Its a Gin Thing......

Our Gin Tasting Menu has been a huge success and as much as we love the menu we currently have, we have decided to create a brand new one for summer '16!! 
Like the first gin menu we created last year, we invited the Eden Mill team in to test it out before we launched it to the public. We like to use them as our guinea pigs. 
We love to support local independent businesses (like ourselves), so our Gin menu is made up entirley of our incredible neighbour distillers Eden Mill of St Andrews(who also hold distillery tours & tastings, info can be found at the bottom of the blog). Gins work so well with fresh seafood it was the perfect match for us to work together and create something special and delicious for our customers. 

For this new gin tasting menu our chefs spent a long time deliberating which way to take the menu. In the end  they have chosen an asian fusion direction. Inspired by Darren's recent trips to Australia where this style of food is having a huge moment! Our menu includes a lots of elegant flavours, sesame & soy. Our chefs are amazing and all the delicate beautiful flavours really come out incredibly in each and every dish!  Especially in our Tuna dish, which was a clear favourite with the Eden Mill team.

The menu still consists of 5 courses, of course included in there is our famous fish & chips. Not massively influenced by asian delicacies but we couldn't not have it on our menu! We also couldn't bring ourselves to take the taco off the menu as it has been such a customer favourite and we have seen many on the gin menu returnees come back to the restaurant just for tacos!! So instead we decided to give it a little make-over!

1st course
The 1st course on our summer 16 Eden Mill Gin Tasting Menu, Tuna Tataki w Asian Slaw & Wasabi Avocado served with Edens Hop Gin with chilli and mint.  Basically we love the intensity and spicyness of the hop gin and everyone loved our pairing with chilli last time, so we thought we'd do it again. This time with mint for a little change!  

Still going down that whole Asian/fusion route we had a tuna dish in mind that needed a big gin to stand up to it and hop is it! The tuna is marinated in a little soy, sesame, lime and honey and then rolled in black sesame seeds and lightly seared. Alongside it is a Asian slaw Mage with cabbage, carrot, chilli, lime, sesame, coriander and crispy fried shallots. Accompanied with that it is an avocado wasabi puree to add an extra little punch. 

2nd course
Seared scallops, pea puree, crispy pork belly and thyme oil. This scallop dish is one of the chefs favourites and they have been wanting to showcase it for a while! The scallops are sourced from the Shetlands and are beautifully sweet when cooked. Working in harmony with the sweetness from the pea puree. We felt the dish needed some saltyness and why we served it with crispy pork belly morsels! We thought a little woodiness from the thyme oil too would bring it all together! Therefor the best match (we believe) for this dish is the oak gin! With its sweet notes and rich oakiness we though it would really compliment the scallops... We tried garnishing the gin with a few different ingredients but settled on thyme, peppercorns and mandarin. The thyme to enhance the oakiness and woodiness, the peppercorns to give it a wee kick and the mandarin to bring out the natural sweetness too!

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3rd course
​We couldn't bring ourselves to take the taco off the gin menu as it has been such a hit with out customers. So instead of taking it off we decided to reinvent the taco, this time using salmon.
Blackened salmon taco w tomato, ramiro salsa. Blackened salmon is a Cajun coating on the fish which is then chargrilled to give it a crispy coating! We have served it with a coriander, tomato & ramiro salsa. With added lime to give it a citrus kick! We loved the original gin with this dish as it has that natural citrus zingyness to it that really compliments the spices in the salmon. ​We paired green olives in the original gin for this course. The olives pull out the coriander in the salsa and also pull the bitterness out the gin which makes the gin and the taco really work together to create an amazing flavour on the palette. 

4th course 
Of course our fish and chips had to be on the menu! 
Our Tailend classic, humble haddock & chips and Eden Mill classic, Shipwreck IPA are just made for each other. The bubbles from the IPA work wonderfully to cut through the batter on the fish and the light golden flavour doesn't detract from the fish! 
In simple words, it just works!

Surprise course
Also with this menu, we have a special supplement course! 
When we get our hands on the new golf gin we are thinking to incorporate an additional course on as a pre dessert, a cheeky blueberry/blackberry sorbet with honey comb . Guests can opt to do it or not but this will only last for as long as we have the golf gin, so best book quick!! 

5th course 
For the final course we were first inspired by the Love Gin and wanted to create a dessert around that. We have tried many different garnishes over the past few weeks and we discovered, through almost selling out, that the Love goes amazingly with grapefruit & rosemary. Initially we thought a bizarre pairing but it works beautifully.
Pannacotta has always been a dish we wanted to try. So we thought why not pop all those garnishes from the gin into the dessert too!  ...If its good enough to drink, its good enough to eat, Right?? 

 We had such a great night, as always, with the Eden Mill team. As this was a pre-launch we asked them to give as much feed back as possible, what they thought worked and where they thought little changes could be made. So the menu we officially launch may be slightly different to this one after the final tweaks are done.
Its amazing to have such a fun working relationship with our fellow businesses and when it involves eating food and drinking gin, its not a bad job! 

The new gin tasting menu will be launching soon and if you sign up to our newsletter using the form below, you will be the first to hear of our launch night and any other promotions or events we will be holding. 

To find out more about Eden Mill and/or about the tours they offer click the link below. We highly recommend their tours-very informative-very fun-tasting at the end-superb!
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Eden Mill