Setting up a new restaurant is often difficult - especially on a Hebridean island with a population of just 19

• Aart Lastdrager and Amanda McFadden aim to bring gourmet standards and the best local produce to their caf on picturesque Canna. Picture: Andrew O'Brien/Complimentary

A lone trawler passes as the dot begins to take form – huge cliffs plunging down to the breaking waves of the Minch on one side and a wide bay with a handful of whitewashed cottages on the other.

This is Canna, visited by ferry only four days a week – less often in winter – and home to just 19 people (six of them aged under ten).

Not, then, the place you'd expect to find a restaurant selling freshly caught lobster and crab, as well as local lamb and rabbit, all cooked to the standard found in the best eateries in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

But just such a venture will open on the island this Easter, run by Amanda McFadden and Aart Lastdrager.

The couple are newcomers, having answered an advert last year from Canna's owners, the National Trust for Scotland, appealing for willing volunteers to move there and set up the business.

Amanda and Aart were chosen from a shortlist of four. They arrived from Ardgour, near Fort William, in January, and since then have been making tables from old bits of scaffolding wood, honing their menus and painting the caf, the Gille Brighde – Gaelic for oystercatcher, of which there are dozens on the shore outside.

Amanda, 38, agrees the venture may seem strange to some, but says they are chasing their dream, adding: "It would be easier to open a caf somewhere else, but it is a very exciting journey. We made our minds up that we wanted to have our own business, and when Canna came up it just really appealed.

"It is something that you dream of, it is the idyllic lifestyle, it is the combining of lifestyle and work that we wanted."

The couple, however, are not blind to the hardships of living on a remote island. Aart, 41, who is originally from the Netherlands, says: "The main challenge is how we survive the quiet months in winter, how we make enough money in summer to survive that.

"We also have to find ways to get people to come to the island in winter. We are looking at groups or artists who could do workshops. There are also challenges, such as you go off to the mainland to do a big shop and you find out that the ferry isn't sailing back because it is too windy and you are stuck in Mallaig for a couple of days."

After seeing the advert in a local paper, the couple applied to the National Trust for Scotland to move in.

"It was quite a long process; it took in all about four months," says Amanda, originally from Glasgow. "We came to the island to see if we could live here, and if they could live with us. We put forward some business ideas and we went to the interview process with the National Trust people themselves; we had to show we could live on the island. You have to be realistic – can you survive? We had to invest all our money into this, you can't just come with a dream, you have to make it a bit more realistic."

Before moving to Canna, the couple ran a successful restaurant at Kingairloch Estate, Ardgour. But those customers could come and go with ease. The lack of easy access to Canna would appear to be another huge stumbling block for the Gille Brighde. Amanda explains: "The caf is going to have a bit of a split personality. Through the daytime we will be attracting hillwalkers, birdwatchers and people who are staying on the island in the self-catering cottages or in the guest-house. There are also daytrippers on a Wednesday and a Saturday.

"But in the evening our biggest trade will be the 'yachties', because we are on this circuit for west coast sailors and a lot of them do restaurant trails and they are always looking for good places to eat. It is a very safe harbour with good anchorage and we are very sheltered, one of the best piers and harbours of the Small Isles, to which lots of yachts come."

Sitting outside the Gille Brighde, it is easy to see how a bounty of food is provided by nature. The sea eagles above have spotted the rabbits already, and the oystercatchers are making short work of scouring the shoreline. As well as the sandwiches and soup expected in a seaside caf, this harvest from the sea and the fields around will be on offer to customers.

Amanda says: "We have fantastic fishermen in the area, from whom we can buy direct. You can't get fresher than that. We have a local business which supplies us with shellfish. From the farm here on the island we have lamb and beef, and the wild rabbit – there is a lot on Canna. The garden of Canna House is also being developed, so it will produce vegetables for us, as well as the local community. If it's not from Canna, it will be from within a 40-mile radius."

The locals insist they are excited by the new enterprise and by the presence of new faces.

Winnie MacKinnon, 48, was born and bred a couple of hundred yards along the island's main road – really a track – from the caf. She is the island's postmistress, as well as looking after National Trust for Scotland visitors and the self-catering bothies and cottages where they stay. She says: "We are so delighted to have these new people. It promotes Canna and it brings the yachts in. It is somewhere they can go at night and meet people."

Winnie, like many on Canna, believes a few more people on the island would help, although she dismisses suggestions that the remoteness is a problem.

She says: "I don't see any challenges. I just feel it as a safe place and a fantastic environment to bring children up in."

Her sister Gerry runs the National Trust for Scotland's farm, rearing lambs and beef cattle with her husband, Murdo. She agrees population numbers need a boost.

Gerry says: "We have got to the stage where we need more people, but we need people who are able to come and make a living, such as Aart and Amanda. Visitors will have somewhere to get evening meals, and it is good for locals to have a central meeting point too."

Neil Baker, 45, the gardener at Canna House, moved from Wales with his wife (Deb is now secretary of Canna Community Council) and two daughters three years ago. He agrees it is a great setting for family life and thinks the caf will benefit everyone on the island.

"They gave us a little taster the other night," he says. "If that is what they are offering for the people coming here to visit, that restaurant will increase visitor numbers and maintain the sustainability of the island. It is really going to improve and brighten the future for Canna."

Neil has some experience of what newcomers face. He says the weather challenges him, being a gardener, as does getting the children to school. He explains: "They have to cross a little bridge to get to the primary school and sometimes the wind can be so strong you have to go with them and hold their hand for fear of them being blown over the bridge. For three or four days of the week there is no ferry, so when that ferry's gone there is just the 19 of us and we've to get on. That's a challenge and sometimes, like all communities, there are little tensions. It's a bit of a goldfish bowl.

"It's a bit of a gossipy old place actually, but it's great, it's really warm and a very close community. All of us get on pretty well."

Good community relations are just as well in a place where the electricity is turned off between midnight and 6am and where there is no doctor, police officer or shop. There is a school, but the register of teacher Eilidh Soe-Paing contains just four names. She says: "It is really great for the place to have more people.

"To sustain itself, you need enough people to provide jobs and to make it a healthier community."

For Amanda and Aart, it is the community on Canna which is central to making their venture work. Amanda says: "The best thing is feeling you are part of something. A small island, a small business, but it is enough, and it is that feeling of belonging somewhere and having found something you can do well and take pride in."

THE WILDER SIDE OF LIFE

Canna is 4.5 miles long by one mile wide and is linked to the smaller island of Sanday by a wooden bridge.

The islands were gifted to the National Trust for Scotland in 1981 by Gaelic scholar John Lorne Campbell. His collection of Gaelic literature, photographs and recordings of recitals is still held at Canna House.

&149 The electricity is turned off between midnight and 6am; there is no mobile phone reception but there is broadband.

There is a small primary school which currently has four pupils, but for secondary school the children have to go to the mainland and live in a hostel at Mallaig (the nearest mainland town – at the end of the "Road to the Isles").

There is no doctor – one visits each month from Eigg.

There is no shop, all provisions come from the mainland.

The roads are all private therefore there is no road tax needed to drive on the island.

There is no police officer – one visits once a year, to check gun licences.

It is an important wildlife haven, particularly for Manx shearwaters, sea eagles and golden eagles. You can also see many basking sharks in summer.