Ar Bòrd

The name Ar Bòrd (‘our table’ in Gaelic) perfectly sums up this little village restaurant – you eat 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 destination that 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 are generous. His three-course, fixed-price carte is built on produce grown, caught or reared on the island. Meals always start with a thick slice of freshly baked sourdough, followed by an amuse-bouche of, say, smoked sea trout on a wafer-thin crispbread given a sharp kick with homemade green chilli sauce (courtesy of a neighbour's bumper crop). To follow, a mound of delicate white Croig-landed crab was piled on plump chilli pancakes, topped with a cuttlefish-ink cracker and surrounded by a circle of flavourful brown crabmeat – moreishly, plate-scrapingly good.

Mains featured a cassoulet of duck leg, local pork and venison sausage or five-hour slow-cooked shoulder of lamb, 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 involving strawberries, meringue and crumbled shortbread with a thick meadowsweet custard. Guests are gently reminded that the restaurant is BYOB when they book, with a tip that they can pick up some wine at Dugie’s shop in the village.