Hoping for a good dinner
I nearly didn’t make it. I’ve been trying to get the The Creel in St Margaret’s Hope for a long time. Last time I was in Orkney they were closed – I was missing the summer season by a weekend – and when I found I would have a car provided for this trip, I immediately made a booking. Plane arrives at 7:00pm, just enough time to dump the bags at the Ayre Hotel, and drive the 15 miles to the southern tip of the Northern Isles for dinner at 8:00pm.
Except that I was trying to get a quilt finished that is due for a wedding present in two weeks’ time, and I had to drop Rumer over to the farm, so it was nearly 3:45 when I started towards Edinburgh. I remembered about the roadworks at Stirling when I was already in the traffic queue, and stuck it out until the GPS said I wasn’t going to get to Edinburgh until 5:20pm for a 5:40pm flight. I then turned round and went the other way. This got me onto the motorway, but I had to do a bit of creative driving and put the car into the really expensive car park. Even then I got the evil eye from the check-in person, and only just got onto the flight.
It was a beautiful evening, with that wonderful light and the wide open skies that show off these islands so well. I love visiting the Northern Isles. I went to Orkney first with my parents at the end of my first year at University, and spent the holiday dissecting trout, because a water fluke was affecting them and my Dad thought I could help find out more about it. St Margaret’s Hope always reminds me of my mother, whose name was Margaret, and we joked about her hoping that Dad would come out with us and not spend all his time fishing.
I now know the origins of the name. Hop is the Norse word for a bay, and in 1290, Margaret, the Maid of Norway, who was the heir to the Scottish throne and betrothed to the son of Edward I of England, died here, aged eight, on her way to England from Norway. This meant of course that the marriage didn’t take place, the crowns of Scotland and England were not joined, Robert the Bruce had to sort out the mess, and the rest is history.
I had to ask to ask directions to The Creel from the Mr Softee van man – he said I would really enjoy it – but there it was on Front Road (as opposed to Back Road) in the pretty and fairly undisturbed village of St Margaret’s Hope. It is an unassuming building that would pass as a run of the mill bed and breakfast, but it has been mentioned by Rick Stein, so my expectations were high.
It has a short menu, two courses £32, three courses £38, and makes no concession to veggies. It’s fish, seafood and meat, and that’s your lot.
I began with crab mayonnaise with avocado salsa, and was pleased when the bread basket had beremeal bannocks and proper butter slabs. Beremeal is the ancient barley meal that is still grown and milled in Birsay. I bought some when I visited there, but my baking with it has been less than successful. These bannocks were light and delicious.
The main course of halibut with a sauce that I overheard the waitress telling someone was made with Noilly Prat came with crushed peas and courgettes plus some proper new potatoes. I say proper because I think they were very local, and they were just right with the fish. I couldn’t resist a pudding, but chose the rhubarb and orange jelly and honeyed yoghurt sorbet – posh jelly and ice-cream really – thinking it would be lighter than the other more robust choices, and also a coffee and “sweets and shortbread” just because I was enjoying the conversation around so much.
The service to me had been very good, but I was watching with some consternation as the three people opposite, whom I had correctly identified as not being related to one another by their body language, were still waiting for their main course when I was being served my desert. We had also had an awkward moment when the older waitress discovered that she had misheard an order and presented the two men at another table with halibut instead of scallops. The chap was one of the few Scots in the room, so I don’t know how she got the wrong word. A full ten minutes elapsed before the correct plate arrived, and by that time the men were discussing the habit in British restaurants – and I agree that this is annoying – of employing teenagers with no experience as waiters and not training them, and the general standard of service found throughout catering. This did not apply at the creel. The waiting staff were charming, knowledgeable and attentive. The mixed order seemed to be a genuine mistake in a busy service, and was corrected efficiently.
The problem of waiting staff in the UK is that all too often it is not regarded as a worthy occupation, and so students think of working in restaurants as something to do in the holidays, with little regard to customer care. My favourite was when celebrating a birthday at a well-known and renowned country pub restaurant in Cambridgeshire. We had ordered a bottle of champagne to be served before lunch, but when it didn’t appear, I went to the bar to ask what had happened. “Oh yes,” said the seventeen year old “We’re just waiting for someone who knows how to open it”. “You have found someone” I replied, “Hand it over”.
The sunset was just developing when I strolled along Front Road, and the Pentalina had arrived from Gill’s Bay in Caithness. The reds and golds were reflected in a soft sea, and there was peace in the air. The Creel has bedrooms, and I bet the breakfast is good, so maybe I’ll try to stay some time and try the wine list. I do hate having to drive!