BYDAND

"I love food, I love the culinary aspect of it, and the delight of working with our beautiful, fresh Caithness produce "- says Brian Gordon, the owner and head chef at award winning Bydand Restaurant.

Bydand Restaurant, with its signature stag’s head and purple theme running through exterior and interior design, definitely stands out from the other shop windows at Traill Street in Thurso.

We were all delighted and proud of them this summer when the restaurant won the European Restaurant of the Year Award.

This is a family run business, with the father and the daughter as chefs, and the mother at the front of the house. But all this small team is like one family, and Brian, who is the owner, the manager and the chef in one, emphasizes that it is the joint effort of everyone on their team what it takes to deliver that special experience of fine dining at Bydand.

Everyone gets very special individual approach at the restaurant to cater for any dietary requirements. For the same reason, it is only vegan butter that is used in cooking - to make the menu as inlcusive as possible. Bydand staff definitely go that extra mile to make sure that any customer can enjoy their meal without compromising their health and well-being, and the chefs are happy to personalize their menu for the customers with any particular allergies or other dietary restrictions.

Where possible, all produce that is used in Bydand kitchen is local.

Seasonal greens, herbs and vegetables such as nasturtiums, dill, amaranth, fennel, courgettes and many others come from Socially Growing Greenhouses, and there are plans in place to make relationship between Socially Growing and Bydand symbiotic and synchronize growing plans and the menu. Some other vegetables like green peas come from Thurso Community Gardens.

All seafood products are sourced locally too and come from JPL Fishmongery, while meat grown by Caithness farmers is delivered straight from John Munro in Dingwall and butchered by the chefs in house.

Favourite bread at the restaurant is Corn bread, baked by Reid’s, our local bakery.

The salmon, as fresh as it gets, comes to the Bydand kitchen from JPL, local fishmonger.

And then chefs begin working their magic over it.

Firstly, salmon is cut into portion sizes and gets cured in dry brine overnight. Then all excess liquid is drained and the salmon is washed and dried. After that, it gets sent to the smoking oven for 3.5 hours in low temperature for dry smoking. At the end, the salmon is full of natural flavour and is very succulent.  

We could probably write a book in several volumes about all those amazing findings that we discovered at Bydand from Brian, but for now we will tell you about the journey of smoked salmon in their kitchen, before it hits the plate at the front of the house.

In parallel with that, the other ingredient for this lovely dish is being prepared in the kitchen too. These lovely cherry tomatoes are delivered from the Socially Growing Greenhouses to the restaurant straight off the stem, they are halved and get dehydrated for 10 hours. This is equivalent process to sun drying, just without the sun - remember, we are in Caithness!

Brian kindly shared many more fantastic secrets with us which we are keeping in store for another time. So watch this space, to be continued!

#HILocal

#HIClimateFest