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Some chefs arrive with a flourish. Chef John Christie enters with the quiet assurance of someone shaped by land, labour and long practice. His culinary voice is rooted in Scotland’s rolling contours, sharpened in Michelin-starred kitchens, then seasoned by years of cooking in the Alps, at sea and far from noise.
The estate of Dun Aluinn sets the tone. This private-hire villa rises above Aberfeldy with a level of composure that feels almost architectural. It is Scotland, but not the Scotland of tartan clichés. The house leans into a modern Highlands aesthetic shaped by natural materials, clean proportion and a sensitive use of light. Oak, stone and earthy pigments ground the rooms. Into this world of placid calm, John Christie steps, aligning his food with the architecture. The building frames the view. His dishes frame the season.
Christie’s story begins in the countryside outside Edinburgh, where he grew up on a family farm. Land taught him rhythm long before he entered a kitchen. Sixteen found him at the Kinnaird Estate, learning by doing at an intensity most chefs meet far later in life.
“I had my hands on everything,” he recalls. “Plucking grouse, filleting and smoking salmon from the Tay, preparing whole lamb and venison. A sixteen-year-old in London would not touch that until much later. Kinnaird was the best place I ever worked.”
His path then moved through the kitchens of Andrew Fairlie at Gleneagles and Claude Bosi at Hibiscus in Mayfair. Both environments insisted on precision and discipline. These years taught him to think like a food designer: no line without intention, no flavour without clarity.
From London, he travelled outward, cooking in Verbier and Zermatt, where mountain winters demand their own kind of flavour. Then came private yachts crossing the Caribbean and Mediterranean. He cooked in Australia and Asia, testing how far his instinct for provenance would take him.
Eventually, Scotland pulled him home. “I always wanted to come back,” he says. “Most people do. After years of travelling and then settling in the south of France, I had a young family. Dun Aluinn found me, and it just made sense. I want my kids to grow up in this environment.”
In Perthshire, he works closely with small growers, regenerative farmers and ethical fishermen. Shellfish from the West Coast. Highland Wagyu from local herds. Asparagus that tastes of spring brightness. Dairy and berry farms of rare calibre. “What we have on our coasts is some of the best anywhere,” he notes. “It reaches us within hours.” Seaweed from the North Berwick coastline is used to make butter, broth, or a cured seasoning. His kitchen is local with intent and seasonal by instinct.
Christie cooks the way Dun Aluinn is built. With restraint, with clarity and with a sense that every plate must belong to the hillside. “The best lesson I ever learned was to stop thinking like a chef and start thinking like the guest,” he explains. “No chef is better than the product. Choose the best when it is at its best and avoid messing with it.”
Foliage from the garden often appears on the plate, not as garnish but as a design element that connects the meal to its environment. “Guests come here to experience the venue and Scottish produce at its best. My job is to deliver exactly that. With this setting, and the producers we use, the work becomes a pleasure.”
One dish sits at the centre of his philosophy. West coast scallops cooked over coal, glazed with home-cured bacon and malted barley butter. The sauce, made quickly from the scallop’s own entrails and infused with pine from the garden, is served in the shell. “That is Scotland and Dun Aluinn in one dish,” he says.
Christie is part of a shift in Scottish food culture that feels both young and rooted. “There is a new generation of chefs and producers. You can feel it everywhere. People love what they do,and the quality reflects the place.” Seasonality, for him, is not a strapline. “When it is good, it is good. When it is gone, it is gone. You design menus around the ingredient when it is at its peak. Work like that and sustainability follows naturally.”
Far from the flash of the chalet circuit, Dun Aluinn gives him a setting where food can breathe. “The landscape changes everything,” he says. “Dun Aluinn brings it back to earth in a place where it all makes sense. That means the food makes sense.”
Christie’s cooking reads as a dialogue between architecture and terroir. Dun Aluinn in Perthshire provides the language of design, ambience, nature and food for weddings, gatherings and events.
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Get the insider news and lowdown on what we've been up to, where we've been, and who we've met along the way. Be the first to discover new places and get the scoop on our favourites.