FROM LEFT: A dessert from Craig Millar @16 West End restaurant; St Monans on the Fife Coastal Path
There’s a salty tang on the breeze as I watch a canoeist paddle out on the Firth of Forth, herring gulls — known here as ‘maws’ — swooping overhead. Beyond the wall where I sit there’s a rocky beach, and in the other direction, a little harbour arm cradling a cluster of small boats. I’m in St Monans, one of a number of lovely villages with whitewashed buildings topped with steeped gable roofs, that shine like pearls threaded on the necklace that is the East Neuk of Fife. It’s sunny enough to sit on this sublimely situated patio with a starter of pickled mackerel, followed by a perfect, wobbly goat’s cheese souffle. My Fife-born, London-living foodie pal has nudged me in the direction of Craig Millar @16 West End, promising fabulous cooking in a spectacular location. As the wind picks up I move in to the shelter of the dining room, and a table with a picture window on to that glorious view. The fillet of cod, in an Arbroath smokie dashi, with samphire, peas, brown shrimp and Ratte potatoes is exquisite.
Chef Craig Millar joins me in the back of the restaurant — an old fisherman’s cottage ‘made to look like an old cosy nook in winter’ — to talk about the food of Fife, a peninsula bounded by the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, and the North Sea, connected to its neighbouring regions by six major bridges.