The Cross at Kingussie

If you've got the weather on your side you might never want to leave the terrace by the waters of the Gynack Burn, where wildlife puts on its own show and your aperitif has never tasted quite so good. That's the importance of a good location, and The Cross has a splendid one in the Cairngorm National Park surrounded by four acres of pretty gardens and woodland. You will get up from the terrace, though, as you really wouldn't want to miss out on the food, which takes the very best Scottish produce around and turns it into carefully considered dishes that allow the ingredients to shine. The Cross is the whole package - there are eight attractive bedrooms so you don't have to rush off home, and the place is done out in such a way that it has kept the essence of its Victorian heritage but is imbued with an understated contemporary charm. The fixed-price menu offers a couple of choices at each course, which helps to ensure the focus is on the best seasonal produce, and the combinations of flavours and textures are acutely judged. An appetiser kicks things off; escabèche of sea bream, for example, with mushroom and spring truffle, or langoustine soup with chive cream. First-course tartlet of organic salmon, naturally-smoked haddock and Shetland crab is full of Scotland's finest seafood, partnered with wild leek pesto and vine tomato salad, while main course might see seared fillet and braised shin of Haddington White Park beef partnered with caramelised silverskin onions, Savoy cabbage, baby carrots, Yetholm Gypsy potato purée and finished with a Madeira jus. Upside-down Black Isle plum cake with plum sorbet and vanilla custard is one way to finish. The service is refreshingly easygoing but thoroughly well informed, and the magnificent wine list shows real passion and knowledge for the subject and is full of little treasures.