20-04-2025
This pub with rooms in an underrated Scottish coastal town should be your next weekend break
I've never laughed out loud at a Wi-Fi password before, but 'westendgulls' made me roar. It also helped me take a guess that – as I looked at the smart Ercol steam-bent wooden chair at the desk in my room and the bright, chic colour scheme surrounding it –that the Southgate in the beautiful little Fife fishing town of Crail, was a dream project for a gay couple. And probably from London. Like recognises like.
It's exactly the kind of thing I'd do with an old pub in a picturesque fishing town in Scotland with my husband if we wanted to leave the capital. And we, too, would go to town with a disco pun to access the internet.
It turns out, on chatting with the owner in the bar, that I was right. Although he has roots here in Crail - his grandfather had a cottage here, which was the family's summer retreat - he and his husband took a knackered-out hotel at the top of the hill above the harbour and worked magic on it.
There was, apparently, mild panic from the landlord of the only other pub in town, that his business would be impacted, but he was placated when he realised that The Shoregate wouldn't take away from his loyal clientele who come for fish and chips and their £9 Pensioners Special (a great deal, no denying).
The excellent thing about Crail is that it hasn't been minced like Margate, and reinvented. It's not cool, which makes it cool.
Tourists come for the coastal castle walk, Crail Pottery, and the proximity to the golf at St Andrews. The Shoregate has immediately attracted locals as well as weekenders, and on a Friday evening the bar is full of friends with bouncy puppies, and local gossip.
It could be any pub in Fife, apart from the brass pelican and monkey lights, the bonkers playlist of Nineties bangers (Urban Cookie Collective and Betty Boo), and the feeling that a lot of money and time has been spent tarting the place up, with pristine wood and stained-glass windows.
There's also a cocktail list that you are unlikely to find anywhere else along this coastline. The Peruvian Pear comes with pear liqueur and ABA pisco (they missed out on a good pun there), and Two Drunk Monks mixes Bulleit rye, green chartreuse and Benedictine.
Upstairs (a sign warns you in the hallway that the building is much older than your knees, and the stairs are wonky), there are four bedrooms, each with polished-up original architectural detail (windows set into the stone walls, ceiling beams), nice Missoni-style graphic carpets, comfortable sofas, and a colour scheme with a shade of orange that I imagine was laboured over, swatch after swatch, before being chosen.
Pristine modern bathrooms have locally sourced Arran bath products and a wild gorse room spray, which smells like delicious biscuits. On arrival: glittery pink macarons next to the tea- and coffee-making tray, along with locally distilled gin miniatures. There's no room service, but they say they will nip up with a bottle of champagne if you really want one.
Everything at The Shoregate is done really well. It feels like the family business that it obviously is, and the owners and staff couldn't be more in love with the town.
As I walked about the cobbled alleyways and along the harbour, I fantasised about having a little cottage here myself. I'd be visiting The Shoregate for lunch or dinner at least once a week. Food is accomplished, ingredients are locally sourced, and dishes served, of course, on Crail Pottery.
Portions are a little absurd though: the sourdough (which was really ciabatta) came as a half loaf, sliced up. My terrine would have served two. Ditto the tapenade-crusted pollock. I imagine the charcoal roast chateaubriand for two would do four. My only real complaint was that much of what I had was a little too… fried. But then, this isn't the kind of place to come for a salad for dinner.
The dining room is pleasingly austere but feels as upbeat and breezy as the rest of the building. Flashes of colour come from the overhead lampshades, in that aforementioned signature orange.
The windows face directly down the hill towards the sea, and on a sunny morning, the whole room glows, and reminds you why people move to these little coastal towns if they weren't born here in the first place. It's a big dose of happy. Just as the eggs Benedict portions are.
Again: The Shoregate delivers in quantity as well as quality. And the place has a ton of atmosphere. I was woken up at dawn by gulls, possibly flying from the west, who knows. I felt far away from my own bed, but also curiously at home.
Doubles from £180, breakfast included. There are no accessible bedrooms due to the stairs.
