The Auldearn hotel and venue has reopened under new management
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00:00I'm Chris, this is my wife Lois, and we're part of the Bigger Management team.
00:09We're reopening Boathouse as what we imagine it should be.
00:13A place where local people come and share local products, local ingredients, and just
00:18enjoy a place of beauty.
00:20For us it's a community place, a place for family.
00:24It's been phenomenal, we could have never anticipated how many people we've actually
00:28had come through the doors.
00:29It's quite overwhelming to see the support already.
00:37We're a completely new company, but there was a bit of a cloud, so we decided that we
00:41wanted people to know as quickly as possible that we intended this to be reborn as a place
00:47for everyone, and just to meet people, let them answer questions for us.
00:53Just to see what it's all about now, to see that, you know, for us this is a rebirth of
00:57a place that's just special.
01:06We got married here actually, this is why it's special to us, and it's somewhere that
01:11we've always come and for me especially I've always had a feeling of peace whilst I'm here.
01:16When you sit here and you're on your own, it's a special place.
01:23We've had such a positive feedback as well, even from social media, with people commenting,
01:27messaging about how excited they were to come and visit the place, and I think people have
01:32been finally allowed to wander around the house which is also great as well, yeah it's
01:36been fantastic.
01:41The big thing is we're a big team of normal people, you know, that just love what we do.
01:48We've got incredible chefs with Ian and Vivian.
01:53Steve originally bought these premises as a legacy for his family.
01:57The last management group, you know, it didn't work out, but for him the legacy, the love
02:01for the place was always there, and this time he was determined to find a team that would
02:05make it work, and we definitely think the team we've got is that team.
02:10We've got a great foundation to build.
02:13Yes.
02:14Ian and Vivian are incredible chefs.
02:18Even just in the garden kitchen, it's incredible already.
02:24We're really excited to see what they do in the main house with the fine dining element.
02:27Yeah, definitely.
02:28Yeah.
02:29Hi, my name's Ian, I'm the head chef here at Both House.
02:32And my name is Vivian, I'm the sous-chef.
02:34Today we've opened the Garden Cafe, and our whole concept behind this is that we want
02:39it to be accessible for locals, and we want it to be really community-driven, and we want
02:44to have food that's accessible and reasonably priced, and locally sourced.
02:48We very much have two kind of sides to the business, so over here at the Garden Cafe
02:52we want it to be like lunches, and more chilled out and relaxed, people can come here and
02:55have a beer, or they can come here and have a sandwich, and over in the house we'll have
02:58a bit more fine dining, and it'll be very refined food, and we're still talking about
03:05the concept, but we think it's going to be all over fire, open fire, and we're still
03:11going to retain what Both House always has been, you know, a kind of high-end establishment
03:15that is offering food for people that want to celebrate something, or they want to experience
03:20food at that level.
03:21And over here will be a lot more kind of family-driven, people can bring their dogs and their families
03:26and chill out.
03:27That's the plan.
03:28It's a very exciting time, I would say, and we would like to make people happy, and make
03:38sure that we are catering for everybody.
03:40Yeah, and I think we have the real opportunity here to do that, because we have the two outlets
03:46really, you know, having the cafe here that we can do really kind of comfort food, and
03:50over at the house we can do something much more refined.