As a child in the 1990s, holidays on the Isle of Mull were fuelled almost exclusively by cheddar and Branston Pickle rolls. Perhaps with a tired-looking fish and chips in a tartan-carpeted loch-side hotel as a holiday finale.
But that has all changed. If the Isle of Skye once took the Hebridean culinary crown, Mull is hot on its heels. Weave your way around this island off the west coast of Scotland, and you’ll stumble across an oyster bar in a glass-fronted restaurant; the perfect flat white in a corrugated iron-roofed farm shop; and stacks of langoustine on the technicolour seafront in Tobermory, just along from the distillery that has been crafting single malt whisky since the end of the 18th century.
Where the single-track lane winds around the north-west coast, there’s a breadbox outside a whitewashed cottage in Ballygown (@mullbreadbox) that is filled each morning with loaves of sourdough and deliciously airy pain au chocolat (with an honesty-box payment system).
Then there’s the Island Bakery, which began when University of Edinburgh graduates Joe and Dawn Reade started baking bread in a converted garage in Tobermory 30 years ago (Harvey Nichols became one of the first customers for its biscuits). On the white-sand Calgary Bay, salty swimmers tuck into Isle of Mull Ice Cream at Robin’s Boat kiosk (@mullicecream). And just up the hill there’s the Calgary Bay Co, where young parents Lou and Ben have been serving up sandwiches in homemade focaccia with Crowdie cheese and seaweed chutney since they opened in 2024.
But before you even clamber aboard the CalMac Ferry in Oban to make the trip past the absurdly fairy-tale worthy Duart Castle to Craignure on Mull, there are delicious stops to make: coffee from Hinba (a roasters that was started on the Hebridean island of Seil); a crab sandwich from the Green Shack on the pier; or a blow-out haddock and chips from Oban Fish & Chip Shop on George Street, shamelessly drowned in ketchup and eaten out of the back of your car as you queue to board the ferry.
When Ulva House – of the BBC’s Banjo and Ro’s Grand Island Hotel fame – opens its doors next summer, there will be a dash to the rambling pier off the west coast of Mull to take the two-minute ferry ride to Ulva. Queues are already building just to get to The Boathouse café, which Banjo Beale and his husband Ro have overhauled. And rightly so: its buttery scallops, dollops of mackerel pate and hunks of oily bread are death-row last-meal territory. But rushing your way here without lingering to get your fill from Mull’s burgeoning larder first would be a mistake. Here’s our guide to eating your way around the Isle of Mull.
Croft3
The aim for Jeanette Cutlack and Jack Shaw is to make their remote restaurant self-sufficient: lambs, vegetables, herbs and the rest. Croft3 opened in 2022 in what was a crumbling croft, and the couple have 50 acres to play with in this corner of north-west Mull, overlooking the Isle of Ulva. There’s some humour to guests asking for a table with a view when they book – they all do, each staggeringly good through the huge windows designed by London-based architecture studio fardaa. Chairs are reclaimed from a French school, the tables are from a brewery and on the menu might be oysters with seaweed hot sauce, crab tart with pickled fennel, and pork and venison ragu, with malt ice cream and caramel whisky sauce for pudding. The line-up for each dinner is strictly dictated by what’s in season – and local to the shores of Mull – with a towering roast served on Sundays.
Fanmore, Isle of Mull, PA73 6LX
Glenforsa Café and Farm Shop
It was at Ballymaloe Cookery School that India Radford and Max Kinder first met, opening Glenforsa together on the Benmore Estate in 2024. Perched on the road from where the ferry lands at Craignure, it serves as a sort of showcase of Mull’s bounty. The pizza oven is fired up at the weekends and there’s a daily lunch menu with Isle of Mull Cheddar and Tobermory smoked salmon up in lights (plus a showstopper langoustine roll with Marie Rose sauce and salt and vinegar shoestring fries). Take note of its supper clubs, too: next up is a collaboration with Sea Change Wine and Nc'nean Distillery, with tattie scones and langoustine ceviche, seared Isle of Mull scallops with romesco and Benmore Estate venison loin on the menu.
Aros, Isle of Mull, PA72 6JN
The Tobermory Fish Company
The savviest supper on the island might be a takeaway seafood platter from The Tobermory Fish Company. It can be pre-ordered, and is likely to be jam-packed with smoked salmon, langoustine, pâté, oysters – and whatever else has been delivered by local fishermen that morning. And then there’s the Tobermory Smokehouse Club, a subscription which delivers £40 worth of smoked fish to you each month in different guises. A Hebridean fix once you’re back in the daily grind on the mainland.
Baliscate Smokehouse, Tobermory, Isle of Mull, PA75 6QA
Isle of Mull Cheese
It was after a holiday to Mull in 1979 that dairy farmers Jeff and Christine Reade eventually packed up their life in Somerset and made the move to what was then a dilapidated farm outside Tobermory, with their four sons. They’ve now been making cheese for four decades, and a spot for lunch under the vines in their Glass Barn here is a hot ticket: sourdough toasties and steaming macaroni cheese with views across the farm and down to the Sound of Mull.
Sgriob-ruadh Farm, Tobermory, Isle of Mull, PA75 6QD
Café Fish
You could happily while away a day in Tobermory just watching the boats drift in and out of the harbour, from grand, three-masted yachts to fishing boats patched up with gaffer tape. And Café Fish on the upper floor of the pier, which for 20 years has been run by cousins Jane Gill and Liz McGougan, might be the best spot to do it from. The café has its own fishing boat, The Highlander, which delivers langoustines and lobsters daily at 4pm; then there are oysters and crabs from the other side of the island at Croig, as well as steak from Glengorm Castle’s Highland cows. Settle in for caviar served on Scottish oatcakes and hearty seafood soup – as well as a fish pie loaded with salmon and haddock that makes any other feel substandard.
23 Main St, Isle of Mull, PA75 6NU
The Boathouse
It would be hard to conjure more of a Red-Letter Day lunch than this one: the theatre of waiting for ferryman Rhuri Munro to collect you from the pier (you flip the sign to red to call him), the two-minute hop across to tiny Ulva and the perfection of the chalkboard menu you’re greeted with when you arrive. Expect highlighter-pink Ulva langoustines, smoked mackerel pâté with pickled apple and Boathouse bread, and half a lobster dripping in garlicky butter. Tracks weave across the island for you to explore on foot (there are no cars), before returning for a smooth flat white or one of the Boathouse’s own hazy pale ales while you wait to catch the ferry back to Mull.
Isle of Ulva, Ulva Ferry, PA73 6LZ
ar bòrd
Arriving at ar bòrd – translated from Gaelic as ‘our table’ – in the village of Dervaig feels like discovering a delicious secret. Started as a supper club, it’s now a 16-cover BYOB restaurant run by Iain Hetherington and Joyce Kayes, with a set menu: expect shellfish landed at Croig, wild venison smoked in-house, vegetables from nearby Calltainn Croft and wild herbs foraged from the local area. There might be an amuse-bouche with mackerel, gooseberry, cucumber and horseradish, or a pudding with strawberries, crumbled shortbread and meringue – all of them so pretty it’s hard to fathom that you’re sitting in a dining room in the wilds of the Hebrides.
