mind-blown symptoms of a visitor who can’t believe they were in a city two hours ago and are now somewhere so heart-stoppingly beautiful.
The second person I saw was the chef, Pam Brunton. She’s currently the Good Food Guide chef of the year. She was wiping down the surfaces in the ladies’ toilets.
Another member of staff was sieving strawberry puree into a giant jar. It smelled so good I wanted to jump in. He complained, in a very cheerful way, that it was giving him carpal tunnel syndrome.
Inver is the place I want to find on the bank of every loch. It is utterly gorgeous yet also friendly and welcoming, a combination that very few restaurants pull off.
This is a foodie destination, with an evening tasting menu that lets Pam showcase everything she learned working at Noma and other Scandinavian superstar eateries.
But dinner requires months of forward planning and, for those of us who don’t live in Argyll, a spendy overnight stay in the adorable bothies next door.
A Saturday lunch is the next best thing, offering simpler seafood as well as more challenging dishes. We were not the only people to have this brilliant idea – the spaced out tables were full. Staff in blue tunics, navy trousers and black masks zipped around giving off strong operating theatre energy.
To start, Carb Boy requested a heritage tomato and raspberry salad. Who even was this sitting across from me? He normally considers salad a very optional extra. Berries are only tolerated when boiled into jam.
Yet he raved about this delicate plateful, the fruit and veg topped with toasted hazelnut, fennel flowers and marigold petals. I had to intervene to secure one exquisite miso-dressed mouthful.
He didn’t fancy my smoked cods’ roe, which suited me fine. These clever little mounds of mousse were made on the same principle as taramasalata, with halibut instead of breadcrumbs to dilute the strong, salty roe. There were ribbons of raw pink and white beetroot on top, a pale green gooseberry sauce and a few face-puckering red goosegogs as a spiky relish. It had a deep earthiness that is unusual in fish dishes. The beets kept it all fresh. I loved it.
I have a rule that, if there’s something on a menu I haven’t eaten before, that’s what I order. So hard luck amazing looking
chicken, sorry pea dumplings, there was a whole barbecued halibut head on the specials board and it had my name on it.
Yikes. Halibuts have larger heads than I realised. How, I asked the waiter, should I tackle this nduja-smeared, barbecued spring onion-strewn monster? He advised collar first, then cheek, discarding skin, bone and cartilage into the bowl provided as I went.
Thankfully I had brought my glasses. And the bones in the head are quite large. This was still quite a challenging munch, but worth the picking for the lush white flesh hiding beneath the primeval exterior. It was tremendous.
Carb Boy’s hefty Loch Fyne crab also required some serious flesh extraction work. It was a quite magnificent specimen, cracked and ready to excavate. The body was filled with a lush mixture of melted butter and the crab’s brown meat. He set about topping this up with the flesh of the legs, and claws.
The crab came with two slices of great sourdough but he also added chips with baked potato salt. This was a strong choice – thin skin-on fries that tasted like a salt-encrusted baked tattie. But better. Not sure what kind of alchemy was used to achieve this result but Carb Boy is very keen to recreate it at home.
Eating all of this took us some time. The halibut head was surprisingly filling and I crashed and burned long before all the crab legs were poked clean.
If only I’d noticed that the cherry clafoutis took 20 minutes, I would have ordered that while Carb Boy finished shell-poking. If I hadn’t been about to drive back along the Rest And Be Thankful, I would have definitely had the sorrel sorbet with a shot of sloe schnapps.
But choosing honey cake with a chunky raspberry granita was hardly a hardship. Decorated with tiny violets, it was almost too pretty to eat. Note the almost.
Back in the car park, the dazed- looking grandpa was getting back in his car. He will probably return home and tell everyone that Scotland has amazing restaurants at the end of every single track road.
If only.