Canton House

Canton House sits on the central run of St Mary Street, the main artery through the historic Royal Burgh of Kirkcudbright on the Dee estuary — the town famous from the 1880s onwards as the Galloway artists' colony of E A Hornel and the Glasgow Boys, with Hornel's old home Broughton House (now NTS) only a few minutes' walk away. The shop is takeaway-only with no dining area, and has built a strong local following for what is by Kirkcudbright's standards an unusually long Cantonese-and-Peking menu rather than the standard truncated small-town list. Reviewers across TripAdvisor, Cylex and HungryFoody most often pick out the crispy aromatic duck with pancakes, the deep-fried spicy sliced chicken, mixed-meat in Cantonese sauce and the special fried rice; spring rolls also get repeat mentions. Orders phoned in ahead tend to be ready in ten to fifteen minutes, which works well for the summer-tourist trade that fills the town in season. The shop is cash-only, clearly signposted as such, and closed on Tuesdays — the standard rural-Cantonese rest day. The St Mary Street stretch is the spine of the old burgh, running between MacLellan's Castle and the harbour, so a walk to and from Canton House takes in much of what makes Kirkcudbright look the way it does.