A dish I can’t forget: bread and butter broth at Inver

It came in a cup bubbling with yeast and split with a sheen of peppered butter. The smells were of morning toast, the damp sweetness of dough proving under a tea towel, freshly milled flour. I lifted it to my lips thinking: ‘This is going to be good but, you know, it’s still just soup.’ How wrong I was.

That bread and butter broth was one course in the tasting menu at Inver, chef Pam Brunton’s restaurant housed in a 300-year-old crofter’s cottage on the shoreline of Loch Fyne – and it was one of the best things I ate last year. It tasted of itself – liquid bread and butter – and brought to mind the thriftiness of generations of strong-armed (and willed) Scotswomen home cooks. It made me rethink what sustainability, fine dining, Scottish cuisine and, indeed, soup can be.

Inver is Scotland’s only restaurant with a Michelin Green Star, an award for restaurants leading in sustainable gastronomy. Brunton’s food is intimately connected to the land and water, asking all sorts of questions of them – and us. Even in a world of sexed-up seasonal broths, hers is legendary; made with the kitchen’s so-called ‘waste produce’, using ancient grains and foraged ingredients from the surrounding lochside, hills and forest.

By the time this one arrived, the sun was going down. The dining room flushed a deep rose gold and, I kid you not, a thin shaft of light struck my cup like a blessing from the land. That’s how good this broth was.

Photograph by Rebecca Dickson