Loch Fyne is the longest of Scotland’s sea lochs – it stretches a colossal forty miles inland from the Sound of Bute to Achadunan, a small hamlet in the foothills of the Trossachs. It’s famous for some of the finest seafood in Scotland, as well as some typically Hebridean vistas. Amongst those stunning landscapes lies a cottage, whitewashed and glowing among the trees. This is Inver – a restaurant with rooms which has set the standard for modern Scottish cuisine.

Inver is the culmination of a journey for Pam Brunton – she was born in Scotland and raised on the east coast, in Carnoustie just outside Dundee. What she and her partner Rob Latimer have created in this remote part of the country is the ultimate expression of the scenery, flora and fauna that make Scotland’s west coast so breathtaking. Pretty impressive for someone who fell into cooking professionally.

After leaving a philosophy degree during her second year to move to Kyle of Lochalsh – a small town that sits at the gateway to the Isle of Skye – Pam worked her way around a few bar jobs. ‘I got fired for having a good time with the locals and giving out free pints,’ she chuckles. ‘I think the official reason was ‘attitude to management’!’ Eventually a friend roped her into cooking at a local seafood restaurant, and she discovered a talent she didn’t realise she had. ‘It was the first job where I had an identity; I could say I’m a chef and people would know what I meant. So, the career stuck and I’ve never been fired from a job since!’

It wasn’t long before Pam moved on to work in the world of fine dining, at the likes of Restaurant Tom Aikens, The Greenhouse in Mayfair and with Marco Pierre White Restaurants, before embarking on a ten-month stint at Le Moulin de L’Abbaye in Brantôme in the Dordogne. But after eight years in these high-pressure kitchens, she returned to university and completed a masters degree in food policy, before working for Sustain and The Soil Association – two charitable groups who campaign for more sustainable food environments. Instead of manning a kitchen section, Pam found herself teaching prisoners how to cook, campaigning for better food and farming practices, and arguing with the head of the National Farmer’s Union on Newsnight.

Still, Pam and Rob both harboured a dream to open their own restaurant, and eventually decided the time was right to leave London. The search for what would eventually become Inver led them on a merry chase around Europe, to Pam’s first head chef role on the Isle of Iona, then to stints at Noma in Copenhagen, Fäviken in Jämtland, Sweden, and the much-missed In De Wulf in Belgium.

‘The restaurant we worked in on the Isle of Iona was closed for four months over the winter, so we used that time to go and work in other places,’ explains Pam. ‘While we were in Belgium, a friend messaged me to ask if we were still looking for a site in Scotland, because this restaurant was about to go on the market. By coincidence, we were about to come home for Rob's granny’s funeral, so we took the opportunity to nip up and view the place.’ When they arrived on the south shore of Loch Fyne, they saw Old Castle Lachlan, with its verdant ivy carpet, and a whitewashed old crofter’s cottage set against the trees. ‘When we saw the building, we said ‘if it’s not here, I don’t know where it is’.’

Inver opened in 2015 and quickly made a name for itself as a place people should most definitely make the effort to travel to. Serving dishes that encompass the surroundings with serious technique, skill and inventiveness meant it really stood out, and critics were soon waxing lyrical about its offering. In 2020, it was the first restaurant in Scotland to be awarded a green Michelin star thanks to its sustainable practices and symbiotic relationship with the land around it. Pam wrote an award-winning book during the Covid-19 lockdowns called Between Two Waters; a memoir-meets-manifesto rather than a cookbook. At the time of writing the restaurant is now in its eleventh year of trading – a huge success for any restaurant, let alone one tucked away on the banks of a remote loch.

‘I’ve learned a few things in the past ten years of running Inver,’ says Pam. ‘The team gets better every season, and I know what our limitations and strengths are more than ever. It’s obviously a very tight-knit community around here, so I want to be able to walk into my own workplace and know people are happy. There’s no point being sustainable in what you serve if you haven’t got a sustainable working environment.’

It’s this holistic approach to running a restaurant which makes Inver such a special place. In Pam’s mind, Inver isn’t just about serving people good food. It’s an encapsulation of everything around it – the people, the places and the stories. Almost everything on the menu comes from within a short radius of the restaurant. ‘We moved here because we wanted to be somewhere where the food would connect with the landscape and we could tell a story,’ says Pam. ‘Wanting to represent the land around us and the amazing people we work with is as much of a driving force as the amazing things I’ve encountered working elsewhere.’

Running a restaurant anywhere comes with its hefty share of challenges. Running a true ‘destination’ restaurant like Inver comes with even more. Pam takes those challenges and makes them work in her favour, and the result is something which is well worth the effort to visit.