The Three Chimneys at Talisker Review

Opened in spring 2024, The Three Chimneys at Talisker is a relatively new restaurant on the site of the famed distillery, operated by the team behind the renowned and decades old original Three Chimneys restaurant on Skye. With the restaurant having received a Michelin guide listing in December 2025, it seemed an ideal place to visit for a (hopefully) good quality meal after our tour and mooch around the Talisker distillery, which I guess is a similar story for a lot of the footfall here. And so, I duly rocked up for lunch with my wife, her parents and our two children on an overcast early August Tuesday.

The welcome on arrival was warm and we were shown to our table along the outer edge of the dining room. The dining room has a modern feel with the high apex ceiling giving a nice sense of space too; there's certainly a nautical vibe as well which you'd expect in this location. There's a full height window at one end of the restaurant giving views out over Loch Harport, although the layout of the restaurant means tables at the opposite end (like us) don't get to enjoy much of the view.

On offer at lunch is a relatively compact three course carte menu (plus snacks and oysters) and there's a short but appreciated three course children's menu too. Drinks wise there's a short wine list, and myself and my father-in-law enjoyed a bottle of J. de Villebois Sauvignon Blanc Val de Loire with our meal, albeit sold at four times its typical retail price which is very punchy, even for a tourist destination restaurant such as this. There are though plenty of other drink options too, including a good range of cocktails and a much better than average range of six non-alcoholic cocktails too; my wife and daughter sampled a few of these and said they were good.

Lunch began for me with the tempura king prawns, served with a sweet chilli dip. This was a decent dish and exactly what I'd expected when I saw it on the menu; the prawns were tasty and the batter was crisp and light. Other starters around the table were all enjoyed also, including the miso roast cauliflower, the crispy duck taco (this probably being the best of the starters), the burrata (this probably being the worst of the starters) and a couple of portions of so-so sourdough bread.

For mains, myself and my father-in-law had the grilled sea bass, served with tomatoes, olives and a little bowl of salad leaves on the side. This was another fairly uncomplicated but tasty plate; the fish cookery was good and the Mediterranean inspired flavours were enjoyable. The other mains were all decent too, with including the gnocchi, bacon cheeseburger and BBQ poussin. My young son was also happy enough with his side of hand cut chips.

After some enjoyable savoury cooking, there was no chance of us leaving without dessert, and this proved to be a good choice. Three of us (including myself) had the apple tart tatin; this was well executed and an enjoyable dessert overall. My wife wasn't quite as impressed with her salted caramel custard tart; the main tart custard was nice but the rest of the dish wasn't quite as good as she'd hoped. The menu listed it as coming with caramelised banana but this was nowhere to seen, replaced instead with a couple of pieces of strawberry (without any explanation). My young son had some ice cream from the children's menu which was fine.

And so after collecting our bill, our enjoyable lunch came to an end. There's no automatically included service charge, but there is an option to leave a tip on the card machine (which we did). There was however the dreaded automatically included charity donation (which you then of course also pay a tip on). I still wish restaurants wouldn't do this (although very few do nowadays); customers are more than capable of donating to charity in their own time if they wish to.

Pricing wise, I do feel the prices here are pretty steep versus the level of cooking ability on show, but that I suppose is to be expected given this is very much a tourist destination restaurant. On top of the location, you would assume that the restaurant has to pay some portion of revenue to Talisker rather than just a flat rent as well (although don't quote me on that).

But overall, I'm very happy to say we enjoyed our lunch here. The food was solid if not spectacular, and the service was good too with no issues at all during our visit. This is a good restaurant by any standard and worthy of some guide recognition, and although I wouldn't rush back, I'd have no objection to eating here again in future.