Dollar Restaurant Guide

The “fabulous” traditional dining room of this famous resort hotel – less aspirational than its near-neighbour Restaurant Andrew Fairlie – is still going strong after just over a century. Its modern Scottish cooking is certainly “not the cheapest”, but inspired consistently supportive feedback in this year’s annual diners’ poll. Recommendations include for “the best breakfast anywhere” and slap-up Sunday lunch.

“Hidden deep in the Gleneagles Hotel”, this formidable dining room is considered by many to be Scotland’s flagship venue for fine dining. Named for the late Andrew Fairlie, who passed away in 2019, its renown has been successfully maintained by chef Stephen McLaughlin, who has worked here since the restaurant first opened in 2001. There are à la carte options here, priced from £145 per person for three courses, or there is a ‘Degustation’ menu at £195 per person for seven courses – of the latter, feedback says that “every course is incredible” and there’s also “particular praise for the sommelier” Frenk Trouw and his “outstanding” advice. GM of 23 years, Dale Dewsbury, retired in 2025, to be replaced by Californian James Ashton, who’s been at the hotel for ten years.

“What a find in Auchterarder, so close to Gleneagles”. “You can not fault the food, wine and service in this small and cosy, family run restaurant”. It’s a white-painted venue on the town’s main street whose straightforward menu is much more affordable than that down the road (with the likes of Hot Smoked Salmon, Chicken Supreme, Tenderloin of Venison and Eton Mess). For one of our diners, “it’s a go-to place when we are north of the border – if only it was closer to us in Cheshire!”

2023 Review: “The best steaks we have ever eaten!” – the Davidson family’s roadside inn near Linlithgow has built its renown over four decades in operation, for the quality of its meat; and there’s also a selection of prime-quality burgers. Reflecting their heritage, South African wines are the backbone of what’s a high-quality list to bolster the generally red-blooded vibe.

“Kim & Andy Murray’s culinary adventure is now maturing into a very good country house hotel” indeed – the tennis ace and his wife having bought the property, a Victorian mansion set in secluded countryside near Dunblane, in 2013 (you can take tennis lessons there, but not, alas, from the maestro), and there’s an on-site chapel where his brother Jamie also married. As we went to press, change was afoot: following the recent appointment of James Mearing, replacing longtime chef Darin Campbell, the hotel was set to close in early 2026 as operations shift to creating a new extension-based restaurant (launching May 2026), after which time the current Glasshouse dining room will revert to serving afternoon teas. Here’s hoping the new setting adds to what is already a “stunning location”, and backdrop this year to some “first-class cooking” of local produce – but then again “Cromlix usually gets it right”.

2024 Review: No reports as yet on this spring 2023 newcomer – the latest opening in the expanding empire of MasterChef: The Professionals 2018 finalist Dean Banks. But The Scotsman’s Gaby Soutar is a fan – in her February 2023 review she noted that the “foraging theme only seems to extend as far as the branding” with a menu that only “features the prerequisite pub classics, like fish ’n’ chips, Sunday roast, pies” along with some “fancier bits”. But she concluded that “Scotland has another excellent country pub”.

2024 Review: 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”.