The story
At The Lovat in Inverness, Chef Sean Kelly guides the Highland cooking program by treating the surrounding landscape as the primary pantry. His team ventures into the woodlands and along the banks of Loch Ness to gather wild garlic, nettles, and hedgerow berries that shift with the seasons. This foraging practice shapes every dish rather than serving as a mere technique. The kitchen also relies on a dedicated plot where heritage vegetables, soft fruits, and edible flowers grow right on the grounds. Harvesting at peak ripeness allows the menu to showcase flavors that commercial supply chains often sacrifice for durability.
Neighborly relationships anchor the sourcing strategy. Suppliers include a family croft nearby, estates providing venison, and a local beekeeper producing honey in small batches. These partners prioritize slow methods and healthy land, values that mirror the kitchen's ethos. Diners encounter these elements through plates built around venison, honey, and foraged greens, defining a contemporary style of Scottish dining. The menu also features comforting classics like a full cooked Scottish breakfast and delicate afternoon teas served with oven-warm scones, sweet jam, and whipped cream.
The Station Road restaurant combines intimate seating with generous space, accented by whimsical décor. Attentive service complements the unhurried pace of the meal. The commitment to sustainability and local sourcing has earned the venue two radishes from the We're Smart Green Guide for 2026. Regular guests appreciate how the kitchen adjusts dishes to match the shifting landscape. Open Tuesday through Sunday, the restaurant invites visitors to enjoy meals that reflect the rhythm of the Highlands.
Recognition
Ambience
Details
History
Chef Sean Kelly’s journey has taken him from top-rated venues in Paris via Corsica and Italy to this colourful, contemporary restaurant housed in an elegant hotel by the shores of Loch Ness. Visitors to Station Road are treated to an ‘interactive and immersive’ dining experience that is big on ambition, technique and culinary wow factor but never feels gimmicky – even if it is leavened with stories and nuggets of info on provenance. The tableside tale around the 'beremeal and treacle bannock' bread course even comes with its own props, including a handful of grain and the mini mill used to grind the bere (an ancient Orkney barley). The bannock itself is cooked in a skillet and served warm with a quenelle of sea-salted butter and dish of earthy pesto made with herbs from the kitchen garden. Everything feels fine-tuned here, and the amuse-bouches are bitesize works of art – a tiny tart of chicken liver parfait topped with damson jelly alongside a ball of Arbroath smokie mousse crowned with a salty sliver of white lardo, for example. Dishes such as home-grown potatoes with a free-range egg and locally foraged mushrooms are intricate reimaginings of humble ingredients, the egg wrapped in a crunchy latticework of Shetland Black potato in a soupy sea of fungal foam sprinkled with nasturtium leaves. Elsewhere, a pairing of wild halibut, Shetland mussels, crab cannelloni, courgette and sea fennel is exquisitely pretty, the black-and-white striped cannelloni like a giant mint humbug. At the sweet end of the menu, you might be offered a 'cheesecake' of Perthshire raspberries involving a raspberry mousse sprayed with a green chocolate casing, topped with fresh raspberries, tart sorbet and a raspberry leaf. It looks – and tastes – simply gorgeous. Finally, a warm madeleine on a bed of spruce sugar is a bit like the Auld Alliance on a plate, while wines, whiskies and other drinks are chosen for their stories and ethos as much as their food-pairing potential.
3 Rosette Award for Culinary Excellence
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