Eating Out at Brechin’s Brasserie

IT’S only a few weeks since Brechin’s Brasserie became the second Rothesay eating establishment to receive a Healthy Living - sorry, healthyliving - award from the Scottish Consumer Council - but it’s already having an effect.

The award, as we reported in these pages two weeks ago, is given to establishments which meet some very strict criteria in offering healthier eating choices - covering cooking practices and ingredients used, as well as the types of food which end up on your plate. And with only 25 fully-accessible eating places in Scotland currently boasting a healthyliving award, it’s quite a feather in the caps of Brechin’s owners, Tim and Ann Saul.

“We’ve had lots of people come in to eat here - a lot of them new faces - since the award was announced,” Tim told us when we paid the restaurant a visit this week.

“On top of that we’ve had some new website reviews for the restaurant, and we’re now seeing returning diners who have been coming back to see us every summer since we first opened.”

An example of those glowing website reviews is this, from Rob Foxcroft from Glasgow: “Friendly, professional service in a beautifully presented restaurant in every way; decor, lighting, music etc. Lamb tender, vegetables crisp and fresh - all in all, a delightful sense of ‘sailing in first class water’.”

And those who do visit will see that the healthyliving scheme’s green apple logo is much in evidence, throughout both the lunchtime and evening menus - though it’s not the only place where the restaurant has garnered official acclaim.

Visitors to the restaurant’s website (www.brechins-bute.com) will immediately see, alongside the proud boast that Brechin’s is “a chip free zone”, that Tim and Ann have, for the fourth year running, been listed in the Les Routiers good food guide - which values establishments with individual style and charm, a warm welcome, quality food and drink and value for money.

And that’s still not all. Brechin’s is also one of a select number of hand-picked establishments to appear on The Internet Restaurant Guide (www.restaurant-guide.com), run by Richard, the seventh Earl of Bradford, who insists that all the restaurants he features are “either listed in a major guide, personally known to me, or recommended by members of the British Guild of Food Writers”.

Brechin’s really is in some pretty exalted company, and it’s not hard to see why. The bright and cheery outside walls, the newly redecorated interior - festooned with more musical paraphernalia than ever before - and the warm welcome from Tim and Ann set the scene perfectly for some really rather special food.

The lunchtime menu features jacket potatoes, wholemeal rustic rolls with salad, large Caesar salad bowls and a variety of hot dishes too - with perhaps three-quarters of all the available dishes approved as a healthyliving choice.

And, as we also noted a couple of weeks ago, ‘healthy’ doesn’t have to mean a dry cracker with ultra-low-fat cottage cheese and a stick of celery on the top. At Brechin’s at lunchtime, it could mean anything from a steak and onion jacket potato to a Cajun chicken salad bowl - or even a Brechin’s Curry Bowl with wholemeal bread, poppadom and pickles.

The evening menu, too, has plenty of officially-approved healthy eating options. Among the starters are a home made salmon mousse, the salmon coming peat-smoked from South Uist, or a salad of roasted artichoke hearts with a mustard vinaigrette; main courses approved by the scheme also include some deliciously different dishes, such as Isle of Bute lamb with a redcurrant and red wine sauce, or a fillet of Scottish salmon, served plain or with chilli jam on a bed of crispy seaweed.

Even if you do fancy indulging yourself just a little more, the menu choices which don’t have a green apple logo next to them still score pretty well on the ‘healthy’ scale - among them, for example, the seafood pasta at lunchtimes, featuring locally caught fish and shellfish, or the popeseye or rib eye steak in the evenings, served with a choice of creamy pepper or the restaurant’s special Café de Paris butter sauce.

The special themed nights at Brechin’s have been consistently popular since the restaurant opened in 2004 and they still feature regularly. This weekend, for instance, the theme is Spanish cuisine, with Italian to follow next month and Indian in September - with a special Scottish weekend to coincide with the Bute Highland Games.

Prices at lunchtimes range from £4.25 upwards for a filled roll or baked potato, both served with salad, to £8.25 for a flaky smoked salmon Caesar salad bowl, with the hot dishes priced between £5.50 and £6.50 each. Evening starters come in somewhere between £3 and £5, with main courses from £8-£15.

There’s a choice of desserts displayed on the blackboard inside the restaurant, and a brand new wine list, with wines from France, South Africa, Spain, Australia, Italy and the USA, and an extensive range of continental beers with which to slake your thirst.

Bookings are welcome - indeed, in the evenings and for the special themed nights, and for Highland Games weekend in particular, they are strongly encouraged. The restaurant can also cater for party bookings of up to 24 people, and for private dinner parties. And yes, all major credit cards are accepted!

Tim and Ann have also extended their opening hours for the peak summer season - lunches, coffees, teas and freshly-baked pastries are available from 10.30am until 3.30pm, with dinners served on Friday and Saturday evenings from 6pm onwards. Contact the restaurant on (01700) 502922 to book your table.