Restaurant review: Knockinaam Lodge, Portpatrick

Published on Tuesday 24 January 2012 00:00

KNOCKINAAM Lodge keeps winning gongs for being one of Scotland’s most romantic hotels, and even through the hurricane-force winds that accompanied our visit you can see the judges’ point.

Hidden away in the most south-westerly point of Scotland, this former hunting lodge is in its own bay looking over the Irish Sea, with the Emerald Isle barely ten miles away and the lights of Belfast twinkling in the night sky. It’s a thoroughly enchanting, if windswept, scene.

The beach is about 100 yards from the front door and gorse-lined cliffs rise skywards on either side of the small bay. It’s a beautifully secluded spot and there’s not another building in sight. Indeed, its seclusion is the reason for one of this venerable little ten-bedroomed country house hotel’s most famous features: the fact that Churchill and Eisenhower met here during the preparations for D-Day (one of several grand houses along the Ayrshire and Galloway coast where they met). Less well known is the fact that author John Buchan also stayed here, basing the long, winding driveway in The 39 Steps on that at Knockinaam.

Bea and I had different reasons for wanting to visit. She was motivated primarily by the fact that she was left her grandmother’s diaries and discovered from them that she had stayed at Knockinaam in the 1930s, when it was still a private house. The diary entries were annotated with rock climbs and walks that she had undertaken to keep busy, and Bea was keen to try them out. Fortunately our visit coincided with one of the more violent of this winter’s storms, which made the two-mile cliff-top walk to the pretty little fishing village of Portpatrick particularly unappealing, while scrambling around on the rocks didn’t rate much more highly.

So we let my priorities take over. I was perfectly happy sitting in front of the log fire in the wood-panelled whisky snug and reading the papers for a large chunk of the afternoon, but my real motivation for visiting lay in the work of head chef Tony Pierce. Since arriving from Inverlochy Castle, in Fort William, in 1994, Pierce has helped consolidate Knockinaam’s reputation for quality traditional gastronomy, leaning heavily on local producers and tending the large kitchen garden himself. Knockinaam was the first hotel in Scotland to win a Michelin star and has now held it for 20 years.

Just why became obvious when our food started arriving, as soon as we moved into the relaxed dining room and took our table, next to the fire. While you can choose when to eat, exactly what you get is predetermined by the hotel, with everyone getting the same menu unless there’s something you can’t or won’t eat. Personally, I like this system, which is similar to that used at the Summer Isles (where everyone also has to eat at the same time) – although I’m not so impressed by the dictat that families must dine at 6.30pm, and only then if their children are eight or older (presumably this way they are finished by the time the grown-up guests arrive for dinner).

Our fresh home-made bread and three fantastic amuse bouches – a salmon mousse and a disc of black pudding underneath a quail’s egg, plus two chunks of silky smooth and crimson pigeon breast with beetroot and blackberry – promised a meal to remember, while the freshly pressed grape juice was a nice touch. Our meal started in earnest, however, with the arrival of the Drummore lobster risotto, which was served with a parmesan tuille and a red pepper emulsion. This was a nicely constructed dish in which the tension between the creaminess of the lobster risotto and the tangy edge of the red pepper turned the whole ensemble into more than the sum of its parts.

Sadly, the cappuccino of spiced pumpkin, which was served in a small cup, was a little less nuanced, a little less impressive. It was, as you would expect with a chef of Pierce’s ability, a more than passable course, but it somehow lacked the bite and layered complexity of our starter. Anywhere else it would have been lauded, but here it suffered by comparison with the risotto and the amuse bouches.

The same was definitely not true of the slow-roasted fillet of Speyside Angus beef, which was served with three onions, a garlic beignet and a port and truffle sauce. If this was small, it was also perfectly formed, with the doorstopper-thick slab of beef the undoubted star of the show. So succulent that it could have been cut with a spoon, it was also packed with the sort of deep, percussive taste that only the very best beef can boast. It also helped that it came with a sauce that did justice to the meat, with the beignet acting as an inventive slow-release mechanism for the garlic.

My pudding of caramelised thin apple tart with double vanilla bean ice-cream was a good way to round off a meal of real quality, but Bea was underwhelmed by a curiously limited cheeseboard.

That said, Knockinaam Lodge passes the acid test because we would certainly go back. The informal, relaxed service, stunning setting and a fantastic wine list that started with a whole gamut of options from as little as £22, were all important, of course. But more than that, the food was pleasantly understated, a joyously traditional meal from beginning to end, yet one that thankfully never threatened to overwhelm the senses.

Knockinaam Lodge

Portpatrick, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland (01776 810 471, www.knockinaamlodge.com)

Bill please

Four course meal with coffee and petits fours £58 Rating

8/10

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DaddyBear22

Sunday, January 29, 2012 at 03:10 PM

I have eaten at Knockinaam twice. Both times we had a really nice meal, but it is definately not Michelin standard. The set dinner menu lacks imagination and in a michelin starred restaurant serving at most most 20 guests this seemed to be a cop-out . Portions were miniscule and both my husband and a dining companion had to fill up with bread, very nice bread as I remember. The cheese course was chosen not for the choice but it seemed to be more substantial than a pudding; on reflection I think the pudding plate had the most on it. This eatery is not for anyone who likes normal portions, not hearty, just merely normal.

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