Michael Smith joins Perle Hotels as culinary director
Days after closing his Michelin-starred Loch Bay on Skye, chef Michael Smith takes on a new role shaping menus across a small Scottish hotel group.
Michael Smith, the chef who built Loch Bay into Skye's only Michelin-starred restaurant, has been named inaugural culinary director of Perle Hotels. He starts on 7 November, a week after Loch Bay's final service on 31 October.
Perle Hotels is a Scottish group owned by Beth Rehman, with properties on Skye, in Oban and in Glencoe, and an Edinburgh hotel due to open next year. Smith will oversee culinary direction across all four, developing separate restaurant concepts and kitchen teams for each rather than rolling out a single format.
Smith opened Loch Bay with his wife, Laurence, in 2016 and won it a Michelin star the following year; it was also named AA Restaurant of the Year for Scotland in 2024. He had earlier spent eleven years at The Three Chimneys, also on Skye, and worked at Arta in Glasgow and the Blueprint Café in London under Jeremy Lee.
Hotels and restaurants are living entities - they have their own energy.
Four hotels, four different menus
Rehman said she does not want to impose one concept across the group: each property should develop its own identity under Smith's direction. "We don't want to impose one concept across Perle," she told The Caterer.
Smith described hotels and restaurants as living entities with their own energy, and said he wants to spend time in each one before shaping its food. "I'd like to take time to experience each venue, feel the different energy of each one," he said.
A second act after a star closes
Loch Bay's closure after a decade was framed locally as a loss for Skye's food scene; Smith's move shows how quickly a well-known chef can resurface elsewhere, even as hospitality pay across the UK has been falling. At Perle, the brief is provenance and local sourcing rather than chasing a second star.
Smith put his nearly 40 years in professional kitchens behind the new role. "This new role allows me to call upon almost 40 years of experience, and I find that extremely exciting," he said. The first menus under his direction are expected to appear at the Skye, Oban and Glencoe properties before the Edinburgh opening in 2027.
