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.