L'escargot Bleu

Broughton St, Edinburgh

visited 28/9/10

This is the more upmarket version of the good-value Petit Paris. It had been well-reviewed and was full on a Tuesday evening. Yet I was disappointed.

It is an airy room with big windows giving out onto Broughton Street, but with too many tables crammed in for a resto of this price, and unimaginatively decorated with "vintage" French posters. We were served some very ordinary bread, and some very good duck terrine en croute as an amuse bouche.

It is very unusual for me not to want to try everything on a menu, yet on this occasion I couldn’t decide. L'escargot Bleu specialises in the best Scottish ingredients and the finest French cuisine, but the auld alliance sat uneasily on the menu and I couldn't bring myself to try Cock a Leekie with scallops, or eel risotto. I ended up with a bland cauliflower soup, but the best thing on the table was a poached duck egg with girolles.

Next I went for the “Sunnyside Farm” veal, whose name proclaimed the happy, free range life it had led. The veal was excellent--perfectly tender and flavourful, making one wonder why anyone still eats the crated stuff. But it wasn’t accompanied by anything very interesting. I also sampled a mutton-based cassoulet which was too salty, too solid, too much composed of rather mushy, disintegrated beans. Vegetables were extra and we had some well-flavoured grilled tomatoes and some unnecessarily anaemic runner beans, just at the time when beautifully flavourful green and purple beans are available. I would just pay a little more and go to Cafe St Honore, or a little less for Petit Paris.

To drink we had a glass of a lovely Alsace sparkling wine, and the house red, which was fine—a young Southern French wine with that fresh creamy note that doesn’t usually travel. In general, though, I thought the wine list, in fact the restaurant itself, was a bit overpriced and not obviously any better than the Petit Paris (which always has some bargainacious wines).