The Edinbane Lodge

Thursday I had some work I wanted to catch up on, and Rachel was doing a bit of paperwork as well, so we spent the morning working, and then in the afternoon Rachel went for an explore down to the Old Man of Storr and back while I finished up.

Then, we got properly dressed up for a fancy dinner. (We forgot to take any pictures of those outfits, I'm sorry. If you're lucky, we might repeat them in Edinburgh and in that case hopefully we'll remember to snap a Selfie.)

A couple of weeks before, while planning the trip, we had decided to try to have one really fancy meal while we were in Skye, and after some hunting since it was quite late when we made the decision we found reservations available at Edinbane Lodge.

Picture from their website because I forgot to take one.  It was much nicer (ie: overcast) when we were there.

Scotland is very fond of sourcing local foods, taking farm-to-table to an entirely new level, and Edinbane Lodge is a place that seems determined to source everything from as close to the building as possible, including admissions of the mileage of each major ingredient in their explanations of where it was sourced.

Truffles really put a dent in their Farm To Table  Foraging Olympics lowest-average-distance scores.

Edinbane Lodge bills itself as "casual fine dining".  From what I could tell,  "casual" = "we won't throw you out for forgetting your dinner jacket and tie" and  "Fine dining" = "incredibly thoughtful food and presentation, also, be prepared to drop a mortgage payment in here.")

Incoming: The chef has a plan, and access to a clipart library

I got the wine pairing, which was a great choice, and it was some of the gutsiest I've ever seen.  The wine arrived before each course and on two occasions I took a sip and was genuinely bewildered by the selection, but when the food arrived, it went perfectly together.  Really remarkable.

Pictured: the reason Patrick forgot to photograph two of the courses.

We ordered a cocktail, but our timing was poor, so it arrived along with my first wine and the crudites, which made the start of the dinner feel a bit like a starting gun had gone off for a race, and meant I forgot to get pictures of the drinks, which is really too bad.  Rachel's was vodka mixed with juice of a local something called "Sea Buckthorn", served in a martini glass with a charming little sidecar of champagne? Mine was an "New Old-Fashioned" made with Marmalade, which it turns out is a stroke of Absolute Genius that I'm going to have to experiment with when I get home.

The courses were incredible -- the first four, and the bread course, especially --

Crudites -- (stunningly complex flavors)

 

Bread!  The brown spread is a whipped truffle-garlic butter that was incredibly rich.  

The seed-topped bread on the far end of the bread board was one Rachel really liked, and when I told her it was very similar in structure and texture to a southern-style drop-biscuit she said she'd never had one, so I'll be learning to make those sometime so I can share them with her.

 

The Hake was excellent.  Incredibly crispy and salty.

Here lies the place where a picture of Halibut should be.  Lost forever.

 

The Hogget, prepared three ways.  Star of the show. 

The Hogget was the stand-out dish.  Hogget is 1-2 year old sheep -- too old to be lamb, too young to be mutton.  Incredible preparations and flavors.

 

Brioche and Brie.  Delicious but sweeter than I was craving.

The meal faltered a bit in the 5th and 6th courses, the first dessert (which I forgot to photograph) was good -- not too sweet, with mysterious local flavors (which it turns out might be mildly dangerous to humans?  Foraging is weird, yo), but the second course was much more sugary (and just, heavier and larger) than it needed to be. 

Seen here: slightly too much dessert. 

The savory courses of the meal were absolutely top notch though.

We meandered home around the northern edge of Sky, since the sun hadn't gone down yet and the weather on that edge of the island was fairly clear.  The views were spectacular.