Some might know St Andrews, Fife, as the home of golf or the site of Scotland’s oldest university. I know it as foodie heaven. Of course, I am biased. I spent four of the happiest years of my life there whilst a student, before all this London malarkey began. When the opportunity arose to attend a food and drinks mini break to Fife, I leapt at the chance.
Fife is but a short whizz away from London – you can fly to Edinburgh in under an hour and then it’s a forty five minute train or car journey over the Forth Road bridge and through the scenic Fife countryside. For the last 10 minutes, the iconic St Andrew landscape teases you, peeping above the trees and hills before disappearing until the next turn. Finally, it appears; a little hillock of a town punctuated with the spike of St Salvadors Chapel bell tower, blue ocean on the left and the green lawn of the world’s oldest golf course ushering you in.
Fife is but a short whizz away from London – you can fly to Edinburgh in under an hour and then it’s a forty five minute train or car journey over the Forth Road bridge and through the scenic Fife countryside. For the last 10 minutes, the iconic St Andrew landscape teases you, peeping above the trees and hills before disappearing until the next turn. Finally, it appears; a little hillock of a town punctuated with the spike of St Salvadors Chapel bell tower, blue ocean on the left and the green lawn of the world’s oldest golf course ushering you in.
On day one of our trip we teased out our arrival into St Andrews, skirting the outside of the town and calling in instead at the Balgove Larder, a great little farm shop on the outskirts. This place makes for a wonderful foodie potter – they sell a huge range of products, nearly all produced here in the Kingdom of Fife, including local ales, cheese and chocolates. The best thing about the Larder is its meat which all comes from the land around the shop.
The driveway is straddled by fields of glaring free range cattle which are later aged and butchered on site. In the summer, the farm shop’s barn is transformed into an open air ‘Steak Barn’, serving all things meaty and they have a year round café serving homely dishes and is always rammed.
After a quick Balgove scotch egg (about the size of my face) and a St Andrews Brewing Company Ale, we headed to our accommodation for the evening: The Cambo Estate, a ‘modest’ stately home just outside of St Andrews. This beautiful estate is owned by Erskine family who have converted part of their sprawling ancestral home into a luxurious hotel and ‘glamping’ site.
We stayed in the West Wing which sleeps up to 8 people in its 4 bedrooms, one of which has a unique four poster bed of carved oak made out of a 1520 Dutch altar! This wing is self-catered and had a decent sized kitchen, plus 2 bathrooms and a large sitting room looking out over the family's private garden. Talking of gardens…the Estate has just a few of them. Walking around the grounds is no modest endeavour and can eat up hours. From February to March tourists flock to the estate to attend their Snowdrop Festival, when literally thousands of snowdrops of 350 different types carpet the woodland areas around the estate. With the sea crashing on one side, a little brook on the other and Cambo Estate rising up through the treeline, a more magical walk is hard to imagine.
Next to the Estate, a mere 5 minute walk, was our next stop: the newly opened Kingsbarns Distillery, set in the grounds of an old dovecot and on the fringe of the famous Kingsbarns golf links. This distillery only launched recently and offers a different perspective on whisky making than others I’ve been on. Everything is local to an extreme – the barley is all grown in Fife, the water is drawn from an underground river and the distillery is now even owned by the same Fife nobles who used to own Cambo Estate in the 18th century, the Wemyss! All their production is done in one room meaning you can literally walk the entire whisky making process from barley mashing to aging! I adore Kingsbarns’ romantic story – it was founded by a local golf caddy so passionate about Fife that he couldn’t bear the thought of there being no distillery nearby and has worked for the last few years to turn his dream into a dram. Various tiers of tours are available, from £8, including a 1 hour site tour and dram of Wemyss Malts whisky, to £50, including a lengthier tour and tutored tasting across multiple whiskies. When I say multiple, I mean it –we wobbled out of that distillery well lubricated and certainly versed in the Wemyss Malts spread. Both tiers of tours are bargains in my book and make for a great day out. Read my full piece on the distillery here.
After a much needed post-tasting nap in the soft beds of Cambo Estate it was out to a very special dinner nearby to the Estate and Distillery at The Peat Inn, holder of a Michelin star and #32 in The Good Food Guide’s Best UK Restaurants. Run by chef Geoffrey Smeddle and his wife (perhaps the loveliest people you’ll ever meet), they do a seasonal menu that focuses on local Scottish ingredients. The Inn itself feels lovely to be in – there’s something about its light, airy rooms that relaxes you and tells you that ‘yes, food is coming and, yes, it is going to be good’.
We tried their 6 course tasting menu (£65) with accompanying wine flight served by their very lovely and ever so slightly eccentric (as they always are) sommelier who told charming stories of the food’s origins and terroir at each turn. Everything we had was wonderful, starting with a fish course of olive oil poached cod with a ridiculous bacon jam which I could eat by the spoonful, celeriac and moreishly soft lentils. Another highlight included their roasted pave of Scottish beef with deep, rich oxtail, smoked potato puree and a meaty red wine jus. Things got weird around the cheese course. Put 3 food journalists close to a large trolley groaning with tens and tens of cheeses, some of them whiffy, and that tends to happen. A delice of dark Amedei chocolate with blood orange mousse, chocolate crackling and a blood orange sorbet balanced intense chocolate with tart citrus artfully and was a good way to end an excellent meal.
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Day one of my foodie trip to Fife couldn’t really have been better. We had eaten some of the best food in the whole of the UK, drunk lashings of whisky and learnt a lot about its production at an exciting new distillery. Nor was I in London, nor some large, established city – I was in Fife, a strange and very special little bubble of a county on the Eastern coast of Scotland, and we had not even entered St Andrews yet. Day 2 awaited….
I am so grateful for your article.