Out and About (1)

Obviously my comment that if we were here on holiday we would getting out of the house and doing things rather than mouldering away inside struck some sort of a chord with the  OH because a few days after our trip to Leila's tapestry studio he suggested we go along to her sister's new coffee place. Leila's sister is Sheila Fleet the jeweller and for the past couple of years she has been transforming the old church building next to her workshop and gallery into a new gallery and coffee shop. It opened last week and so off we went to try it.

I suspect the OH's main reason for going was that the new building incorporates some of the Caithness flags that came off our roof when we had the house re-roofed. The flags lay in TWWCTG for about 18 months on the advice of our builder who told us that one day someone would want to buy them and he wasn't wrong, as one day SF's son rocked up, asked if he could have a look with a view to buy and I was very happy to say yes. (Builder seemed to think later that the lad had got a bargain, but he was the first  person to come along and want them and I really didn't want them hanging about any longer than needful)

The conversion work has been done very sympathetically and the building, as you would expect really from a family of artists, is beautiful.

and the inside is lovely too

After that it got a bit 'meh'. The service was slow, the cake selection was narrow, the OH's cake, due to their habit of writing on both sides of the cake labels (a strange economy when obviously they have spent shedloads of money on everything else), when it came  was on its side and broken into three pieces - and wasn't very nice into the bargain, and everything was, in Orkney terms at least, expensive. Also, although my scone was lovely, and it's not often you get me saying that about a scone I haven't baked myself, I was a bit non-plussed when paying the bill to be asked if I was the person who had had 'the odd scone'. Now admittedly it was apple and cinnamon and you don't come across those every day, but I hadn't selected it from a dozen others.  It was the only scone that they were offering. So I don't really see how they come to be calling my taste into question when they are the ones with this 'odd scone' and only this one, on offer. 

It ill behoves me to criticise the wider menu because I am always moaning about seeing the same stuff on menus for lunch wherever you go on Orkney and they have tried very hard to offer something different. And that's a good thing. Some of the items on it struck me as a bit distasteful - e.g. 

Pulled goose roll - featuring locally shot goose 

Not sure that the reference to the massacre of the goose is quite the come-on which the appending of the term 'local' seems to be trying to establish, since local is such  a foodie buzz word these days, especially when  followed by the warning that some pieces of shot might still be embedded. 

I do wish them well, but overall it was an underwhelming experience.