It's by the third bottle of red wine, raucously ordered by the stag do we seem somehow to have been adopted by, that I realise I should probably go to bed. The clock is about to chime midnight, I’m hurtling somewhere through the English countryside at 80 miles per hour, and I have to be awake for our expected arrival into Inverness at 8am. It’s safe to say that a state of light inebriation does not make tottering back to a cabin on the Caledonian Sleeper a particularly easy task. Nor does it help bolster sleep quality which, due to the aforementioned velocity of the location of one’s bed, was already expected to be reasonably interrupted.

And so I find myself at 7am, bleary and blinking eyed, waking up to the incessant hooting of my alarm, my mouth a little dry, my head more than a little painful. I’m not one to tout ridiculous hangover cures – because sometimes really the best medicine is simply sleeping it off – nor am I an outspoken advocate for train food, which most often feels like it’s been cooked by someone who hates you, but feasting on a full Scottish breakfast in the dining cart, while the awe-inspiring expanse of the highlands whipped past in the dappled morning light is really something of an effective fog lifter.

The colours are astonishing: greens so bright they seem oversaturated

On arrival, any lingering unease is well and truly booted away by a subsequent drive from Inverness to Ullapool. The 90-minute journey traverses craggy peaks and swooping valleys, and ambles past tinkling waterfalls and expansive lochs, as if all of the stereotypes of Scottish beauty and grandeur have been concentrated for your viewing pleasure. I’ve never driven through the highlands of Scotland in the summertime, and the colours are astonishing. While we’re going through the driest summer in decades, Scotland is in full bloom; greens so bright they seem oversaturated, leaves tinged with the vaguest hint of the incoming autumn season and swathes of bell heather like vibrant, vivid jewels.

Our destination is The Dipping Lugger, a recently refurbished Georgian mansion on the shores of Loch Broom in Ullapool. The purpose of my visit is not to languor in the enormous, immensely comfortable rooms, snacking from the honesty box-operated ‘larder’ at regular intervals (although that, of course, did occur), nor is it to gaze agog at the comings and goings of the loch through picture-frame windows; it’s to eat.

In an article for a previous issue of this magazine, regular contributor Clare Finney wrote about the rise of modern Scottish food in the capital, and spoke to the chefs waving the flag for the food of their home country. She opened by saying, very astutely, “Ask anyone south of Hadrian’s wall what they think of when they think of Scottish cuisine, and they’ll likely say two things: haggis and deep- fried Mars bars. I say this, because for the last month I have been doing just that and everyone, including my Scottish father, has said the same thing.” In London, some 900km away from Ullapool, many of the country’s leading restaurants champion Scottish produce on their menus. Scallops from Orkney, langoustines from the Moray Firth, salmon from the country’s numerous smokehouses and Highland venison all feature like they’re tick boxes for any restaurant worth its salt in the capital. So why is it, then, that when we talk about Scottish food, we tend to focus on the hackneyed and overwrought? Deep-fried Mars bars, haggis, neeps and tatties, square sausage and, well, you get the picture – stodgy, often fried food that makes no mention of place or provenance or of the country’s immense natural larder. It truly is a baffling disconnect, and one I thought I would try and remedy, by driving through some of the country’s most beautiful areas, and eating its most delicious foods.

I’d had an illuminating conversation that morning on the train, in between life-giving forkfuls of tattie scone, haggis and eggs, with a woman who was travelling back to her home in a remote part of Uist in the Outer Hebrides. She told me she worked closely with Uist Beò, an organisation that encourages young people to return to their rural home, focusing on growing opportunities and jobs that will entice them back. Food producers and restaurants taking advantage of the country’s open spaces and beguiling destinations help to do just that, drawing in not only locals who may have headed elsewhere for tertiary education, but also workers and business owners from around the country and the world. To cook and eat well in Scotland is quite literally a beneficial decision; it helps contribute to the redistribution of wealth outside of the cities, and the overall growth of the country as a whole.

Scotland has the best natural larder in the world. The bounty from the sea is exceptional

Back in Ullapool, meanwhile, the menu at The Dipping Lugger is like a fact sheet of all the reasons chefs and restaurateurs would rush to set up shop in Scotland: beefy scallops, halibut, roe deer, Blue Murder cheese (a mellow, cow’s milk blue), all sourced more or less within a 50 mile radius of the restaurant. “Modern Scottish food has a real connection to local produce and flavours with influences from all around the world,” head chef David Smith, tells me. “Scotland has the best natural larder in the world. In Ullapool especially, the bounty from the sea is exceptional.”

It’s not all fine dining here, though. Around the corner sits The Seafood Shack, a repurposed trailer serving up incredible food and a good dose of culinary education, too. Because here, at this no-frills restaurant, sits perhaps the most thorough lesson in modern Scottish food, proving that it’s not just relegated to the confines of expensive restaurants and chefs with an obsession with provenance. With a focus on the incredible seafood landings that come into Ullapool every day (and the fact that both owners Kirsty and Fenella have family and partners in the fishing business), the daily changing menu has guests feasting on cullen skink packed full of smoked fish for £5, blushing hot smoked trout and potato salad for just over a tenner, and even a heaping pile of six langoustines for just £12. It might seem a world away from the expensive tasting menus but, really, the ethos is the same: allowing the incredible ingredients to shape your cooking.

After a feast of a breakfast the following morning that kicks off with granola with gooseberries, followed by smoked and whisky-cured salmon from the infamous Ullapool Smokehouse, and local bacon and eggs on sourdough, we hit the road again, this time our destination being the newly-opened Killiecrankie House in the Cairngorms National Park. While we are by no means hungry after our serious morning meal, I insist on stopping at KJ’s Bothy Bakery in Aviemore, owned by the founders of the nearby Mountain Café, which sadly closed in 2020. Garnering worldwide fame for its incredible New Zealand-accented food, Kirsten Gilmour’s eatery brought Kiwi cuisine to the Highlands and, in doing so, highlighted the incredible parallels between the countries and their cooking, namely: their staggering topography and incredible indigenous ingredients.

Walking into KJ’s is so much like coming home that I gasp. The shelves are stocked with products I immediately recognise: Pic’s Peanut Butter and Watties tomato ketchup, alongside lamington cakes, rocky road brownies and a warmer filled with glistening, leviathan-sized sausage rolls, just like they make them at home. It’s not so hard to see why a New Zealander would rock up to the Cairngorms and not only decide to stay, but also be inspired to start a food business: the rolling green hills, masses of open space and world-class produce are so similar to that of my home country, something that contributes to confusion around what it means to eat in these places. Just like how food in New Zealand is so much more than meat pies and fish and chips, dining in Scotland isn’t just one big cholesterol-raising endeavour, despite how it may have been communicated to the rest of the world.

Here we can afford land to have a kitchen garden for the restaurant

After topping up our already full stomachs, we take a quick detour to the Falls of Bruar, a fairly easy hour-long hike that takes you along the gorge edge, following the rushing water up to its entry point, punctuated by groups of brave canyoners hooping and hollering as they immerse themselves in the various pools along the way. It’s an incline so arresting in its beauty that it not only distracts you from the fairly strenuous process of climbing it, but also inspired poet Robert Burns to write a sonnet requesting the owner of the land, the Duke of Athole, plant trees along the way to cement the beauty of the space. Who says poetry can’t enact change?

Killiecrankie House sits just a short distance down the road from Bruar. Opening the venue in September 2021 after an extensive renovation, owners Tom Tsappis and Matilda Ruffle made the move up from London to realise their dream of owning and operating their own restaurant with rooms. It’s exactly the kind of story that defines the pull of Scotland, and the power that diving under the surface of its cuisine can have. The couple met in Japan where they were both working in fairly high-flying corporate jobs: Tsappis as a broker, Ruffle as a strategist. Tsappis began to get a cooking bug after spending his time overseas recreating all of the English foods he craved but couldn’t buy, and upon their return to England, enrolled in Leiths School of Food & Wine. Ruffle started working her way up the wine education ladder, and the two of them launched a supper club out of the kitchen in their flat in East Dulwich to test recipes and concepts. Then, they took the leap of a lifetime and purchased an enormous property in the middle of the Scottish Highlands.

“Matilda grew up here and wanted to move back. It’s a beautiful country with fantastic produce. Plus, here we were able to afford land to have a kitchen garden which we could then use for the restaurant,” Tsappis tells me, when I ask about the move. The food he cooks at Killiecrankie House is exquisite, not to mention the drinks that Ruffle thoughtfully pairs with each course. As is so often the case these days, the menu doesn’t give much away, but this one is particularly laconic. ‘Scotch Egg’, for example, is a play on words that doesn’t see sausage meat or bird eggs come anywhere near your plate, while ‘Charcoal’ shows up looking a little like a naughty kid’s stocking on Christmas morning, but is in fact sweetbreads that are very nice indeed.

Venison, of course, features, as do a series of wild Scottish mushrooms and an inventive take on ‘porridge’ that looks nothing like the gruel you might receive in a breakfast bowl elsewhere. It feels like you’re eating Scotland on plate after plate of superlative food, and yet there are underpinnings of other cultures woven through, specifically Japanese, with the menu being inspired by the kaiseki format of ceremonial Japanese tasting menus. “Today, the best of Scottish cuisine is produce-led,” Tsappis tells me. “How it has evolved more recently is that many restaurants now look to incorporating techniques and flavours from all over the world to complement and highlight the produce.” This approach is inherent to his cooking at Killiecrankie House. Even the cocktails in the gorgeous, dinky bar at the front of the house read like a rolodex of everything that’s great about the country’s food and drink culture.

After another sizable breakfast – and a short contemplation about whether we’ll fit into the train seats on our way home – we venture out of the Highlands and into the (comparatively) big city with our final stop, Edinburgh. It is impossible to talk about eating your way through Scotland without mentioning Stuart Ralston, chef and owner of Edinburgh’s Aizle and Noto. The former is the jewel in his crown, a highly impressive restaurant inside the Kimpton Charlotte Square Hotel, where the six-course menu is dictated by the seasons and inspired by the incredible ingredients available in Scotland – rather than an outline of the night’s dishes, guests are given a list of all the seasonal items the restaurant has used. Our summertime visit highlighted Lough Neagh Eel, crowdie cheese, Goosnargh duck and Scottish strawberries, to name a few.

Farm shops tout world-class products usually made a stone’s throw away

When I ask Ralston how he would define modern Scottish food, he echoes the thoughts of Tsappis. “To me, it’s about utilising the fantastic produce we have available to us through local fisherman and growers,” he says, “and applying modern cooking techniques from around the globe.” This ethos is woven through Aizle, and our meal there succeeds in being one of the best I have all year. Starting from the bread – laminated brioche served with chicken liver parfait, cultured butter and tapenade – all the way down to the impeccable dessert of strawberries, verjus and woodruff, the food doesn’t put a foot wrong; in fact, it does everything right.

This trip is, of course, not an exhaustive list of the chefs cooking exciting food in Scotland – far from it in fact. Aside from those already mentioned, there’s Pam Brunton and Rob Latimer’s captivating Inver on the shores of Loch Fyne, The Little Chartroom and Fhior in Edinburgh, The Fife Arms in the Cairngorms and The Three Chimneys on Skye. Farm shops line the country’s major highways, too, touting world-class products usually made a stone’s throw away, and almost every town has at least one good cafe or restaurant serving up the kind of food you’ll travel far and wide for. I may have colloquially referred to this trip as my “Scotland food journey” to friends before visiting – and you only need to read a few chapters of Ghillie Basan’s A Taste of the Highlands to be persuaded that Scotland is one of the most underrated culinary destinations in the world – but really, it would be hard to take any trip to Scotland and not be quietly blown away by both the quality of the produce and the ambition of the cooking.

On the train back to London, rather less pumped full of red wine than I was on my way up, I reflect on how I would answer the question now if someone asked me what Scottish food was all about. Most of the places I dined at, and all of the chefs I spoke to, seemed to evoke the same thoughts: produce-driven food utilising haute-cuisine techniques. And yet, this isn’t by any means definitive, because high-end food isn’t the only space where exciting cooking is taking place in Scotland. It’s happening in pubs and in cafés, in farm shops and in shacks by the beach. It’s in Edinburgh, the Cairngorms and the farthest reaches of the Orkney islands. Because good food comes from good ingredients and a knowledge of what you’re working with. Scotland, more than ever, is proving that is true.