Cupar, British, Modern Restaurant Guide

In prime golfing territory a short drive from St Andrews, Geoffrey and Katherine Smeddle’s well-known and highly acclaimed restaurant-with-rooms “never disappoints”. It again won praise this year for its “quiet excellence” – both its service and its modern Scottish cooking which can be accompanied by a vintage from their very extensive (and in places expensive!) cellar. “Good news, lunch is back on Fridays and Saturdays”.

MasterChef: The Professionals winner “Jamie Scott is one of the UK’s finest unsung chefs” (setting aside that 2014 honour), say fans of the restaurant-with-rooms he launched with wife Kelly in 2016; “the wonderful food together with the young, local but knowledgeable serving team” make for a winning combination and “a window seat looking over the Tay estuary is a bonus” (indeed, the room has “some of the best-ever views”).

2023 Review: Part of the Balcaskie Estate – which provides much of the produce for the menu – this seventeenth-century pub is run by chef James Ferguson and front-of-house Alethea Palmer, and continues to be highly rated for its short-but-impactful menu that would look just as at home in Shoreditch as it is in the middle of Fife.