We are greeted by torchlight on arrival at the gates of the castle, which remain firmly closed. Before there is any question of opening them, IDs must be checked.
Once inside, we will be asked to raise our arms to allow a member of staff to give us the once-over with an airport-type security scanner. Handbags will be searched. Phones should be off.
It is not, perhaps, the traditional greeting at a fine dining establishment. But, then again, the seven-course meal in question does represent a complete break with tradition.
Prime ministers and foreign heads of state are normally welcomed for an evening at Balmoral. Florence Nightingale once dined here, as did the last emperor of Russia, Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra in 1896. Ordinary members of the public not so much. Never, in fact.
All that changed last weekend when, for the first time since Prince Albert bought the Balmoral estate for Queen Victoria in 1852, dinner was served at the castle for ‘subjects’. In return? Not quite a king’s ransom but certainly a princely sum.
The decision, we were told, came from the very top. Although King Charles would not be putting in an appearance that night, he certainly wished us bon appetit from afar.
It was down to him that the interior of Balmoral Castle was opened to members of the public for the first time in its history this summer. It was on his say so, too, that something more special – and rather pricier – was planned for the autumn and winter season.
This was An Evening at Balmoral. Take the tour of the 167-room castle, behold the dining room where Queen Elizabeth II entertained for more than 70 years, and the drawing room where her last known photograph was taken, meeting her 15th prime minister, just days before she died in 2022.
Then move on to the Balmoral restaurant for champagne and a hearty repast of dishes made from local produce, each one themed on the seven rooms of the tour. Not forgetting wine pairings.
Yours for £250 per person. Well, it could have been yours had all the evenings not sold out almost immediately.
I was among the lucky 20 diners who managed to bag a ticket for the launch evening. We were ‘pioneers’, castle staff told us – and, by the end of the night, pretty merry ones.
Balmoral whisky sour cocktails were thrust into our hands on arrival, followed by an odyssey of chardonnay, beaujolais, pinot blanc and noir, cabernet sauvignon and port, before we were tempted with another snifter of Balmoral whisky – this time neat – with our cheese.
If this really is dining as the royals do, people may talk. So what kind of patron forks out decidedly high-end sums for local fare from a largely untested restaurant on a Deeside estate? The kind, it turns out, who are prepared to spend much more than the cost of the meal to get there.
Take Nadene Gray and her mother Cathy Leeds, for example. They set off from north London that morning, travelled to Heathrow and flew to Aberdeen where they booked into an airport hotel.
They then paid a taxi driver to take them on the 50-mile trip to Balmoral and collect them for the return journey.
‘You must be serious royalists,’ I said to them. ‘Not really,’ they said in unison. ‘We just like trying new things,’ said Ms Gray. ‘Last week we were at the Whitby Goth Weekend. This week it’s Balmoral.’
Or take Alison from Windsor, my dining companion for the evening. She flew up with a friend from Heathrow too, rising at 4am to do so. She hired a Tesla electric car at Aberdeen – ‘I wanted to try one out’ – and rocked up at Balmoral, dressed to the nines.
Having witnessed her share of royal action in Windsor, she wanted to see how the Scottish dimension of their lives compared.
‘I could only get a ticket for one,’ she said. ‘But I still wanted to do it. Why wouldn’t you?’
I was among dedicated experience seekers with cash to burn – but, first off, I took a moment to experience Balmoral alone, popping into the gift shop where a box of Earl Grey tea can be had for £12 but the King’s 75th Birthday Limited Edition Balmoral Whisky costs £3,200 a bottle.
I then wandered towards the castle for some private reflections on the place where the late Queen Elizabeth spent the last night of her reign two years ago.
I had to pass the restaurant on the way. As I approached, the lone piper in the doorway began playing to welcome me but, seeing me pass, fell silent again. A small ceremonial misunderstanding, for which I apologise.
We would be hearing more from him shortly. But first, a brief history lesson for the diners. Having fallen in love with Deeside, Victoria and Albert leased Balmoral Castle in 1848 and the prince purchased it and the estate for his wife four years later.
Their first decision was to raze the original castle and build a much bigger one, which was complete by 1856. It was quite the bolthole – a lavish 52-bedroom affair on which no expense was spared.
Some of the finest painters of the day – notably Sir Edwin Landseer – were commissioned for the acres of wall space and an up-and-coming designer named William Morris was asked to create suitably regal wallpaper for its halls. It’s still there, as we were about to see.
Off to the castle for our tour, then, our piper leading the way through the darkness at a brisk clip. The ‘experience’ element of the evening was beginning to crystallise. How many other fine dining joints pipe you into a royal home as you work up your appetite? We gathered in the entrance hall where, we were warned in advance, it would be barely warmer than outside. But shawls would be available to those unused to late autumn Scottish castle room temperature.
Several of us began to see why the royals traditionally bail out of Balmoral in early September.
While the shawls were optional, protective shoe coverings were mandatory – a mark of respect for the householders’ tartan carpets, some of which the King has replaced in the last two years. You imagine, in a grand family home on a hunting estate, that you may encounter the odd stag’s head affixed to the wall.
There were 22 of them in the entrance hall. They surrounded the entire room – each one accompanied by a plaque stating which royal shot it, where, and what it weighed.
In one corner stood a bronze statue of 11th-century Scottish king Malcolm Canmore. Contrary to Shakespeare’s telling of the royal skirmish, he was the real slayer of Macbeth.
This was a present from Queen Victoria to Albert, one of many on display.
Albert survived for just five years after the castle’s completion. Victoria spent the vast majority of her time here as a widow, festooning the place with remembrances of her husband.
There is the life-sized statue of him next to the stairs in the hallway known as the Red Corridor, mounted on a rotating plinth so that it could turn and ‘watch’ the Queen as she retired to bed.
And there is the last portrait of Albert – now hanging against the William Morris wallpaper but, during Victoria’s lifetime, placed on an easel so that it could be moved to whichever room she was in.
The sombre truth is that, in her grief, the first lady of this household obsessively memorialised her husband in the castle’s decor – and not one monarch since has changed it.
Equally sobering is the visit to the drawing room, the place where a clearly frail Queen Elizabeth welcomed Liz Truss as prime minister in 2022.
Here we were, in the place where the late Queen performed her final official duty, perhaps even suspecting it would be so. A grand piano sat in the corner, a photograph of the Queen Mother atop it. Chocolates would also sit on the piano when guests were present. Against one wall is an ornate chair which, we were told, had not been sat on since Queen Victoria last did. Would a teenage Prince William or Harry have had a different tale to tell?
I had expected the two sittings of dinner for ten to be organised as an ‘en famille’ experience around a big table, rather as the royals might do when entertaining. And, in laying out separate tables for each couple, I felt Balmoral may have missed a trick.
If the appeal for some was to dine like royalty, how royally entertaining to dig in as one and exchange plummy-vowelled wisdom on the issues of the day. We could even have nominated our own king and queen of the table.
As it stood, both Alison and I faced solitary dining experiences until we agreed to do our seven courses together.
And the food? The menu was created and prepared by Joe Gordon, award-winning head chef at the Rothesay Rooms, a restaurant launched by the King in nearby Ballater a few years ago. The idea was an ‘estate to plate’ culinary journey where everything on offer was produced either at Balmoral or locally.
In short, it was the kind of thing the Royal Family have been serving up to the great and the good at their Scottish residence for the past 170 years. Delights presented with wordy introductions from staff included smoked salmon, game terrine, Aberdeen-landed cod and – perhaps obligatorily – venison loin from a Balmoral estate-felled deer.
The treacle tart with homemade ice cream filled the last available corners of my appetite, which left me wondering if it was seemly in royal surroundings to ask if the cheese course might be placed in a doggy bag.
If our waitress was appalled, she did not show it. Nor did she let on whether prime ministers have been known to make similar requests at the royal dinner table.
Worth £250 of anybody’s money, then? Well, the dishes were prepared to perfection and the portions generous for a tasting menu.
This was fine dining with an added cachet no other restaurant in the country can offer. Sure, we had paid upfront, but in doing so we trusted that if it was good enough for the royals, it’d surely pass muster with the likes of us.
I dabbed at my lips with my Balmoral monogram-embossed napkin and wobbled to the exit, trying not to slur my compliments to the chef. Outside a fleet of taxis waited to drive us through the estate gates back to our real lives.
Will the King go further one day? There are, I believe, 52 empty castle bedrooms at this time of year. Fantasy hospitality perhaps, but what might the going rate be for dinner and an overnight stay?
