Kinloch Lodge, at the extreme other end of Skye, offers rooms and various adventures exploring the island as well as delicious meals. You can go foraging, otter spotting and sample whiskey from local distilleries. Their kitchen, previously spearheaded by Marcello Tully, is now run by Jordan Webb, and the hotel as a whole is run by the Macdonald family, whose roots on Skye go back centuries. 

If you’re looking for a more casual way to get your seafood fix, The Oyster Shed is ideal. You can buy local oysters by the dozen, or heaps of cooked crab and langoustines with fresh lemon. The Oyster Shed was recently featured on Somebody Feed Phil, so while the secret may be well and truly out, it’s still a fabulous place to sample what Skye’s seas have to offer. For another delicious and low key affair, check out Pizza in the Skye, a popular food truck just outside of Portree that serves wood-fired pizza, and has vegan cheese options. 

Cute cafes abound across the island, but Birch Cafe, The Coffee Bothy, Café Cùil and Deli Gasta are all excellent stops for a coffee and bite to eat. After a day’s hiking around the Isle’s stunning Cuillin Hills, there's nothing better than a generous slice of homemade cake, a sizeable sandwich or, indeed, both.

While all chefs on the island could likely talk your ear off about the quality of Skye’s produce, there are few who are more passionate than Calum Montgomery. We started off talking about the seasonality of seafood. While most British supermarkets stock the same few fish and shellfish all year round, there is in fact an ebb and flow to the type of and quality of seafood you get throughout the year.

‘We’ll get langoustines all year round,' Calum explains. 'The only time we wouldn’t really get them is May. They call it ‘no pay May’. But you see a lot more smalls and mediums coming throughout the summer months. That’s why I try to get more langoustines on the menu throughout October, December, January, February. They just seem to be a lot bigger and a lot sweeter and a lot better.’

Calum’s approach at Edinbane Lodge is inspired, in part, by Fäviken, Magnus Nilsson’s hyper-local restaurant. He names Nilsson’s cookbook, The Nordic Cookbook, as his all time favourite, and notes that he can see it on his bookshelf from where he’s speaking. Like Nilsson, Calum takes the word local seriously, rallying against the way the word is used increasingly loosely to describe food that only has the vaguest ties to the local area. This is not the case at Edinbane Lodge. Calum explained to me that he’s often picking up fish from local fishermen at 3pm that is going to be on the table for 6pm the same day, and will often need to leave the restaurant in the middle of prep to drive to personally meet a supplier off the boat.

‘It’s a very unique situation because a lot of our suppliers are family members or people I went to school with. If you go to a lot of bigger commercial kitchens then they’ll have a call list with suppliers. Because we’re getting everything at source, I’m just texting them and getting live updates with what’s going on. A lot of my produce comes through Facebook messenger, or I’ll bump into someone at the Coop and they’ll say 'I’ve been catching these huge crayfish do you want some?'’

The source of all the food is clearly labelled on the menu at Edinbane Lodge, with many ingredients foraged or grown on the grounds of the lodge.

‘For people that have come in [to work at the restaurant] before they’ve been like 'What the hell is going on?'. If you’ve worked in London or you worked in Edinburgh or Glasgow or wherever, you’re used to coming in at eight in the morning and all the produce is there ready because you ordered it in the night before. Whereas here you actually have huge constraints when it’s not Skye produce.’

Of course, while Skye is full to the brim with seafood, if you run out of blue roll or flour, it’s not going to be quick to re-supply. ‘We’re really spoiled for produce when it comes to shellfish, meat, things like that. But when it comes to any sort of dry good ingredients…I’ll need to order them three days in advance.’

Despite the trade-offs, Skye continues to attract chefs and residents alike who all seem to agree that the quality of life and ingredients on the island is worth the inconveniences. The population of Skye has risen in recent years, from 9000 in 2001 to over 13,000 now. While still significantly below the average population of the nineteeth century, which was decimated by the forced Highland Clearances, the popularity of Skye as both a holiday destination and a long-term residence is on the up. And once you visit, you won't be surprised why. ‘I honestly think it’s the best place in the world.' Calum smiles, then slightly qualifies his enthusiasm. 'On a sunny day, it’s the best place in the world.’