Saplinbrae Hotel

Mintlaw, Aberdeenshire (saplinbrae.co.uk, 01771 623585)

I WOULDN’T say I exactly drifted here but leaving Peterhead and not having anywhere specifically in mind for lunch apart from a vague email from a reader I let the car run. Clola, Berryslacks and Mintlaw pass and if they’re not names to stir the appetite I don’t know what are.

When I spot the hotel sign, I slam on the internalexpanding and externalcontracting brakes and bring the car trembling to a dead standstill.

As you can see I’m not only in full EE Cummings motoring mode, but have started to shake off the effects of that appetite-stifling but otherwise excellent pie from the Peterhead Home Bakery.

A pick-up truck stuffed with men in camouflage rolls past me as I head up the drive. Paintballers, I think. No. It turns out they’re real bang-bang duck hunters all the way from France.

In five minutes – after I’ve lingered briefly in the hotel’s very bustling restaurant area, worked out the place seems smartly run and then spotted wood-panelling and leather through the back – I’ll be seated at a table next to the duck hunters in the hotel’s very snug, snug. There’s a left, another left and then a right and a left before I find the secret door into that, but that’s another story.

Not much anyway to beat unwinding in a comfy club chair beside a low window with a stag’s head above your own head and a tartan carpet running all the way up to the bar. While a load of foreign, er, gunmen chatter away enthusiastically.

“Would you like a goose, or some wild duck for the hotel?” one of the hunters is saying to the boss lady as she passes.

Crikey, this really is the country, I realise.

While she ponders that thorny question I ponder whether to nip out and haul the kilo of chicken and oatmeal sausages from Peterhead’s Taste O’ Buchan butcher out of the boot of my car.

I could do some bartering myself: Wild goose? Wild duck? And Christmas is-a-coming. Have you tried those delicious local sausages, gentlemen?

Actually, I haven’t tried them myself, or the oatmeal-stuffed beef olives packed alongside them, both bought on a whim on the grounds that small-town butchers are often surprisingly great. Cooked up with local Buchan potatoes tomorrow they’ll turn out to be excellent, so it was lucky I don’t barter them away.

Instead I sink back into my seat and watch the crows wheeling round the trees outside while a steaming hot chicken pie cools in front of me.

Roast potatoes, a fresh side salad and a chef who doesn’t stint from piling chicken in or adding a good shake of seasoning to a punchy, creamy sauce is what this is about.

There’s a taxi pulling up in the car park now with the phrase: “Far ar ye gaan,” plastered along the side in huge letters causing both the Frenchies and myself to pause and try to work out just exactly what that means.

There was Stuartfield haggis and black pudding bob-bons – no I have no idea what Stuartfield haggis is either – with red onion and an almost punchy salad-creamy dressing earlier. I crunched and tossed them down.

As the waitress arrived with bread and drinks I couldn’t help noticing the hunters were completely ignoring the menu and ordering up plate after plate of bacon and eggs.

Hard work that duck-hunting game.

“Could have been a bit more pastry on that pie,” I’ll say later when I’m asked how my meal was.

“Quite a lot more pastry, actually, it being a pie and not a stew, but otherwise very nice.”

The whole thing has been very nice. In fact I could have sat in that club chair and eavesdropped all afternoon. But the road to Glasgow awaits.

Menu: Freshly-made chicken pie for lunch, a bit more expansive and local for dinner. 3/5

Atmosphere: Hunters on the bar, stag heads on the wall, comfy club chairs. Hard to beat. 5/5

Service: Friendly, chatty, local hotel staff buzzing about and dealing with the rush. 4/5

Price: It’s a country hotel in the north-east. Starters come in at £6 while mains were just over a tenner. 4/5

Food: Comfy setting, handmade chicken pie. Hard to gauge on a quick lunch alone but dinner looked promising. 6/10

Total: 22/30