The Kylesku Hotel is a place we know well. I've talked about it before and it has the happy distinction of being the only eaterie I can think of that gets just that little bit more awesome every time we visit. We've developed a fairly comfortable relationship with the place - after visiting a couple of times a year for the past decade and a half we recognise some of the staff (they don't recognise us - but that's hardly surprising, they see hundreds of different customers a week and besides, we're not that remarkable...) and even have a favourite table.
Well, we had a favourite table.
As indicated at the end of last week's edition, after discovering that Lochinver was mostly closed we headed north in the sure and certain knowledge that there would be no surprises at the The Kylesku Hotel. We were wrong.
As I've mentioned before the hotel sits just off the main road north, next to what used to be the slipway for the Kylesku Ferry before that service was replaced by the elegant arc of concrete which now carries the road across the narrows and onward to the north coast. Turning down what is now the dead end spur that leads to the hotel we were met with a building site. Essentially the whole building looked like it was being rebuilt.
This gave us a moment's pause - after all, it was lunch o'clock and for us that's the most important time of the day. We'd already discovered that all the places we'd been looking forward to eating at in Lochinver were closed - was Kylesku going to let us down too? With some trepidation we made our way quickly (it was chucking it down) along the front of the building to the steps that lead up to the bar praying silently that we weren't going to have to make an empty stomached trip back to Grummore.
We should have known better. The Kylesku Hotel has never let us down - why would it start now?
It was still a surprise though.
The carpet had gone, replaced by sleek hardwood floors. The rustic stripped pine tables which always looked as though they'd been salvaged from a farmhouse kitchen where they'd been loved by generations were gone too, replaced by crisper, paler, slightly more Terrance Conran style furniture, although some of the chairs were still the old green upholstered dark wood. I suspect they'll all be white in due course. The colour scheme lived in my memory as sort of cream and green. Now it's various shades of pebble grey with the odd brightly coloured "accent" wall.
Visually it's one hell of a change, but I rather liked it. It's perhaps a little less cosy, but it's lighter, brighter and very pleasant indeed. Well, take a look:
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| They also kept the old ship's wheel on the bar... |
Oh, and we have a new favourite table:
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| Look at that view. Just LOOK at it! |
We could have sat there for hours. In fact, we did. Twice, because we went back later in the holiday. To avoid confusion and repetition I'll talk about both visits at once.
On both occasions we were greeted by the very genial Mark, who I think in a previous blog I believe I described as looking as though he "could have stepped straight off Bondai Beach". He still does, and his cheerful friendliness always makes the room light up a little bit.
He brought the menus and explained which of the dishes listed on the specials menu were no longer available. We both elected to start with the potted lamb. I was expecting a sort of cold pate affair, along the lines of the potted beef we're so fond of in Yorkshire, but what we got was this:
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| It was delicious. |
Personally I preferred the mustardy coleslaw, but since both were excellent, that's by the by.
It was warm, rich, perfectly seasoned and had a flavour so deep there was practically an echo. On a cold, wet, slate grey day it was the perfect comfort food - sort of distilled stew. We loved it so much on our second visit we asked our server if she'd ask the chef for the recipe. She told us with a smile and a twinkle that the chef "never reveals her secrets". I can't say I blame her. If I knew how to make something that perfect I wouldn't tell anybody either.
We'd arrived fairly early on that first visit and had been the first customers. We were in the middle of this unbelievable festival of flavour when the next customer arrived. It didn't occur to me to ask his permission to write about him, so I won't mention the name of this excellent old gentleman, although any regular of the Kylesku Hotel will doubtless know who I'm talking about, because he's something of a fixture.
We'd met him once before, on a previous visit when he'd regaled us with tales of his childhood around Loch Dubh during the war when his father had almost shot one of the top secret midget submarines that trained there after mistaking it for a seal. He sat down to his lunch of Loch Dubh spineys (think small languostines) just as our main courses were arriving, after dispatching Mark to collect a terracotta bust (actually he said "I've got a head in the boot of my car - could you go and get it for me?") which I believe is now displayed in a position of honour in the hotel.
Convivial as he was, when his spineys arrived he directed his full attention to his meal - as is only right. We did too. On that first visit I'd opted for the "Burger of the Day" (yes, I know, no shocks there) and Mrs Snail had gone for an old favourite, the Beetroot and Goat's Cheese Salad.
I won.
On our first visit of the trip the "Burger of the day" was a "Moroccan Lamb Burger" and it was utterly magnificent. I'm wishing I'd taken a picture because it was unutterably beautiful to look at. It was even better to eat. The Lamb patty was juicy, moist and wonderfully seasoned with spices that frankly I didn't recognise but really wanted to get to know better. The chips were, as in the past, about as close to perfect at it is possible for a chip to be - fat, golden and crispy on the outside, white, fluffy and steaming on the inside. There may have been salad. We don't speak of such things here.
Mrs Snail's Beetroot and goat's cheese salad looked amazing - there was more than one colour of beetroot on display which made the plate look exuberant rather than a charnel house - but it was also clear that the cheese did very much belong to the goat, and the goat was less than keen on sharing. There was not a lot of goat's cheese, is what we're saying. Indeed, the shortage was so severe that I didn't get to taste any, which means I only have Mrs Snail's word for the fact that in combination with the beets the effect of the breaded deep fried (we're still in Scotland, food lovers...)* nuggets of goat's cheese was exploseively good.
She wouldn't lie to me though - and if your only criticism of a meal is that you didn't get enough of it, that speaks pretty well of the food...
Our second foray to Kylesku was about a week later. As you already know, we both went for the insanely wonderful potted lamb as our starter, but we like to experiment, so our main choices were different.
Well, alright, I toyed with going for the burger of the day again, but the jovial and omnipresent Mark begged to make a recommendation. "Try the haunch of Venison," he suggested, "they serve it just pink, which is the only way to have it!" Well, you can't move in thois part of the Highlands for red deer, and they look not only magnificent, but also tasty, so how could I resist? Mrs Snail, who lacks my appetite for dead things, opted to try the cheese platter - normally a dessert - as her main. We ordered and settled back to watch the oyster catchers mince their way up and down the slipway, while a pair of herring gulls harrased the prawns that were swimming near the shore.
After a surprisingly short while our server - whose name I never quite got, I think it may have been "Elle" or "Ellie", whatever she was called, she was wonderful - brought our meals out to us. Just take a second and look at this:
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| I mean, where do I start?! |
Haunch of Venison, some kind of braised greens (the menu told me what they were but all I can remember is that they were nice), mashed neeps, straw chips and dots of different vegetable purees, with a potato an haggis dauphinouse.
It really shouldn't have worked. Cheesy potatoes with haggis in them? With Venison? Really?
YES!
I guess many readers have not eaten venison. Let me explain. Imagine the finest beef fillet you have ever eaten. Times that experience by three. That's bog standard venison. This though. Take your bog standard venison, multiply it by pi, add on your birthday than stick on a few more noughts. It was astounding. The bitterness of the braised greens and the sweetness of the neeps counterpointed each other, and the haggis dauphinouse was, well, interesting.
I know what's in haggis. Essentially, it's all the bits of a sheep you really wouldn't eat, minced up with oatmeal and shoved into a sheeps guts. In spite of that, I rather like it - so long as it's made to be crispy, something that the traditional steaming cannot do, and something that is never going to happen if you put it in a dauphinouse. Essentially, on paper, it's a bloody stupid idea.
And yet it worked.
Brilliantly.
The whole plate just came together to become the best meal I have had in some time. It was thge kind of meal you hated to finish. The kind of meal you wanted to be hungry enough to eat again. The kind of meal that makes you wish you were an Michelin inspector so that you could give the place a couple of stars. That good. I'm just going to go on record and suggest that any chef that can put those elements on a plate and make it work is a flat out genius.
By way of contrast Mrs Snail was somewhat less overwhelmed by her Cheese and Biscuits which seemed a little peremptory - three slabs of cheese with a couple of oatcakes, three grapes and a sort of onion marmalade sort of thing which jst didn't pack the pickly punch that a chutney would have provided. This is not a complaint (yes I know, it sounds a lot like one, but honestly it's just when everything is so good the little things that aren't quite perfect really stand out) as such, and although this was a bit of a low point in the culinary experience, the platter had an unexpected saving grace that made even the low point pretty darn high.
Did I mention that their chef was a genius and their waiting staff are awesome?
Well, I'm going to say it again.
Sitting quietly in the centre of the Cheese and Biscuit platter were three little balls of sesame seeds. Mrs Snail nibbled tentatively and then very quckly ate the whole thing - her expression melting into something approaching delighted content. She passed one of them to me and insisted that I try it.
It was amazing. We've christened these nectareous** nuggets of noshableness "sesame brittle", but in fact they were not quite crunchy and not quite chewey, but somewhere rather fascinatingly in-between. They were also sweet but not too sweet, with that nutty toasted sesame flavour that is almost but not quite bitter. They were so good that when our server came over to see if we wanted anything else, we asked for a bowlful, which she very generously provided. Told you the waiting staff were awesome!
On that second visit we skipped dessert - we were in a bit more of a hurry and settled for the sesame brittle balls. On our first visit the weather was so uninviting we did stick around for a third course. I went for their tablet ice-cream, while Mrs Snail went for a Pear tarte tatin with poppy seed syrup.
People who haven't spent much time in Scotland may be unfamiliar with Tablet. Mrs Snail, who doesn't really have a sweet tooth, once described it as "gritty fudge", but to me it is the finest of confections. It is sort of fudge like, but drier and crumblier. It is also outrageously sweet. My two scoops of vanilla ice-cream were loaded with huge nuggets of the stuff. It was heavenly, but it was Mrs Snails tarte tatin that was the real star.
I confess I was intrigued by the "poppy seed syrup". So far as I was aware the only syrup you're going to get from a poppy seed is opium - which would be an innovative approach to ensuring repeat custom, but I'm guessing it would also attract entirely the wrong clientele. The tarte was just about the right size, just the right texture and actually tasted of pear rather than suger. The syrup was not in fact opium, but a regular suger syrup with poppy seeds in it. They seemed to be a strange addition but they did add an interesting flavour and another layer of texture to the dish. The tarte is supposed to be accompanied with a scoop of Run and Raisin Ice-Cream. I have no idea whether that would have worked, because both Mrs Snail and myself regard Run and Raisin as an abomination so she asked if they would kindly swap it for pouring cream, which worked brilliantly.
And that's the all new Kylesku Hotel. It still gets better every time we visit.
Ultimately I think that the wonderful old regular said it best when he told us "The only thing you can do at the Kylesku is start at the top of the menu and work your way down."
He wasn't wrong.
Postscript:
I loathe prawns in all their forms. Mrs Snail adores them, but now suffers from the kind of allergy to them that makes your lips turn blue and inflates your tongue like a balloon. This is why neither of us ordered what I maintain is the hotel's most spectacular dish - a platoon of langoustines skewered on what is basically a sword which hangs, Damocles like, above a dish of garlic butter. I'm please to report that on our second visit I observed a fellow diner being served with this insanely cool seafood sensation. I'm pleased to see that it's still on the menu and that the presentation has not changed. I'd love to show you a picture of it, but I balked at invading a person's privacy to ask if I could photograph their lunch. If anyone from the hotel is reading this and wants to post a picture in the comments I'd be most grateful...
*Sorry. I do love a good stereotype. And I have visited the chippie in Stonehaven that claims to have invented the deep fried Mars Bar, so it's not like I haven't seen evidence for the idea that the Scots will deep fry anything.
**Sorry again. I wantedto use alliteration so I asked my Facebook friends for a synonym for "delicious" beginning with "N". They have a wide vocabulary, my Facebook friends...
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