The Times
Chitra Ramaswamy was thrilled by dinner at a tiny restaurant-with-rooms on the southern edge of the Highlands, where Japanese techniques and ingredients, Scottish storytelling, and boundary-pushing eccentricity combine to create “one of the most exciting and visionary restaurants in Scotland”.
It was opened in 2021 by chef Tom Tsappis and his wife Matilda Ruffle, who runs the front of house and is “one of Scotland’s most exciting sommeliers”, creating saké and wine pairings that are “high-end and unconventional”, sometimes “truly bonkers”.
The signature snack is inspired by the thrifty Scots tradition of keeping porridge in a drawer – “reinterpreted here as a slab of oats mixed with confit duck leg, fried in duck fat, and served with a pickled walnut emulsion and flurries of Isle of Mull cheddar. It tastes like haggis and brown sauce — the future and the past, all at once.”
Chitra Ramaswamy - 2025-07-27