Why foodies should flock to this underrated corner of Scotland

Times

10-07-2025

Most people reckon the west coast of Scotland starts at the Clyde, northeast of Glasgow, and that once the motorways, trains or planes have rushed you over the river it's only there that you need to slow down, wind down the window and take in the view. The islands, the lochs, the mountains … that's what you come to Scotland for, right?
So you have to work hard to persuade people to turn left at Gretna Green and head to the southwest instead, or to ask a Glasgow taxi driver to head south. After all, only 8 per cent of visitors to Scotland choose this area, Ayrshire or Dumfries & Galloway, according to recent figures from the tourist board Visit Scotland. But if you reach the coast here, all you can do is wonder why so few.
There's Alloway, the pretty village on the outskirts of Ayr where Robert Burns was born and which was the setting for his poem Tam o' Shanter. It's also where the road meets the sea, the lowland hills rolling along behind you. It feels so fertile here — lobster pots bob about amid the waves; sheep and cows wander everywhere; the famous Ayrshire tatties are harvested from fields on the shoreline.
We reach Ballantrae, the road curling up away from the coast into the woodland that surrounds Glenapp Castle, a 19th-century baronial pile that is now a wistfully romantic 17-bedroom hotel. This is where Winston Churchill is thought to have drawn up plans for D-Day with General Eisenhower, who was staying up the road in Culzean Castle. And it's where the owner Paul Szkiler has drawn up his own plans to invade the Scottish food scene.
In the walled garden of the 36-acre estate, a short stroll from the castle along a path colonnaded by hornbeams, sits a 150ft-long Victorian glasshouse, the streams from natural springs converging beneath it. There is a new trend of creating dining 'experiences' sweeping Scotland — the Seed Store on the banks of the River Dye in Aberdeenshire; the platform of Kyle of Lochalsh railway station on the northwest coast, various other greenhouse restaurants and outdoorsy chefs cooking on fire. Szkiler, who took over Glenapp in 2015 when it was treading water as a business, has tried three times before to open a restaurant in this building, but for various reasons it hasn't quite worked. In hiring Peter Howarth as the hotel's executive chef, I think he's struck gold. In his new Azalea restaurant, Howarth served me my favourite meal of the decade, with not one bum note.
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On our first evening, my partner and I had dined in the main restaurant in the castle, where Howarth's cooking reveals his ambition to win a Michelin star; he has worked in kitchens bearing them at Gidleigh Park in Devon and Pennyhill Park in Surrey. There is an eight-course tasting menu that changes daily (£135pp); this night it featured langoustine with salsify, red wine, bulgar wheat and apple; cod poached in olive oil with Girvan crab and redcurrants; duck with carrot dashi and five spice. It's disciplined cooking: delicious, grown-up, good looking.
Down at the Azalea, Howarth has undone his top button. The dishes are less formal but just as imaginative (mains from £28). We had a simple grilled fillet of west coast mackerel with spiced aubergine and chilli and garlic oil; garden pea risotto with truffles (yes, they do find truffles on the estate, but they won't tell you where); baked lobster with coriander, ginger and lime; chicken with wild mushroom, asparagus and tarragon; onion and fennel tarte with summer vegetables. You can sip the daily mocktail dreamt up by the manager Jen Scanlon on her morning walks through the herb garden — or let her choose for you from the clever wine list.
We return for a Sunday lunch of chicken liver parfait with brioche and cultured butter, and rolled Galloway sirloin with a cauliflower cheese featuring golden raisins and crispy onions, then go for a walk in an attempt to make room for a pudding of champagne and rhubarb trifle. We bump into Howarth wandering the grounds, a quizzical look on his face. 'I know it's here somewhere,' he says distractedly. 'Sweet woodruff. It's a bit early in the year but I can smell it. It's my favourite flavour in the world. I want to put it in a panna cotta. I'll find it.'
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Rather than plan his menus a few days in advance, Howarth is thinking a full year ahead, planning what to grow for next summer's dishes before a seed is even sown. 'It wasn't about the restaurant for me, at first,' he says. 'It was about building a relationship with the garden, with the gardeners.' His cooking bursts with everything we see as we potter between the beds — 37 varieties of fruit, vegetables, herbs and flowers.
Like the glasshouse, much of the Glenapp estate remains as it was when it was established as the seat of the Earl of Inchcape in the 1870s (it reopened as a hotel in 2000). It doesn't have a bar as such, just mostly local staff who will bring you whatever you need whenever you ask for it. That sets the tone of the place. It's like coming to a generous (and unbelievably wealthy) friend's country house for an indulgent weekend.
There is no pool or spa, but there are gardens and woodland walks among some of the tallest trees in Scotland, archery and croquet on the lawn, and stargazing untinged by light pollution.
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Inside, the furnishings are rich and heavy — dated perhaps, but to the right date for the architecture. The rooms have huge windows, offering magnificent views across the Firth of Clyde to the soulful outcrop of Ailsa Craig and the Isle of Arran beyond, or deep into the woods. In the library there are deep leather sofas to sink into, and shelves packed with heavyweight tomes of history, biography and poetry — but also Jilly Cooper and Tom Clancy, and board games aplenty.
Glenapp has a lengthy list of excursions, from foraging walks and falconry to fishing in the Forth of Clyde with a sea eagle — Ripley flies between the shore and the boat — to a two-day sea safari on the hotel's motorboat, staying in a luxury tented camp on the island of Jura.
It also has strong links with Kitchen Coos & Ewes, an experience based on a 900-acre tenant livestock farm high on the hill overlooking Luce Bay, near Stranraer. It's a half-hour's drive south through the greater estate and along the shore of Loch Ryan.
The landscape here is windswept and wild, with dry stone walls, long grass and stones. There are the remains of an Iron Age settlement in one of the pastures. It's exactly where Highland cattle should be, what they're built for.
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'Most farmers set up petting zoos to diversify, but that's not something that appeals to us,' says Neale McQuistin, the owner, whose family have links to the farm dating back 400 years. 'So instead of shutting the cows in or tethering them up for people to see them, we shut the people in and invite the cows to come and have a look.'
We climb into a trailer towed by a Massey Ferguson 35 tractor bought by McQuistin's father in 1965 for £450 — 'He could have bought a house for that,' his son says — and chunter up the track through the walled field to the top of the hill, the herd rousing themselves as we pass, plodding along behind us.
At the summit we are ushered into a pen. 'Just let them come to you — they're an affectionate lot. They love a scratch and a stroke,' says Janet, Neale's wife, who calls her husband a newcomer because her family were here first, five generations before his.
It's strange, this reversal of roles, the horned beasts lining up along the iron railings to look at us, to make their judgment. It makes you hold your breath. And once the boss of the herd reaches her decision — it's the girls who run the show — the heads pop over the bars, offering themselves up. 'No need to be gentle,' Neale urges. And we push our fingers into their rough, thick coats, scratch behind their ears, along their shoulders. They lean into us, and their sheer size and power — some weigh more than a tonne — is awesome.
Afterwards, over homemade cream teas in what used to be the milking shed, McQuistin explains he wanted to diversify from cows and the sheep (Neale is one of Scotland's most successful breeders of Beltex, a variety prized for its meat) and build a business to pass on to the next generation.
'My great-great-grandfather had three sons. None of them travelled more than three miles to find his wife. I never wanted to be anything but a farmer, but that's not true for my three children. I wanted to create something to give to them that's easier to manage than farming.' Kitchen Coos & Ewes is now in the top 25 things to do in the whole of Scotland, according to Tripadvisor.
It's a similar family affair at Glenapp. Szkiler and his wife Poppy, an actress turned noise abatement campaigner, are hands-on owners, having moved from London to Ballantrae. Howarth's wife is the breakfast chef; the manager, Scanlon's boyfriend, is a sous chef. Annmaree Mitchell, the castle's head gardener, has been there for 30 years, since she first took on the restoration as a student.
'You can't just be a hotel — you have to be a destination,' Szkiler says. 'You have to respect the effort your guests put in to reach you.' In all honesty, it's not that hard. You just need to know when to turn left.
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Tim Gow was a guest of Visit Scotland (visitscotland.com), Glenapp Castle (glenappcastle.com), which has B&B doubles from £353, and Kitchen Coos & Ewes (kitchencoosandewes.com), which has tours from £24pp
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