The ObserverFoodTop five restaurants with animals
No elephant on the menu, but go to the right place and you might see one out of the window...1 La Ferme de Mon Père
Megève, France
Tel: 00 33 4 50 21 01 01
Marc Veyrat was awarded three Michelin stars last year for this faithful reconstruction of a Savoyard farmhouse in the mountains of the Haute Savoie. Purpose-built to his own design, the building is a homage to his peasant-farmer father and his own roots, where every night the animals would be brought into the stables under the house. And indeed at La Ferme where authentic farmyard smells permeate the eating area, diners can look down through the glass panes in the floor onto the flock of mountain sheep, a carthorse and hens. Veyrat uses the regional ingredients his mother and grandmother cooked with, but unlike the rich cuisine that is more traditional on the Swiss border, he avoids creams and butter for a lighter, more aromatic approach.
La Ferme is his second restaurant: the other one (also three Michelin stars) is l'Auberge de l'Eridan nearby in Annecy, and he solves the chef-in-the-kitchen crisis by shutting l'Auberge in winter and La Ferme in summer.
Caroline Boucher
2 The Carnegie Club at Skibo Castle
Sutherland, Scotland
Tel: 01862 894600
The 2001 conference on rural poverty was held at the luxurious Skibo Castle. Some felt that Skibo's Victorian opulence made it an inappropriate location for such a topic, but at least its 7,500 acres is home to enough animals to make it suitably rural. Now known as the place Madonna and Guy Ritchie tied the knot, Skibo is situated on the shores of Dornoch Firth and the edge of the Sutherland Hills, which preserve a micro-climate warding off midges and encouraging a profusion of wildlife.
In autumn the roar of the red deer stags that roam just north of the estate echoes around the castle. Foxes, red squirrels, badgers, hares, otters, Scottish wild cats, seals and bottle-nose dolphins can be seen if you have the dedication to find them. Between March and September the rare osprey visits and there are duck, geese, swans, grouse, herons and buzzards.
Every morning the falconer, Andy MacLeod, arrives at the hotel with an owl (Zeus), falcon or eagle perched on his arm, letting them swoop around the grand hall and perch on the antique furniture.
Skibo had never been renowned for its food so it appointed a new head chef, Craig Rowland, to rectify the situation. Rowland takes advantage of the local seaweed-fed mutton from Orkney, wild salmon, local cheeses, the Aberdeen Angus, and delicious lamb and seafood. Fruit and vegetables come direct from the castle gardens, its huge Victorian greenhouses and two farms. Dinner is served in an oak-panel room at eight, in formal Edwardian splendour.
Chloe Diski
3 The Cliff restaurant
Derricks, St. James, Barbados
Tel: 001 246 432-1922
Perched on top of a steep cliff, this restaurant has stunning sea views and the coolest way to arrive would be by yacht in the early evening as they don't do lunch. Another reason for arriving at night and stepping very carefully is that you might encounter a leatherback or hawksbill turtle coming ashore to lay her eggs. Having hunted both species to near extinction, Barbados now has an active conservation programme, and if you were really keen you could stay at the Coconut Court Beach Hotel in Christ Church on the southern tip of the island and have a working holiday as a conservationist volunteer.
Rosie Plante
4 Ristorante Don Alfonso 1890
Naples, Italy
Tel: 0039 0818780026
Just above the bay of Naples and Salerno, set back from the Amalfi coastal road is a flock of gloriously vain peacocks that strut around the picturesque Mediterranean gardens of the famous three-starred Michelin Ristorante Don Alfonso 1890.
For years this restaurant in the small village of Sant'Agata sui due Golfi has produced simple, unpretentious and incredible food. The ingredients are grown at Don Alfonso's farm Le Pecciarole in nearby Punta Campanella, where the soil is rich in minerals deposited by Vesuvius.
Under the restaurant there are ancient Roman tunnels in the mountains where they store their celebrated stocks of wine from across the world. Alfonso has studied the southern region's 3,000-year history of food and wine from ancient scripts found at the Agriculture University of Portici and his dishes are influenced by his findings. Surprisingly, the classic garlic and tomato combination play only a secondary role. The menu includes dishes such as squid with asparagus and mint, baby goat with fresh Mediterranean herbs and his famous dessert of eggplant and chocolate. Pepper has been banished from his kitchen as Don Alfonso believes it to be an unnecessary and unhealthy addition to his food.
Matt Small
5 Treetops Lodge
Aberdare National Park, Kenya
Tel: 0025 4 171 550 30
The famous Treetops hotel started life in a humble way in 1932, when its first visitors gingerly climbed the wild fig tree supporting the two-room tree house. By 1952, Treetops had expanded to a four-room construction, and welcomed, in February of the same year, its most famous visitor. A young English girl climbed the tree as a Princess one afternoon, to descend the following morning Queen Elizabeth II - her father, King George VI had died during the night.
I first visited Treetops in the late Eighties. I was not about to inherit the throne. In fact I actually had not a penny in my pocket. I was in Kenya as a volunteer teacher and on a wet and windy day decided to hitch around Mount Kenya (a mad thing to do but it seemed perfectly sane at the time). A tousle-haired man eventually stopped in a four-wheel drive. He told me his name was Don and that he was on his way to lunch. 'Where?' I asked. 'Treetops,' he said. It had been my dream to go there. We rolled up, an hour later, and no one seemed to be remotely concerned about the mud clinging to my dress. It turned out he was the son of the late William Holden. 'My stepmother's coming too,' he said. Half an hour later we sat, with Stefanie Powers, eating delicious food and watching elephants meander around in the lush trees below us. As the sun went down a leopard loped in front of us. It was stunning, an experience of a lifetime.
Lucy Cavendish
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