Alan and I are faithful regulars to both of these places - not as regular as we might like what with it being an almost two hour round trip - but as regular as possible.
I believe that both The Bay and Aunty Bettys are second to none. Whilst I may not be the sort of lass who does cartwheels over either fish and chips or ice cream, I would never, ever pass up either from these lovely places.
When we visited this time, we were on our way back from the Scottish Game Fair at Scone Palace and were really meant to have been home mid-afternoon, however we ended up being much later than we had thought and popped into Stonehaven o the way home at around 7.30ish, knowing we had a lack of food in the house and a chip supper was likely anyway. Our local chip chop in Oldmeldrum is okay. But just okay.
What I like about The Bay, amongst a whole load of other things, is the traceability of their products. The whole menu is set out so that you can see where the fish was caught and by which boat. It's lovely to see something so local on your wee wooden chip fork.
I waited in the car with the dug whilst I sent 'him outdoors' to obtain the goods. I was waiting for a long time. It was the first Sunday evening of the school holidays though, so I was prepared for a long wait. The views from the car were super though, I watched four beautiful golden retrievers playing on the beach with their owners.
Alan finally appeared. I had the 'special' which was a seafood platter. I have previously had this - it seems to be on the special board a lot, but I don't mind because it's delicious and often has a wee tweak here or there. It consists of a portion of chips and three small portions of different types of fish. As I expected, Alan had a haddock supper - he's very predictable! We polished off our suppers in no time and were quickly eyeing up goodies from the shop next door. Alan had said to me as we drove into Stonehaven that he wasn't going to have an ice cream.
We both knew that he was kidding himself.
We left the doggy in the car (Don't panic! We were only gone for five minutes, it was not hot and all the windows were down at least a few inches.) and ventured into Aunty Bettys. It's an Aladdin's cave of all things sweet. It's really quite beautiful. The only complaint I have to make is that the shop is not big enough. It can be a little difficult to see what you want or reach one of the many, many sweeties without getting up close and personal with a fellow customer. But it's a petty complaint compared to how many good things have come out of this shop.
I had a two scoop tub. One scoop of bramble and the other or raspberry ripple. Alan had a two scoop cone. One of mint choc chip and the other of sticky toffee. The trademark sweeties were added to the ice cream - something they have gained a reputation for in an almost brand like way. It's great to have something so simple make an experience just a wee bit different.
Of course, we couldn't forget about our wee pooch in the car. We got her her first ever doggy cone. This is a small cone with vanilla ice cream and doggy biscuits instead of sweeties adorning the top. I only discovered the ice cream was vanilla after I got just a little too curious ad tasted it. I avoided the dog biscuits although the smell of them made the ice cream taste a bit dog biscuity. Not something I would ever choose in an ice cream.
But Fara loved her cone, possibly even more than we loved ours!
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