Our Story

I’ve always wanted my own restaurant – I’m sure it’s every chef’s dream. It all started in Bermuda (another small island!) where Elaine and I met. As most chefs will tell you their partner is often in the same industry due to the hours and lifestyle!

After 2 years in Bermuda and a brief stop in Scotland I was offered a job as an Oyster Chef at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong. Having not shucked many oysters I got practicing as this opportunity was too good to pass up.

Fast forward 9 years, a wedding, 2 daughters, a Michelin Star, a year in Taiwan and lots of Dim Sum we left Asia for more adventures and a great job on the Palm Jumeriah in Dubai.

We would always come back to Scotland for holidays and to see family, we came to Tobermory for a holiday and quickly fell in love with the pretty town and its people never thinking we could one day call it home.

Dubai – London – Singapore and sadly Covid took its toll in the world. We saw a small restaurant for sale in Tobermory and made one more international move to put down roots for good. We took a gamble but the “The Galleon – Bistro on the Brae” is now ours and Tobermory is our home.

We plan to bring everything we’ve learnt and seen over the years to the menu and we are looking forward to being part of the community, please come and see us and say hi 🙂

Martin, Elaine, Hannah and Amy - Hamish & Archie

It’s like coming into our home, our first restaurant that’s actually all ours! We welcome you, we seat you we take care of you like a guest in our ‘home’ the only difference is we don’t often have 30 friends round for lunch and dinner each day.

The Galleon Bistro is small for a reason. We want you to come in and feel relaxed in a nice cosy setting with your friends, let us take care of you, we don’t promise to be perfect and we might get the odd thing wrong but we’re learning as we go and we’re always happy to be here for you.

Our intention is to showcase to you the best that Tobermory and the Island has to offer, from the amazing local seafood, dairy or venison to the local whiskys or gin.

From the moment you arrive anything you need just ask – you’re a guest in our home.

Inspiration is everywhere – we presume you’ve explored Mull or are about to explore and what you’ve seen we are lucky enough to see on our rush hour commute to work every day, it still takes our breath away.

If you do pop down after lunch or before dinner and we are not at ‘home’ chances are we out picking wild garlic, talking to the fishermen, collecting mushrooms from Aros park or most probably sat by the harbour having a cup of tea and reminding ourselves that we live in probably the most amazing place in the world.

We live and work on Mull, our ethos is to blend our passion for food and beverage with responsibility, sustainability and keeping where we live as beautiful for as long as possible.

We pride ourselves in knowing all our producers on first name terms and this means a lot to us, we give back as much as we can.
You often see restaurants where they never run out of anything, this is great but we plan to buy what the day boat catches or what’s available in the area and if we sell out we sell out and we are proud of that and we would like you to be too.

WHAT WE DO

OUR INSPIRATION

ETHOS

LOCAL PRODUCE

OUR SUPPLIERS

info@thegalleontobermory.co.uk