Badenoch entrepreneur's new alliance
After 22 eventful years, award-winning chef Lydie Bocquillon has sold her renowned guesthouse and restaurant The Auld Alliance in Kingussie's East Terrace.
"I have decided to downsize," she told the Strathy this week, "and to concentrate on my recently-opened Cheese Neuk on the High Street."
Her former business, in its charming Victorian villa – built around 1870 for the Count De Serra Largo – was snapped up by the new owners, who follow in celebrated footsteps.
The Count's splendid villa had, by 1998, become a youth hostel and in the hands of the classically trained French chef from Avignon blossomed into one of the strath's finest eating houses, where successful courses in cuisine were staged for many years for locals and tourists alike.
The restaurateur was mentored by Michelin-winning chefs Jacques Lameloise and Bernard Loiseau and soon emerged as an accomplished wine taster, learning the trade from her grandfather, who was a Maitre de Chais (cellarmaster), for one of the finest wine producers in Beaujolais and Burgundy.
Her skills were matched by her enthusiasm to promote her new home in the Highlands and she was soon putting her shoulder behind such popular events as the Food on Film Festival and organisations including the local business forum – for a while she also made time to provide Badenoch with a desperately-needed taxi service.
Now her main efforts will go to continuing the success of Kingussie's dedicated cheese shop, where Lydie was pictured (left) with her daughter Skye (centre) and assistant Rachel Pollock at the Neuk's winter launch.