Cafe Argyll and Bute Scotland

Inver at Strachur: ‘In a burger-obsessed west of Scotland, Inver may be the ultimate outlier.’ Photo: Murdo MacLeod the Guardian

The drive to this strange restaurant, open only some weeks, is enough to get this to Scottish exile weep into her hip flask. The sweeping handsomeness associated with crags, furred with pines; the trail that winds around glittering pewter loch after loch. Dorothy, we’re maybe not in Hyndland anymore.

Strachur, a village clinging to your banking institutions of Loch Fyne, is the address. But on we vacation, at night village, the street punctuated only because of the periodic little, whitewashed chapel or lonely cottage. (I’m disregarding the only using “Boden Party Here These days” indication outside, because that’s puncturing my enchanting Caledonian reverie.) This is where a duo schooled at De Superette in Ghent, Belgium, along with stints at Noma and Fäviken, have decided to open their first restaurant. Will they be rather angry?

But, oh, the heartstopping view. Then the fattest loch crab claws, rammed with nice animal meat and served with Inver’s own-cultured butter, crunchy with salt crystals, their own sourdough breads and a G&T fashioned with unique tonic cordial. (have you been getting a theme right here?) This is the reason cook Pam Brunton and front-of-house companion Rob Latimer desired to create shop right here. Today it seems sensible.

We’re eating these in the woodsmoke-fragranced club of a restored croft, all gewgaws and odd ratty taxidermy. The stripped-back primary dining room, furnished merely with tweed, animal skulls and vaguely 20th-century modern furniture, will leave the view to do the job. I’m with a pal who’d been right here during place’s times as Inver Cottage; anyone expecting the former incumbent’s repertoire of salmon platters or a pleasant prawn ciabatta – like three females behind united states, gingerly nibbling at their particular food with mouths like cats’ arses – will probably have their particular globe well and truly rocked.

It has become a cliche to explain modern cooking to be “new Nordic”, but I’m opting for it as it holds definitely real right here: where simpler to absorb its principles than Scotland’s Highlands and Islands? The Glasgow-based pal claims, “This is the better meals I’ve eaten regarding the west coastline in, really, for ever.” From twig-like sheep’s cheese straws, only fleetingly squidgy around along with a herb-strewn share of creamed cheese, to panna cotta scented with gorse “gathered straight down by the abandoned naval base” and served with crisp tuile and coconut sorbet, everything we eat is eye-opening, enlivening, since bracing as a dip when you look at the loch.

As it is the trendy way, some dishes are offered by waitstaff, some by cooks. Crockery is austere stoneware, the greater to showcase the beauty of what’s onto it: brilliant green asparagus mousse, smooth and silken as balm, topped with mandolined chapters of the raw veggie for crunch and hiding wee gift ideas of razor-sharp crowdie mozzarella cheese. Or what Rob wryly states is “our accept seafood and chips”: treated halibut from Gigha, folds of impeccable fish topped with spaghetti-strands of pickled natural potato and flanked with pungent horseradish ointment. The whiteness with this plateful indicates blandness, but each mouthful provides textural comparison and a jolt of pleasure: the sting associated with the horseradish, the piquancy for the potato, the suavity regarding the fish.

The showstopper is Bute lamb with toasted caraway seeds and fennel pureed, and natural, and charred. Three cuts of the lamb, the neck slow-cooked and practically “pulled”, others green and pristine: the loin is much like a meaty bonbon, additionally the entire thing just as if your pet had romped and rolled through a fennel field, coming away kissed with anise. Glorious.

Raising the baa: Inver’s showstopping Bute lamb with fennel 3 ways. Photo: Murdo MacLeod for Guardian

But we bother about Rob and Pam and Inver. We worry there’ll be a lot of regarding the kitties’ arse women rather than enough punters just who have it. Rob informs us that individuals had walked out the past night since they don’t do steak. I fancy that it’ll be like Daniel Berlin’s spot deep in rural, middle-of-nowhere south Sweden, where individuals travel along the nation to eat their thoughtful, exquisite cooking. However in a burger-obsessed west of Scotland, Inver is the ultimate outlier.