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LOCH Fyne Oysters is planning to open a seafood cookery school at its Cairndow base in Argyll.
But company managing director Bruce Davidson told Fishupdate that it was very much a long term project and would probably be at least a year before it started to get off the ground. However, he stressed that it was very much in the Loch Fyne plan.
He said the cookery school would probably serve a two-fold purpose, providing training excellence for would be seafood chefs and as cookery school holiday breaks for people who wanted to visit a scenic part of Scotland and learn the art of fish cookery at the same time. Mr Davidson thought it might be broadly similar in concept to the cookery school run by Rick Stein in the West Country.
Loch Fyne is noted for its oysters of which the supermarket chain Waitrose is a major customer, but salmon is biggest product at present. The area is also rich in scallops and farmed white fish such as halibut. The company supplies many leading UK restaurants with a wide range of quality seafood, but it also has a growing export market which is worth almost £2-million a year, a figure which Mr Davidson and his team hope to more than double in the next four years. The United States is thought to be a key growth market. News of the fish cookery school plan has been welcomed by Scottish Food and Drink which said the Loch Fyne Oyster Bar was already one of the finest seafood restaurants in Scotland.
Loch Fyne started in the 1970s with one inspirational idea – to grow oysters in the clear, fertile waters of Loch Fyne – and has developed into a cluster of businesses whose success is built on an honest approach to superb quality food.
The Loch Fyne restaurant chain around the UK is a separate company, owned by the Greene King brewing group, and uses the Loch Fyne name under licence.
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