February, 2024 THE BUSH TELEGRAPH Haute Grandeur global awards features the GRILL @ Balbirnie ‘Where Scottish culture meets The Modern Age’
Haute Grandeur global awards features the GRILL @ Balbirnie ‘Where Scottish culture meets The Modern Age’ At Balbirnie we combine fine foods, beautiful surroundings and friendly Scottish Hospitality to create a wonderful dining experience for our guests. The Grill at Balbirnie was recently featured by Haute Grandeur Global Awards in this recent online article.
In celebration of Regional Winner Hotel Restaurant of the Year we are delighted to offer a complementary glass of fizz for guests who book a Traditional Afternoon Tea at Balbirnie before the 26th of March 2024. This splendid offer is for new bookings only and is not applicable with a voucher. Afternoon tea is served in our beautiful Orangery which is sumptuously decorated in shades of soft greys, taupe and a slight touch of blush. With floor to ceiling lunette windows and a glass roof ceiling, The Orangery offers a delightful Afternoon Tea experience whatever the occasion of your visit. Daily from 12pm to 4pm. Book your table for this wonderful experience, you can do so here. Celebration! I T I S T IME F O R
Balbirnie has started 2024 with a quite incredible 178 weddings booked for this year and we are still taking bookings. As a celebration of winning Global Wedding Hotel of the Year from Haute Grandeur Global Awards, we are offering wonderful winter wedding packages that are available for 2024 and 2025. In particular we have very special packages available for weekends in December 2024. Whether it is your dream to be married during the festive season and for your guests to simply enjoy delicious food and drinks served in elegant surroundings beside our roaring fires. We have certainly got what you are looking for. As part of our ‘Behind The Lens 4' film project we have created a further shortened edit aligned especially as a celebration of winter weddings at Balbirnie House. Wedding in a Winter Wonderland
BEAUTIFUL BALBIRNIE DINNER, BED & BREAKFAST FOR 2 PEOPLE; £149.50 Looking for a break? Well we have got you covered this WINTER!! With our AMAZING offer for an overnight stay based on 2 people sharing a standard double or twin room, £74.75 per person, per night. This fantastic offer is available until the 26th of March 2024. Roaring fires will be ready to welcome you and keep you cosy throughout your stay. Enjoy a delicious 2 course dinner from "The Modern Age" set menu*, in the beautiful Orangery then stay in a standard double or twin room. The following morning start breakfast with a twist, our delicious fruit salad and home-made sorbet refresher, followed by either a light continental breakfast or a hearty Scottish cooked breakfast. This offer is for new bookings only, and available on selected dates via our website. Please note all offers above are payable in advance. Supplement charges apply for weekend dates and upgraded rooms. Book your stay here! *or equivalent value from our GRILL menu
Following a £5,000 investment in brand new surfacing for entire pathway along the southern front of Balbirnie House, we are absolutely delighted to now confirm completely new Disabled Access from entire Western car park. (The area at the top left in drone shot above) We hope this will help many guests with mobility issues. The two parking spaces at the front of the hotel will be reserved for disabled parking for guests who are charging an electric vehicle. We have installed 10 brand new Electric Vehicle chargers at the front of the hotel and these charging stations are pre reservable via the Go Zero App This is an ongoing commitment to do whatever we can to help reduce the tourism industry's environmental impact. This commitment is certainly inspired by the 2023 news that The Fife Tourism Partnership has signed The Glasgow Declaration on Climate action in Tourism. Continual investment in to our beautiful Balbirnie
With a hotel history which has been built upon a cornerstone of always offering absolutely superb start point value-for money, Park and Visit Dynamic Pricing is now being applied across the entirety of all Balbirnie House provisions and services. Park ’n’ Dine Dynamic Pricing. We always apply regular hospitality analysis, to define our absolute best value start point menus. With all start point pricing we take into consideration an allocation for guests parking. In all contexts Balbirnie House always strives to deliver the absolute best value in Fife. Specifically, on a very regular basis Balbirnie House considers start point pricing offered by hospitality industry colleagues elsewhere within 45 minutes drive, and we then define our start pricing at levels either marginally less, or significantly less. We then also fully factor an acknowledgement of the cost of parking within that start point, which in terms of practicality is settled via the convenience of either App, or touchscreen at front desk. Balbirnie House Park and Visit Dynamic Pricing was initiated at the very beginning of 2024, and the first relevant examples we have defined are in relation to our 3 course The Modern Age dinner, and Afternoon Tea. Superb start point value. Approachability. Our traditional warmth of welcome of Scotland hospitality. Start point pricing at levels underneath those of industry competitors, with start point pricing which also fully acknowledges the costs within the new parking systems as well. For our amazing local community, we can do no better this! Read the full blog here! Balbirnie House Confirms Park & Visit Dynamic Pricing
Wonderful meal offers available all week! From our most recent 885 guest reviews for The Grill @ The Orangery, we have a guest rating of a truly wonderful 94.4% The following fabulous offers are available ALL week: Come and try our Modern Age menu which sits alongside our main menu for The Grill at The Orangery. With 3 courses priced with wonderful value-for money at £34.50 per person. Steak Nights: For two guests, our steak deal offers; two Josper-grilled 10oz rump steaks, with tomato, watercress, chips, a choice of sauces, and a bottle of Balbirnie's House wine for £65. We serve Scotland's finest steaks which are cooked on the mighty Josper Grill - legend of charcoal gastronomy, you don't want to miss out! You can reserve your table here!
Our Executive Chef Kris has been asked to be a mentor for a young man Caleb (from a local high school) who is taking part in the future chef competition for Springboard. Caleb is due to take part in the Regional finals soon and he has been practicing his dishes along beside Kris. With springboard, students learn about practical cookery to enhance their culinary skills. It builds students knowledge and helps them grow in confidence within the kitchen environment. As students gain experience and progress through the 4 staged cooking competition, School, Local, Regional and National Final heats. They work with industry chefs to develop their culinary talent as well as exploring entry routes into careers in the kitchen. Kris said "It is a honour to help a young person who is passionate about food and to help develop their cooking skills. " Springing into action with the charity Springboard
METHOD Gnocchi 1. Add all your ingredients for the gnocchi into a bowl & mix thoroughly until completely combined 2. Roll in cling film into logs about 15cm long and 1.5cm in diameter, tie the cling film at both ends and place into gently simmering water with a lid for about 10 mins 3. Once cooked, set aside to cool and then cut into pieces around 2cm Pesto 1. Place all ingredients in a food processer and pulse until broken down but not completely smooth Assembly Heat a frying pan and add some oil, add your gnocchi pieces and gently shallow fry them for 2-3 minutes, add the mushrooms and a generous dollop of butter and continue to cook until the mushrooms are cooked and you have a nice golden colour on the outside of your gnocchi. Once cooked remove the gnocchi and mushrooms from the pan and arrange in your bowl. Apply pesto & shaved pecorino as desired Tip – replace the parmesan for an alternative hard cheese to make it completely vegetarian!! INGREDIENTS Ricotta Gnocchi 300g ricotta 95g plain flour 50g finely grated parmesan 1 whole egg Hazelnut pesto 50g basil 30g grated parmesan 30g roasted hazelnuts 1 clove garlic (crushed) 85ml olive oil 150g wild mushrooms 60g pecorino Executive Chef Kris Currie recipe: Ricotta Gnocchi, wild mushroom, hazelnut pesto, pecorino
Lovely guest’s comments Balbirnie for us is like a home from home… Each time we visit we are blown away by how the staff treat us. We have been coming to Balbirnie since we viewed it as a wedding venue in 2018 - we were married in 2022 due to covid. Our visit is always made special with staff recognising us and welcoming us. David in particular makes us feel so welcomed and appreciated for our visit. He’s so professional but personal too and we look forward to seeing him! He was master of ceremonies at our wedding so it’s always so lovely catching up! All the staff we experienced on our stay were amazing from the reception staff to bar and food servers. We love to stay at luxury hotels and eat at nice restaurants as a treat so we recognise the efforts and quality of service, rooms, food and drinks. We always discuss how the quality is for the value. Each time we are blown away and want to thank the staff for making our stay so lovely and like we are special visitors. The set menu, the quality and skill of food served for £34.50 was incredible, the chefs are amazing! We’ve tried so much food with you over the years, Our favourite being the seven tasting menu and last nights visit. Thanks again for all the time and care that the staff put into our stay this time x We hope to be back soon! Kayleigh Meach X 'Balbirnie remains our favourite place for a real treat in the Orangery. This time we had afternoon tea for 2. We added soup on. All delicious as always and very filling indeed. For us, it's all about the splendour of surroundings and the fine flavours brought to the table. The service is always perfect too. It's not a 'grab and go' pub, if you are looking for basic food go elsewhere. If you are looking for an experience then this is it. As I say, it's a treat'. 'Wonderful food, such beautiful surroundings and couldn’t fault the service. Definitely be back'. 'Great setting, great food and great service. Had a lovely time as usual'. 'Wonderful, accommodating staff'. 'The standard of the food was excellent. Decent size portions. Service was impeccable. The food is also reasonably priced. Varied and interesting menu'. Hello Katy, I wanted to pass on a huge thank you to everyone for our lovely evening at Balbirnie house hotel last night for my sons 21st birthday. We all had such a nice time, the food was delicious and Sean couldn’t have been more helpful. The table was beautiful and we used the comfy lounge chairs with the fire set for us afterwards. It really made the occasion even more special to be treated in such a way. Thank you again to the team for making the occasion so special for us. Kindest regards, Jacqui
Employee of the Month for December Event Planner Katy Ronaldson Katy has demonstrated wonderful organisation of Special Events over the festive period. Katy has also gone above and beyond to assist colleagues during this time and has done so with a cheerful disposition. Katy received a bottle of Champagne a three course meal for 2, complete with pre-dinner cocktails and wine with her meal. Well done Katy, from us all at Balbirnie x
Wonderful Winter Weddings!
Memories are made of this!
Celebrate
What a wonderful feature in the wedding magazine To Have and To Hold Scotland Of our beautiful bride Emma and her husband Josh who were married here at beautiful Balbirnie. The most celebrated wedding venue in the world! The stunning photography of Josh and Emma’s gorgeous day, was done by the award winning photographers from Lifetime Photography.
Wedding thanks Dear Gaynor, I would like to say a huge thank you to you and your team, in particular Angela for being so welcoming and helpful on the day of Robyn and Lewis' wedding on Saturday. It really was a pleasure to work with you and the team and I can fully understand why you have earned so many awards over the years. I thought the banqueting team were amazing throughout the entire day and it appeared that they could not do enough for all the guests that attended. The food served at the wedding breakfast was excellent and the service was outstanding. You really do have a fabulous team. I wish you all the very best in the future and if you find yourself in need of a Toastmaster please do keep me in mind. With my very best wishes and kind regards Richard Gray President and Fellow, The Association of Scottish Toastmasters
At Balbirnie we offer fabulous affordability, beautiful rooms and wonderful hospitality. It is the perfect place to hold your special occasion or family gatherings. We have wonderful packages with our private dining experience. From afternoon teas, buffets, barbeques or a full sit down three or four course meal. We have you covered! You can choose from three wonderful menus “The Modern Age” , Classic Balbirnie or The GRILL. To find out more please email: [email protected] Make it special! Make it Balbirnie