Restaurants worth travelling for: 1887 at the Torridon

Tradition is a kind of blanket; in it we find the soft comfort of familiarity. A tradition of mine is to visit Scotland in the winter. Up there I have found many favourite places: Gleneagles, yes, but also the Station Hotel in Rothes. Years ago I stayed in the Eagle Brae cabins, fairytales found off a winding B-road going from nowhere to the middle of nothing. Sometimes, when I imagine time could be reversed, I wonder about going back there.

The Torridon might best them all. It is quietly famous, the Torridon, partly for its easy sell: here is Britain’s most northerly five-star hotel. Whether you like its looks will depend on your taste for the gothic; it is an old hunting lodge with a clock tower, built from dark red sandstone. Against the green of the forest and hills that surround it, it seems all turrets and black magic. There is something beguiling in this. In front of it is a loch; beyond that mountains climb endlessly into the sky. The clouds do not always clear their peak.

The hotel’s gothic exterior (Press handout)

Here is a hotel with a history: what is the Torridon now — named for the village nearby — was once Ben Damph House, built over two decades for an English earl, William King-Noel, the man who married Lord Byron’s only legitimate daughter, Ada. King-Noel wanted a hunting lodge, which was not an easy ask: the build needed everything shipped in across the water. The soil for the garden came from Ireland. Somebody really cared.

Somebody still does. The hotel has been family owned for more than 30 years, with current owners Daniel and Rohaise Rose-Bristow having taken it over from Rohaise’s parents in 2004. You shudder to imagine a corporate board in charge, one that might tear the stories out of the building. There feels one in almost every room. The bar in particular is somewhere to sit and wonder, to look around at the wood-panelling and red leather, at the blue and green velvet, and ponder who sat here before.

The whisky bar (Matt Buckley)

One wall is given to library shelves, only in place of books are whisky bottles, and around from there a small cabinet of cigars. They do not push here, just suggest. It can be somewhere for a sharpener before supper or nightcaps before bed, though it does just as well in the daytime, after a morning riding out among the mountains, kayaking on the loch, or clay-pigeon shooting (the hotel is not short of things to do). There is a ladder to reach the top shelf Scotches, which when the lights are low seem to flicker like candlelight. For two years I wrote a drinks column for this paper. But here might just be my favourite bar in the world.

There are two restaurants here: one, the casual Bo and Muc, a brasserie that feels like a ski lodge. The other is the impressive 1887. Here is a room with another story, with its ceiling a wood-lined representation of the zodiac, King-Noel wanting to pay his respects to Queen Victoria and her passion for astrology. It lends the room a sense of the mystic, of magic. The evenings that roll in here come winter, with their mist and wind, only help. You feel as though you might be at the end of the world, about to discover another.

The hotel and its views (Matt Buckley)

This is a hotel of solid things, of silver salt cellars and a porch filled with muddied wellington boots. To have a restaurant that intended to break moulds or reinvent wheels would not fit; gastronomy of an intellectual kind would be inappropriate, out of place. Danny Young, the head chef, is too perceptive to chase a folly of this kind. Instead, what he is serving here is the ideal restaurant for its surroundings, where the intention is simply just to serve food that does not shout but impresses, food that is delicious. And so he does: his £135 menu draws from both the loch and the hotel’s two-acre garden kitchen, but Young has contacts across the country for the best produce — he will not compromise flavour in subservience to locality.

Young has a knack for simple ideas made sublime. Mushroom tea — a simple broth — is served elsewhere. But not like this, not so savoury, tasting the way it feels to be wrapped up warm in a dark forest. It is a dish that soothes and consoles, so rich, so umami it is as though there has been sleight-of-hand in the kitchen: surely there is beef in here too? Apparently not. From Beinn Eighe, the mountain the bar looks at, comes venison, diced into a tartare, the meat left alone and only gently seasoned, as though too much might spoil things. Barbecued langoustine might sit on a plate, its pink shell turned black and orange from the grill, its meat still springing against the fork, carrying a little smoke.

Danny Young’s scallop (Matt Buckley)

Cod came in a whisked vin jaune, all bubbles and lightness; the fish itself slow-cooked so its natural sweetness and butter note strongly sounded, the flesh softly floating into flakes, snow in all but name. It was followed by beef fillet, cooked only to the colour of crimson, as perfect and tender as an old Scots ballad. On other days there might be duck, hand-dived scallops, plenty of cheese. This is not food that startles but food that soothes. You look out of the window and hope for snow, as though you might get stuck here, in the safest place on earth.

Contrarily, the wine list is playful and broad, explorative and brave. There is everything wanted — good Burgundies, plenty of claret — but also notable, distinct choices: white wines from Japan, English reds (reds are not yet generally taken as our strength), one of the few Austrian rosés to make it to Scotland (or indeed the UK; we don’t get much of it, excellent though Austrian rosés often are). It is an unusually thoughtful selection, and priced fairly, with an egalitarian touch — most budgets will find something here. It is a wine list to get lost in, or not. It is the modern where the food is tradition, tartan with a thread of hot pink.

The Torridon opens year round, and would make for an elegant summer base, one from which to spend the days walking, and the nights cheerfully sat out, watching the sun fade behind the mountains and the orange of the light splash across the loch. But 1887, with its warmth and loveliness, seems to beckon at winter, when such things are not just wanted but needed. This is a hotel where, date be damned, there is a feeling that all children know but adults forget, the one that comes with the first light of Christmas morning.

£135 for the set menu. The Torridon, Annat, By Achnasheen, Wester Ross, IV22 2EY. For more information and to book, visit thetorridon.com

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