CAFÉ CANNA - Savouring the Hebrides

“Chef, brewer and person responsible for cobbling it all together on a daily basis.” That’s how Gareth Cole, Café Canna’s owner, humbly describes himself. But behind that answer is a story shaped by Gareth’s passion for the sea.

You’ll find the Isle of Canna in the Inner Hebrides, an archipelago off the west coast of mainland Scotland. Canna is one of the smallest of the inhabited islands – with only 18 residents – and sits to the south-west of Skye. It’s two miles across and famed for seafood, sailing and seabirds. How did Gareth find himself managing one of the most rural restaurants in Britain? “Utter chance,” he says. “Besotted with the west coast”, Gareth spent years plotting how to swap his busy London life for a new chapter in Scotland. Fortuitously, Gareth learnt that Café Canna’s previous owners were calling it quits, and with his love of food, he thought, why not?.

Since coming to Canna, the restaurant has gone from strength to strength. Open seasonally from April to October, the menu is inspired by and sourced from the bountiful surroundings. “This is partly a necessity, partly a big love,” Gareth says. Getting produce can be complicated, involving a network of shipments and suppliers: RIBs, yachts, fishing boats and personal contacts. “This precariousness led us to look more to what the island has on offer,” Gareth notes, a self-reliance which also serves sustainable and delicious produce to Café Canna’s diners.

For example, Gareth can’t get fresh bread from a bakery, so they bake their own each morning. Meat comes from the farm down the road, wildflowers and seaweed are foraged by hand, and local fisherman Craig delivers world-class seafood daily. “We’re blessed with the produce,” Gareth admits. “And just about every single one of the island’s residents is involved in some way in the plate of food you’re eating.”

Maybe that’s why Gareth can’t quite bring himself to pick a favourite dish. A popular choice is the seafood platter.

“I don’t think it’s possible to serve it fresher,” Gareth says. “We land everything moments before you sit down. You can often see one of us scarpering off to pick it up: lobster, langoustine, crab...” While you enjoy fresh bread and aioli, gaze across the bay and spot the buoys marking the lobster pots.

Then there’s the kelp salad, something Gareth started offering years ago, “almost as a laugh.” He didn’t anticipate diners’ reactions. Served with a rice wine vinegar and toasted sesame seed dressing, plus smoky dulse (red seaweed) crisps, it’s such a favourite that Gareth’s taken guests for impromptu foraging courses the next day.

The sea plays a huge part, not only in the menu, but in people’s lives on the island. The tides “determine how you walk from one house to the other,” Gareth explains, and once the buzz of summer and the sailing route slows, “it’s time for socialising.” Over the wilder months, the bar opens for the locals, storms unfold over the Atlantic, and people make plans. The islanders run their own wind and solar power grid, and this year Gareth’s hoping to build a bigger brewery.

But his next adventure will be sharing the award-winning restaurant’s recipes with an audience far beyond Canna’s clear shores. His book ‘Café Canna: Recipes From a Hebridean Island’ curates dishes and advice inspired by common table-side questions: how to fillet mackerel, forage seaweed, or pick fragrant gorse flowers “without impaling yourself!”

The book could also coax more visitors to Canna, seeking out not only a taste of the Hebrides but a small slice of island life. Gareth says that the shoulder months – April and September – are his “favourite by an absolute mile” for sailing, swimming and wandering the mostly pathless contours. “But whenever you visit,” Gareth adds, “come and say hello. Have a dance, a drink, and get out there. It’s beyond beautiful.”

words //Laura Anne Brown -photography //Simon Hird