Café Cùil, Isle of Skye: ‘The kids give their cheese toasties 20 out of 10’

Lunchtime on a rain-lashed Saturday on Skye, and the queue at Café Cùil snakes out the door. Here they come, from far and wide, to descend on the southwestern hemline of Scotland’s foodiest isle like the most orderly flock of oystercatchers in the Inner Hebrides. Locals nipping in for a bowl of the best soup known to nan-kind. Mums with babes on hips and Scotch pancakes on their minds. Whisky-lovers who got sidetracked en route to the nearby Talisker distillery. Hikers praying the sausage rolls haven’t yet sold out. Some sodden sheep loitering by a cattle grid on the road skirting the loch. And me.

Happily, I’m heading in the opposite direction. I’d been warned that Café Cùil gets unmanageably busy at weekends, so we fetched up, keen as mustard, at midday – me, my partner, Claire, and our two kids, the older of whom is autistic and as allergic to queuing as I am to overpriced pastries from overhyped cafés. Oh, and Lizzie Lemon, our characterful (appallingly barky) Romanian rescue crossbreed. We had such a great meal that the next morning I was back for brunch with my daughter. A stack of the fluffiest pancakes with homemade strawberry jam for her and, for me, bright orange chanterelles gathered that morning from Skye’s sparse clumps of forest on note-perfect sourdough. Basically, take Skye in autumn, transfer contents to a plate, and gorge like Proust on the disappearance of time. Because it’s gone before you know it. This was the special, and five minutes later it was crossed off the board. At 11am.

Café Cùil is a one-off, the kind of café that will have the most jaded diner scouring Rightmove for affordable two-bed cottages in the shadow of the Cuillin Mountains. (Even though there aren’t any, because holiday homes and Airbnbs have pushed prices on Skye sky-high. And you’re a lifelong city dweller who can’t drive. Or climb mountains.)

Clare Coghill, Café Cùil’s owner and self-taught chef, is made of stronger stuff. A rare young islander who left and came back, she first opened a version of the café 600 miles south, in Hackney. It was February 2020, in retrospect the worst time to start, well, anything, yet Coghill’s bold cookery was gratefully received by the sentimental Scots of London, who never can suppress their feelings when met with a square sausage and a can of Irn-Bru. Café Cùil served top-notch produce – Skye black pudding, lobster, hand-dived scallops – without the eyewatering mark-ups of more pompous seafood restaurants of, say, Mayfair.

Then came Covid-19. The country went into lockdown and Coghill shut up shop and went home.

Five years later, Café Cùil’s neighbours may be seals and skeins of migrating geese rather than the tattooed gadabouts of east London, but the philosophy of “café food, elevated” pertains. And what a spot for it. This is the Minginish peninsula, where today the rain is like a curtain of silvery gauze drawn across the fuzzy green hills and slate waters of Loch Harport. Along the shoreline are some of the ingredients Coghill forages for her modern seasonal menus – gorse, seaweed, flowers and herbs. Her first cookbook has just come out and Café Cùil has matured into a well-oiled machine, set across a great barn of a building with a startling pillar-box red roof, staffed by a small army of smiley, efficient, multitasking women. How refreshing on an isle of fine dining restaurants fronted by men.

There’s a shop selling merch, the requisite totes and hoodies, ceramics and venison salami. Past the never-ending queue and takeaway section laden with bakes is the restaurant; modern and bright with floor-to-ceiling windows out of which you can ogle the contrasting weathers outside. To the outsider it may look like the middle of nowhere, but this is the well-beaten road to the Talisker distillery, dominating the nearby village of Carbost since 1830. One of Skye’s most astonishing natural wonders, the Fairy Pools, scooped out of the slopes of the Black Cuillin range, is a few miles away.

Everyone around us is gorging on Lochalsh beef brisket rarebit and pancakes stacked with roasted plums, cardamom crumble and candied ginger mascarpone. Two walkers speak to one another but once, to declare their matching sandwiches “the best chicken burger I’ve ever eaten”. Café Cùil is also the most accessible busy café I’ve ever been to. When I explain to our unflappable server, front-of-house manager Catherine, that my son is autistic, we’re seated in a quiet corner and when he gets stressed, emits some piercing screams and threatens to leave, she points to a door and says we can open it for him whenever we need to. My fellow parents of autistic children will know how hard, and thus rare, it is to eat out as a family. A kind and welcoming response like this means the world.

We order all the specials to celebrate. Langoustines caught that morning from Loch Harport by Calum the creel fisherman, their sweet meat stuffed in a pillowy brioche made by Sŏna, the server who brings it to the table, and who also masterminded my warming plum, ginger and bog myrtle “Cùil-Aid”. It comes with a bowl of langoustine bisque so thick, rich and velveteen it’s closer to a rouille. Skye pork shoulder is piled on extra crisp tostadas with pear chimichurri, crumbled crowdie and smoky house brava sauce. The kids give their cheese toasties, chips and pancakes “20 out of 10”. Best of all? Jerusalem artichoke, pear and fennel seed soup. Yes, my highlight is a bowl of soup. Sweet, nutty, and unforgettably good. Coghill explains they have a stock pot in the kitchen that roils away with the week’s discarded veg and peelings and is in constant rotation for their daily changing soups. What toothsome sorcery comes out of that frugal island cauldron.

We finish with exemplary coffee, vegan cinnamon twists, toffee, apple and cinnamon strudel, and a pear and ginger cheesecake as light as a cloud. Meanwhile, the queue lengthens, the rain goes on and so, too, do my wildly impractical relocation fantasies. Like most of the island’s hotels, restaurants and cafés, Café Cùil operates seasonally and closes over the winter. Which gives the rest of us plenty of time to plot a visit, and then, ideally, another the following day.

Café Cùil, 4 Satran, Isle of Skye IV47 8SU (01478 640575; cafecuil.com). Mains from £12, sides from £2, bloody Màiri £11