Ar Bòrd

The name Ar Bòrd (‘our table’ in Gaelic), perfectly sums up this little village restaurant – you eat at one of a scattering of tables in the spacious front room of Iain and Joyce Hetherington’s modern house. What started out as a supper club some five years ago has evolved into a popular seasonal restaurant. It works because Joyce is a natural host. Moving between the tables, chatting and laughing with the guests, she makes everyone feel at home and the room buzzes with conversation.

Do bring an appetite. Iain loves to cook and portion sizes, even starters, are generous. His three-course, fixed-price carte is built on produce grown locally, caught or reared. Meals always start with a thick slice of freshly baked sourdough, followed (on our visit) by an amuse bouche of smoked sea trout on a wafer-thin crispbread given a sharp kick by some homemade green chilli sauce - a neighbour had had a bumper crop. Then came a mound of delicate white Croig-landed crab teetering on plump chilli pancakes topped with a cuttlefish ink cracker and surrounded by a circle of flavourful brown crab meat – moreishly, plate-scraping-ly good.

Cassoulet with duck leg, local pork and venison sausage or five-hour slow-cooked shoulder of lamb were main course choices but we plumped for pan-fried hake, potato and Inverlussa mussel curry, the fish flaking at the mere touch of the knife and delivering on flavour and texture. Desserts are down-to-earth, perhaps a take on Eton Mess that mixes strawberries, meringue and crumbled shortbread with a thick meadowsweet custard. On booking, there’s a gentle reminder that the restaurant is BYOB, with a tip that you can pick up some wine at Dugie’s shop in the village.