Okay, okay, it’s not the Carnegie Hall. Please believe us however when we tell you that, if you are one of the 350 souls who live in lovely Portmahomack, this is definitely the Carnegie Hall. The Cafe at the Carnegie Hall is pretty much the centre of the universe.

It all happens here

Very much a community hall, run largely by volunteers, you can book it for just about anything; birthdays, weddings, tai chi, yoga, salsa drumming .. what? When we arrived the local Salsa Drumming Band were in full flight with a practice session for an event the following day. The Budapest Café Orchestra will be performing here soon. It all happens in Portmahomack! At the café, Bruce Edwards, chef extraordinaire and general superhero, reigns supreme and will happily rustle you up a tasty meal .. the emphasis being on ‘happily’. A nicer, more friendly person you could not hope to meet.  He is hoping to retire as soon as another franchisee can be found. If you are looking for a business opportunity in this beautiful part of the world, this could be it .. contact details below. Amongst other things of course we had to have a scone, made that morning by Bruce’s own fair hand. Although not a topscone it was very good. We thoroughly enjoyed it, as we did everything about this place. Nothing fancy, just good honest fare and warm friendly folk. We were staying in Portmahomack for a few days and enjoyed wall to wall sunshine every day.

No news

Because we were preoccupied walking on beaches and eating scones news gathering was not high on our list of priorities. Wifi is pretty flaky here as well. Very quickly, we were completely out of the usual swirl of current affairs. Just what you need for a relaxing wee break. So you can probably imagine our surprise, on our return, to find that rich people have been avoiding paying tax. Absolute shocker … who would have thought? As always the rules don’t seem to apply if you have lots of money but at least, thanks to the Panama papers, we get some idea of who they are. No surprises here either but you have got to hand it to the Icelanders who seem to know how to handle bankers and tax dodgers.

All this must be particularly galling though for the folks in this wee village where the local restauranteur has to have a special licence just to walk across the street, to the harbour, to buy a lobster from Jimmy, one of the local fisherman. Plenty rules up here .. and they are applied!

Even superheros need a day off so please note that the café is closed on Wednesdays and Thursdays but otherwise open 11-4pm. No cards either so take cash … you won’t need very much.

IV20 1YD     tel: 01862 871798      Cafe at Carnegie TripA