Restaurant review: Barley Bree, 6 Willoughby Street, Muthill, Crieff, Perthshire

Over the years I've visited the pub in Muthill, just south of Crieff, on countless occasions. But every time, I've struggled to understand why the place has such an unenviable track record for failure.

All the ingredients are there for a successful restaurant or pub. From the outside, it's a beautiful old coaching inn, situated right on the main road in this small, picturesque village, with its own courtyard parking. Once inside, it gets significantly better, with low-beamed ceilings, lots of exposed stonework, ancient wooden floors and a wood-burning stove right in the centre of the dining room.

Until three years ago, there was also a snug bar at the end of the building, a darkened wood-panelled room with fading 1930s newspapers glued to the walls; a room that could have been unchanged for the best part of a century. The drinkers were a real mix, with villagers and gamekeepers rubbing shoulders with tourists and the odd coloured-cord-wearing incomer. The place was adorned with posters campaigning against pylons in the Sma' Glen, providing a palpable sense that it was the hub of the community.

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All of which made it surprising that the place was sold yet again three years ago, this time to Fabrice and Alison Bouteloup, who immediately set about turning it from a village boozer with attached gastropub into a more chi chi restaurant with rooms. The snug went, to be replaced by a cosy lounge built around a log fire and stacked with books and board games. The main dining room was sensitively overhauled, retaining its rustic identity but subtly updating it. There was the name change too, with the place now being known as Barley Bree.

Most importantly of all, the menu was completely revamped. Although he has been in the UK for the past 15 years, Fabrice Bouteloup, as the name suggests, is French. He may have worked at the Michelin-starred Putney Bridge Restaurant and moved to Muthill straight from working as head chef at the Atrium in Edinburgh, but he did his training across the Channel so you might expect a very Gallic gastronomic experience given that he now owns the place. If so, you would be wrong. Rather than simply importing a selection of French cooking's greatest hits, Bouteloup has gone native, serving a selection of dishes that are strong on local ingredients and almost bereft of the usual gallic bolt-ons.

Our menu, for instance, had a choice of lobster ravioli, parsnip soup, pigeon breasts or smoked salmon to start, and then sea bass, duck, rib of beef, turkey, pork or duck for the main courses. If his only purpose in life was to showcase Scotland's larder, he could hardly have constructed a menu better designed to do so (the French don't generally deign to eat parsnips, instead using them as feed for their livestock). Even the puddings were stoically Caledonian offerings, with the exception of the word "tatin" after the "apple tart".

If the menu looked good in theory, it worked equally well on the plate. We suspected as much as soon as a dish of steaming hot homemade bread arrived at our table, with our starters confirming that Monsieur Bouteloup really knows his onions. Bea's pigeon breasts were as gamey as they were tender, but were nicely offset by the pickled white cabbage and a nicely nuanced pinenut and sultana sauce. Even then, my lobster ravioli was a step up, with big chunks of lobster and a gentle Thai bisque sauce that completed a highly accomplished dish.

On a freezing, snowy Sunday, comfort food was the order of the day, so Bea's main course was a gloriously rich lamb stew studded with sunblushed tomatoes and infused with basil (slightly irritatingly described as a navarin, despite having no turnip in it, when the word "stew" would have sufficed and would possibly have confused fewer customers). My thin-cut roast beef was beautifully succulent, but suffered from too little gravy and horribly cloying roast potatoes. My daughter Ailsa's slices of duck were also superbly moist, and she wolfed down the asparagus and broccoli, even if she wasn't a fan of the excellent potato gnocchi, which had been browned in the oven and was more like roast potatoes than the roast potatoes. They didn't go to waste, though, and were eagerly devoured by Bea and me.

Given the timing of our visit, in the middle of last month, I rounded off with my first Christmas pudding of the season. It just about passed muster, but needed more brandy. It came with a big blob of delicious homemade vanilla ice-cream and a brandy custard, but which was also short of brandy (a Frenchman not adding enough booze to his cooking – what next?). Ailsa ordered a slice of the white chocolate cheesecake with honey ice-cream, which she ate with indecent haste once she had removed the crumbled hazelnuts. Bea finished off with a cup of gloriously bracing coffee.

Barley Bree remains a conundrum. The food is good and surprisingly decent value (especially if you go for the small-plate option) while the environment is outstanding, yet it was less than half-full when we were there and by all accounts is still struggling to really establish itself. There's certainly a lot of competition in the area, including Yann's and Knock Castle in Crieff, the Royal Hotel and Deil's Cauldron in Comrie, Tormaukin in Glendevon, Duchally House Hotel in Auchterarder, Andrew Fairlie at Gleneagles and Cromlix House in Kinbuck, yet it's surely only a matter of time before Barley Bree gets due recognition for its purist approach.

Let's hope so, because the Bouteloups have produced a restaurant that is good enough to stand the test of time.

Vital statistics

Barley Bree

6 Willoughby Street, Muthill, Crieff, Perthshire

(01764 681451, www.barleybree.com)

OUT OF POCKET

Starters 4.40-6.50 Main courses

8.50-14 Puddings 5-5.50 Cheese 7

RATING 8/10

• This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday, January 17, 2010

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