Martyrs’ Bay Restaurant

Eating establishments on Iona are few and far between. Dennis and I had been touring through the Abbey and various sites but we also wanted to walk across the island to see the spouting cave and possibly St. Columba’s Bay. It was about 6:00 so we were starting to think about supper also but neither of the hotels on the island serve dinner that early. The dinner hour is fairly short, too, so we had pretty much resigned ourselves to crackers in our room later on. We turned the corner from the ferry to start following the map and there right in front of us was the Martyrs’ Bay Restaurant and Lounge. (As an aside, Martyrs’ Bay is where hundreds of years ago those dastardly Vikings came ashore and slaughtered the Benedictine Monks).

Anyway, the restaurant appeared to be a fairly new establishment which is probably why it wasn’t included on the island map. We went in and asked the woman when they started serving dinner and she replied “Just now”. This was great timing so we decided to have supper before our walk. Dennis opted for a scallop dish and I thought I should try the local prawns. I was expecting some nice shrimp in garlic butter. What I got were some nice shrimp but still completely in their little bodies. I was very taken aback by the number of legs they have. I’m a little bit picky about eating and don’t really enjoy having to work around bones so I knew I was going to have trouble with this. I started by chopping off the tail and digging out the meat (it tasted very good). After a bit Dennis asked me if I was going to get enough to eat because I just couldn’t make myself dig into the torso and I had no idea how to get anything out of the claws. I was also a little unnerved by the eyes ; they seemed so reproachful. So the lesson for me (other than that sometimes you don’t get what you expect in life and you just have to deal with it) is that I should read the menu more carefully and analyze about the naming of the dish - Whole Local Prawns; after all, these are the people who invented haggis.

The reward for me (and Dennis) was to share an order of sticky toffee pudding with cream for dessert - that made it all worthwhile!