Book your spot now, as there are only six sittings for Gary Maclean’s Chef’s Table dining experience at Edinburgh’s Bonnie & Wild, where the National Chef of Scotland and MasterChef: The Professionals 2016 winner has his restaurant, Creel Caught.
These imaginative feasts, which will take place from March 10-12, at noon and 5pm each day, have been organised in collaboration with the Islay-based Bruichladdich Distillery as part of its celebrations for B Corp Month in March. In 2020, this company was the first whisky and gin distilling company in Europe to achieve B Corp status, which demonstrates the business’s sustainability and responsibility credentials.
To suit the theme, the five-course set lunches and dinners, which all come with a matched drink and cost £110pp, feature some of this chef’s favourite ethical producers and are created using environmentally-friendly methods. Maclean will be talking diners through each dish.
After a course of rye bread, potato dip, burnt onion and mushroom broth, served with a 50:50 Martini featuring silver birch vermouth and a fermented gooseberry, there’s barbecued celeriac, along with a Bonfire-spiced Pear Old Fashioned cocktail, which features foraged hogseed, among other ingredients.
The first meat course is Gigha Halibut, served with Shetland mussels, potato broth and kale and teamed with a Classic Laddie Rhubarb and Rosemary Highball. Maclean has chosen his seafood ingredients carefully.
“Halibut has become a victim of its own popularity, and is now an endangered species,” he says. “However, the incredible Gigha Halibut company has pioneered a land-based aquaculture system that means they can produce these beautiful fish sustainably and cleanly. Rather than a detrimental impact on the environment, one of the by-products is cleaner sea water.”
The final savoury dish, served with a glass of red wine, is smoked roe deer loin, served with braised shoulder pie, beetroot and brambles
“By eating local, culled roe deer, whose population is more than 350,000, we help to reduce the damage these herds cause to wildlife, forests and crops, while also avoiding the environmental impact that industrial animal farming can have”, says Maclean.
This will be rounded off with orchard apple shortbread, oat creme fraiche and granola - a dish featuring fruit that was sourced from community gardens - along with a dram of single malt Octomore 10.3.
Tickets at Eventbrite
