Menuwatch: Boath House, Nairn
Sessions Art Club's wild Scottish sister combines fresh local ingredients in quirky ways. Victoria Miller sees how it's shaking up the Highland's restaurant scene
Two questions are important to Philip McEnaney when deciding if a dish is worthy of his menu: is it delicious and does it fit with the restaurant's ethos? "If it's a yes for both, then we'll sign off on it," he says.
This rapid decision-making is possible thanks to the team of three chefs at the Boath House, a 10-bedroom boutique hotel and 26-cover restaurant two miles from Scotland's Highland fishing town of Nairn.
Tackling the first question is second nature to McEnaney, who has a raft of experience working in Michelin-starred restaurants throughout his 12-year career. But the answer to the second has recently changed somewhat. October 2023 was a busy month for the culinary team, when the hotel's restaurant relaunched from a garden café with a pizza oven and sharing plates to a more elevated dining experience befitting the hotel's Regency manor house aesthetic.
McEnaney takes hyper-local Scottish produce and delivers "clean, unfussy flavours" through classical French techniques combined with Japanese influences taken from his stint working at Ode in Tokyo in 2016.
One such dish is the restaurant's bestseller of scallops with bay leaf and a koji sauce. The scallops are sourced by divers from the Wee Shellfish Company, who collect the fan-shaped shells from the west coast's Loch Torridon and the sea around the Outer Hebridean island of Uist, delivering them to the kitchen a mere two hours later.
"They are so unbelievably fresh that you can never go back to ordering them from other places – once you've seen that quality, having to wait three or four days for fresh shellfish to arrive is crazy," McEnaney explains.
He cuts the scallops in half and poaches them in bay leaf-infused beef fat at 60°C for three minutes, making sure the scallops' core temperature reaches 45°C before taking them off the heat.
The inspiration behind the bay leaf-infused beef fat came from McEnaney's time at the Michelin-starred Harbour House Inn in California, where they "set fire to everything".
However, he concedes he doesn't completely set the bay on fire to ensure the leaf's fresh and sweet aroma is retained. "So, maybe it's more singeing it," he says. He infuses the charred bay leaf in the fat for 10 minutes before straining it. "The burnt bay leaf brings a smoky flavour to the dish, and the sweetness comes through and really enhances the scallop flavour."
For the koji broth, he adds salt to organic rye and leaves it for three days to draw out the rye's moisture before adding soy, mirin and sake. Désirée potato, harvested from Boath House's two-acre kitchen garden, is cut into a cube, poached in butter and placed on top to offer a creamy and subtly sweet addition.
The menu might seem a little quirky, but this hotel is the Scottish base of Jonny Gent, artist, restaurateur and founder of London's Sessions Arts Club, so there is an inherent free-spirited charm that is brought to the fore in the food. This is also evident in McEnaney's bestselling dessert of potato, meadowsweet and buttermilk.
"Everyone is interested to try it because it's flavours you don't expect to see together," he adds. Unexpected flavours yes, but McEnaney also plays with textures and temperatures. Désirée potatoes are used again but this time added to milk, cream and sugar. McEnaney then whips the sweetened mash to a foamy, aerated consistency. The buttermilk is made in-house and "is slowly reduced to a lactic caramel flavour which cuts through the richness of the potato really well". This is placed at the bottom of the dish, with a cloud of warm potato foam on top.
The ice-cream is made from meadowsweet collected in the spring from the hotel's ponds. McEnaney dehydrates it and adds it to housemade ice-cream, placing this within the foam. He tops with a sprinkle of finely chopped and dehydrated meadowsweet.
The Boath House restaurant was previously in the Michelin Guide, so with all this creativity and McEnaney's experience of working in Michelin-starred kitchens, is he hopeful for a star anytime soon?
"Accolades and awards are not our sole focus. What we're focused on is making [the food] creative, fun and interesting," he says. "There's so many places out there and so many people doing amazing things. We just want to play a role in that."
From the menu
Celeriac, chestnut soup £7
Dunlop and mushroom tart £9
Beef tartare £12
Scallop, bay leaf, pickled walnut £12
Halibut, sprouted rye, cabbage £26
Cauliflower Grenobloise £18
Venison, kale, elderberry £28
Beef, celeriac, bordelaise £30
Potato, meadowsweet, buttermilk £8
Apple, roasted rye, cobnut £8
Chicory root choux bun £8
Boath House, Auldearn, Nairn IV12 5TE
