Excellent seafood restaurant
Near the harbor of Port Ellen, you can find not only one of the best hotel-restaurants in Port Ellen, but also one of the best on the entire island of Islay. It's advisable to reserve a table ahead of time as it's popular among the locals and tends to fill up quickly. The restaurant itself is modern and well-decorated with nice music and a fireplace. The most typical thing to order are the potted shrimp, a hefty portion of shrimp cooked in butter with aromatic herbs. If you have a slightly bigger budget, they have some other shellfish dishes that'll be sure to delight more sophisticated palates. In our case, we ordered crayfish, haggis, and local salmon (don't forget that salmon is a staple of traditional Scottish cooking) cooked in dill and lemon. The presentation was great and the flavors were absolutely stunning. It really proves the "there's no good food in the UK" myth completely wrong! And finally, the bill came out less than we were expecting, especially considering that it's a seafood restaurant. All in all, we paid around 60 pounds.
