Tuesday, January 25, 7:00 pm
Members $90, guests $115

There are many reasons to celebrate Robert Burns’s birthday each year: he was a fine poet, a most loyal Scotsman, and, by all accounts, a very nice fellow. If you’ve ever attended a Burns’s supper at the Beard House, however, add to that an occasion to recite his poem, “Address to a Haggis.” And what a recitation it is. Halfway through the dinner, an entire haggis is paraded by kilt-wearing Scotsmen up the dining room stairs to the second floor, where the poem is read in full burr.

We are fortunate to have Michelin-starred chef Martin Wishart bringing the haggis this year. At his namesake restaurant on the waterfront of Leith, Scotland, Wishart presents a refined, French-inspired cuisine using the finest Scottish beef, fish, shellfish, and woodland mushrooms and berries. The Harpers & Queen Restaurant Guide 2004 wrote that Wishart, “distills the essence of his ingredients, delivering brilliantly intense flavors.” In a profile on Wishart for the Wall Street Journal, Paul Levy praised Wishart’s “French twist on Scottish ingredients.”

Wishart is a native of Edinburgh who got his start in a culinary training program at the local Crest Hotel. After working his way up to commis, he gained experience at restaurants around Scotland and Australia. He landed a post at the then Michelin three-star Le Gavroche in London. After a stint in South Carolina at Restaurant Million, Wishart moved to Mauritius as chef de partie of the three-star restaurant L’Ortolan. Wishart returned to the United Kingdom to work as sous-chef of another three-star, Restaurant Marco Pierre White. After other European positions, Wishart was finally able to realize his dream of opening his own restaurant. Together with his wife, Cecile Auvinet, he opened Restaurant Martin Wishart in 1999. They received their first Michelin star two years later.

Bowmore will be providing the fine single malt Scotches for the evening. Founded in 1779 on the isle of Islay, Bowmore is one of the oldest distilleries in Scotland, and one of the few that malts its own barley, which is dried over a peat fire and combined with water from the Laggan River, producing a rich, complex, and ultra-smooth spirit. Bowmore single malts are available aged 10 to 40 years, and aficionados can also choose from its poetically named wood-finished malts, Dusk, Dawn, and Darkest.