if . TRAVEL
You can still find a good old fashioned cup of tea and a scone but lnverness is far from a genteel backwater
You take the high life
With fine dining and one of the biggest arts venues in the country, lnverness is increasingly cosmopolitan. Kirstin Innes followed in Gordon Ramsay's footsteps and found herself challenging her preconceptions
‘d never really thought about lnverness as a holiday destination. To be perfectly. shamefacedly honest. I hadn‘t really ever thought much about lnverness. In an age of £20 flights to Europe. the idea of the weekend city break has come to mean
of the very. very fine dining on offer in the region. The Highlands and Islands enjoys immediate access to some of the best. freshest local game, beef and seafood in the country. and over the past decade increasingly impressive chefs and the attendant rosettes and Michelin
approximately three-and-a-half
hours from both Edinburgh and Glasgow. and Scotrail's service times can be erratic. Bring a book. or a good conversation partner. and relax. Being Invernesian novices. we took a taxi the tiny distance
from the station to our hotel. ‘ls
groomed. and apparently French to a woman. Were we really still in Scotland'.’ Our room was tucked into the eaves of the second house. three floors tip; it felt a little bit like staying in a spare room at a relative's hotise. were your relatives possessed of meticulous taste in interior design. the best-stuffed feather mattresses in town and a host of French staff to carry groaning breakfast trays up three flights of stairs if you decide not to come down in the morning.
What we were there for. though. was the food. We were booked into Abstract (sister to the recently opened Iidinburgh branch of the same name). the (ilenmoriston‘s flagship restaurant. You might know it from Ramsay's Kirt‘ht'n Nightmares — a few years ago this was La Riviera. a conservatory- view Italian restaurant with wicker chairs and no customers. Post- Gordon Ramsilication. it's a sleek panther of a place dripping with AA
awards and Michelin commendations; the gently
glimmering chandeliers. dark wood and minimal foliage giving it a bit of a l920s feel. The other customers ooze wealth and good taste; the staff are distantly courteous and. again. as French as the menu. ('anapes and gourmet chocolates are brought to us with cocktails before and after the meal respectively. while the cooking shows off exactly why our food experts are so excited about locally- sourced Scottish produce just now. The plump excess of lobster carpaccio or sweet. rare duck are tempered by perfectly-chosen accompaniments (pea ice cream; rowan jelly). locally dived scallops complemented by pork belly. This is true special-occasion dining. the
something very different: a Friday afternoon dash to the airport with all the ensuing fuss and bustle. a whole other city. country. language and culture packed into a day and a half. It‘s not something we . necessarily think of doing in our own country any more; it‘s certainly not something self-contained Central Belt-dwellers often think
stars have gravitated towards the food. Dine Around the Highlands. which runs until the end of November, offers fixed-price two course meals for either £15 or £25 in 35 restaurants all over the north of Scotland. IVs a long
there anywhere we can go sort of food you‘re still dancing." my companion asked the taxi driver. who replied ‘Dancing‘.’ You’ve come to the wrong place for dancing.‘ While I'm not sure that‘s an entirely fair assessment of the city, he set the tone for the weekend: this was going to be life lived at a very different pace.
train ride up:
were
about doing in Inverness. In fact. despite the extensive regeneration projects happening all over Scotland’s newest city. we still tend to think of the increasingly cosmopolitan capital of the Highlands as a bit of a genteel backwater.
What lured me up there was a project called Dine Around the Highlands. which Visit Scotland has run annually for the last couple of years. The idea is to promote some
94 THE LIST 15—29 Nov 2007
‘OUR TAXI % We
DRIVER SET THE TONE FOR THE WEEKEND: THIS WAS GOING TO BE LIFE LIVED AT A VERY DIFFERENT PACE'
staying in the Glenmoriston Town House Hotel (recent winner of the Scottish Hotel Awards Best Hotel in Inverness trophy) which is actually two
luxuriously appointed houses. each
of them hiding an equally award- laden restaurant in their skirts. It was sheer glitz from the moment the car pulled up at the fairy-lit riverside entrance. None of the famed Highland hospitality here. though; the staff were all young. immaculately mannered and