][1]The 5pm Restaurant site is delighted to extend a warm welcome and firm handshake to The Airds Hotel and Restaurant, near Oban. The Argyll business is one of the West Coast’s best known culinary hotspots with three AA Rosettes and a Michelin recommendation to their name.
Port Appin
Located in the tiny hamlet of Port Appin, the hotel has eleven lovely rooms and suites along with two lounges (think open fires and stag’s heads) plus some of the finest loch views in Scotland.
][4]The candlelit dining room is very elegant with fresh-cut flowers and ironed white linen on every table. As you might expect, Scottish produce, particularly seafood, takes pride of place on the menu. Some of the ingredients have even been grown in the hotel’s own kitchen garden – hard to beat when it comes to dishes being fresh and local.
Natural ingredients
Head chef David Barnett trained under Martin Wishart and his style of cooking aims to let the natural ingredients of the flavours shine through. A sample dish, say the monkfish braised in red wine, saffron potatoes, citrus fennel, oyster beignet and served with a shellfish broth, may contain several elements but, in Chef Barnett’s kitchen, all the different flavours should be distinct as well as working together.
This blogger stayed at Airds a number of years ago and it was fantastic. We ate in the restaurant and I still remember enjoying the view of the sun setting over the water as dinner was served.
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