The Three Chimneys and The House Over-by — Restaurant in Skye

Dear staff at Three Chimneys, I am sorry that we have to give such a negative review, but we hope this will help you to improve services. I assume, this link being provided by you, our review will not be published directly. We live in Scotland and would therefore not like to negatively affect any Scottish business. We would however, in return, ask for a response to our feedback. My wife and I have over the last 30 years visited Skye on a regular basis, and had been able to dine at most other fine dining restaurants in the Skye/Ullapool region, but had not yet been able to visit the Three Chimneys. We were therefore excited to be able to visit you on the 10 June 2025, and bring along our good friends from London, who also enjoy fine dining. We were however in the end very disappointed with our visit to your restaurant. Before going into details about the courses, we would like to comment on the setting. Although service was good, friendly and timeous, however lacked local knowledge. We had been placed at a table of four in a very busy part of the restaurant. There was a lot of through traffic from staff and other diners. This was unpleasent as it didn't allow for us to have a relaxed conversation with our friends over dinner, but rather at times we had to talk with raised voices. Overall the busy-ness of the "through path" beside our table was distracting from our dining experience. We understand that you added tables to the restaurant a wee while ago and wonder if this was a good decision? We felt that the overall presentation of the food was lacklustere, we appreciate that this was a tasting menue, but often the food was presented in small bowls, a prime example of this presentation was the scallop dish, which had a sliced scallop in brown butter in a small bowl and nothing else to highlight the main protein. As a group we agreed that across the dishes the main protein mostly "got lost" amongst the overpowering flavour of the sauces, and this sadly applied to all four of the Langoustine, Halibut, Scallop and Crab Tortellino courses. Also, whilst mostly the flavours of the courses were pleasant, we agreed that they lacked depth and most of all layers of flavour. The starting snack was an exception and left us with high hopes for the rest of the menu, but sadly this did not continue. The Langustine flavour in the ceviche preparation sadly got lost. The Halibut course was nicely presented, but again had lost the flavour of the halibut, due to being overpowered by the other ingredients. Moving towards the later courses, the North Sea Cod in warm tartar sauce had retained the Cod flavour, but was otherwise, as our friend commented, "a bit of a non-dish". I personally felt that, if you serve the fish skin, it should be prepared separately and crisped with some seasoning, here however it was just left on the piece of fish and was somewhat unappatising. My main concern was however with the main meat dish, Hogget, Potato and Wild Garlic. Here a Lamb Haggis had been added, which in our opinion was unpleasent to eat, also the Wild Garlic was overpowering and unbalanced. Again, and somewhat strange for a Hogget, although perfectly cooked pink there was very little flavour of Lamb. There was one sweet course only. The Strawberry, Sloe Gin, and Mint was delicious, refreshing and layered, for us the best dish of the menu, but due to refreshing and palate cleansing nature we had felt this may be a pre-sweet course and were surprised that it turned out to be the main sweet course. As my wife does not eat fish/seafood it was arranged on booking she would receive vegetarian or meat replacements for the fish courses. Overall these were underwhelming. She had to return the Venison tortellino, which we all agreed on was oversalted. The Crowdie Angelotti was unpleasant. Overall my wife felt short changed, given the price of £140 for the 7 course menu. We understand that staff and chef changed 18 months ago, and hope that The Three Chimneys will be able to work hard to return to prior form, especially if you want to extend...

Bad. Really bad.

Firstly, before we get to the review, we found out afterwards from someone at the hotel we were staying at that the chef has changed and the previous chef that gave them the reputation of Michelin is not there anymore.

We arrived at 8.30pm, excited as this was fine dining experience. My wife is from Sri Lanka so we know flavours and are used to tasting incredible fresh food.

There will be photos included in the review.

The first courses we ordered were Oysters and a pork broth style schezuan. We got 3 on the plate covered in a butter style sauce. Bland and tasteless. The other pork meal with a spicy Chinese style broth was delicious and we was like 'ok, first course let's give them the benefit of the doubt'.

The second courses arrived, and this was scallops and pigeon. The scallops were cooked nicely, but covered in a hazelnut crumb, not sure that worked well with such beautiful scallops. Kind of spoiled it. The green sauce with it, no idea. Like someone had sneezed on the plate before serving. The pigeon was OK, the pie accompanying it was tastier than the main feature of the dish.

The 'main' courses arrived and this was really bad. One dish was 3 langoustines torched on some tomato style salad. This to my wife's incredible disappointment was served cold, I mean really cold. It didn't say on the menu that it would be a cold main course. The price of this was over £30 for 3 small, cold langoustines. Horrific.

The second dish was a 'lamb' dish. Now, this was over £35 and the two pieces of lamb that were on the plate were miniscule. I'm all for accepting that its fine dining but when they call it a lamb dish and I had to try and find it thats just a joke. See the photo, I had to put a pound coin next to the lamb just to show how pathetic it was. Also, I wasn't asked how I want the meat cooked which I thought should have happened. If this lamb was shocked with a defibrillator it would have got off the plate and ran off it was barely cooked.

Anyway, my wife has never sent food back to the kitchen and we've been to some pathetic places and still ate the food out of hunger. But this was too far. She sent it back and the manager came and asked if she wanted another dish off the menu to try instead. We agreed and she went for a fish dish. It came and we did not think it could be worse than a cold main course but wow. I'm sure it was the same butter sauce that was put on the Oysters. There was zero seasoning on the fish as well. Again, dreadful. So by this point we were past wanting anything else and decided to leave. They didn't charge us for my wife's main course disaster and ended up still paying rest of the bill.

I wouldn't go back even if someone paid me.

Extremely...

We've finally done it, after too long we got to experience the magnificent Three Chimneys. From entering to leaving the whole experience was magical. We were met and greeted by the wonderful front of house staff and really made to feel welcome. Throughout the course of the meal we got to chat to nearly all members of the team, such a great contrast of characters and personalities, yet all boasted the same high level of attentiveness, and professionalism you'd come to expect from such an establishment.

The vibe is really interesting, you may walk in in your finest suit, and you will be treated to a high class fine dining experience. On the other hand, you may pop in in your walking boots, just off the hills and be treated to a lovely relaxing country pub-vibe lunch. How this is achieved is beyond me, but everyone seems to be given the experience they are looking for.

The menu, is by far one of the most interesting I have come across yet. First off, it's the same menu for lunch as it is dinner, so you can have the same marvellous experience regardless of your time preference.

Second, it's not your normal, run of the mill a la carte format. The menu progresses in courses, with suggested dishes for each, entrées, course 1, 2 and 3, and finally desert. The menu is designed in such a way that as you move forward throughout each course, the dishes will get more rich, however you aren't restricted to any give dish in any given order. you can start with something from course 2, jump back to some fish off of 1, enjoy some entrées, then finish with something off of course 3. Your partner can do something quite different. What an excellent way to dine if you so wish.

Finally, the food and wine. Of course it was exquisite. The locally sourced fish and meat was at it's finest. Master crafted dishes, brought to life by Scott Davies. Each dish was very different, yet the whole experience tied together perfectly. We really did "mix-it-up", and yet the contrast between each course was perfect, at no point did anything feel jarring or odd. As you'd expect, the quality was superb.

We had several red wines and several white wines throughout the meal, each was perfectly selected for us based on our attempt to describe what we liked and the dishes we had ordered. We ended our meal with some superb port, sherry and a couple of cheeky cocktails. You really can have as much or as little as you like, without pressure and time constraints.

We'd just like to say a huge thank you to both front of house staff and the kitchen for making our experience everything we had hoped for and so much more. You really made us feel like friends.

All in all, an...