HOOK, LINE AND SINKER
The Mystery Diner revisits an iconic country inn and former fishing lodge and finds it much changed and much improved
The Mystery Diner finds the Meikleour Arms has changed for the better
Ihave many happy memories of the Meikleour Arms, a small gastropub in the Perthshire village of the same name by the banks of the Tay. Not only is it near the biggest beech hedge in the world, it was once run by two friends of mine, who leased it from the estate which owns it.
Sadly, their joint foray into the world of rural gastronomy wasn’t a success: The Meikleour Arms was a beautiful little pub that would have been perfect for a couple willing to work all the hours, but while the boys may occasionally have bickered like a dysfunctional Darby and Joan, they definitely weren’t a couple.
They also got the food a bit wrong. The place was small, so the best way to pay the rent was to head upmarket: in retrospect they were probably too high-falutin’. In the end, they left when it was time to renew the lease, but I had several memorable nights there, either eating or propping up the bar.
Fast forward ten years or so, and news reached my ears of huge changes afoot at this sleepy village inn. So we headed off to investigate and found that time has indeed marched on. Where once the Meikleour Arms had a bar plus space for roughly thirty diners, it has now been transformed.
The space reserved for drinkers is basically around the bar and in a couple of booths, where you’d be hard-pressed to get more than a dozen or so souls. The dining capacity has, however, been completely transformed, with a new layout, private dining room for a dozen guests, and a fantastic barn-style extension combining to mean that the whole place can now hold eighty diners. Sam Mercer Nairne, whose family have owned the 3,800-acre Meikleour estate since 1162, and his Bordeaux-born wife Claire, have been the driving force behind the transformation of this former fishing lodge. That the changes are as radical as they are tasteful owes much to Claire’s Gallic design flourishes, which sit alongside slate floors and a combination of exposed stone walls and patterned wallpaper. We visited on a Sunday night to find out that there had been 98 for lunch and 110 for dinner the previous evening, so the operation is clearly in rude health. Gone are the days when much of the trade was made up of shooters drawn in by the sport on offer on the estate or anglers fishing the Tay, Isla or Ericht. These days Meikleour is a dining destination for folk from Perth and Dundee, plus local towns like Blairgowrie, Dunkeld and Coupar Angus. A sea change in the clientele has been matched by a fundamental reassessment of the sort of
food on offer. Instead of fine diningorientated fare, the accent now is on hearty pub grub. That’s not to say that head chef Jack March’s cooking lacks ambition, but this is accessible food with upscale additions rather than the other way around.
We started with a black pudding Scotch egg garnished with a salad of warm tomato chutney and rocket leaves. With two perfectly cooked free-range eggs from the estate surrounded by thin, baked black pudding, this was a great starter brought to life by a big dollop of tart home-made chutney produced by the estate’s head gardener Lindsay, who grows unusual vegetables, berries and herbs in the walled garden.
The other starter was kedgeree, which came with smoked haddock, cod and a soft-boiled egg. I had lots of thoughts on this unusual yet thoroughly welcome addition to the menu, such as the large amount of haddock, and the fact that I’d have liked the rice to be more heavily curried, but my main musings concerned its size, which was massive. I have an enormous appetite (code for ‘I’m a greedy knacker’) and yet I struggled; for many people this starter would be a meal in itself.
The substantial specials menu contained the more complicated dishes, but we had come in search of superior pub grub so resisted its charms. Instead, we opted for venison lasagne, made using deer shot on the estate, and the chargrilled Meikleour burger, which came from the estate’s beef and was served with bacon, cheese, caramelised onions, chilli jam and some of the best homemade chips I’ve had in ages.
If the burger was spot on, the lasagne was so hot it almost burned my lips off. I strongly suspect it was made for the lunchtime trade and zapped in the microwave, when as a main course there was plenty of time to finish it in the oven and then serve on a non-microwaved plate. Other than that, it was good and, once again, unfeasibly large.
It was tough, but we still just about fulfilled our duty by forcing down pudding. The thankfully smallish lemon posset was a superb palate cleanser which came with home-made shortbread, while a slab of beautifully moist gingerbread pudding arrived with toffee sauce and vanilla ice cream from a nearby dairy.
With Claire coming from Bordeaux, the wine list is unsurprisingly classy. The house claret comes in at £26 while the cheapest bottle costs £20. Not in the mood for wine, I instead chose the house beer, which is produced by nearby Inveralmond Brewery and called the ‘Lure of Meikleour’ in tribute to the estate’s superb fishing.
Refreshing but not clichéd, it fitted the Meikleour Arms perfectly. I always liked this place, but they have managed to improve significantly on it: more power to their arm.