Lunch at Lake of Menteith Hotel, Scotland

We have recently been to Lake of Menteith Hotel (http://www.lake-hotel.com) for lunch. The hotel is located within The Trossachs National Park and on the banks of The Lake of Monteith. According to their website the current hotel building was used to be the manse for the church nearby.

The Lake of Monteith is said to be the only body of natural water referred to as a lake in Scotland, however Wikipedia informs me that there are actually four other small artificial bodies called lakes in Scotland. In any case, until the early 19th century, it was called Loch of Monteith.

Anyway, it was a lovely weekend and we did not have booking however we decide to try to see if we could get in.

We were lucky to get a table in a lovely conservatory which reminds you of a boat house. Their website did say that the hotel is designed in a style of New England Waterfront Inn. Lovely....

You can see The Lake of Monteith in the background from our table...

The menu sounds quite nice with good selections for fish lovers and vegetarian too.

For starters, my daughter Maria ordered Pan-seared Lake of Monteith Fishcake with grilled Corn Slaw and Coriander Salsa. I tried this one a little and it was very nice. 

As we love artichoke, both my husband and I had Grilled Globe Artichoke, Sun-blushed Tomato and Buffalo Mozzarella Salad with a Pesto Dressing. It was quite a big salad and we enjoyed this.

For main course, both my husband and Mary, my mother-in-law selected dishes from the hotel's Classics Menu.  My husband had "Moules-frites" - 1kilo of steamed West Coast Mussels with Garlic, Shallots, White Wine and Cream and Skinny Fries and Mary had "Fish n'Chips" - battered sustainable Icelandic Haddock with Garden Peas, Tartar Sauce and Skinny Fries.

My husband's Moules-frites....

and Mary's Fish n'Chips ...

My husband suggested to try Falafel stuffed Aubergine from the hostel's Signature Mains menu as I like Aubergine. I was considering it but also did not fancy falafel that day for lunch. The next thing I saw someone else having a big burger on a plate and suddenly wanting to have a veggie burger now.
So both Maria and I ordered Chickpea, Carrot and Courgette Burger with Tzatziki, grilled Haloumi and Skinny Fries.

After I ordered it, I then remembered that I am not keen on heloumi so I put the cheese aside on a plate and tackled the rest but the burger was quite big so I could not finish all. The burger bun was a brioche which I thought was really good.

We were quite full but there is always a space for dessert.

We ordered Lemon Tart and today's special - Maple Syrup and cinnamon cheese cake to share.  Cheese cake was very creamy (perhaps a bit too creamy for my liking) however with a hint of cinnamon without overpowering. I thought the lemon tart was good.

After that, my husband and I had a black coffee that came with a small short bread.

Maria and I went for a toilet check. We went through an central hallway for the hotel ....

It passed the test - nice and clean like a new facility. We noticed a nice lounge area near the bar too on our way back to our table. 

After we finished our lunch, we went outside to see the lake.... it's a lovely and relaxing place.

The hotel is within an easy reach from Glasgow or Stirling by car. You could do a boat trip to small islands on the lake, do finishing on the lake, go and visit the Trossachs National Park or even to Doune to visit the antique shop (see my earlier blog).  I notice there is Nick Nairn's cooking school nearby so you could also have a cooking lesson there, come back to the hotel for relaxing stay and lovely evening for dinner.... that's more like my sort of thing ...  eat, drink and merrily!

That's all forks!

Two Fat Ladies - The Shandon Bells, Glasgow, Scotland

My husband and I went to Two Fat Ladies - The Shandon Belles (http://twofatladiesrestaurant.com/shandonbelles) in Glasgow last night for dinner. It was actually an on-line voucher deal of two courses and a glass of proscecco each for £21 for two people.... £10.50 per person, which is a very good deal.

The restaurant is located within the residential area, the other side of M8 Motorway from Hilton Hotel in Glasgow. Our booking was 6pm and we arrived a little bit early so we decided to go in anyway to have a drink at the bar.

We walked in and mentioned our booking, only to be told that we were at the wrong restaurant. It was not at The Buttery (this is the posher one) but we should go to the Shandon Belles, which is downstairs with the entrance at the side of the building. The website describes the latter as 'quality cooking at affordable prices'.

I have been to the Buttery for business dinner as a group; that was a long long long time ago, well long before the restaurant became being part of Two Fat Ladies. I remember waiting staff solemnly carried our main course to our table - each plate was covered with silver dorm/bell shaped food cover called cloche (meaning "bell" in French) to keep the food warm.  I remember there were 6 of us sitting around the table and there were 6 waiting staff. When all our plates were placed in front of us, then all 6 waiting staff ceremoniously lifted the cloches simultaneously to reveal our food. I used to love that almost theatrical but somewhat OTT experience. That was the Buttery then.

Anyway,  back to the other restaurant for quality cooking at affordable prices. We quickly exited the front door to go around the building and found another entrance for the Shandon Belles.

According to their website, the Shandon Belles is their bistro with a quirky and cosy atmosphere where you will feel right at home, serving simple, honest and well cooked fresh food at great prices.

Well, it does look cosy and has relaxing atmosphere......

Our proscecco arrived!  We sipped this whilst perusing the menu to decide what we would have.

We then had wonderful bread whilst waiting for our food to arrive. It was a lovely bread. My husband thought it was a tomato bread and reminded me that I do have new bread maker which has been sitting somewhere in the house collecting dust and that perhaps it could bake a wonderful tomato bread like this.

Anyway, back to the food. For starter, my husband ordered 'whole grilled sardines, garlic butter and mixed leaves'.  It does sound good and it did look fab!  He did enjoy this.

I wanted to try something vegetarian for starter so I ordered 'chargrilled polenta with pesto marinated beetroot'. Beetroot was really tasty. Polenta was fine - I just don't get polenta in general .... however I still enjoyed the starter.

For main course, we had an option of selecting fillet of Shetland salmon, grilled fillet of coley or fish special of the day with £2.00 supplement, unless we go for a vegetarian option of butternut squash and pea risotto.

Two Fat Ladies are good at fish so we got to order fish. Since we are here, we both decided to order fish special of the day, which was sea bream. All served with roasted vegetables and potatoes.

The fish was lovely, perfectly cooked. We both really enjoyed the fish.

After two courses, surprisingly we still had some room for dessert! So my husband had 'Shandon Belles' Cheesecake with mint sauce'.  I tried the cheesecake a little bit - it was delicious and cheesecake was lovely and light.

I had 'dark chocolate and strawberry roulade with chocolate sauce'.  This was delicious too with lots of chocolate sauce.

After that we both ordered black coffees that came with 'Julie's tablet'.  Julie's tablets were big and quite sugary so just as well I ordered a black coffee which is very rare thing for me to do. Coffee came in lovely tea cups, which I liked.  I enjoyed the coffee too.

 

Yes, as usual, I did toilet check and it passed my check. The toilet was immaculately clean, which I like, with a picture of mermaids on the wall. There was a basket of white hand towels to wipe your hands instead of industrial paper towels. I kinda like this ... it's rather homely ....

We had a lovely dinner. Well, the voucher was £21 plus £6 for 1/2 bottle of wine, £2 x 2 = £4 for sea bream supplement, £3 x 2 = £6 for dessert and £2 x 2 = £4 for coffees, total £41 plus 2 glasses of proscecco. No bad.

As we came out of the restaurant, we had a quick look at the pre-theatre menu at the Buttery. They do 2 courses for £16.95 and 3 courses for £19.95.  Maybe we shall come back and try the Buttery. I doubt they do 'cloche' thing anymore though ...

We decided to go to Malmaison for a drink en route to the train station to go home. Malmaison is not too far so we decided to walk.

We found a walkway that goes across the M8 motorway toward the centre of Glasgow.

 It was also 'Super Moon' last night. I tried to capture the picture of full moon ...

In the meantime, the other side of the world in Japan, my sister was also trying to capture super moon from the veranda of her house.  I think she did a great job taking this photo!

Super Moon - photo by Mariko

I feel so far away to Japan, yet at the same time feel close too as after all we are all under the same sky....  This reminds me of Japanese tradition of 'Otsukimi' literally meaning moon-watching to honour the autumn moon and eat Tsukimi dango or rice dumpling to celebrate the beauty of the moon.  I wonder if my sister and her husband had the dumpling whilst admiring the super moon ....

That's all forks.

Buttercup Cafe, Doune near Stirling, Scotland

My husband and I arranged to have lunch with Mary, my mother in law the other day.  She lives in Stirling, so I did some on-line search to see where we could go for lunch in or around Stirling area.

Stirling Castle

I then found a place called Buttercup Cafe in Doune (http://buttercupcafe.co.uk), near Stirling. According to their website, they reached the final of the British Sandwich Association's 'Designer Sandwich of the Year' competition in both 2013 and2014. Immediately I thought to myself, "This is it! This is the place we should try for our lunch with Mary."

The Cafe is on the main street of Doune. We parked our car on the main street and walked across to the Cafe. Inside is simply decorated but warm, relaxing atmosphere with friendly staff.

The Cafe has quite good selection of dishes on the menu ....

In addition, daily special on the blackboard on the wall sounds good too.

My husband tried Vegetarian Burger which is with grilled Portobello mushrooms in a lightly toasted muffin with roasted onions, red peppers, spinach, cheese and a light basil mayo, served with side salad and homemade coleslaw.  He also ordered chips with it.

Normally when you order a vegetable burger, you get a burger patty made of mixture of vegetables but you have no idea what they are fully made of. Here, Buttercup Cafe's vegetable burger is, literally 'vegetable' burger...

Here is what's inside of the vegetable burger - grilled Portobello mushrooms in a lightly toasted muffin with roasted onions, red peppers, spinach, cheese and a light basil mayo, exactly how they describe in the menu....

Mary had Buttercup Quiche - today's quiche of home made roasted vegetable served with fresh salad and coleslaw.  I should have taken more picture of the quiche as the photo below does not look that big but it was a big and deep filled quiche....  Mary also liked this blue plate.

I decided to try their 'Gourmet Bagel' (£7.25) which is toasted bagel, smoked salmon, prawns in a light citrus mayo, paprika, guacamole, rocket and sweet chilli jam, served with fresh salad.  Apparently, this was designed by one of their chefs - finalist at the British Sandwich Association "Designer Sandwich of the Year Competition 2014", so off course I got to try this bagel.

Yes, exactly as it is described ...

The bagel was delicious - with interesting concoction and different flavours of smoked salmon, prawn mayo (but "light citrus"), guacamole and chilli jam. Interesting.

To be really honest, having checked their website and viewed gallery page, I was naively expecting the bagel to have been presented differently. The gallery shows a picture of the gourmet bagel being hooked and lifted with a tiny fishing rod, with a small sign saying "Hooked on a Filling".  I thought if this was the finalist's bagel for the Designer Sandwich of the Year competition, it would serve in such a way at the Cafe. Obviously it was not and I felt slightly disappointed, however, I understand ... it is not actually practical to serve in such a way in a busy working kitchen.  So I understand (... but I wish they would do "Hooked on a Filling" thing ... for the sake of blog, hahaha) ...

After that, I then wanted to try their cakes. There were good selections of sweets and home baked cakes which all looked delectable.  My husband had lemon sponge cake and I had chocolate and peanut butter cream cake. They were delicious too, especially my chocolate and peanut butter cake's sponge was lovely and moist.

 

Buttercup Cafe opens 9am to 4pm Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm on Saturday and 10am to 4pm on Sunday. It also serves breakfast menu till 11.30am and the menu has good selections for breakfast. It also has area where you could sit outside in the back.

I start sounding like I am advertising this cafe for them so I stop now. Just to be clear, all the meals and drinks we consumed at the cafe were paid for by ourselves (and the owner of the Cafe does not know the existence of my blog, so I am totally independent).

After the lunch, Mary suggested that we would go and visit Scottish Antique & Arts Centre nearby (http://www.scottish-antiques.com). Well, you could spend good many hours at this place, looking at all those antiques (there are many shops and dealers under one big roof), visiting the gift shop and stop over at their cafe for lunch etc.  And I guarantee that you will leave the premises without empty handed ...

You can buy sweets ...

or you can look around antiques ...

 

... you can buy books and records, if you don't mind old ones ... 

or you can buy cars!

You can also buy signs ...

You can also own a collection of cats ....  as I do now ... a cat lady I am .... My husband asked me where I would put these, which I have not figured that out yet ....

A collection of 10 small cats that my husband bought for me ...

 Well, we had a lovely day out in Doune with Mary.

 

... and that's all forks, hahaha.