Shooting Lodge & Sporting Estate Catering in Scotland

Italian Banquet Company cooks for shooting parties at sporting estates, shooting lodges and self-catering sporting houses across Scotland — the Highlands, the Cairngorms, Aberdeenshire, Angus, Perthshire and the Borders. A full chef's brigade travels to the lodge, cooks in the lodge kitchen, and feeds the party for as many days as the party is there.

It is the kind of work we are built for. Most of our year is spent cooking in houses with domestic kitchens, a long way from the nearest supplier, for groups who are staying rather than visiting. A shooting week is that job exactly.

Why a sporting lodge suits a travelling Italian kitchen

A shooting lodge is usually let on a self-catering basis. There is a good domestic kitchen, a long table, and no restaurant within half an hour. The party arrives on a Sunday or a Monday and stays. Somebody has to feed twelve to twenty people, three times a day, for the best part of a week, at hours dictated by the weather and the drive card rather than by a booking sheet.

That is not a catering delivery. It is a residency, and it is how we have always worked. We bring the brigade, the equipment and everything that will be eaten across the whole stay — because at a lodge in the Cairngorms or the west Highlands you cannot nip out for what you forgot. The planning is done days before the van leaves. We wrote about exactly that in cooking at Mar Lodge.

The rhythm of a shooting day, fed properly

A sporting day has its own timetable, and the food has to fit it rather than the other way round.

Breakfast before the off, early and substantial, served at whatever hour the day starts. Elevenses taken standing up in the cold — broth in flasks, sausage rolls, something hot and portable that survives a hill. Shoot lunch, either back at the lodge or set up in a bothy or barn: this is where an Italian kitchen earns its keep, because a long table of braises, baked pasta and roasted vegetables is precisely the food a cold, wet, hungry party wants. Tea when the guns come in. Dinner, later, properly — the meal the day has been building towards, cooked from scratch and served at one long table.

Then it happens again the next morning. And this is the part most caterers underestimate: it is not one impressive meal, it is fifteen consecutive ones, each of which has to be as good as the last while the party gets progressively more tired and more hungry.

Game, cooked the Italian way

Italian cooking and Scottish game belong together, and it surprises people that they do.

Italy has one of the great game traditions in Europe. Pappardelle with a slow hare or venison ragù. Wild boar braised for hours with juniper and red wine — a technique that works just as well on Scottish roe. Pheasant cooked the way northern Italy cooks guinea fowl. Grouse is stronger than anything in the Italian repertoire, so it gets treated with respect and simplicity rather than smothered.

If a party wants what it shot on the table later in the week, we will hang it, prepare it and cook it. If a party would rather not eat game every night after four days of it — which happens more often than anyone admits — we cook something else entirely, and everyone is relieved.

What we bring

• A full chef's brigade, led by founder and head chef Giuseppe Manzoli, Modena-born with more than 35 years in professional kitchens
• Front-of-house service staff for dinners where the party wants to be looked after properly
• Our own knives, pans, plating equipment and pass discipline, worked into the lodge's existing kitchen
• Everything to be eaten across the stay, planned and transported in advance
• Fresh pasta rolled, filled and shaped on site — on the day, every time
• Full provision for dietary requirements, built into the menu from the start rather than bolted on
• A kitchen left exactly as it was found

Where we cover

We travel across mainland Scotland for sporting work: the Cairngorms and Deeside, Speyside, the wider Highlands and Loch Ness, Perthshire, Angus, Aberdeenshire, Argyll, the Borders and Dumfries & Galloway. If your lodge is somewhere we have not cooked before, we survey the kitchen before contracting, so nothing is a surprise on the first morning.

Frequently asked questions

Do you cater for the whole week, or just dinners?
Either. Most sporting parties book the full stay — breakfast, elevenses, shoot lunch, tea and dinner across several consecutive days. Some book dinners only and handle their own breakfasts. Tell us the shape of the week and we will build around it.

Can you cook the game we shoot?
Yes. Given notice we will hang, prepare and cook the party's own game during the stay. We will also happily cook a week with no game in it at all.

Our lodge has a domestic kitchen, not a commercial one. Is that a problem?
No. That is the normal condition for us. Nearly every venue we work has a domestic kitchen — we are built around bringing our own equipment and working in the kitchen that is there.

How far in advance should we book?
For grouse in August and September, and for the pheasant and partridge season from October through to the end of January, the earlier the better — sporting weeks are booked well ahead and so are we. Ask about a specific week and we will tell you straight away whether it is open.

How many can you feed?
From a party of eight up to a banquet for 120 guests. Sporting parties are usually twelve to twenty, which is a very comfortable size for us.

Do you cater shoot lunches away from the lodge?
Yes — in a bothy, a barn, a converted steading or wherever the day ends up. Hot food that travels and holds is part of the brief.

What about corporate and client shooting days?
Common, and we are happy to work with them. The food is often the part clients remember from the trip.

Enquire about a sporting week

Tell us the lodge, the dates, the number of guns and guests, and the shape of the week you have in mind. We will come back with a menu proposal built around the days you are shooting and the kitchen you have.

Call 07868 162435, email hello@italianbanquetcompany.com, or use the Check Availability form. Our catering FAQs cover how we work in more detail, and How It Works at a Self-Catering Country House explains the practicalities of a residency.