Once in a while – for the sake of our mental health, if nothing else – we just have to take the easy path in life, even if part of the joy of being human is throwing the dice in the air and seeing where they fall.
This doesn’t feel like the time for that.
Restaurant reviewing is no different in that you want to find great spots to write about but it’s rare to find a place where everything just works and where you’ll return again and again.
Getting everything right in a restaurant is so incredibly difficult because it’s not just about the food. Everyone in that room has invested time and money in being there, and many arrive with substantial emotional investments too.
Hopes, dreams and anniversaries often hang heavy in the air – we go to restaurants to celebrate success and to drown out the noise of failures and disappointments, just as much as we go because we’ve got nothing in the fridge that night and can’t face another takeaway.
Success is those times when the restaurant provides an experience that perfectly chimes with what you need or want that day. That’s not so easy when taste is so subjective; my favourite places might be anathema to some – for instance, I tend to abhor affectation and frippery, whilst some people revel in it.
This is why, much as I love presenter Andi Oliver, I just can’t see the culinary point in the concept of the Great British Menu, apart from to make an entertaining TV show.
Presenting dishes to resemble space stations, sentry boxes or tennis courts just isn’t my thing, I’m afraid – in fact, I struggle with the very idea of why anyone would want to muck around with food in this way.
Ingredients cooked well
Happiness, for me, is great ingredients cooked well. Strangely enough, that’s quite hard to find in Courier Country, especially in Dundee – but there is hope offered by a growing list of places that will always be there for those times when you need to know you’re in safe hands.
The following places deliver time and time again: The North Port and 63 Tay Street both excel in Perth, as does the Tayberry in Dundee. The Seafood Ristorante and 18 St Andrews bring quality dining to Scotland’s first university town, along with a bit of glam in their surroundings.
The East Neuk of Fife is relatively bountiful, with wonderful food available at the Kinneuchar Inn, Craig Millar@ 16 West End in St Monans, the East Pier Smokehouse (also in St Monans), the Harbour Café in Elie and the lovely Dory Bistro in Anstruther.
All the above serve the kind of food I love in surroundings which are empathetic to the ethos of simplicity and purity.
To this list I must now add the fantastic Grandtully Hotel in Perthshire, which is easily my favourite dining experience so far this year.
The Grandtully Hotel
This wasn’t my first trip to this beautiful part of Perthshire and I’m excited to see that the dualling of more of the A9 now makes it a 101-minute drive from my house in Fife.
The last part of the journey is particularly scenic, adding to the sense of occasion as you near the small, pretty village of Grandtully.
The hotel sits handsomely on the main road opposite the river, and there are great walks and photo spots nearby.
Really, I hate to make a rod for anyone’s back but this place is just perfect – and I’ve been there often enough to know that this perfection is consistent. I’ve never had a bad meal here and have always left this building feeling better about life than when I went in.
The lunch we enjoyed recently was the best yet.
There’s a kind of quiet perfection here that I just adore. Smart minds are at work because everything is designed so well that you barely notice it.
It’s a bit like being in many of the Soho House venues in London – everything is there for your aesthetic pleasure and yet nothing screams ‘interior designer’, even if such services have been used. This softly spoken yet assertive good taste is something I revel in, especially now our minds are in such a constant state of turmoil with the state of the world.
You enter The Grandtully Hotel and life seems to slow down.
I’ve never actually eaten in the dining room here because I’ve always come for lunch, which is served in the bar. But what a bar!
It just feels so damn good here – the tiling, the lighting, the colour scheme, the simple wooden tables and the comfortable banquettes. This is the kind of place you dream of stumbling into in Paris – welcoming, glamorous and yet bedded so firmly into its environment that you feel you don’t want to leave.
There’s a woodburner in the bar, a blazing chimera outside and a warm welcome from the staff. You have a menu in your hands in seconds and a cocktail in front of you in minutes.
One thing I love is seeing a great barperson at work – I adore the whole theatre of cocktails, provided it doesn’t become a Tom Cruise caricature. Today I chose a Picnic Smash mocktail which was so fantastic I didn’t miss the alcoholic hit at all; this one contained Feragaia, seasonal jam, lemon and salted pink grapefruit and was as good a way to spend £7 as I can think of.
The food here is wonderful and I could have eaten everything on the menu. In fact, I was somewhat scared to appear a gluttonous pig when I kept ordering more and more but the expert assistance of assistant restaurant manager Mia Andrew kept us right.
This was service to dream of, from someone who knew this menu as if she had cooked it herself. Bad service is something we have grown accustomed to – but when you experience this kind of stellar attention you know how invaluable good waiting staff are.
I was incredulous to find out that this was Mia Andrew’s second week at the hotel because this took skilled service to another level.
I can’t blame Mia for the fact I ordered so much food but I can thank her for the specific recommendations she made when we asked her for tips.
The food
The menu is divided into bites, small plates, large plates, sides and desserts, with a few specials for lunch.
The first thing to note is that it’s insanely cheap for food of this quality, because I believe head chef Jordan Clark’s food is up there with the best in Scotland.
Bites average at £3 and the first thing to know is even if you’re on a diet you need some of the incredibly good Ballintaggart sourdough with whipped butter (£3).
You can buy some of this fantastic bread in the small shop at the hotel’s reception, and I can’t imagine a time when you wouldn’t want to do that as you leave.
After the bread I had the following “starters” – great glen charcuterie plate, pickles (£4), pigs head croquette, smoked honey (£3) and North Sea cod Scotch egg, dill emulsion (£6).
They were all quite brilliant and my only regret is I didn’t throw caution to the wind and order the beef tartare, beef fat crumpet, soy cured egg yolk, beer pickled onion and hazelnut (£13) from the small plates.
The lobster ravioli in spiced shellfish broth, cucumber and confit lemon also sounded incredibly alluring (£14) as did the cured Peterhead monkfish, yoghurt, blood orange and rhubarb for £10.
You see, it was all just the best.
David showed remarkable restraint by ordering the kitchen garden salad with pickles (£3) as a starter and yet… this salad was a revelation. At a time of year not exactly abundant with salad crops this salad was a perfectly balanced plate of vibrant flavours which made a mockery of most versions of the ubiquitous side salad we’re often presented with.
My main course of venison loin, salsify, beetroot and hazelnut (£28) was the most expensive item on this menu but was worth every penny. Even as I look now at the photos I took of this great dish, I’m salivating – two pieces of perfectly cooked venison served with the two complementary vegetables in a perfect sauce. Top stuff!
Extra points go for the use of French Laguiole knives which I used to delight in buying in French supermarkets and which sliced through this meat like it was whipped butter. In line with the pared back glamour of this place, table settings here are simple yet vastly pleasing, from the glasses to the plates; just as in the food there is nothing extraneous.
David’s vegetarian main of pumpkin pithivier, black garlic, bitter leaves, walnut and pickles (£16) was a delight – not least because it showed some imagination for non-meat eaters. A dish of Shetland black potatoes with garlic butter (£3) was exquisite, the meaty density of the potatoes releasing a wonderful flouriness on eating.
We shared a rhubarb and lemon curd pavlova (£8) and it was a thing to behold, such a wonderful contrast of sharp and sweet that I could have eaten another just by myself.
We left with a pack of the best oatcakes you will ever eat from the tightly edited selection of products in the shop. These oatcakes were so good I ordered another pack via mail order and I’ve eaten the whole pack whilst writing this review.
The verdict
Jordan Clark is something special and the food he offers is exactly what I want to eat.
As such he joins chefs like Lloyd Morse at the Palmerston in Edinburgh and the inestimable James Ferguson at Kinneuchar in bringing a gutsy realness to the table – perfectly structured dishes that taste greater than the sum of their perfect parts, without unnecessary adornment or interference. This, to me, is the new classicism.
The Grandtully Hotel is a total joy and Jordan Clark’s cookery is the most exuberant, emphatic expression of that joy.
This former Scottish Young Chef of the Year has made this small hotel in Perthshire a food lover’s paradise. If you haven’t been yet, you’re in for a treat.
Information
Address: The Grandtully Hotel, Grandtully, Perthshire, PH9 0PX
T: 01887 447000
Price: Bites from £2, small plates from £6, large plates from £15, dessert from £4
Scores:
- Food: 5/5
- Service: 5/5
- Surroundings: 5/5
