Cupar, French Restaurant Guide

“The Smeddle Family has consistently turned out very good food served by very knowledgeable and capable waiting staff” (all backed up by a heavyweight wine list) at this famous, upscale inn – sensitively modernised over the years and set “in a tiny village just outside St Andrews”. One reporter gives us the local lowdown: “As it happens the family have just announced that the business is up for sale. (March 2025). They have run it for twenty years and took it to one Michelin Star. Before them the legendary David Wilson ran it for thirty five years. Watch this space for details of the new owner…” [no transaction has yet been announced as of October 2025]

Chef Roy Brett’s Ondine closed in Edinburgh last December after 16 years, to reopen in spring 2025 at this new five-star hotel overlooking the hallowed golfing turf of the Old Course. It opened rather late to attract reports in our annual diners’ poll, but in her July 2025 review, The Times’s Chitra Ramaswamy invested in “the most expensive lunch… in ages”. Oysters are the star turn here according to Chitra – “to sit in this fine room at teatime, with this view, eating oysters of this calibre at these outrageously good prices, is one of the best things you can do with your hard-earned cash in Scotland.” Other dishes on the “minimalist and French-leaning” menu were a mixed bag: “lemon sole meunière is a masterclass in fish cookery, the fish soft, fluffy and white as a cumulus cloud”, but some of the cooking “needs finessing” – in particular, both salt-baked beets with whipped crowdie and monkfish au poivre were “way too salty”.