The Stags Pavilion is an amazing little restaurant in Lochranza, run by Italian chef Rino and his Scottish wife Valerie. You can find Rino back in the kitchen while Val and their other friendly servers look after the front of the house. Not only is the restaurant itself incredibly charming, the service is top notch, you can BYOB, and the food is easily some of the best we had in Scotland.
Stags has a very impressive selection of dishes, there is definitely something on the menu for everybody. They have a wide variety of fresh seafood offerings along with Italian and Scottish inspired dishes, and even some really great Vegetarian dishes thrown in as well! The menu changes regularly, based on what is in season, and everything sounds so delicious it was hard for us to choose! Luckily we dined with a group of 5 so we all got to try a fair amount of food.
For starters we had Goat Cheese & Red Onion Marmalade Stuffed Mushrooms and the Italian Stuffed Local Crab with some garlic bread thrown in as well. All delicious! For mains we had a salmon dish, a creamy pasta dish, a couple seafood pastas, and one butternut squash vegetarian dish. Everything was so fresh, cooked perfectly, and just so delicious and full of flavor, you can tell it is all homemade and a whole lotta loves goes in as well! I highly doubt you could go wrong with anything you order at Stags.
At this point you'll probably be stuffed because the portions are very generous, but make sure you save just a little room for some of their amazing homemade desserts...pies, cakes, cookies, Arran ice cream, they've got it all on display and it's the cherry on top of an already great meal!
Obviously I highly recommend visiting Stags, but be sure to make a reservation ahead of time, you can call or contact them through their website. Stags is no secret to the locals and when we went on a Tuesday night they had a sign on the door that they were full for the evening. When the locals love it you know it's probably something pretty special! read more