Exclusive:'The most addictive thing about Cromlix is its potential' - Kim Murray on next chapter for award-winning hotel
Kim Murray and her tennis legend husband Andy’s award-winning hotel will reopen this spring after renovation work and a new extension. Rosalind Erskine finds out what guests can expect
These plans have been in the pipeline for years,” said Kim Murray of her and husband Andy Murray’s award-winning Cromlix hotel in Dunblane. “ We knew we wanted to do it and we felt that the business really needed that investment in order to grow.”
The hotel has been closed since January for work on an modern glass extension that will result in a new restaurant, The Garden Room, and kitchen (”the biggest I’ve ever stood in” said Mrs Murray) as well as three new bedrooms including the main building’s first fully accessible suite, which Murray is “really excited” about. There will also be a woodland cabin wellness destination.
The former restaurant, The Glasshouse, will become a “more traditional orangery" and there will be a small, 16 seater fine dining restaurant, Cradle, which will be open five nights a week. “The most addictive thing about Cromlix is its potential,” said Murray, who has just returned from overseeing the work on the hotel.
“ It was amazing to see everything that we've been planning kind of really come to life and I was blown away by what the team have achieved in the time, especially since closing in January,” she said. “ It's a departure from what's there already, but I think the contrast between the two is going to be really special.”
While the couple have owned Cromlix since 2013, they have become much more involved since they took over managing the business. In 2023 the hotel reopened after an extensive refurbishment overseen by Murray, which included the renovation of all of the bedrooms and bathrooms, the creation of a new bar area and entrance, and the upgrading of the restaurant and all other common areas of the hotel. The interior design was by Suzanne Garuda who Murray is working with again on the new restaurants and rooms.
“ I love working with her,” said Murray, "We have a really successful partnership. We did our family home together, and then we did the first stage of refurbishment at the hotel.” She also credits architect Fergus Purdie as being part of the team "helping to bring the ideas to life.”
As well as overseeing the site, Murray got to taste some of the dishes that will be on the menus in the new restaurants when the hotel reopens in May. “I’m still feeling it today,” she laughed. Notable dishes were an “incredible” rice pudding dessert and a “mindblowing” scallop ceviche. Of the rice pudding, she said: “I squealed when it came out because it's one of my favourites. I know it's quite divisive. I'm still dreaming about it and I wish I'd had more of it because I was broken by that point, by the amount of food we'd had.”
The two restaurants will have very different offerings, with The Garden Room being the all day dining spot and Cradle, a much smaller, fine dining experience. “It’s important to me that there’s distinction between the two,” she said. “If you're a resident of the hotel and you're on a multi night stay, it's nice to have some variation in what you are eating. It's really important to me that the Garden Room, the main restaurant, is not too great a departure from what we've had because we’re so fortunate to have so many repeat guests and customers that I don't want to totally alienate them.
“We’re really keen on family style sharing menus and not super formal because we were really keen that the hotel itself is quite informal and relaxed. Guests can expect hearty, best of British produce, and especially highlighting local Scottish produce and what we can get from our garden and around the estate as well.” Cradle, she said, gives executive head chef James Mearing a chance to “really go for it, play and be super creative.”
While the Garden Room and The Glasshouse restaurant names are self explanatory, coming up with the name for the fine dining restaurant was “probably one of my favourite parts of this whole process,” said Mrs Murray.
“We had loads of members of the team working towards the name. It basically stems from this idea that you are nourished by nature, and that's what we're hoping to achieve in that room in terms of drawing on the local, the estate and the whole straight from the garden to the table element. It's a space of transformation. Those ingredients from the garden are transformed into something wonderful.
“You as a diner come in and you're almost transformed by this experience. It sounds quite reverential, but the idea that it's a place of nourishment and transformation. And from that we arrived at Cradle, which I was really pleased with and I'm really excited about the branding that we've come up with and the story that kind of goes behind that.”
Cromlix is no stranger to an award win or two; it has won AA Scottish Hotel of the Year, Independent Hotel of the Year and Chef of the Year at the Scottish Excellence Awards as well as best boutique hotel and best historic hotel at the ‘Hotel Oscars’, the Innis and Gunn Prestige Hotel Awards. It has also retained its Michelin Key. So what about a coveted Michelin Star? Speaking to The Scotsman last year, general manager Barry Makin said: “Our aspiration is to have Michelin-standard food without question. That is why we are putting on the fine dining restaurant.”
Murray said she’d never want to put pressure on the team with Michelin expectations. She said: “The aspiration is purely to offer something that feels in that ballpark in terms of an elevated experience. I want them to create something that is enjoyable, unique, interesting, and is a real destination. For me, success is happy, well fed people coming through the doors and filling the restaurants.”
The 35 acre Cromlix estate is home to a Wimbledon colour-themed tennis court and pickle ball, but can we expect a golf course now that Andy Murray has taken a shine to it post tennis? “He doesn't need any encouragement,” she laughed. “We have got an area, and I don’t know how much of this is Andy or how much is Barry, who loves his golf, but we are putting in some putting greens - not a big official putting green - but a little area where there's some holes in the ground that you could hit a golf ball towards. I've been told it's got all the correct drainage and things, but I'd like to draw the line somewhere. I think if he had his way, we'd have everything ripped up and golf courses scattered around everywhere.
“We are so fortunate with the site we've got, it's a really wonderfully untouched site and so I don't want to make it too manicured or do too much to over-engineer it. I think there's a real charm in how quite unkempt it is in places.”
Children’s schedules permitting, the family hope to visit for the big opening in May, and you can tell the excitement that’s building for the unveiling of the next chapter for this grand old building.
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