Stylish, individually designed bedrooms and an elevated modern Scottish restaurant added up to something eyebrow-raisingly different for the East Fife former fishing village of Crail when The Shoregate opened in 2022. But the mould-breaking inn has proved a hit with bon-vivant visitors and the local community alike.
When husbands Nicholas Frost and Damon Reynolds first shared their plans to transform the simple, historic East Neuk Hotel into a style-forward pub with rooms and a fine-dining-adjacent restaurant with locals, the London transplants soon got used to hearing the words, ‘That’s nae for Crail’, from residents of the eponymous former fishing village – population circa 1,200 – in Scotland’s East Fife. But through a painstakingly respectful three-year restoration of the building and a canny, community-focused business model, they’ve won both gushing admiration from travellers and the approval of natives.
The centrepiece of the property is the restaurant, a simple, stylish space with huge windows that flood the room with light and beam in views of rows of cute, beautifully kept fishermen’s cottages sloping down to a scenic 16th-century walled harbour. A base palette of blond parquet, off-white walls and quietly hip Scandi-esque chairs and tables nods to no-nonsense Scottish spartanism, but is kept the fun side of neutral by judicious splashes of teal and orange, and quirky touches like custom-made pendant lampshades in a vintage Harris tweed. Here, head chef Craig McAllister, formerly of Edinburgh five-star hotels Prestonfield House and The Balmoral, conjures a menu of artfully presented, elevated but unpretentious modern Scottish fare that spotlights the best of the area’s exceptional local, seasonal produce. Failing to resist a second exquisite gimlet made with local craft gin and beads of emerald-green basil oil, we started with gravadlax with smoked mousse, a dill emulsion and Hendrick’s gin jelly. Next came sea trout on a bed of mashed butter beans, which, crowned by two plump prawns crusted in herb-green breadcrumbs, looked for a moment too good to eat. It soon proved deliciously otherwise.
Along a hallway sits the bar, a quintessential Scottish village pub, with its low ceiling, reclaimed wooden chapel pews, flickering fire and exposed sandstone walls – albeit with an elevated drinks menu showcasing craft spirits and ales sourced from local producers, alongside wines from all over the world. It’s here that Nicholas and Damon – who knows Crail from childhood, having spent many family summer holidays here – told us how key it was for them to make The Shoregate, as they rechristened the property when they opened its doors in 2022, a community asset, as well as a gorgeous place to stay.
| Perfect for | Fly into | Right on time |
| The Culturalist | EDI | GMT |
| While you’re Out There |
| A nifty way to sample the inspiring indie food renaissance currently hitting its stride in East Neuk is a visit to Bowhouse, a hub for small producers in a cluster of stylishly repurposed barns on the Balcaskie Estate. Merchants include funky ferments brand Angrykulture, East Neuk Market garden (supplier of veg and microgreens to The Shoregate), and Futtle, an organic brewery which – attention, hipsters – also has a small vinyl store with achingly cool lines in Detroit gospel and Brazilian tropicália. |
Mindful of the fate that has befallen many nearby seasonal seaside towns, where holiday homes and/or Airbnb properties now account for more than half of the housing, and whose residents must rely disproportionately on tourism’s precarious whims, or move away from home to find work, they took the commercially riskier decision to open year-round, and took pains to source labour and materials for the £1.2 million renovation as locally as they could. Today, 15 people either from Crail or very close by work at The Shoregate, and local suppliers of food and drink are given preference wherever possible. “What’s lovely is that the whole thing has been built by people who live no more than 15 miles from it”, Damon told us. “At the bar, that’s Stevie, one of the joiners who built this place. Next to him is Keith, from the village butcher J.B. Penman, who supply our kitchen. That people who built and supply this place come in and enjoy it is just the best. It’s exactly what we set out to do”.
Upstairs at The Shoregate, floor plans have been radically remodelled to convert eight guest rooms on the first and second floors into three luxuriously large double rooms and one suite with exposed stone walls and painstakingly restored original roof beams. While purposefully fuss-free, all are appointed with custom king- or superking-size beds (or twins on request) from Glasgow-based manufacturer Elite, made up with high-thread-count linens, and spacious, beautifully designed bathrooms. Here, colour schemes, unique to each room, are unabashedly rich, with walls painted deep blues and serene greens, further pops of vivid colour in tactile upholstery, blankets and curtains fabrics, and quietly funky artworks on the walls.
To the attuned, there’s a subtly camp sense of humour at play here too – from the beds’ headboards, so oversized they bring to mind Alice in Wonderland, to the gently homoerotic Paul Bommer artwork of a bare-chested, tattooed Scotsman in a hallway, from the monkey sculpture on the wall of the restaurant to the guest wifi password westendgulls (The Shoregate is in the village’s West End neighbourhood).
And the inn’s rebirth could hardly have come at a better time, with the East Neuk, a region of East Fife rich in rambling private estates and quaint seaside villages that attracts golfers, ramblers and birders, powering a confident resurgence in artisanal, small-scale production, most notably in food and drink. A handsome mix of former fishermen’s cottages and historic merchants’ houses, many of whose crow-stepped gables bear witness to its medieval importance in trade with the Netherlands, Crail itself is home to an unusually large number of small independent businesses, three pubs with strong local trade among them. A little further afield are the charming seaside townlets of Saint Monans and Pittenweem, the Isle of May National Nature Reserve, the artisanal Kingsbarns Distillery and the gorgeous walled gardens of Cambo Estate, whose woodland walks and magnificent Victorian country house are also open to visitors.
Photography by Martin Perry
