Text by Lydia Itoi
Monsters of the Deep
Like the frantic White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date – a date with the hottest new chef in Scotland, Mark Donald of The Glenturret Lalique Restaurant.
After missing my original flight to Edinburgh thanks to the utter indifference and incompetence of the Iberia Airlines check-in people in Madrid, I’m scrambling to get to an old cattle market town called Crieff, located about an hour’s drive northwest from Edinburgh in the foothills of the Scottish Highlands.
As I am mentally whipping the taxi furiously onward from the back seat, I’m suddenly dumbstruck by the sight of two towering white metal horses that appear just by the M-9 highway near Falkirk. Their pearly heads arch gracefully over the trees, beckoning. I am spellbound. I NEED TO GO TO THEM. Heck, I’m already so late, I’m now thinking a little later shouldn’t matter.
Luckily, my driver, a burly no-nonsense Scotsman called Tom, isn’t having it. The gigantic horses may seem to be just next to the road, but they are deceptively far off our path to Crieff and Glenturret, where my interview is waiting. Besides, Tom says firmly, they are Kelpies, evil shape-shifting spirits that haunt the local waterways. Kelpies sometimes take the form of horses and treacherously entice their victims to ride them.
Warning: If you touch a Kelpie, you will be dragged to a watery death unless you manage to grab the horse’s bridle. File that tip under “Life Hack”.
Many people have come to Scotland in search of the famed Loch Ness Monster, but it turns out that there are sea monsters in just about every loch and pond in the country. In fact, just as I am making my way to Glenturret Distillery, another sea monster is emerging from Loch Turrel, still dressed in chef’s whites.
Restaurant in Scotland’s Oldest Working Distillery: A Short History
This new sea monster is Glenturret Lalique’s Executive Chef Mark Donald, who has just served a hearty lunch of Scotch broth to my more fortunate and less tardy companions down at the boathouse, and then shocked them all by jumping straight into the Loch. This simple act of hospitality (offering Scotch broth, not leaping fully clothed into a lake) is highly resonant in historical terms. Chef Donald, who came to Glenturret Lalique in 2021, can claim the distinction of having achieved the first Michelin star awarded to a restaurant in a whisky distillery. This feat was accomplished within his first year at the restaurant. Two years later, Glenturret Lalique won a second star in February 2024. There are 11 Michelin-starred restaurants in Scotland, and only two of them have two stars. Glenturret Lalique has now shot up in truly meteoric fashion to join Andrew Fairlie at Gleneagles at the top of the national Michelin league tables. Incidentally, Gleneagles is only a 20-minute drive away. Perhaps there is something in the local water besides sea monsters.
Glenturret also happens to lay claim to being the oldest whisky distillery in continuous operation in Scotland, citing a lease agreement and one-time tax exemption dated in 1763 (and conveniently glossing over a period of dormancy from 1923 to 1957, when no new spirits were distilled but 96,000 gallons of old hooch continued to age). While it is entirely possible that the distillery is even older, 1763 is the earliest known record of its existence, at least to the taxman. Given Scottish distilleries’ history of evading taxes and illegal moonshine operations, the moral of this story is that sometimes it pays to pay taxes.
A visit to the Glenturret Distillery shows very little sign of the passing of time despite numerous changes in both name and ownership. In the Mash House, the malted barley is noisily milled by a fire-engine red Porteus grain mill patented in Leeds probably back in the time of Queen Victoria and still going strong after 105 years. The bulbous copper pot still is monitored by hand, and there is a room set up for the Customs and Excise tax people in the Filling Store, where the barrels are filled.
If someone were to look up “restaurant” in a dictionary in 1763, the definition would have been a “restorative broth”, as the restaurant as we know it today would not appear until the 19th century. In the 1760s, these intensely concentrated broths became a trendy health fad in Paris, rather like the bone broths of today. When Glenturret first began distilling, if you were not a wealthy person traveling with a full kitchen staff or letters of introduction to the great private houses of the local aristocracy, you were at the mercy of the innkeeper or tavern, and the vast majority would have fallen far short of Michelin standards. A restorative broth was pretty much the best you could hope for.
And if one were to look up Scotch broth, one would find that it is indeed high in restorative virtues, being a rich meat stock produced from simmering a “hough” (shank) of beef or lamb neck, to which vegetables and barley have been added. Actually, it is more of a thick potage, calling it a broth is a bit of a stretch. A 1755 recipe for “Scots Barley Broth” published in Elizabeth Cleland´s New and Easy Method of Cookery even suggests raisins, but the recipe, like the Glenturret distillery itself, is likely to be even older.
Very fortifying indeed, and it would have erased all the misfortunes of my stressful journey to Crieff had they saved any for me. More fortunate travelers than I might find Chef Donald´s version of Scotch Broth, sans raisins, on offer in the distillery’s cafe.
Foraging for Dinner: Nature is Savage
When I did finally catch up with Mark Donald and his party, they were pulling on thick boots and hunting jackets. Despite the steady drizzle of rain and my creaky, travel-weary knees, we were apparently going to have an invigorating tramp around the countryside to see what we could rustle up for dinner. Maybe we would even be lucky enough to see a red deer, they enthused. If only a 12-point Monarch of the Glen stag would pose majestically for us against the misty hills in what Moira Jeffrey of The Herald Scotland called “the ultimate biscuit tin image of Scotland”.
I decide not to mention the deer permanently camped out in my California garden, eating my landscaping. Where I’m from, deer are a dime a dozen, and it’s funny to think of making a special effort to see one.
Ian McPhee, our craggy-faced deer stalking guide, is somebody’s granddad and looks like a gamekeeper stepped straight out of a Sir Walter Scott novel. His single-barreled shotgun, equipped with a scope and a silencer, indicates that this is not just a photo op but a country ramble with deadly intent. Ian orders us to stay silent and leads us into a forced uphill march through a field of waist-high stinging nettles, being careful to stay downwind of the tree line where the deer are likely hiding. Very quickly it becomes obvious that the deer are safe from us. Yelping with pain and gasping for breath as we thrash though the nettles and stumble in the mud, we are effectively scaring away all the game in the county.
That is, we are scaring away all the animals except a baby bunny crouched motionless in our path. In the wet, I think it is a stone until a boot comes down almost on top of it, and it flops helplessly onto its back. Upon closer examination, this adorable little Peter Rabbit is too injured or ill to take even a step, and it keeps flailing about like a fish on a hook. We city slickers ache to rescue the trembling ball of fluff, but Ian’s eyes wear an inexorable expression. The code of the countryside dictates that the path of mercy is to put the tiny creature out of its misery as quickly as possible. The tender-hearted walk somberly on as Ian does what must be done.
On second thought, we might have better luck with mushrooms. Much less messy, morally speaking, and a lot easier to wrangle. We meet up with chef-forager Steve MacCallum of nearby Kinloch House. Since Steve has already staked out a gorgeous patch of hen-in-the-woods mushroom (Laetiporus sulphureus) and girolles, we make a very quick and satisfying harvest. Even the rain has let up.
Steve throws in a fistful of succulent young hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium), which turns out to be my new favorite foraged green ever. It is a kind of juicy wild celery, with a taste somewhere between coriander seed and artichoke. The bulbous stems are the best, by the way, when lightly sauteed. Hogweed is sometimes called Limperscrimps, which makes me like it even more.
After researching hogweed, however, I find more confirmation that foraging should be left to the experts. Hogweed comes in many varieties, and the forager must be sure that it is indeed common hogweed and not giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum), which causes phototoxicity and severe skin burns. Hogweed also closely resembles hemlock (Conium maculatum), whose notorious deadliness stretches back to the execution of Socrates. I’m glad, or rather hope, Steve knows what he’s doing. I also wonder why people often find eating new kinds of meat scarier than eating plants of dubious identity. We might be the predators toting guns, but it is Mother Nature who can kill us.
But Mother Nature also offers remedies for those who know where to look. In the UK, it is common to find dock weed, Rumex obtusifolius, growing conveniently near the stinging nettle. Crushing dock weed leaves and rubbing them into the nettled skin is a local folk remedy to take the sting away.
A Tale of Two Dinners
Finally, at long, long last, it’s time to eat.
I’ve gone more than 24 hours and more than 2,400km (and the last several kilometers through mud and nettles) on nothing but a bottle of water, which might be some kind of grim personal record.
Mark Donald has planned two dinners: the first a casual affair served family-style in Glenturret´s sumptuously refurbished Aberturret Estate guesthouse, and then the ￡195 tasting menu under the glow of the Lalique chandeliers in the Glenturret Restaurant itself.
Glenturret’s cheerful pastry chef, Kayleigh Turner, brings out a beautiful loaf of house bread, which she slices with an evil-looking knife fashioned out of a jagged whisky barrel hoop. I could have kissed her feet with gratitude, but the zombie apocalypse knife she’s wielding holds me back.
Evelina Stripeike, Felix Robertson-Orford, and Anna Feeney, all members of the Glenturret Lalique kitchen brigade, also turn up at Aberturret to lend a hand despite it being their day off. They make short work of prepping the mushrooms we have just picked, stirring pots, firing up the hibachi, and the zillion other minute tasks that go into throwing together a casual supper for 9. Either they love Mark, they’ve been bribed, or they are scared shitless of him. I can’t tell which.
The subject of mental health and work-life balance did come up in conversation earlier while we were struggling through the nettles. Mark has the thousand-mile stare of someone who has done time in some tough kitchen trenches, and his CV includes Noma in Copenhagen, Hibiscus in London, Bentley´s in Sydney, and Andrew Fairlie at Gleneagles. Watching the Glenturret Lalique team working together in perfect sync around the lumbering Aga stove, I hope Mark and his generation of chefs find a way to break the cycle of inhumane kitchens. With so much culinary genius, surely someone will create a new culture of excellence around the stove, not just on the plate.
But the plates coming off that Aga were looking delectable. The nicest part of the day’s agenda was to sit down to a meal highlighting Scotland’s finest produce and eat it with the people who had prepared it. Even Steve the forager joined us, dressed for the occasion in a jaunty mushroom print shirt. Some of his mushrooms went over a glistening Highland Wagyu short rib roast that had been finished over fire and served on a bed of wild garlic. I was polite and passed the beef platter round to the others, but I could have polished off the whole thing myself.
If a meal is an edible self-introduction, then serving Haggis over neeps and tatties was a Scotsman’s Declaration of Allegiance. Had we been back in the late 1700s, Mark’s addictively savory pudding could have inspired Robert Burns’ mock ode poem “Address to a Haggis,” even if he did take the liberty of lightly pickling the neeps (turnips) and serving the tatties (potatoes) with their crispy skins. Eleonora, our Italian photographer, innocently asked what was in haggis. We just laughed and asked for seconds. As someone once observed about backroom politics and sausage-making, sometimes ignorance is bliss.
But even as Mark Donald’s cooking goes to great lengths to signal Scottishness, he doesn’t hide his love of travel and flavors from distant shores. Steve’s hyperlocal hogweed and hen-of-the-woods mushroom were married to meaty Orkney scallops and, surprisingly, kimchi. The cockles are downright fiery for UK standards, dressed with Mark’s riff on XO sauce.
I realize I may be stereotyping. After all, everything I know about Scotland and its food culture fit into three kid-sized books, one of them scratch’n’sniff. I even discover over dinner that there are Caribbean-like white sand beaches and palm trees in Scotland.
I imagined that this devil-may-care fling with bolder flavors might be Mark letting his hair down in his more improvisational cooking, but it was subtly but insistently present in the fine dining menu as well. Take the Spoot tartlet, a refined bite of browned butter cream, laminated with the thinnest slices of razor clam (called “spoots” in Scotland). The nori crust boosts the umami, and the tongue is swimming blissfully in a buttery sea when WHAM! The togarashi sneaks in a peppery punch, amplified by the citrus sting of finger lime.
XO sauce, this time made from shiitake mushrooms, reappears as well. The exquisite lobster tail might be dressed in a frothy wild Scottish rose petal vinegar and classic sabayon, but somehow the overall effect of creamy with acid and XO umami heat reads Southeast Asia.
Sometimes I feel like I’m in a posh Scottish dim sum palace with exceptional tableware. The native Tattie scone is usually a triangular potato cake topped with a square sausage and a round black pudding. It’s another local folk remedy, to cure hangovers. The Glenturret Tattie Scone is really a kind of steamed bao made of potato skin milk, which is then toasted on a griddle (called a “girdle” in Scotland) and then injected with potato mayo and topped with a square of raw Highland wagyu beef, a disc of summer truffle, and a dollop of caviar served from a leaf-shaped Lalique Champs-Élysées gold lustre bowl. That bowl would cost you £1.200 (€1.400) if you were to break it, pilgrim. Mark´s Tattie scone might very well be the single best bite in all of Scotland, and it should also do the trick nicely for hangovers.
And if that doesn’t work, try the langoustine bisque-it, an adorable crustacean sandwich cookie of concentrated head juices, served with a taco of langoustine tartare folded into an impossible shell of cultured buttermilk. These technical yet beautiful bites remind me a little of The Eight in Macau or DiverXo in Madrid in the early days. I rarely see East and West so well balanced.
Glenturret Lalique owes its technical virtuosity to Head Chef Alex Angeloiannis, who came to Glenturret with pastry chef Kayleigh and Mark. Felix, I can’t help but notice, is also very nimble-fingered at executing delicate plating challenges. Kayleigh was casually chatting with me all the while as she tempered jet-black chocolate by hand, so I was astounded at how that impossibly thin and shiny chocolate shell shattered against my teeth. Her desserts were chocolate ecstasy. Our charming young waiter, university student Ryan Mallon, confides that one taste of Kayleigh’s chocolates was motive enough to sign up for a summer job. I’m even impressed with Bobby Hunter, the dishwasher. He’s a couple of years older than me, so he must also have exceptionally steady hands not to break all the expensive dishware. If it were me, I’d have to take out an insurance policy.
“It’s essential for a cook to travel” says Mark over Kayleigh’s magical sweetie box after the meal. “Some things just link up like pew-pew-pew-pew (makes rapid shooting gestures), really fast without you even thinking about it. These are things that assimilate into your palate at some point, that build…of course I’m going to bring stuff back. I use amazing Scottish produce, but with flavors I’ve picked up along the way”.
Australia, that great melting pot, was an important place of encounter for Mark, but he has his own methods of cultural exploration: “The first thing I do when I go to a different country is go to the supermarket and buy crisps. It’s my thing. No matter who you are, where you’re from or where you are economically, everyone eats them, and everyone loves them. I go there and ask myself, OK, what’s the best? What’s my take on this country’s crisps?”.
Mark Donald may have traveled the world in search of its best flavors, especially if it comes in a crisps packet, but he has come home to Scotland to make his mark. Now he has two little silver Bibendum Michelin men, with plastic orange mini traffic cones glued to their heads, sitting on the shelf over the pass in the kitchen. Anybody from Glasgow would recognize what that means.
The Glenturret Lalique Restaurant
Glenturret Distillery
The Host, Torreglen
PH7 4HA Crieff – United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)1764 657016
www.theglenturretrestaurant.com
