I can assure everyone personally, that Eddie and I have no plans to close The Three Chimneys and The House Over-By in beautiful north west Skye. We are amazed that information about our North Berwick project has spread so far! To explain: we have sold our 1-bedroom flat in Leith and bought a 2-bedroom cottage in North Berwick. This will give us the combination of accessibility to my home city of Edinburgh, where our children live and work, with the wide open spaces of the East Lothian coastline. The cottage will take at least another year to renovate. We hope that all the family will use it and that we ourselves, will have a small retreat. We have no plans to retire! Indeed, we re-opened last night following our annual period of closure for essential maintenance and ongoing refurbishment. We had a full house and a superb menu appeared to be enjoyed by all. Eddie was playing genial host front-of-house as always and serving the wines from his great list. As you will see from our website, we appointed a new Head Chef, Michael Smith, a little under three years ago. We worked closely together for the first 18 months, building a new team. I had realised a few years ago that one day I would have to pass on the day-to-day running of the kitchen to younger chefs. I have worked hard to make this changeover successful, rather than walk away from all that we have achieved at The Three Chimney. The "peculiarities" of running such a special restaurant in this crazy location took Michael a few months to accomplish. He is a brilliant Chef and completely on my wavelength about the importance of using the wide range of local produce available from Skye and the Highlands of Scotland, as well as promoting the superb culinary heritage of Scottih cooking. The "astonighingly good meal" referred to by Tony H was all down to him and the team. I have not been at the stoves for a a year now. However, I am here virtually al of the time, assisting Eddie with running (and possibly developing) the buisness for the future. We are still living in the flat over the restaurant - our home for 22 years and still counting! Come up and see us sometime. But don't forget to reserve a table as demand is greater than ever!
