Callander, Scottish Restaurant Guide

2023 Review: “Well worth the lengthy detour” – “hidden away up a long narrow road”, with views over Lochs Voil and Doine – Tom Lewis’s “unique” boutique hotel puts a contemporary slant on traditional Highlands hospitality, while chef Marysia Paszkowska’s menus rely heavily on home-grown produce.

Opened in July 2023 (after our annual diners’ poll had concluded), veteran Scottish TV chef Nick Nairn and his wife Julia re-launched this Stirlingshire restaurant on the site of their previous venue, which was destroyed in a fire two years ago. The business is a modern, family brasserie that’s not particularly foodie in approach and this is reflected in early reviews. For Murray Chalmers in The Courier it is “…great. Not life-changing, not genre-defining and not likely to win awards for innovation, but it all worked so well”. The Herald’s Ron Mackenna found it “strangely inconsistent… but is Nick’s worth a try? Yeah. Definitely”.

Limited but very enthusiastic feedback on this two-year-old outpost of the Nairns’ empire, whose most notable feature is a vast outdoor space, but whose attractions also include a home shop run by the celebrity chef’s wife. ‘Paul’s Pizza’ is a mainstay of a menu of fairly straightforward brasserie-style fare (burger, chicken Milanese, venison meatballs, steak…). The Scotsman’s Gaby Soutar is also a fan – in her February 2023 review she dubbed it “a beautiful space” that’s “well worth a detour” and “hard to leave”.

Handy for Stirling Castle and the train station, this well-established venture has won an embarrassment of accolades over the years, including ‘Restaurant of the Year – Scotland’ at the country’s 2022 Food Awards. Reporters love its “retro menu of good old-fashioned cooking” (haggis with mash, chicken supreme), “though the layout and ambience make it feel a little more like a café than a really good eatery, which is what it is”.