The Isle of Skye, a bucket list destination for foodies for decades, is the easiest Scottish island to tick off. The Skye Boat Song’s romantic retelling of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s escape across the waves after the Battle of Culloden, might be sung in primary schools across the country and hummed by ‘Outlander’ fans everywhere but you no longer need to hop on a boat to get here. Since 1995 Scotland’s second largest island has been connected to the mainland by a bridge.
Visitors hurtle here for the jaw dropping scenery. The dramatic and daunting Cuillins form its backbone, the outlandish rock formations of the Quiraing on the Trotternish peninsula in the north have seduced a slew of Hollywood location scouts. There's a dour clifftop castle, two whisky distilleries, a pastel-painted harbour capital, Portree, and a legendary food scene. Skye is also ripe for a culinary roadtrip with single-track lanes meandering over heather-sprung moorland, winding round clifftops and dipping down to pretty fishing villages peppered with artisan bakeries, rustic cafes, cosy waterfront pubs and fine dining restaurants.
It all started over 50 years ago, when Scotland was not (whisper it) famous for its food. Lord and Lady Claire Macdonald, the doyens of Scottish cookery, opened their home on the lush, green Sleat peninsula in the south to weary travellers, feeding them from the island’s well-stocked natural larder and starting a quiet food revolution on this big Hebridean rock. Dating back to the 17th century, with walls hung with ancestral portraits, Kinloch Lodge became the island’s first gourmet bolthole and is still going strong. A new chef, Jordan Webb, is now at the helm, with daily-changing seasonal menus exhibiting a passion for provenance: veg plucked from the kitchen garden, seaweed foraged from the shore of Loch na Dal and chanterelles from the hill behind the hotel.
Jump forward a few years and to the other end of the island, in the little coastal settlement of Colbost, where a second destination restaurant made its entrance. In 1985 Shirley and Eddie Spear opened The Three Chimneys, a low-slung, whitewashed croft house with a similar ethos of celebrating the island’s produce. It was soon garnering awards and, alongside Kinloch Lodge, turned Skye from a culinary wilderness into a gastronomic pilgrimage. The Spears handed over the keys in 2019 to hotelier Gordon Campbell Gray and chef Paul Green now continues their legacy, while the launch last year of a collaboration with Talisker Distillery, The Three Chimneys at Talisker in the little village of Carbost on the Minginish Peninsula, delivers the restaurant’s philosophy to a wider audience.
The next generation of chefs has further cemented the island’s restaurant credentials. In 2016, Three Chimneys alumnus Michael Smith opened his own restaurant, Loch Bay, in the Waternish Peninsula’s waterfront village of Stein while Edinbane Lodge has also been notching up the accolades, including an 'Exceptional' rating in The Good Food Guide. In 2017, local chef Calum Montgomery converted a ruined 16th-century hunting lodge into a restaurant with rooms and one of the hottest tables on the island. His 10-course tasting menu name-checks local fishermen, foragers and crofters and logs the food miles. In Portree, Scorrybreac (speckled rock in Gaelic) Calum Munro’s fine dining restaurant’s seasonal menus feature imaginative dishes such as venison tartare, burnt heather, pickled rose along with barbecue scallop, Douglas Fir and sea sandwort. It’s fair to say the tasting menu tribe are more than adequately catered for.
But it’s not just fine dining that the island’s famous for. The culinary landscape is as rich and varied as the scenery and constantly evolving. Up a dirt track from the Talisker Distillery The Oyster Shed is a spit’n’sawdust farm shop-cum-seafood-shed with picnic tables and a lean-to with loch views, their own tidal loch-grown oysters on the menu along with lobster grilled in garlic butter, hot smoked trout and a rich crab bisque. Down the lane the bright red roof of Café Cuil beckons. Clare Coghill returned home from Hackney to open this barn-like eatery on her home turf. Famous for its brunch and showcasing the best of the island’s produce, tuck into Lochalsh beef brisket rarebit with Orkney cheddar sauce washed down with Cuil-Aid – a homemade strawberry and meadowsweet lemonade.
There’s also a vibrant coffee culture. Caora Dubh (black sheep), is a hip little tin-roofed coffee shack and roastery opposite Talisker Distillery. Just over the Skye bridge, Lean To Coffee on the road to Broadford is a cool makeshift café in a ruined crofter’s cottage and converted shipping container. On the menu? Matcha lattes, homemade granola with chia seeds, moreish pastries and sourdough toasties. In Portree, down a little alley, you’ll find Scandi-chic speciality coffee house Birch, with its nearby roastery just on the outskirts of town.
Pot plant-laced, vintage-chic Bog Myrtle café in Struan is an eclectic lunchtime pitstop with a good line in specials like their twice-roasted smashed seaweed potatoes. The Stein Inn, dating back to 1790 (the oldest pub on the island), serves fresh-from-the-pier seafood, lobster, langoustine and crab, with Scottish ales on tap and around 130 malt whiskies. Meanwhile, The Dunvegan dubs itself a fire restaurant, the owners’ family links to Argentina inspiring their asado cooking-style: seafood from the fire, outdoor-reared pork cooked in smoky charcoal and grass-fed ribeye from the flames with a garden herb chimichurri rub.
Finally, for an off-the-beaten-track gem, hang a left in Broadford for the long and winding journey cross-country to the far-flung fishing village of Elgol and Coruisk House, a small, whitewashed foodie hotel. Back in 2009, London lawyers Clare Winskill and Iain Roden bought what was an old fish restaurant, turning it into a dining destination with a clutch of charming rooms. Iain is the chef, conjuring up daily-changing four-course menus featuring island hogget, rope-grown mussels and creel-caught squat lobster with Clare’s bread hot from the oven.
Skye might feel overcrowded at times, but it’s still possible to find a quiet corner, a place where you can bed down in comfort and eat exceptionally well.
