Locomotoring

Spending our time untethering the mind, getting the fidgets out, exploring the in-between ideas, and learning kintsugi.

Posts Tagged ‘restaurants’

Sticky toffee pudding in Blair Atholl

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I had to try the sticky toffee pudding at The Old Manse of Blair (link) restaurant, a Michelin restaurant in Blair Atholl in Pitlochry. The restaurant sources their ingredients within a 30 mile radius. I haven’t had a sticky toffee pudding before so I can’t compare. I can only say that this was an excellent cake. The interior was moist, the sweet and salty toffee sauce had a delicate burnt caramel flavor. The chef has replaced the more traditional dates in the pudding recipe with parsnips, the later being local to the highlands. If the service staff hadn’t mentioned the parsnips, I might have been left wondering about the woody nutmeg flavor.

Sticky toffee pudding at the Old Manse of Blair.
Apparently the building was the Highland Railway Company’s HQ in 1800s and was in state of disrepair. It has only been recently renovated into a guesthouse and restaurant. The purple fireweed is a common adornment to Scottish landscape. They also have couple of highland cows on premise that the guesthouse residents get to feed.
Don’t let the sunlight fool you. This was closer to 7:30 pm. The active rail line is to the left of the photo and no more than a 100 ft away from the dining room. We heard the train rumble by several times during the course of our meal.
Although the sticky toffee pudding is what I want to remember this Michelin restaurant for, their scallop starter stole my heart. It came with a rich scallop roe and pickled radishes and samphire. Samphire too was also my first taste although I have known about them from Ottolenghi cookbooks. The scallop roe was also the first. They are umami and oh so melt in your mouth texture. Apparently the roe is highly perishable and doesn’t make it to the plate in US. In Blair Atholl, at the edge of Perthshire and Cairngorms, perhaps perishability isn’t a problem.

Theirs was a prix fixe menu. It had been a while since we had done a multi-course meal. I find the act of sitting for two hours physically taxing. I had requested the service staff that I be allowed to get up and walk about their premises – so I could be more ready for the pudding. They were amused and suggested that we walk as long as we liked. And we did, we were gone for a good thirty minutes. The servers later told us that they were starting to worry if we had skedaddled without paying!

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July 20, 2026 at 7:49 am

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