Boath House - Nairn

Built in the 1820s and once described as 'the most beautiful Regency house in Scotland', this Georgian mansion could easily be mistaken for a stately home. It's set back from the road and surrounded by 20 acres of manicured grounds complete with a walled garden and an ornamental lake.

Boath was on the 'endangered list' in the 1990s, until Don and Wendy Matheson set about restoring the house to something like its splendour of old. The hotel now also boasts a beauty salon/spa and is festooned with the work of 30 locally based Highland artists.

Chef Charles Lockley's Michelin-starred fixed-price menus take their cue from abundant supplies of home-grown and regional Scottish produce, but he often applies a French twist to proceedings. Dinner runs to six courses (no choice) and meals generally begin with a soup (perhaps cauliflower with angelica oil) before – say – seared scallops, leek, fennel and egg cream. The centrepiece could be meat, game or fish (perhaps halibut with bulgur wheat and crab salad and samphire or cannon of Shetland lamb with potatoes and kale). Cheeses are from Scotland and beyond, while the evening's dessert might be mango custard with strawberries and sorbet or roasted 'forced' rhubarb with poppy seed and ginger parfait and Grenadine syrup.

Lunch is a slightly simpler affair - choose two or three courses, with options at each stage: beetroot soup with lovage oil, cod with linguine, salsify and snails, followed by white chocolate and tonka bean mousse, say.