Mull is one of the easier to reach islands in the Inner Hebrides - just a few miles offshore at the Fishnish ferry crossing and around 3 ½ hours drive from Glasgow. As the fourth largest of Scotland’s islands (roughly 30 by 30 miles at its widest), it’s big enough to have its own food identity and infrastructure with plenty to tempt your palate across price range and geography. The resident population numbers around 3000 people but up to 600,000 visitors arrive annually making tourism an essential part of the island economy – particularly relevant to those in food and hospitality.
Many visitors only really make it to Tobermory with its kaleidoscopic jumble of multi-hued restaurants, galleries and quayside cottages. For foodies, it’s a great introduction to the island’s culinary heart. Start perhaps at the eponymously named village store with its shelves of local products and tasty selection of home-made savouries and cakes - hearty venison pasties or an oaty ginger flapjack offer hand-held comfort. For more than picnic goods or groceries then the eternally popular Café Fish on the pier above CalMac offers the full shorefront seafood experience with briny sharing platters, daily catch specials and an idiosyncratic lobster thermidor sourdough pizza. Those with more time and seeking next tier gastronomy might be tempted by the 12-course tasting menu at An Cala Ciuin restaurant within the banana yellow Mishnish Hotel. For £125 you get a succession of prime island ingredients creatively transformed into such dishes as: langoustine tartare with pea and wasabi, plump Inverlussa mussels with pig cheek and pork dashi or Glengorm venison beignet.
Only after a cornet? then Isle of Mull ice-cream in its tiny pink waterfront ‘factory’ uses milk direct from the family farm up the road – the excellent Tobermory whisky and marmalade flavour might even tempt you to visit the nearby distillery.
If a stroll is needed to aid digestion (or create space), there’s an easy path along the coast to the viewpoint of the Rubha nan Gall lighthouse past the local oyster producers. Depending on the season and weather you may be enveloped in the heady aromas of wild garlic, bluebells and gorse flower or lashed by salty foam rising off a turbulent sea. Either way the views are striking.
Leaving bustling Tobermory, the population thins out and the already relaxed pace slows further. Travelling around is an experience in itself. Public transport runs to the most popular visitor destinations but beyond that you’ll need your own wheels – whether two or four, motorised or not. Depending on your perspective, the single-track roads winding along the jagged coastline and over some of the higher passes are either an exhilarating challenge or a buttock-clenching trauma. Taking things gently and stopping frequently is a must.
Near Tobermory, The Isle of Mull cheese and spirit company at Sgriob Ruadh Farm is one-stop ‘soul-food’. Owned and developed by the Reade family since 1980 it offers a laudable example of the self-sufficiency needed in tight-knit insular communities. Its charming glass barn café with attached farm shop showcases their own talents from cheese and charcuterie, through meat, baking, veg, preserves and botanicals - even cocktails with spirits distilled from leftover cheese whey. Graze local Mull cheddar and charcuterie or tuck into hearty braised wild venison from the estate with a novel rhubarb aioli (it works!). The nearby Island Bakery also run by a Reade family member has its ‘factory shop’ complete with honesty box in a pretty roadside shed – perfect to stock up on their addictive harissa and cumin cheese biscuits or dark chocolate gingers.
At Ar Bòrd (our Table) in Dervaig, Iain and Joyce have been offering thoughtful cooking at a micro level in the intimacy of their own living room since 2021. Having started as a pop-up they now offer a fixed menu four evenings a week in summer. Unsurprisingly, places are limited and bookings essential for their refined home-cooking.
Communal tables and almost monastic architecture are the order of the day at recently established Croft 3 restaurant on the coast road at Fanmore. A short, fixed menu might include pork and venison ragu or Instagram-worthy compositions of seasonal vegetables. Alternatively, just enjoy the terrace views with a few oysters and some sourdough and crab butter.
Fionnphort and the Iona ferry are popular destinations. On Iona itself, St Columba’s Larder offers the wherewithal for a tasty picnic to enjoy on the white sandy beaches. On the mainland allow time around your boat to visit the Creel Seafood bar by the slipway. This simple wooden shack does a roaring trade with locals and visitors alike. Garlic lobster and chips, mussel pots, Cullen skink, scallops in an aromatic batter, or just an impeccable crab sarnie. All prepared fresh to order. More advanced planners might visit Ninth Wave for one of their fixed lunches. Canadian chef Carla and her partner John (fisherman, barman, vegetable grower and front of house) – catch their own shellfish each morning and serve imaginative fusion menus in a haven of calm and productivity on what was John’s family croft.
The Old Post Office cafe overlooking Loch Buie, makes a welcome sight, with its jolly red tin roof and picture windows. Open daytimes only, this is a great place for baking and snacks as well as more substantial lunchtime offerings such as smoked haddock and sweetcorn chowder or local mussels with a Thai twist.
Whatever your personal Mull itinerary or interests, it’s an opportunity for a slower pace with a chance to enjoy and support local cafes, farm-shops, pop-up produce stalls with honesty boxes or scattered fine-dining (remoteness and scale require advance bookings to avoid disappointment). Any Island dweller knows that to thrive you must be resourceful, resilient and sustainable. Food and drink businesses on Mull pride themselves on their short supply chains and self-sufficiency, their direct and personal involvement with customers and a real symbiosis between producers and purveyors (often neighbours and friends). Our role as visitors and customers from the ‘Continent’ is to enter positively into that relationship and relish the freshness and authenticity of culinary experience that this little island can offer.
