Perle Hotels Names Michael Smith Its First Culinary Director

By Rebecca Stone

Michael Smith will become Perle Hotels’ first culinary director on Nov. 7, following the Oct. 31 final service at his Michelin-starred Loch Bay restaurant on the Isle of Skye.

What will Smith oversee?

Smith will oversee culinary direction at Perle’s existing outposts in Skye, Oban and Glencoe. The Scottish hotel group also expects its Edinburgh hotel to open next year, adding a fourth property to his remit.

Smith said: “This new role allows me to call upon almost 40 years of experience, and I find that extremely exciting.” He also called the appointment an opportunity to pass on what he had learned to the next generations coming through Scottish hospitality.

His remit includes developing individual restaurant concepts and teams at each site. The stated priorities are ingredient provenance (where ingredients come from), local sourcing and a strong sense of place. For menu engineering (shaping menus around customer demand and pricing), the instruction is clear: distinct concepts for each property, not one group-wide format.

Perle Hotels owner Beth Rehman said: “Michael’s appointment is a significant investment for us, not just in our restaurants but in our people and in what we want food and drink to become within Perle.” She attached no investment figure to that assessment.

The announcement disclosed no average checks, sales forecasts, food-cost percentages, labor-cost percentages, wage figures or property-level restaurant data, so any effect on margins and cost of goods sold cannot be calculated. The scale of the investment remains unpriced.

Why Smith, and why now?

Smith’s move follows a decade at Loch Bay, the Isle of Skye restaurant he co-founded with his wife, Laurence, in 2016. The restaurant earned a Michelin star in 2017. It also won AA’s Restaurant of the Year for Scotland in 2024. The closure announcement came last month, ahead of the Oct. 31 final service.

Smith said he had achieved everything he had hoped for at Loch Bay. The move brings a chef with nearly four decades of experience to a group seeking clearer restaurant identities and stronger team development.

Before founding Loch Bay, Smith worked at Three Chimneys on the Isle of Skye, Arta in Glasgow and Blueprint Café in London, where he worked alongside chef Jeremy Lee. His new remit moves him from one restaurant to culinary oversight across three operating properties and one planned hotel.

He described restaurants as living entities with their own energy and existing narratives. Smith plans to spend time in each venue before looking for opportunities in new markets or visitor experiences. A title can coordinate oversight; it cannot manufacture each property’s accumulated character on opening day.

What will the operating model look like?

Rehman said Perle had known Smith for many years and praised his understanding of food, people, place and the wider experience surrounding a successful restaurant. Her operating model rejects one concept imposed across the group because the hotels differ from one another.

Rehman said each restaurant should develop a clearer identity and attract local residents and visitors, whether or not those guests stay at a Perle property. Smith will develop existing teams rather than import a uniform playbook. She said his experience and enthusiasm would help staff build on what each venue already had.

Demand from visitors who are not hotel guests gives the sourcing mandate a commercial purpose. Perle disclosed no covers, average checks, menu mix, pricing changes or labor schedules needed to test the financial case.

The group has hired a standard-setter whose actual task, by design, is to avoid standardization. That is hospitality’s useful contradiction.

What is the next checkpoint?

Perle’s next measurable checkpoint is the Edinburgh opening next year. Smith’s Nov. 7 start should produce early decisions on restaurant concepts, teams and local sourcing across the three operating properties before the Edinburgh hotel opens next year. Until those choices produce menu and staffing data, the announcement remains an operating plan without financial terms.