An Talla — Restaurant in Scotland

This was our second visit to An Talla. The first was awful and before the renovations so we were expecting an improvement. The biggest change was the food.....it was excellent! Very tasty and was beautifully presented. The other changes..... The queue at tills was not separated into restaurant and coffee shop/and the lack of signage made it difficult to know if you were in the right place/queue. Not enough menus either. Two boards with menus while you're in the queue meant the queue was held up while everyone decided what they were having. At the tills it was so noisy that we had to shout to be heard and it just felt a bit dinner hall like. Not the upmarket dining/shopping experience. You pass the toilets on the way to your allocated table and have to follow the one way system which means once you've reached your table you can't go back to the toilets you have to go right outside through the courtyard and back through the coffee shop. We had my disabled mother with us and this was very difficult for her. Wait times for food were too long and if you wanted to add more drinks or a dessert it's back into the queue!

Having had our food we walked through the gift shop, lovely selection of gifts and table ware. Prices a bit steep but I don't mind paying a bit extra for beautiful, quality, local/Scottish items. (East of india gifts, although lovely are made in folkestone Kent! So could be swapped for local made pottery or other gift lines as we have so many talented makers in the Highlands. The young lady who served us in the gift shop was very knowledgeable about the local gins and was lovely and chatty. We bought a selection locally distilled gin which was beautifully gift wrapped for us. A wander along the canal finished off our visit. All in, we had a lovely afternoon at An Talla and will return. There is still room for improvement. Food 5/5 Atmosphere 2/5 Pricing...

Firstly they have a very limited takeaway menu which makes no sense i dont see how mac and cheese with chips cant be takaway. I ordered a tuna sandwich and a cornation chicken toastie. The tuna sandwich was on bread with no butter and the crusts were rock hard and stale. The toastie also had no butter or cheese and in fact was not a toastie but just toasted bread. Each sandwich came with 7 yes 7 crisps. The salad came in seperate boxes which was pointless would rather they took the time to put the salad on the sandwich. My tuna sandwich also had the coronation chicken sauce on it so they must not have cleaned or swapped the knife whilst making the sandwiches. In total I paid £28 for the tuna sandwich the chicken toastie 2 cans of juice a bottle of water and 2 slices of cake. How they can justify £7.50 for a sandwich on stale bread that they could not even be bothered to put the salad on is beyond me. I visited the cafe a year and a half ago and it was great but the standard versus the price is no longer justifiable. Defiantly won't be back...

This was a lovely experience. After getting freezing cold and wet in the rain on our Loch Ness boat trip we found this gorgeous place. Staff were fabulous and working very, very hard indeed to make everyone's experience as enjoyable as possible while respecting Covid regulations. The restaurant is lovely. Clean, classy and exceptionally good value for money. The food is excellent and the welcome warm and generous. Lots of praise for the impeccably well presented and polite staff who looked after us with patience and professionalism under difficult circumstances. Even more impressive when we also saw how they maintained this polite attitude in the face of some appallingly behaved people who obviously felt that they were special in some rude way and who refused to comply with Covid restrictions. Don't know how one waitress didn't just punch a bloke who shouted in her face because he didn't want to wait or complete the track and trace process. We really loved it here and highly recommend a visit if you're...