The Fife Arms Hotel

Hiya, this is a special place to discover. We would have stayed longer because the hiking is one of the kind with paths along crystal clear rivers, the Scottish bath experience with the local nature guide is a must do. The classic hotel comfort brings you back in time. The restaurants are very good. The service is top. Even the drive to Braemar through the Cairngorms National Park is stunning. We would be back.

Been to the Fife Arms previously and enjoyed the experience, however, was a little disappointed this time. Food seemed expensive for what we had and felt a bit rushed. Saving grace was the " more senior" member of staff who made us feel at home. Younger staff seemed a bit to keen to "upsell" the wine.

I was recommended to visit The Fife Inn in Braemar by a former receptionist. They have some extremely expensive painting hanging on the walls including a Picasso. Had a lovely lunch and enjoyed the old world charm, good food and the Scottish welcome and got to admire their art works.

If you are looking for an unforgotten afternoon tea, this isn’t it. The stale bread and tasteless fillings are a culinary Time Machine, transporting you back to last week when they should have been eaten. I had hoped the sweets might redeem this tea disaster, but alas the dry cakes were as uninspiring as the rest of the spread.

"Meal for 2 in the Flying Stag, the bar was relatively quiet, but a decent amount of tables in for a Sunday night. The hotel has been beautifully renovated, lots of see, we were in the more casual, Flying Stag bar, and didn’t feel comfortable to wonder around checking out the other areas, I would’ve liked to look around more. The fish and chips were delicious, good portion size. My husband had the beef cheek pie, which he said was very tasty, the portion of potatoes on the side was small, so more potatoes and some veg would’ve taken this to a 5 star. Staff. A bit pricey, but not outrageous, I’d definitely go back again.

We had afternoon tea here a short while ago. Where to start….. Our welcome from the front desk was very nice. Friendly and helpful we were pointed in the right direction. Upon arriving in the lounge staff just stared blankly. I explained we were there for tea and we were shown to our table. The main waiter was very odd. He would hover around, passing comment on some fairly personal things and not really assisting in making the meal a pleasant experience. Ordered some champagne and after a few minutes he came back and couldn’t find what we had ordered and was really accusatory, as if I had made something up. I had to explain the menu and show him exactly what it was. He then asked ‘have you got any allergies? I hope not’. Luckily we hadn’t as it would be very easy to be offended by this blade attitude. The young man who brought the wine over , however was really excellent, as was the lady who poured the tea. Sadly the main waiter was back with the food. Three finger sandwiches which were universally dry and stale. I would suggest they were made either very early or the day before same stored improperly. The fillings were actually tasty but spoiled by stale bread. There were two savoury items also served, a sausage roll and a cheese gougere. These were both really fantastic and the highlight of the meal, by a long way. After an incredibly long wait the table was cleared and the sweets produced. Scones were giant and really dry, which was a shame. Jam and cream were tasty and in good quantity. Cakes were way way below par. A large chocolate ‘rocher’ was served on a delicious shortbread round but the chocolate surrounding was not tempered correctly and was soft and not good. The filling was a huge golf ball sized lump of really firm ganache with a stiff caramel within. It was way WAY too big and needed a salted caramel to cut the richness. It was just a huge sticky lump that had to be cut with a knife and fork and was very inelegant. The Dundee cake was dry and lacking flavour. The main draw was a large choux puff filled with crème pat, rhubarb and a pistachio crème. This had clearly been sat out for a while as the piped edges of the pistachio cream had dried out and changed colour. The small caramelised nut on top had also gone soft. There was no zing of rhubarb nor nutty flavour in the crème so it was mainly just all one creamy texture and no real flavour. A disappointing result. We were made to feel like we were imposing on the staff the whole way through. It was not remotely a five star experience nor worth the cost of food and drink. Sadly I feel this reflects the attitude of the whole establishment, that they are doing you a favour by allowing you in, rather than them providing a service to you, the customer. An example of this would be a couple were sat in the same lounge and had cocktails. They wanted another round so one of them asked for the menu again, a perfectly reasonable request. This waiter sighed and said ‘well what do y