A French name but very local flavours

IT must have been the late Nancy Sinclair who started the vogue in the North for adopting French to name a restaurant – itself a French word – when she opened La Mirage in Helmsdale.

More properly it should have been Le Mirage, but the gender of nouns in France has nothing to do with sex although it often confuses the British.

I remember the Benny Hill joke about the diner summoning the waiter to complain about a fly in his soup. “Monsieur,” he said to him, “voici le mouche.”

“La mouche,” said the waiter.

“Gosh,” was the response, “you’ve got extraordinarily good eyesight.”

After La Mirage came the Bord de l’Eau with, suitably, a French proprietor, then bistros sprang up at Mackay’s Hotel, Wick, and in the former Ship’s Wheel in Thurso.

But the most unusual and different in every way is the Côte Du Nord in the Schoolhouse at Kirtomy, near Bettyhill. The proprietor

Dr Duckham came to north Sutherland eight years ago from Lincolnshire to take up his current medical appointment, but having a keen interest in food and cooking he, with his wife, started a restaurant in the Farr Bay Inn, renting rooms for his compelling hobby, but moving later to the Schoolhouse, Kirtomy, where he now lives.

Friends introduced my wife and me to the restaurant last summer for a meal quite like no other. If you are wanting a dinner like the one I noticed US finance millionaire Warren Buffett treats his friends to, of a 22oz T-bone steak washed down with cherry Coke, you will have to go elsewhere. Our adroitly constructed, well-proportioned meal at the Côte du Nord, of interesting textures and flavours, was a unique experience.

The restaurant’s aim is to create an exciting, contemporary and vibrant cuisine using the finest produce from the far north of Scotland: fish, shellfish, meat, game, locally-grown vegetables and also wild herbs, mushrooms and seaweed.

Inspiration for the dishes can come from many sources – wild thyme on the sea cliffs, bog myrtle or sea lettuce which can only be reached when the tide is low; perhaps the wood-sorrel among the chanterelles on the forest floor, or the creel catch hauled in at low tide. But it is only when Chris Duckham is completely happy with a dish that it is put on the menu.

A menu for this month indicates the unusual nature of a dinner at Kirtomy which is preceded by Côte du Nord canapés and snacks, and then: Spruce shot 2011; scallop, sugarwrack, cucumber; kale, black pudding, oyster, hazelnut; pork belly, pickled vegetables, garden leaves; “beef and onion”; cranachan DIY; chocolate, gorseflower, seawater caramel.

The downside to the restaurant is that it only seats eight, so booking is essential (phone 01641 521773 or e-mail dine@cotedunord.co.uk

One important point to remember is credit cards cannot be accepted, so cash or cheque will be necessary for payment.

THE AGM of Friends of the Far North Line takes place in Mackay’s Hotel, Wick, on Saturday at 2.45pm. This is open to members only but it will be preceded at 1pm by a meeting, which the public are welcome to attend, with an introductory address given by the Society’s president, John Thurso MP, and an update on Far North Line matters by Frank Roach, of HITRANS.

There will also be a talk by Kenny Scott, fleet director, First ScotRail, who will also answer questions from the floor.

THE late actor Kenneth Williams, who possessed a waspish wit, kept a diary in which he was pleased to record acerbic observations about his contemporaries in the entertainment world. On this day in 1969 he had this to say about John Lennon. “That Beatle who is married to an Asiatic lady was on The Frost Programme. The man is long-haired and unprepossessing, with tin spectacles and this curious nasal Liverpudlian delivery: the appearance is either grotesque or quaint and the overall impression is one of great foolishness.

“He and his wife are often ‘interviewed’ from inside bags in order to achieve ‘objectivity’ and they have ‘lie-ins’ whereby they stay in bed for long periods and allow a certain number of people into the room. I think this man’s name is Ringo Star (sic) or something (No – it’s John Lennon) but he began as a ‘singer’ and instrumentalist with this group called the Beatles and one searches in vain for any valid reason for his being interviewed at all.

“What this ex-pop-singer is doing pontificating about the state of humanity, I cannot imagine. It’s mind-bending to listen to.”

Leslie Rowe

leslierowe123@btinternet.com

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