This  fine-dining restaurant, is situated about as far out of the way as you can get .. in Portmahomack. It’s on the tip of Tarbat peninsula in Easter Ross. Question is … is it the best restaurant in the world? Probably not, but it does make you ask the question so it’s pretty special. It is certainly unique.

We were fortunate to be here for the first night of the season and we had been looking forward to it with much anticipation. There is no doubt that this is fine dining .. fabulous menu specialising in seafood and almost a thousand different wines along with hundreds of whiskies and liqueurs to choose from .. and correspondingly expensive. It may only be three courses but, they provide extra palate ticklers between each dish. One was cullen skink, another was haggis neeps and tatties, another was peach sorbet topped with crowdie. All taster sized portions but fabulous. But places like this don’t do scones .. do they? No they don’t. Our excuse for writing this is pretty thin, embarrassingly thin.

Yes, I had the ‘seared scallop of scone’ .. because I like scallops and I like scones. So the dish was king scallops, black pudding; bacon & coral scone; airbag; garlic-sauteed samphire; partan sauce. I didn’t even get a picture of the scone because it was buried underneath everything else. Suffice to say it was delicious. Don’t ask what the airbag was, we have no idea but it wasn’t a safety device. Obviously this could not be classed as a topscone. We do have a weird scone category however so we placed it there .. top weird scone!

Fantastic

I can show you a picture of my pudding though. That’s good Talisker you can see burning away there. Susan, the owner/waitress, looked after us superbly well but don’t expect any of the us

ual deference you normally get in fine-dining restaurants. No standing on ceremony here, just great friendly service. All in all it was a fantastic experience, hats off to Susan for making The Oystercatcher work in rural Easter Ross. Nothing short of amazing!

Who owns Scotland?

Was it a better than Bruce’s Café at the Carnegie Hall, just round the corner? That would be like comparing apples and pears. Completely different but both wonderful. While Susan and Bruce work their socks off we don’t suppose either of their businesses will feature in the Panama Papers. It is disturbing to learn that ownership of great swathes of Scotland are simply registered to PO boxes in Panama. Also, if you have ever wondered why people in oil rich countries like Nigeria are still poor it is because the country’s wealth is squirrelled away in Panama. Most of it administered through the UK by RBS and HBSC.  What is being displayed in the Panama Papers is that the system is global .. and rotten. Maybe we already knew that? Nothing rotten at the Oystercatcher .. expensive but worth it.

IV20 1YB         tel: 01862 871560        The Oystercatcher